The initiative comes as the tech giant seeks to maintain its dominance in digital advertising amid rising competition from Meta and OpenAI, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday (May 20).
The new formats include “conversational discovery” ads, where Google’s Gemini model generates ad content by drawing from a brand’s website and marketing materials based on specific user prompts, the report said. Another format, “highlighted answer” ads, provides AI-generated product explanations. Google is also expanding “direct offers,” which are discounted product advertisements, from its AI Mode into traditional search results.
Shashi Thakur, Google’s vice president and general manager of search ads, said while AI provides conversational responses, the company is rethinking “what an ad is” to ensure continued value for users, per the report.
To assist marketers, Google introduced an AI Brief tool, allowing brands to influence the AI-generated copy by emphasizing or removing specific phrases, the report said.
Despite these controls, advertisers will not have full authority over the final imagery or text, according to the report.
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While the new ads are excluded from the standalone Gemini app, Google executives indicated that successful formats from AI Mode would likely transition to the app in the future. To maintain user trust, a Google spokesperson confirmed in the report that all new formats will be clearly labeled as “sponsored.”
The company has also implemented “strong guardrails” to prevent AI hallucinations in ad copy, Thakur said, per the report.
This is the latest step of Google’s company-wide AI push. A central piece of this strategy is the experimental AI Pointer, a cursor developed by DeepMind that interprets on-screen content to perform complex tasks, such as converting data tables into charts without manual prompting.
Google has also embedded Affirm and Klarna’s buy now, pay later (BNPL) options into Google Pay within Gemini conversations and Search, an integration designed to synchronize AI agents with retail systems via the Universal Commerce Protocol.
Simultaneously, the company is scaling its specialized AI tools, launching a reimagined Google Finance in Europe featuring AI-generated insights from live earnings calls.
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