Worried that the ongoing embrace of artificial intelligence and the acceleration of late-stage capitalism will continue to leave people isolated from each other? Don’t worry, you can talk to ads now! According to a report from Search Engine Land, at this year’s Google Marketing Live event, the company announced a new generation of “conversational” advertisements that will soon start to populate search results.
Google will be rolling out several new ad experiences that will pair with the company’s re-imagined and AI-centric search. That includes “Conversational Discovery” ads, which Search Engine Land reports are sponsored results that are designed to look like an answer to a person’s query. It’ll appear in AI Mode within Google Search and will produce tailored responses with the company’s Gemini AI model. So if you’ve ever found yourself wanting to talk to an advertisement, congratulations, because your strange, specific desire is about to be fulfilled.
In addition to the chatty ads, Google will also introduce “Highlighted Answers,” which will offer highly relevant promotions that will be displayed in a recommendation list. That, too, will be powered by Gemini and will reportedly appear in Google’s standard Search experience. On the consumer side, it’s probably just going to feel like more ads. On the business side, Search Engine Land reports that it’ll make advertisements more dynamic and targeted instead of static and locked to specific keywords and pre-made copy.
While Google is actively trashing its flagship Search product in pursuit of pumping as much AI slop into it as possible, the Wall Street Journal reported that Gemini itself will remain ad-free for the time being. But you’d have to be pretty naive to think that’ll remain the case. We’re already seeing other companies trying to slip ads into their chatbot interfaces.
OpenAI did it, though the results of that experiment would generously be described as mixed and more accurately described as a failure. Turns out corporations are thrilled to pay high rates for ad placements that don’t actually seem to get any attention. Of course, Google has been in the ad game for much longer and has a lot of dark arts to tap into that an upstart like OpenAI can’t—like, say, a digital advertising monopoly.
Search Engine Land said that Conversational Discovery ads and Highlighted Answers are already being tested on users in the United States and will appear on both mobile and desktop. More AI-powered features for advertisers are expected to roll out later this year. So get ready for the web to get even worse.
