A version of this article originally appeared in The Keyword.
Advertising has experienced many big shifts, and this moment is no different. One thing is clear: The future of advertising fuelled by AI isn’t coming — it’s already here.
The role of advertising for businesses and the internet is as critical as ever. People come to Google to find answers to their questions, discover new things, and find inspiration. Digital ads help connect people to businesses of all sizes along these journeys and enable publishers and creators to offer content for free.
To help marketers and businesses make the most of this moment, we’re reimagining the future of ads and shopping. Ads that don’t interrupt but help customers discover a product or service. Content that features the perfect creative, appearing at just the right moment — even those moments that were hard to predict. Ads that remove the guesswork and drive measurable impact. And of course, ads that genuinely inspire.
Today at Google Marketing Live, we showed exactly how we’re building these kinds of next-gen AI-powered solutions for Search and YouTube — where discovery starts and decisions are made. Here’s a closer look at what’s coming and how we’re turning AI into action for our customers.
Capture even more opportunities in Search. We see over five trillion searches a year on Google,1 and AI has opened new ways to explore with tools like Lens, AI Overviews, and AI Mode, helping people discover information and act faster. Google Search is bringing generative AI to more people than any other product in the world.2 It’s going beyond information to intelligence. And as people search, ads help them take the next step. Today, we’re expanding ads in AI Overviews to desktop, and bringing ads to AI Mode to create new opportunities for our customers.
Turn creative visions into reality. Beautiful content is essential to spark inspiration but often hard and time consuming to make. In the last two months, we’ve made incredible strides, improving the quality of our creative tools powered by our leading video and image generation models, Veo and Imagen. Today, we announced these cutting-edge features will soon be available within Google Ads and Merchant Center so that marketers can easily build campaigns and watch their creative vision come instantly to life.
Find untapped potential with Google AI. The way consumers discover information and make decisions has changed —?it’s no longer straightforward. To help marketers predict what is often unpredictable, we introduced AI Max for Search campaigns. Building on that, today we’re launching our biggest update to bidding in over a decade: Smart Bidding Exploration. It pursues less obvious and potentially high-performing searches, giving advertisers the chance to appear in more of the moments where people are researching and discovering information on Search.
Work smarter with new agentic capabilities. These are exciting changes, but we also know that adopting the right AI tools can feel daunting, particularly to smaller businesses. To help with these transitions, we are unveiling new agentic capabilities, which give marketers the power of their very own Google AI so they can adapt and succeed with less effort.
As always, we’ll partner with our customers as we roll out these products so they can take part in every opportunity across Search and YouTube. As we move AI in advertising from potential into practical actionable solutions, we’re here to help marketers and businesses succeed. Read more on The Keyword.
