Speakers at the Google Marketing Live event explained how they will use user search queries and AI Overviews to show interactive shopping ads that will push organic search results lower, noting that Google “Focus on opening new opportunities for your business.“
Google: We’re not building a better search engine
The first speaker, Philip Schindler, senior vice president and chief business officer at Google, said out loud what Googlers typically don’t when he said the purpose of search results is to show ads.
He made the statement in the context of a new AI-powered video tool that will help YouTube creators create more content.
At 18:19 minutes into the event, Schindler bragged:
“We’ve collaborated with some truly talented filmmakers, musicians and artists, and the results are simply amazing. We’ll soon be adding video to short films, opening up a whole new world of creative possibilities for you and your brands. Just imagine every creator with the power of AI in their pockets.”
So what does all this mean for you? More creators creating quality content attract more viewers, which means more reach, engagement, and ROI for you. We’re not just building a better search engine or a better YouTube site. We focus on opening new opportunities for your business.”
The statement that Google is using AI Overviews and Search to build reach and ROI for advertisers is not the only one. The next two speakers made the same point.
Search and Shopping Ads in AI Overview
The next speaker was Vidhya Srinivasan, Vice President/General Manager of Advertising at Google. You start by describing how search experiences will drive traffic to websites. Then quickly switch gears to show how interactive ads will literally push organic search listings beyond the visibility of users making search queries.
At minute 30 of the video, Srinivasan explained:
“AI overviews will appear in search results when they are particularly useful beyond what search offers today. As we continue to test and evolve the search experience, we will continue to focus heavily on sending valuable traffic to publishers and creators. But beyond that, more avenues to explore The user leads to more choices and more choices leads to more opportunities for advertisers.
You may have noticed that we already show ads above and below AI overviews. These ads are matched to the user’s search query. We will now begin testing search and shopping ads in AI-based overviews for users in the US.
What’s also new about this is that we’ll match these ads not only to the context of the query, but also to information in the AI overview. As always, ads will be clearly labeled.
1. AI Overview – No membership listings
2. Scroll down for shopping ads
She then went on to describe an example of wrinkled clothing while traveling, and then turned to a Google search to find ways to prevent wrinkles. It shows search activity for travel hacks and shows how organic search results are pushed below the AI Overviews feature and new search and shopping ads that contain product images and pop up far more than any search results.
She explained how the new AI Overviews Shopping Ads will be there to convert searchers:
“Through the AI overview, I quickly found some popular travel hacks that looked promising. As I was browsing through the many options that came up, I found a really great solution, a wrinkle-free spray that I had never heard of before. So perfect. I wanted to try that.
Now, with this feature, I can just click on that ad right away, and buy it.
As you can see, we make it easier and faster for consumers so they can take action right away. This is just one example of how we are using AI generation. There are many more, and we will start with more applications in search advertising.”
3. Targeted advertising based on artificial intelligence overview
Google search is bait
Google’s search engineers use the latest technology and data to create the most useful search results ever in Google’s history, and that’s the best ever. But according to the people actually in charge at Google, the purpose of search is not to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” but to build more “reach, engagement and ROI” for advertisers. Sam Altman was right when he described what Google is doing as miserable.
SEO is designed socially
Social engineering is managing people’s behavior in order to get them to perform a certain way. Google has acquired a large part of the web ecosystem bought with concepts like Core Web Vitals and also experience, expertise, credibility and trustworthiness in order to satisfy users that Google never seemed to intend.
And this is not the fault of Googlers who put their hearts into search optimization. They are doing a good job. But it’s clear that Google’s mission is no longer to make information accessible and useful. Perhaps what may seem like a dystopian horror is that Google has successfully engineered the search and social publisher community to focus on creating useful content so that those working on the advertising side can use it to build more ROI for advertisers.
SEO and publishers aren’t just used to benefit advertisers.
Watch Google Marketing Live Keynote 2024
Featured image by Shutterstock/pikselstock
