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Google executives have insisted for months that the company has no immediate plans to put ads in Gemini. But in an interview with WIRED, Google\u2019s senior vice president of knowledge and information, Nick Fox, says the tech giant is \u201cnot ruling them out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI would expect that the learnings that we get from ads in AI Mode would likely carry over to what we might want to do in the Gemini app down the road,\u201d says Fox. \u201cIt\u2019s an odd thing to say, but our research shows that users actually like ads within the context of Search. Over time, we\u2019ll figure out what makes sense in the Gemini app.\u201d<\/p>\n
Google has spent the past year racing to catch up with OpenAI in the AI chatbot market. Its efforts appear to be paying off. Gemini now has more than 750 million monthly active users, compared to the 350 million it had in March of last year (OpenAI doesn\u2019t release monthly active user numbers, but its weekly active user number is 900 million).<\/p>\n
Now, the question for both companies is how to make money from free users. In January, OpenAI announced it would start testing ads on ChatGPT\u2019s free tier in the United States. Naturally, this raised questions as to when Google\u2014which runs the largest online advertising businesses\u2014would follow suit.<\/p>\n
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis tried to put a stop to that speculation, telling reporters at Davos the following week that the company didn\u2019t have \u201cany plans\u201d to put ads in Gemini.<\/p>\n
Instead, Google is testing ads in AI Mode, the Search product powered by Gemini.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have an environment with AI Mode where we can experiment [with ads],\u201d Fox says. He notes that Google\u2019s business is doing quite well these days\u20142025 was the company\u2019s first year generating more than $400 billion in revenue\u2014so it doesn\u2019t have to rush to monetize Gemini. That puts Google at an advantage compared to OpenAI. The ChatGPT-maker reportedly aims to more than double its $30 billion revenue in 2026, with a significant chunk of the growth expected to come from ChatGPT.<\/p>\n
Anthropic is taking the opposite route, running a Super Bowl commercial last month highlighting the potentially disastrous impact of ads in AI. This sparked a broader conversation around how the AI industry can do ads in a way that\u2019s helpful and preserves people\u2019s privacy. In February, Perplexity executives said they would stop experimenting with ads in its AI, partly because of the impact on user trust.<\/p>\n
One open question for Google is how ads will interact with Personal Intelligence, a feature the company launched in January, which allows Gemini to reference a user\u2019s Gmail, Photos, and Calendar to generate contextual responses. Fox says it\u2019s \u201cTBD\u201d whether Personal Intelligence will make it into traditional Search but notes that personalizing Search has long been his \u201choly grail.\u201d<\/p>\n
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.<\/p>\n
WIRED: Nick, there was a lot of concern a few years ago that AI was going to cannibalize Google, but the business has continued to do better than ever. How is AI changing Google\u2019s ads business?<\/strong><\/p>\n Nick Fox:<\/strong> On the ads side, there's three different pieces. First is improving core ad quality. For every ad, we generate a prediction of how well that ad will perform on a query. Will the user click on it? Is the user likely to convert? Turns out, AI models do a better job at those predictions. I would say that\u2019s the biggest way Gemini is improving our ads.<\/p>\n Second is advertiser tools. If you\u2019re a small business, you\u2019re not thinking about all the queries people are going to type in. AI is great at figuring out which keywords to use, what\u2019s the optimal creative, and generating all of that.<\/p>\n The third piece is the most nascent: ads in new experiences. The general philosophy we have is to build a great consumer product, then figure out monetization. Because the business is so strong and healthy, that's a luxury we have.<\/p>\n What have you learned from experiments around ads in AI Mode?<\/strong><\/p>\n Ads are always separate from organic results and clearly labeled. If we don\u2019t think any ad is relevant, we don\u2019t show any ads. Probably the biggest principle of all is that ads should be useful.<\/p>\n What [ads in AI Mode] have shown is mostly intuitive things. If it\u2019s relevant, a user will click on it. If not, they won\u2019t.<\/p>\n At Davos, Demis Hassabis said that Google has no plans to bring ads to Gemini. How are you thinking about it now?<\/strong><\/p>\n The reason we focused on ads in AI Mode and AI Overviews is because we see them as extensions of the Search experience. It\u2019s the most natural place for us to do initial experiments.<\/p>\n I would expect that the learnings that we get from ads in AI Mode would likely carry over to what we might want to do in the Gemini app down the road. We're able to get all those learnings within a context and a construct that users are already aware of ads. It\u2019s an odd thing to say, but our research shows that users actually like ads within the context of Search. Over time, we\u2019ll figure out what makes sense in the Gemini app.<\/p>\n So you guys aren\u2019t ruling out ads in Gemini completely?<\/strong><\/p>\n No, we\u2019re not ruling them out. It\u2019s just not where we\u2019ve been focusing.<\/p>\n Gemini is a massive product now\u2014it\u2019s grown quite fast. OpenAI is already trying out ads in ChatGPT. What makes you think Gemini isn't ready for ads?