Google announces new AI Mode ad formats and agentic commerce tools at Google Marketing Live

Google had just announced ad testing in AI Mode last year at its annual Google Marketing Live event. At this year’s event, AI Mode ads are front and center.

The company announced not only new features in AI Mode, but also expanded agentic tools for advertisers, more campaign setup features in Google Ads and YouTube, and new measurement capabilities around Meridian, Google’s marketing mix model. Google has been steadily building out its AI offerings for advertisers in recent months as the technology, as well as agentic commerce, continues to transform advertising and consumer behavior.

Surprise, surprise: Google is testing two formats that incorporate AI-generated features to ads in AI Mode, Dan Taylor, VP of global ads, told reporters during a press briefing on Monday. These formats, both being tested in the US, also include AI explainers generated by Google Gemini, which can include information such as a comparison of a specific product against information in organic search results, Taylor said.

• One such format is Conversational Discovery ads, which builds creative that is “tailored to a [specific] search” and spotlights product features.
• The other is Highlighted Answers, which highlight “relevant” ads within AI Mode recommendations based on user queries.

Search ads are also being customized for lead generation and shopping, according to Taylor.

Business Agent for Leads, currently in open beta in English, places an agent within an ad so that when a user clicks an embedded “chat” button, they can converse with an agent, which will populate its answers to users’ questions off of information on a brand’s site. AI-powered shopping ads will feature Gemini generating an explainer for customers searching for specific products detailing why specific products could be a good fit. They roll out in the US later this year.

Speaking of shopping, Google is also expanding the pilot for its feature Direct Offers, which allows advertisers to provide special offers on their products, first rolled out in January, Taylor said. Advertisers can include bundled promotions like discounts or coupons within Google Ads through the feature. Google is also expanding access to travel brands, enabling them to offer hotel deals. Merchants using the agentic protocol, Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), will be able to leverage native checkout. Chewy and Gap are among the brands involved in the pilot, which is available to US advertisers.

Special agent: Google is expanding agentic commerce features and bringing agents to more of its own platforms.

• Google is bringing UCP to more countries like Canada and Australia, Ashish Gupta, VP and GM of merchant shopping for Google, said. After previously rolling out single-item cart checkout, Google plans to roll out the ability for consumers to purchase multiple items and also transfer items to a merchant’s site from a cart on Google and complete the purchase on-site.
• It’s also releasing Ask Advisor, an agent that, among other things, can “pull product details from Merchant Center to set up [a] new campaign in Google Ads” and surface “insights using data from both Google Ads and Google Analytics,” according to a blog post from the company..

“Taking a step back, last year we introduced a number of in-product agents built with Gemini to help marketers optimize campaigns,” Taylor said. “Ask Advisor provides a unified entry point into our end product agents across Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Marketing Platform, and soon Merchant Center. On the back end, our agents talk to one another and carry each other’s context, creating a continuous thread of intelligence.”

Set me up: Google Ads is integrating the multimodal model Google Omni for asset creation in its Asset Studio creative hub, Taylor said. Advertisers can then use Google’s 1-Click Creative Testing to help identify which assets perform best.

Over at YouTube, retail advertisers can upload product videos into Google Merchant Center that take into account user interests through Demand Gen campaigns, Taylor said. Demand Gen is also coming to Google Maps. Its checkout links are coming to nine more markets, and Demand Gen product feeds are expanding to more verticals like automotive.

Measurement, measurement, measurement: Google Meridian is coming to Google Analytics 360, per Taylor. Marketers will be able to view first-party data and metric signals there and forecast potential outcomes, among other capabilities.

All of the new features are a part of a move “from marketing automation to marketing intelligence,” according to Taylor.

This year “I see us fully transitioning from AI’s potential into its everyday reality,” he said.