TL;DR:
- Google introduced four new Gemini-powered ad formats at Marketing Live 2026, all designed to live inside AI Mode responses rather than alongside them.
- AI Mode has crossed 1 billion monthly users, with queries more than doubling every quarter.
- 92 to 94% of AI Mode sessions currently end without a click to an external website, meaning intent is being resolved inside Google before users ever reach your site.
- To stay visible, your product data, ad copy, and content structure all need to be specific and direct enough for Gemini to generate accurate, useful answers from them.
We’ve been watching Google move its ad inventory closer to the answer for a while. At Google Marketing Live 2026, that move became official. Four new Gemini-powered ad formats now live inside AI Mode, a surface that just crossed 1 billion monthly users. The click-through model that has anchored search marketing for two decades isn’t disappearing overnight, but the rules are shifting fast enough that “wait and see” isn’t really a strategy anymore.
Here’s what was announced, what the numbers say, and what we think you should do about it.
What Google announced at Marketing Live 2026
Google introduced four new ad formats designed to sit inside AI Mode and AI-powered Search responses. Each one behaves differently from a traditional search ad.
Conversational Discovery Ads
These ads answer a user’s specific question directly inside an AI Mode response. Someone asks how to make their bathroom feel like a spa, and the ad surfaces as part of the answer, with product-specific copy generated by Gemini in real time. No separate ad unit, no banner. Just an answer that happens to come from an advertiser.
Highlighted Answers
When AI Mode returns a list-style response (say, the best language-learning apps for beginners), eligible ads can appear as a recommendation inside that list. Position depends on relevance, not just bid.
AI-Powered Shopping Ads
Built for high-consideration purchases like TVs, appliances, and software. Gemini pulls your product feed and writes a custom explainer on the fly, explaining why this product fits this shopper’s specific needs at this moment. The creative is generated per query, not per campaign.
Business Agent for Leads
Instead of a static form, users interact with a Gemini-powered chat agent trained on your website, directly inside the ad. They ask questions, get answers, and qualify themselves before ever leaving the search results page.
The number that reframes everything
AI Mode now has over 1 billion monthly users, and queries are more than doubling every quarter. For context, AI Overviews, the broader AI summary layer, sits at 2.5 billion monthly users. Both numbers are growing faster than traditional search.
Here’s where it gets interesting: 92 to 94% of AI Mode sessions currently end without a click to an external website. That’s not a rounding error. It means the intent that used to flow to your landing page is increasingly resolved inside Google itself. If your brand isn’t present within the answer layer, you’re invisible for a growing share of searches.
Vidhya Srinivasan, VP and GM of Google Ads and Commerce, put it plainly at the event: “Now, you can ask Google anything, so the best ads must be answers.”
That’s a pretty solid brief for every search campaign running today.
Yellow take: what this means for your strategy
The new formats don’t replace Performance Max or standard search campaigns. They extend the surface area where your brand can show up, but they require a different kind of asset.
Traditional ads are written for a position on a results page. These new formats are generated for a specific question. That means your product data, your ad copy, and your landing page content all need to be precise enough for Gemini to work from accurately. Thin copy and generic headlines won’t hold up.
The same logic applies to SEO. Generative Experience Optimization (GEO), which means structuring your content so AI systems can accurately summarize and cite it, is no longer a niche practice. It’s a prerequisite for appearing in the answer layer at all, paid or organic.
Three things to do right now
1. Audit your product feed and ad copy for specificity. AI Shopping Ads and Conversational Discovery Ads generate creative from your existing assets. If your descriptions are vague (“high-quality product for every need”), the generated ad will be too. Go through your top-spending product categories and tighten every attribute you can.
2. Start testing Business Agent for Leads if you run lead-gen campaigns. Early data on conversational lead formats consistently shows higher intent from users who self-qualify through a chat flow compared to a static form. Even a small test budget will give you benchmarks before the format becomes the norm.
3. Structure your content for direct-answer indexing. Pages that answer specific questions clearly, with a direct sentence early in each section, are more likely to be pulled into AI Mode responses. Our SEO team has been building this into content frameworks for the past year. If your content still leads with brand storytelling before getting to the actual answer, it’s worth revisiting.
Final thought
The 1 billion users number gets the headlines, but the 92 to 94% no-click rate is the one that changes budgets. It’s not a catastrophe. It’s a shift in where value is created. Brands that adapt their assets, their copy, and their content structure for the answer layer will capture intent that others miss. We’re still in the early stages of that transition, which means there’s time to move thoughtfully rather than reactively.
If you’d like to talk through how these formats fit your current search strategy, our paid search and SEO teams are happy to help.
Partner with us for top-notch UA, GEO, and SEO solutions
Frequently Asked Questions
Google introduced four new formats: Conversational Discovery Ads, which answer a user’s specific question directly inside an AI Mode response; Highlighted Answers, which surface eligible ads inside list-style AI responses; AI-Powered Shopping Ads, where Gemini generates a custom product explainer per query; and Business Agent for Leads, where users interact with a brand’s AI chat agent directly inside the ad instead of filling out a form.
 It means the majority of AI Mode sessions are fully resolved inside Google, without anyone visiting an external website. For advertisers relying on click-based traffic, that’s a significant shift. Visibility now depends on whether your brand appears inside the AI answer, not just near it. The new ad formats are Google’s way of giving advertisers a route into that space.
No. Google positioned them as an extension of what already exists, not a replacement. Performance Max and standard search campaigns still run on traditional and AI-powered search surfaces. The new formats add a layer on top of that, specifically for the AI Mode environment, and require different creative assets to perform well.
Start with your product feed and ad copy. AI Shopping Ads and Conversational Discovery Ads generate creative from your existing assets, so vague descriptions will produce vague ads. On the content side, structure pages to answer specific questions directly and early, which makes them more likely to be cited inside AI Mode responses. This applies to both paid and organic visibility.
GEO is the practice of structuring your content so that AI systems can accurately summarize, cite, and surface it in generated answers. It involves writing direct-answer sentences early in each section, backing claims with statistics from credible sources, and using clear H2/H3 headings that map to real questions. With 92 to 94% of AI Mode sessions ending without a click, appearing inside the answer layer is increasingly where organic visibility happens.
