Google has started rolling out ads in AI mode, which is the company’s “answer engine,” not a search engine.
AI mode has been available for a year and is accessible to everyone for free.
If you pay for Google One, AI mode lets you toggle between advanced models, including Gemini 3 Pro, which generates an interactive UI to answer queries.
Up until now, Google has avoided showing ads in AI mode because it made the experience more compelling to users.
At the same time, Google has been slowly pushing users toward AI mode in the hope that people get used to the idea and eventually use ChatGPT or Google Search.
Now, Google is rolling out ads in AI answers.
These ads have a “sponsored” label because Google needs to comply with the law of the land, and they’re similar to the usual links (citations) in AI answers.
We noticed that these ads appear at the bottom of the answer compared to citations, which mostly appear in the right sidebar.
It’s possible that Google’s tests found ads at the bottom of the answer have a higher CTR (click-through rate), or it could be one of the experiments.
What do you think? Do you think people would click on ads in AI mode as much as they do in regular search?