Google is expanding advertising in its AI-powered Search experiences to international markets, adding a new sales push as growth in its core Search ad business slows. The company announced the move during Alphabet’s third-quarter earnings call. Philipp Schindler, Google’s chief business officer, said Google is scaling ads in AI Overviews and AI Mode to more users and queries, and taking ads in AI Mode global for the first time.
The announcement came as Alphabet reported $127.6 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 25% from a year earlier. Google Search revenue grew 12% year over year, compared with 17% in the second quarter and 19% in the first. Alphabet shares fell 8% following the results. The company did not specify which international markets will get the ads or when they will appear there.
What the ads look like
Google says sponsored product listings in AI Mode have click-through rates comparable to organic listings. Schindler also said the company’s user research suggests people find the ads relevant. Those are Google’s own early assessments; the company did not provide figures for the click-through rates or independent testing.
The international expansion is part of a wider rollout of AI-focused ad formats. In the U.S., Google is introducing multi-turn ads alongside AI Mode, according to Schindler. These build on formats Google announced in May, including conversational discovery ads that respond to questions and sponsored recommendations placed within AI-generated answers. The announcement does not say whether every format will be available in every market.
Why Google is making the move
Google is trying to make AI features a larger part of its advertising business while people change how they search. CEO Sundar Pichai said Search queries grew at their fastest year-over-year rate in five years, without giving a percentage. He said queries in AI Mode are three times longer on average than traditional searches, and one in five AI Mode searches globally uses voice, images or documents. Google also reports more than 50 billion visual searches per month.
The figures help explain why Google sees AI Search as a potential place to show ads, but they do not establish how much revenue the new formats will bring in. Alphabet’s Google Services division, which includes Search, generated $96.3 billion in revenue, up 11% year over year. Google Cloud grew 103% to $30.7 billion, providing another large source of growth as Search ad growth eases.
Why it matters
People using Google’s AI Search features may see sponsored products or recommendations within AI-generated answers, with ads in AI Mode expanding beyond the U.S. The markets and rollout timing are unspecified, and Google has not shown how much revenue these ads generate.
