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Dan Taylor is vice president of global ads at Google. He leads product commercialisation to deliver results for advertisers, focusing on how AI, data strategy, and modern measurement can help businesses navigate the evolving digital landscape.
Ask any group of marketing leaders if they are expected to prove that AI is driving real growth, and the answer is almost always a resounding “yes”. But ask if they find that easy to answer — or if their leadership team is completely happy with the answer provided — and the confidence quickly drops.
It is time to shift the approach so you feel empowered and equipped to answer that exact question. While much is said about the opportunity for AI in the future, let’s focus on something concrete: AI is expanding the capabilities of Search today. And, backed by new reporting that provides a more complete view of the Search Ads journey, you can more clearly see how AI Search is driving expansionary opportunities for your business.
How AI is rewriting the rules of discovery
AI is helping consumers navigate their daily lives. By removing friction from the discovery process, people are no longer constrained by how they search.
To meet these evolving needs, Google Search is becoming more agentic, personalised, and intelligent. More and more searches are conversational and multimodal, with consumers talking to Search in natural language using text, voice, or even sharing photos. In fact, with AI Mode, we see queries that are, on average, three times longer than traditional Search queries.1
This shift is driving an expansionary moment for Search.
Opportunities for brands in an expansionary era
When people realise they can search in any way they want, they search more. AI Overviews now has 2.5 billion monthly users,2 and AI Mode — a complete reimagining of Search introduced just over a year ago — has already surpassed 1 billion monthly users.3
More ways to search means more opportunities for your business. Ultimately, AI is changing how people find products and shop, moving curious consumers from discovery to decision faster than ever before. This creates a massive opportunity for brands to create and capture demand, and connect across the entire purchase journey.
While AI is supercharging consumer discovery and the opportunity for marketers in this new era of Search, the core channels and tactics in the moments that matter haven’t changed: your organic presence and your paid strategy.
For your organic presence, although the technology is expanding, your foundational strategy still holds true: continue creating content and experiences that people find compelling and useful. In other words: good SEO is good GEO. When you focus on genuinely helping your users, AI will recognise and reward you.
How the Gemini advantage supercharges your ad performance
Just as AI is removing friction for consumers, it can do the heavy lifting for your paid search strategy. We built our Gemini model into the very foundation of Google Ads. Your advertising performance now connects directly to our core AI research, turning curiosity into business growth faster than ever in three key ways:
- Improved ads quality and relevance: Gemini helps us better interpret these more detailed, conversational queries so we can connect people with the best response. This significantly improves helpfulness for our users and results for your business.
- Ads in AI Search experiences: In conversational search, ads are no longer just links to click on — they need to be helpful solutions that answer and inspire. That’s why we are putting our latest insights to work with new ad formats in AI Search experiences. Today, ads are eligible to show above or below AI Overviews in 200+ markets, and we’re actively testing ads in AI Mode. We’ve learned that it isn’t just about where an ad appears, but the utility it provides. Ultimately, the best ads are answers.
- Tools that capture demand at scale and keep you in control: As consumers shift to more detailed, conversational searches, AI Max helps you find new opportunity in the new ways people are searching and dynamically enhances your messaging to match their needs in real time — driving 27% more conversions at a similar CPA or ROAS, compared to manual campaigns.4 To capture this demand at scale while staying in control, AI Brief acts like a creative brief, letting you set brand guardrails in conversational language. And the closed beta will soon be expanding to seven new languages.5
New reporting feature to showcase the strategic value of AI investments
As consumers are searching in new ways and more than ever before, you need insights to understand the value tools like AI Max are driving for your business. For example, what search term triggered your ad, what specific creative the user saw, and exactly where they landed on your site.
That is why we are preparing to launch a new reporting feature for AI Max. It’ll show you a single, unified view of the Search Ads journey — and gives you greater transparency from discovery to decision to confidently showcase the strategic value of your AI investments.
The next time leadership asks if your AI Search strategy is working, your answer can be a confident yes.
The future of AI Search is here. Let’s build your next era of growth, together.
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