The much anticipated launch of ads in AI Overviews is officially live.

Originally announced in May’s Google Marketing Live event, it’s now available for mobile users in the United States.

Through several months of testing, early findings show ads in AI Overviews have been helpful to quickly connect users to brands at the exact right moment.

How It Works

When a user searches for something in Google, a new ad format is shown in the AI Overview section along with other helpful content that is relevant to the query.

If a user asks a question, their AI Overviews results may include helpful solutions, articles related to their search, or a new Shopping ad format.

For ads shown in AI Overviews, they’ll still have the standard “Sponsored” label to denote an ad.

What This Means For Advertisers

For those already running Shopping, Performance Max, or AI-powered Search ads, your ads are now eligible to serve in those placements.

No other action is needed on your part to show ads in AI Overviews.

Considering AI Overviews is the first experience a user sees when searching on Google, this can be a great way to get in front of your audience sooner.

As other ad types are now being pushed further down the fold, capturing as many relevant ad placements as you can will be crucial, especially during key research moments.

Google also mentioned in their announcement that having different types of information in AI Overviews can help alleviate the need for additional searches.

If that’s the case, we could see search trends or volume decrease over time, but it’s still too early to tell.

Serving ads in the AI Overviews section is an opportunity to introduce your brand and products earlier on during the customer journey, such as when they’re asking a question.

This can lead to better brand recall, keeping you top of mind in their decision making process.

Looking Ahead

It’s not clear yet how advertisers will be able to segment campaign performance by these new placements.

Since campaign types like Search, Shopping and Performance Max are automatically eligible to show ads in AI Overviews, it’s also unclear if they will be able to opt out of showing in certain places, like they can for the Search Partner Network, for example.

We have reached out to the Google Ads Liaison for more information and will update this story as more becomes available.