Google has been the dominant player in search market for a long time but the tech giant is finally seeing some competiton rise up against its dominant revenue stream with generative AI coming into the picture. As it turns out, Google has now plans to show ads within conversations with AI chatbots in order to retain its position in the digital ads space, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Reportedly, Google’s AdSense for Search network that is responsible for showing ads within search results of websites, expanded to include conversations with chatbots operated by AI startups. The move was made after the company conducted tests last year and this year with a handful of AI search app startups like iAsk and Liner.
Google is reportedly running these experiments with AI startups in order to test the waters with advertising in the relatively new world of AI.
Commenting on the report, a Google spokesperson told Bloomberg, “AdSense for Search is available for websites that want to show relevant ads in their conversational AI experiences.”
Threats to Google’s search business:
Notably, Google search business has been under threat ever since the first public debut of ChatGPT in late 2022, with fears of users turning to the chatbot in order to find answers to their queries. A lot has changed since then, with Google developing its own AI chatbot that is generally considered to be on par with OpenAI’s offering while also adding AI overviews in search that allows users to get quick answers to questions without opening the websites.
However, the tech giant now faces newer challenges, including from the likes of Aravind Srinivas-led Perplexity AI, which uses different AI models, including Openai’s and China’s DeepSeek, to serve up quick results to users’ queries.
Meanwhile, Google is also facing scrutiny at home with a US federagl judge finding that the company violated antitrust law by monopolizing the open web digital advertising market. The remedies hearing of that trial is currently underway that could vastly shape the way Google Search evolves in the coming years.
