Google Ads in AI Overviews: What to Expect

Google’s latest major change of the search experience, AI Overviews, has proven to be a success. Starting October 2024, AIO will start slowly rolling out to over a hundred countries worldwide.

While this feature is only available in a handful of countries, there’s a new, very important addition to it. There are now Google ads in AI Overviews.

What do they look like at the moment? What AIO means for your business? How ads in AIO can influence your strategy?

This brief guide will answer these questions.

Google's AIOs Impact on Websites’ Web Performance

If you are from one of the countries where AIO has already rolled out, you’ve seen what it is. When you google something, there’s a chance that above the organic search results, you’ll see a brief explanation of the topic written by generative AI.

It typically triggers for long keywords phrased as questions and takes up the whole screen once you expand it.

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As it pushes the organic search results even lower and provides a quick answer, it poses a threat to SEOs. Organic traffic on informational keywords might decline if an AI Overview is present.

Yet, it also provides an opportunity. If your page can make it to the list of sources cited by the generative AI, it will appear above other results.

The optimization strategy for AI Overviews is hard to pinpoint, as it’s a new feature that’s liable to change, and sources are mostly highly authoritative websites like Wikipedia. However, if your page ranks in the top ten for the keyword or has a featured snippet, it’s much more likely to appear in the sources as well.

So, doing SEO basics like keyword optimization and building website authority greatly improves your chances. Using a tool like SE Ranking AI Overview tracker to find which keywords trigger AIO and analyze the source links can also help you tailor your strategy to this new feature. 

Google Ads in AI Overviews

Since AI Overviews are mostly shown for long keywords phrased as questions, ads aren’t shown as often. SE Ranking research on AIO ads from September 2024 shows they accompany AI Overviews in 13% of desktop searches. In the majority of cases where ads are present, text ads occupy the bottom of the page. In fact, 11% of accompanying ads are Google Shopping ads.

Ads are shown on mobile a lot less, only in 3.76% of searches with AI search results.

Recently, Google Shopping ads also started appearing inside the AI Overview.

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These Google Shopping product cards are shown in relevant searches, many for commercial keywords. This makes AIO ads great for affiliate sites. They can be expanded to view product details, pricing, and websites users can make a purchase from—everything you’d expect from a regular product card.

As of today, you may have your ads displayed on AI Overviews via Search ads, Shopping campaigns, and Performance Max campaigns. There are no extra steps or any way to influence the placement—Google Ads will determine where to show your ads based on the context.

Key Details about Google’s Ads in AI Overviews

AI Overviews has been running for almost a year in its current form, but advertising within the feature is a new addition. Here’s what we know about it.

Testing Stage

Ads inside AIO is still being tested. Since its rollout, AI Overviews themselves have gone through changes. For instance, from appearing in a lot of searches to triggering only for a few percent of keywords and back to being pretty common in search.

For all we know, ads inside of AIO can go through a similar pattern with more and fewer ads appearing before Google decides on what’s best for the users.

We may also see Google allow choosing AIO as a placement for your ads and keywords that trigger AIO ads growing in CPC cost if those ads convert better.

Ads Reduction Outside AI Overviews

A trend that emerged in late 2024 is a surprising reduction in the number of ads around generative search experience. Judging from continuous AIO analysis by SE Ranking, the number went down from 13% to 8.77%, so the number of text and shopping ads in search results with the AIO feature dropped by a third in a few months.

Now, this could have been Google’s attempt to cut down on ads to look better on the antitrust lawsuit hearings.

This could also be a part of Google’s potential experiments with AIO ads in search. It’s likely both the frequency and layout of the ads will fluctuate for 6–12 months before we get a somewhat final version of it.

Another explanation is Google potentially planning to increase the number of ads within AI Overviews and cutting down on ads that appear around the feature.

When Ads Appear

When the ads appear in the AI Overview, it will depend on the query and on the context of the answer AIO provides.

Mostly, they’ll be served to users in AI answers to questions with a commercial angle. For strictly commercial searches like “best sneakers released in 2022,” expect ads on the topic to appear in AIO.

There also can be ads in AI responses for queries where a product can be relevant. For instance, a search for “how to get a stuck screw out” will likely contain AI descriptions of common solutions and ads for extraction bits sets.

Ads are taken from existing Google Ads campaigns. There’s no need to do anything if you want your ads to appear there. There’s also no way to opt-out at the moment or see segmented performance statistics on AIO ads.

Importance for Online Advertisers

If the new ad placement turns out promising—and it likely will—it’s going to become a staple at Google Ads. Here’s why this matters to advertisers.

This new type of ad placement gives a unique way to connect with customers. Regular ads are displayed based on user request. People looking for a specific product or a service will see a search or a product ad related to it.

In AIO, it seems some ads will be displayed based on context as well. So, a wider demographic of people can see your ads in the context of a solution to their problem even if they weren’t looking for the product specifically.

