Ads in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode: how to actually show up

Every Google Marketing Live event generates a wave of noise, and the latest one was no exception. The headline that travelled fastest — that Google is replacing search with AI, and that advertisers need to scramble to keep up — is mostly wrong. What is actually happening is calmer and more useful to understand: Google is expanding AI Overviews and AI Mode, putting more ads into both, while traditional links stay exactly where they are.

For advertisers, that is not a crisis. It is an evolution of the same results page, and Google will keep finding ways to monetise it, which means the opportunity is to understand the mechanics clearly while everyone else panics. The single most persistent myth worth killing first: you do not need AI Max to show ads in AI Overviews or AI Mode.

What AI Overviews and AI Mode actually are

If you search something commercial in Google today — say “best driver for beginners” — you will often see an AI Overview at the top: a generated summary that breaks down what you might want to know before any blue links appear. Alongside it sits AI Mode, which is closer to a conversation with a large language model, because it is one. It runs on Gemini. Think of AI Mode as Google’s answer to ChatGPT, built into search.

Both of these are surfaces Google is pushing harder, and both now carry ads. That is the part nobody should be surprised by. Google is not going to walk away from one of the most profitable advertising businesses ever built in order to hand users free AI answers with no commercial layer. The ads are coming because the money is there.

The misinformation: that you need AI Max

Here is the claim circulating widely: that to get your ads into AI Overviews or AI Mode, you must turn on AI Max. That is incorrect, and it is worth being precise about why.

Google’s own guidance is clear: search and shopping ads from existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns are already able to win the relevant auctions and serve within AI Overviews. In other words, if you are already running these campaigns, your ads can trigger on AI surfaces today — no migration required.

What genuinely drives eligibility is using one of Google’s AI-powered targeting solutions. There are a few, and they are interchangeable for this purpose:

• Broad match keywords on your Search campaigns
• Performance Max
• AI Max (one option among several, not the gatekeeper)
• Standard Shopping campaigns

Run any one of these and your ads are eligible to appear on AI-powered search experiences. You do not need the full set, and you certainly do not need AI Max specifically. If broad match is live in your Search campaigns, that alone can get you there. If you have a Performance Max campaign, that can get you there. Even ordinary Shopping will do it.

What you cannot do: target or measure it

Two honest limitations sit underneath all of this.

First, you cannot actively target AI Overviews or AI Mode. There is no toggle to opt specifically into (or out of) these surfaces. Eligibility is a by-product of using AI-powered targeting in your normal campaigns; placement is Google’s call, not yours.

Second, and more frustrating, Google offers virtually no reporting on it. There is currently no clean breakdown of how often your ads show on AI Overviews or AI Mode, for which queries, or how that performance compares with traditional results. You can be fully eligible and actively serving on these surfaces without ever seeing it isolated in your account. So while it is easy to become eligible, it is nearly impossible to measure the AI surfaces in isolation right now.

So what should advertisers actually do?

The practical takeaway is reassuring precisely because it is so undramatic. If you want to be eligible to show on AI Overviews and AI Mode, make sure at least one of these is running: broad match on Search, Performance Max, AI Max, or a Shopping campaign. That is the whole requirement for coverage.

Do not feel pressured to adopt AI Max just to reach these surfaces, especially if your own testing with it has been poor. It is one route among several, not the price of entry. Adopt it where it performs on its own merits, and lean on broad match, Performance Max or Shopping otherwise. Beyond that, keep operating your account the way disciplined paid search has always rewarded: tight tracking, clean structure, and decisions made on outcomes rather than on whichever feature is being hyped this quarter.

How Morris McLane executes this

We treat AI surfaces as part of performance marketing, not a separate panic. The mechanics above are simple; the discipline around them is where results actually come from, and that discipline is ours to run.

In practice that means:

• Eligibility without over-buying. We make sure clients are eligible for AI Overviews and AI Mode through the targeting they should be running anyway — broad match, Performance Max or Shopping — rather than pushing them into AI Max purely to chase a surface. If AI Max earns its place on performance, it stays; if it does not, we do not force it.
• Our own measurement over Google’s silence. Because Google reports almost nothing on AI-surface placement, we instrument the parts we can control: rigorous conversion tracking, clean GA4 events, accurate UTM tagging, and value-based bidding signals, so decisions rest on real outcomes, not on guesses about where an impression landed.
• Paid and organic AI visibility, run together. Paid eligibility on AI surfaces is only half the picture. We pair it with the work of being cited in AI answers — how to rank in AI search and generative engine optimisation — so you are building durable presence, not just renting impressions.
• One connected view across surfaces. The same logic governs Google’s AI surfaces and the emerging paid placements inside assistants like ChatGPT. See our read on what ChatGPT Ads early data shows. We manage them as one programme through AI search visibility and performance marketing, weighted to what each can currently prove.

The throughline is the same as ever: ignore the noise, get the mechanics right, and measure what you can actually control.

The short version

Google is expanding AI Overviews and AI Mode and putting more ads in both, but traditional search is not disappearing. You do not need AI Max to appear there: broad match on Search, Performance Max, AI Max or Shopping all make your ads eligible, and any one of them is enough. You cannot target these surfaces directly, and Google barely reports on them, so the winning posture is unglamorous: stay eligible through the targeting you should already be running, measure outcomes on your own side, and run paid AI placement alongside the organic AI visibility that compounds. That combination — clear mechanics, disciplined measurement, paid and earned working together — is exactly what our performance marketing and AI search visibility work is built to deliver.