Google Ads Coming to AI Mode - How Do You Get Your Ads There?

Have you spotted Google’s new AI Mode recently make its first appearance on your Google interface? It is a “new Search mode (that) expands what AI Overviews can do with more advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities so you can get help with even your toughest questions” (Source:Google). Google’s AI Mode, that uses their Gemini model, allows you to choose whether to search from the original Google search results page, or ask its new AI chatbot in the AI Mode. 

As digital marketers, this poses the question of “how does this impact my marketing strategies?”, and it’s a fair question to ask. Let’s dive into this and how you can ensure you future proof your strategies, specifically focusing on Google Ads and your activity there.

Will people use AI Mode over their competitors such as ChatGPT and Claude?

This is the question that is important to ask, because you need to make sure that you’re putting your efforts where it matters. According to DemandSage reports, in June 2025, ChatGPT had secured 800 million weekly active users, so the habits of users who use AI are pretty secure in ChatGPT.

However, it’s hard to believe that Google will let this last long and will likely make their AI Mode more prominent, attracting users to switch over to AI Mode. We all know that Google holds a majority of the search landscape, and especially the paid search advertising space. So, are they going to cross over to make AI Mode a new platform to advertise on?

The new era of advertising is here…are you in?

It’s recently been announced (or, leaked!), that Google is preparing to release advertising to AI Mode. “As we apply the power of Generative AI to Search, Ads will continue to play a critical role in helping consumers find helpful information and enabling businesses to be discovered online”.

This is a really significant shift, and it’ll soon hit your Google Ads results if you aren’t ready for it.

So, those golf trousers you’re selling? Soon, your customers may find you via their specific searches on AI Mode.

Now, more than ever, optimising your ads to the best they can be is so important. Great ad copy, optimised shopping feeds and engaging assets can no longer be something you do 1 or 2 months down the road from campaign start, it’s something that should be at the top of your to-do list.

The way to get your Google Ads into AI Mode results

As you can see in the screenshot above, Google claims that the top three things you need to show ads on AI Mode is:

1. Broad match on Search campaigns

2. AI Max for Search (beta) / Performance Max / Shopping

3. For retailers, feed hygiene is critical; ensure your shopping feed is as up-to-date as possible

1. Turning to broad match for AI

We all have opinions on broad match, whether it’s a great strategy to reach your customers, or if it’s just a way that Google eats away at your budget leaving behind little to no value.

But broad match keywords can be really good, it just requires a lot of negative keyword research to get the value you need to be profitable. 

Yep, negative keyword research. From humble beginnings of keyword research, we’re now flipping the script. Sure, keyword research is great and it’s good to do to understand the search landscape, but it’s arguably not the most important thing about building a campaign anymore. Don’t get me wrong, you need to target the right keywords (i.e let’s not just bid on ‘shoes’ if you’re selling football trainers), but you should not have broad match keywords without the barriers of negative keywords.

Using Google’s Keyword Planner, you can discover negative keywords to add before you switch to broad match for Google’s AI. 

You can add negative broad match keywords, which are great to block out queries that you’re quite confident wouldn’t convert. 

If you’re selling Adidas football trainers for women, you could add the broad match keyword ‘football trainers’ along with negative keywords such as Nike, Puma, Men, Children, Size 12 etc. You don’t stock any men’s football trainers, or Nike football trainers or Size 12 trainers- so you can be sure that search queries containing those keywords aren’t going to convert with you.

Perhaps you’ve already got keywords running in your Performance Max or Search campaign, and you’re reviewing whether to switch to broad match. Amazing! You’ve got a tool right there in the data - your search term report. 

Navigate to your search term report and see what are the highest costing terms, and add anything there that’s not relevant as a negative keyword (whether broad, phrase or exact match). 

Once your campaign has the security of negative keywords, you’re in a better position to add broad match keywords. Now, of course, you can’t neglect the other important things to get converting ads such as making your landing page ticking all of the conversion rate optimisation points, but at least you have less of a chance of Google taking your money and throwing it away!

2. AI Max for Search with Performance Max and Shopping

We’ve covered broad match keywords, and now we’re going to look at keywordless targeting. Feels backwards, right? Stick with us. We’ve known for a while that Google is removing more and more control as the updates come, and this is one of them that is going to be interesting how it turns out. As we know with AI, it’s constantly evolving and learning, which means your ads will follow suite in that learning. 

AI Max was recently put into most accounts, and you can find it in your campaigns settings, but it’s essentially Google’s way of expanding your reach using AI. It’ll get an understanding of what you are advertising and match your ads with other relevant searches, perhaps even ones you aren’t intentionally bidding on. It doesn’t necessarily replace keywords, but rather complements it.

It works hand in hand with ads in AI Mode, so if a user searches something that AI Max thinks is relevant - there’s your ad! 

3. Keeping your feed squeaky clean and keyword rich

One of the most missed optimisations when it comes to eCommerce advertising is optimising your shopping feed. Your shopping feed is vital to giving Google’s algorithm context for what you’re selling. 

Optimising your shopping feed looks like adding keywords to your product title and providing all the relevant product attributes.

Help Google’s AI out by giving it all the details, and it should then know who to show content to. Without it, Google will expand your reach, and it’s likely not to the right audience.

Got the essentials? It'll be ok. 

AI Mode ads are likely to come to the UK in the next few months, but it’s best to implement these things as soon as possible, as it’ll give you time to test. Once ads on AI Mode are released, it’ll be useful to compare the data with a previous period without AI Mode, and if the impacts are high costing and low reward, you’ll know it’s time to take a bit of control. 

Broad match keywords and shopping feed optimisation (if eCommerce) will always be part of your foundational efforts to get the best Google Ads campaign, but it’s just the AI Max setting that you may want to test before AI Mode comes in.

It’ll certainly be something that we test with our clients, and we’ll be closely watching what happens when we see the shift happen. 

We can help make sure you ride the AI Ads wave in the right way! Get in touch with our pay-per-click marketing team today, and we’ll ensure that you're on the right side of the AI shift! 

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