Currently, there seems to be no way to track how ads perform in AI Overview, but these context-based ads may show decent results. The reason is that AIO explains why the product is a good fit for a user’s problem before the ad. Google is likely to add AIO ad statistics in the future, so this assumption will be tested.

Best Practices for Ads in AI-Powered Search

While you can’t directly influence whether your ads appear in AI Overviews, there are a few things that improve your odds. Here are the best practices to achieve success in paid search in and around AI Overviews. 

Ads Alignment with Relevant Keywords

The first thing is keyword research to find out which of the keywords you target in a PPC campaign have an AI Overview. An SEO tool can give you this information about your whole keyword list. What you do with the information is up to you.

You can double down on the keywords with AIO present if you want to test the hypothesis that those ads will convert better. Or you can strategically avoid them by either removing them from the list or reducing bidding on them.

Now, to make sure your ads have better odds at appearing higher, align the ad with the keyword. Look into the semantics of the keyword and search intent. Browse through organic results and analyze what content ranks well. That’s likely the information users are looking for.

Craft your ad to highlight information and answer the search intent to improve Ad Quality and get better positions.

Leveraging AI-driven Search Campaigns

Using AI-driven campaigns with a broad match setting improves your chances of succeeding with PPC advertising. An exact match is great if you absolutely know what you’re doing with a very narrow campaign.

If your goal is to get your ad in front of the eyes of people who may be interested in your products or services, or you’re not a specialist in the field, a broad match can do most of the work. It will use all signals available to Google to understand the intent behind a user’s search and serve them the right ad that aligns both with their interest and your goals.

This likely means Google will serve your ads contextually in the AI Overviews.

Keywords Grouping for Different Accounts

When grouping keywords, keep in mind that AI Overviews will trigger on longer search queries. These will mostly be either informational or commercial in nature. Keywords like “best Father’s Day gifts” are likely to trigger both an AIO and shopping ads inside.

Consider exploring commercial keywords and including them as a subgroup in your campaigns if you want to target AIO.

Optimizing your existing campaigns for transactional keywords also plays a role here as AIO ads can be shown in a context of a problem a user faces. The ads will likely be pulled from transactional keywords related to the products that solve this problem.

Merchant Center Optimization

Since the ads shown in AI Overviews are shopping ads, a major thing that could improve the results of your campaign is optimization of Merchant Center product feed.

When your data feed is organized, well-structured, and updated regularly, it makes it easier to process for Google. This means your ads will appear for relevant searches and improve ROAS. Product cards that look good and provide information important to the user will also improve the conversion rate.

Here are the basics of product feed optimization:

• Optimize product titles for your keyword group
• Create multiple good-looking photos
• Provide information about the product that’s relevant to the users
• Keep the information updated

Run A/B testing on your product cards to find an optimal layout.

Reengage Users

Reengaging users with ads can provide a bigger ROI than running regular ads. Seeing those remarketing ads in the context of an AI Overview response to a user question might produce even better results.

While there’s still no way to influence placement in the AIO, your best bet is to run reengagement campaigns and monitor performance to see if there’s a major difference with times before ads in AIO.

Watch Out for Updates

That’s about it when it comes to things you can do now. But Google is likely to change how ads appear in AI Overviews and add more advertiser tools to manage them.

Look out for updates on this matter. Check for updates in the way AIO serves ads and in Google ads tools. When Google ads features that allow tracking performance in the AIO, you want to be among the first to jump on the bandwagon and analyze how your ads appear there.

Meanwhile, some third-party tools might appear on the market that can help with tracking some aspects of AIO performance.

Look for Context Performance

When a reliable way to track ad performance in AIO appears, pay close attention to performance for context keywords that are not directly tied to your ad. For example ads for tools showing up in AIO for informational keywords about DIY projects.

AI might not correctly understand the relation between your products and the search request, or it might make a mistake and serve ads in a completely irrelevant context.

Currently, you might try to experiment with the wording in the ad to avoid it being shown in that context if it ruins performance and draws unnecessary ad spending, or try excluding parts of that keyword from the campaign. For a more comfortable solution, we’ll have to wait for Google to add tools for AIO ads management.

Summary

Google’s AI Overviews create a problem for digital marketers, but what is digital marketing if not the race to overcome new problems with each update? Thankfully, this feature creates new opportunities. Ads shown in AI Overviews is just one of them.

It remains to be seen how exactly AIO ads will function and how they will perform compared to ads around this feature and ads on pages with no AI results. Google doesn’t even have the option to show AIO specific performance metrics as of today.

When that day comes, you’ll be prepared. Analyze AI Overviews in search results, perfect your PPC strategy, and optimize Merchant Center product cards. Then, analyze your ad performance with a winning ad tracker. This should help you land ads in this search feature and decide whether it’s a good placement or not.