Marketers champing at the bit for AI chatbots to become the next major ad surface may have to suppress their appetites a little longer.
With Google’s Gemini surging in popularity, speculation has been bubbling in the ad industry that the app might be on the cusp of introducing ads to capitalize on the moment — and help offset the hefty AI infrastructure costs.
Not so, according to Google’s VP of global ads, Dan Taylor. In an interview with Business Insider this week, Taylor reaffirmed there are “no plans for ads in the Gemini app.”
Instead, the ads team is prioritizing ad placements within AI search. Google began introducing ads to AI Overviews — the natural language summaries of search results that appear at the top of its search engine results page — in 2024. Last year, it brought ads to AI Mode, its AI chatbot that appears on search pages, which enables users to conduct more in-depth research and ask follow-up questions.
“Search and Gemini are complementary tools with different roles,” Taylor said.
“While they both use AI, search is where you go for information on the web, and Gemini is your AI assistant,” he said. “Search is helping you discover new information, which can include commercial interests like new products or services. We see Gemini as helping you create, analyze, and complete that.”
From an advertising perspective, Google has over 25 years of experience with search ads. Monetizing AI assistants is a relatively new, uncharted territory with numerous questions to consider.
Here are a few:
- Where and when should an ad show up?
- What would these ads look like, and how should companies think about charging for them?
- How can an AI chatbot balance commercial interests while also ensuring users feel they are getting accurate and objective answers?
- Could the introduction of ads alienate users in a competitive landscape where apps like Gemini are fighting for supremacy against the likes of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, and Anthropic’s Claude?
A first-mover disadvantage?
Ads might feel inevitable as tech giants invest billions of dollars into their AI infrastructures. However, AI companies are aware that making the first move could be perceived as a degradation of their products and cause users to jump ship.
Google’s success in leveraging AI to create financial gains from its existing search product and advertising platform is one advantage it has over arch-rival OpenAI, which is under pressure to demonstrate a path to profitability. It potentially gives Google more leeway to wait before introducing an ad model to Gemini.
Stratechery tech analyst Ben Thompson said in a recent interview on the tech news show TBPN that OpenAI delaying ads in ChatGPT “risks the entire company.”
“They could have launched the world’s crappiest ads in 2023. By today, in 2026, they would be good,” Thompson said. “Now, they’re going to have to launch ads, they’re going to suck, and people are going to be like, ‘This sucks, I’ll just go to Gemini.'”
The rivalry between Google and OpenAI intensified late last year when Google released its Gemini 3 AI model, which received rave reviews. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded by issuing a “code red,” telling teams to redirect resources from newer projects, including a yet-to-be-released advertising program, to prioritize improving ChatGPT’s performance.
Gemini had 650 million monthly active users, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, said in its latest quarterly earnings report in October. OpenAI said in October that ChatGPT had 800 million weekly users.
What Google has learned from ads in AI search so far
Taylor said that more than 80% of Google’s advertisers are currently using some form of AI-powered search functionality. That’s largely through the adoption of tools like AI Max for Search and Performance Max, where Google’s AI algorithm automatically chooses which ad creatives a campaign should run and where to place those ads.
Advertisers can’t yet specifically choose to run ads within AI Mode or AI Overviews. Instead, the algorithm makes the decision to place them there based on targeting variables like location, demographics, keywords, and topics.
“We don’t have any plans to enable buying separately at this phase,” Taylor said.
Taylor said AI Overviews have notched up more than 2 billion monthly active users, and that people are clicking and engaging with AI Overview ads “at about the same rate” as traditional search ads.
Google’s testing of ads in AI Mode isn’t as far along and presents more challenges when trying to convert the traditional search ads playbook for the AI era. Users have longer back-and-forth conversations in AI Mode, and ads shown too early can feel “intrusive” and create “a trust problem,” Taylor said. A newbie runner seeking helpful information about how to prepare their body for a marathon later in the year might not be ready straight away for ads featuring performance running shoes, for example, he added.
This month, Google said it had begun testing a new ad format called Direct Offers, which will let advertisers present personalized discounts to shoppers who are about to make a purchase within AI Mode. Taylor said Google is only working with a specific set of advertisers on the Direct Offers pilot and didn’t have more information about when it might become broadly available.
Direct Offers was one of several announcements Google made regarding new AI-shopping experiences. New products included a forthcoming checkout function that will let shoppers complete their purchases inside AI Mode and the Gemini app.