<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019re super happy with how well it\u2019s growing. I would say it\u2019s more of a prioritization question\u2014what\u2019s the right area to focus right now?<\/p>\n Do you think OpenAI introduced ads too early?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s hard for me to say. I think it will really depend on how they do it. What we\u2019ve seen is when we do ads right, it\u2019s accretive to the product experience. But the really critical thing is to do it right, and that means relevance, quality, and not putting ads where users don\u2019t want to see ads.<\/p>\n That\u2019s hard to do. We have over 20 years of experience learning how to do that. It\u2019s less a question of timing and more a question of doing it right, and in a way that\u2019s respectful of users.<\/p>\n Google recently launched Personal Intelligence in Gemini and AI Mode. I imagine advertisers would love to get their hands on that data. How are you thinking about that?<\/strong><\/p>\n Personal Intelligence is incredibly useful. For example, I was skiing and couldn't see well through my goggles\u2014it was cloudy out. I asked AI Mode a fairly vague question about what lens I needed for the conditions. From my email, it was able to say which resort I was staying at, which mountain I'd be skiing, and what the weather would be. It also pulled in a receipt my wife had forwarded me for my goggles\u2014turns out she'd bought me an extra lens. It\u2019s like subtle magic.<\/p>\n From an advertising point of view, there are no ads in the Gemini app at this point. Within AI Mode, we\u2019re still working through it. We don\u2019t sell data to advertisers. All this stuff is very nascent, but probably what we\u2019ll figure out is how to make sure that an ad can be targeted and relevant to the context in a query. Maybe in this case, it could have known the specific brand of goggles.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll need to figure out how the targeting of the ads can be consistent with the organic response and to make sure it all fits together. But we\u2019ll make sure that your private information remains private and isn\u2019t shared with advertisers.<\/p>\n I\u2019m guessing you saw Anthropic\u2019s Super Bowl commercial about ads in AI. What was your reaction to it?<\/strong><\/p>\n I thought the ads were funny. From our point of view, ads in Search have worked incredibly well for 20-plus years. It doesn\u2019t change our confidence that we can build incredibly useful, relevant ads in the context of AI search.<\/p>\n Search has a lot of AI in it today. Where is it heading?<\/strong><\/p>\n The broad vision for Search is you should be able to ask anything. If you can ask all the questions in your head, you\u2019ll probably visit more web pages, and you might buy more products.<\/p>\n I would say that personalization, for years, has been the holy grail of Search, but we never actually figured it out. For me, seeing the rollout of Personal Intelligence has been really game-changing in terms of Search getting more useful. You should expect to see us push quite a bit on that.<\/p>\n Do you mean Personal Intelligence will be a bigger part of AI Mode, or Search in general?<\/strong><\/p>\n So far, we\u2019ve brought it to AI Mode. We think of AI Mode and AI Overviews as increasingly one and the same. A core part of how we\u2019re evolving Search is that it should be more seamless. Users should just bring whatever question to Search and we should show you the most useful response. That might be a navigational link to a webpage. It might be a set of news articles. It might be an AI response.<\/p>\n All those things come together, and that\u2019s a reasonable way to think about how Personal Intelligence will evolve as well.<\/p>\n Do you expect all of these products\u2014AI Mode, AI Overviews, Gemini, and Search\u2014to be one thing at some point?<\/strong><\/p>\n It kind of depends on how usage evolves. Today, the way we think about it is Search is becoming AI search, and the Gemini app is your personal assistant. Those areas have overlap for sure.<\/p>\n Within the context of Search, users shouldn\u2019t need to be thinking quite as much about what\u2019s traditional Search, what\u2019s AI Overviews, what\u2019s AI Mode\u2014 that really should come together into a seamless, holistic Search experience. That\u2019s the direction we\u2019re going.<\/p>\n If Personal Intelligence gets wrapped up into Search more, that means that people's searches could be influenced by their emails, photos, and all of these different things. How are you guys preparing for that shift?<\/strong><\/p>\n One thing we\u2019ve been clear about with Personal Intelligence is that it\u2019s opt-in. We don\u2019t want people to be surprised. We think Personal Intelligence is super helpful and would love lots of users to use it, but if users don\u2019t feel comfortable, they shouldn\u2019t need to. This is not something that's being done to users, but this is something that users are choosing to invoke.<\/p>\n In terms of how [Personal Intelligence] connects back to traditional Search, I think that\u2019s TBD\u2014we wouldn\u2019t do that in a way that\u2019s uncomfortable for users, and we may never do it\u2014but it\u2019s based on how the technology evolves, how the use cases evolve, and whether users want it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Save StorySave this storySave StorySave this story Google executives have insisted for months that the company has no immediate plans to put ads in Gemini. 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