First, by removing background shading in 2013, and then by doing away with colored ad labels in 2019.

They say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but in our opinion, there is nothing beautiful about ads populating your chatbot’s answers.Īnyone familiar with Google’s history of ad labeling knows that over the years, Google has made ads in search more and more indistinguishable from organic search results. When describing the new ad placements and how they can help advertisers reach users with highly-relevant ads, VP of Google Ads Vidhya Srinivasan called it a “beautiful moment.” We thought she was being sarcastic, but she wasn’t. Besides, what catches the user’s attention first is arguably the product image, the description and the price, and not a line of text in fineprint at the top. That’s partly because, in Google’s example, other products also have labels: “good for mountain biking” and “good for kids,” which make the “sponsored” label less noticeable. However, if you look at the backpacks in the screenshot above, without peering too intently, you may not be able to tell which one is the advertised one (or if they all are). The former would “feature our industry-leading clear and transparent labels with the ‘Sponsored’ label in bold black text,” he said. Touting the “new ad experience”, Google’s VP of Ads Jerry Dischler claimed that search ads within SGE would be hard to confuse with organic results. ‘Industry-leading’ ad labels that hide in plain sight A sponsored result came first, followed by organic results. The first AI-generated response was ad-free, but the first follow-up question to the AI chatbot - “hiking backpacks for kids” - triggered an answer that already included ads. After scrolling down, the user could see some tips on outdoor activities to enjoy in Maui, framed in green to indicate that they were generated by AI. In the presentation showed by Google, an SGE user searched for “outdoor activities in Maui” and was greeted by two Google ads at the top of the search results before he could even see the AI’s suggestions. And if the example Google gave is anything to go by, it’s not a pretty sight. There, Google revealed that ads would not only appear before and after the AI-powered snapshot, as originally announced, but would also infiltrate the AI-generated responses. Google offered a sneak peek at ad placements in its brand new Search Generative Experience (SGE) at an event for advertisers on May 23. But how many ads is too many? For Google, it seems, the more, the better. Google says its new generative AI feature will start a “new era of search” by “unlocking new types of questions” and “transforming the way information is organized.” But a closer look at Google’s own promotional materials reveals a downside: you may have to face a barrage of ads every time you use it.

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