Google's AI Overviews are getting ads soon

Google's AI Overviews, a recently launched feature that provides AI-written summaries for certain queries, is soon getting ads.

We knew the AI Overviews would get advertisements in some form from the get go, but now Google shared more details about how this will look. In a blog post Tuesday, Google explained that it will "soon" start "testing Search and Shopping ads in AI Overviews for users in the U.S."

The company also provided an animated demo of how this would look, with various products for unwrinkling showing up under the AI Overview for a query on how to straighten up your clothes.

According to Google, there is no action needed from advertisers to turn this on. "(The ads) will have the opportunity to appear within the AI Overview in a section clearly labeled as “sponsored” when they’re relevant to both the query and the information in the AI Overview," the blog post read.

"As we move forward, we’ll continue to test and learn new formats, getting feedback from advertisers and the industry."

Given how ad-heavy and spam-riddled Google Search already is, getting more ads in a feature that cannot directly be turned off (there is a way to do it, read our how-to guide) probably isn't great news for users.

For Google, of course, AI Overviews are a way to keep (some) users out of going to OpenAI's ChatGPT for answers, and the ads within the AI Overviews are a way to monetize this audience. As Wired noted, Microsoft's Bing search engine already does something similar by displaying ads inside the Bing Copilot chatbot. Long-term, with AI-generated content likely to become a key part of Google Search, these ads and other forms of advertising might prove to be increasingly important for the company.