Google has started selling ads inside AI Mode in India. The company is scaling sponsored placements in AI Mode, its conversational, Gemini-powered search experience, to India and nine other markets. It is the first time Google has taken AI search monetisation beyond the United States.

Shashi Thakur, Vice President and General Manager for Google Search Ads, announced the move in a company blog post on 28 October 2026, the same day Alphabet reported its September-quarter results. Besides India, the expansion covers Australia, Canada, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Singapore. Google plans to add more locales in the fourth quarter of 2026, including Brazil, Mexico and the United Kingdom.

What changes for users and advertisers

Ads in AI Mode will sit within the AI-generated responses and will be clearly labelled “Sponsored”. Google says it will keep testing new formats so that ads stay relevant to what users are asking. In the US, it is also launching “multiturn” ads, which can appear in follow-up questions as a conversation continues. For now, that format is US-only.

Google says the early data is encouraging. According to the company, click-through rates on sponsored product listings in AI Mode are already similar to those on organic product listings, and its user research suggests people find the ads relevant. Queries in AI Mode are on average three times longer than traditional searches. Google argues that this gives it a sharper read on user intent, which it can use to match people with businesses.

The rollout builds on Gemini-powered ad formats Google unveiled earlier this year, including conversational discovery ads and sponsored recommendations within AI answers. Google first began testing ads in AI Mode in the US in May 2025.

The business pressure behind the move

The timing is significant. Alphabet’s revenue rose 25% year-on-year to $127.6 billion in the quarter ended September, powered by a 103% jump in Google Cloud revenue to $30.7 billion. But growth in Google Search and other revenue slowed to 12%, to $63.35 billion, from 17% in the previous quarter and 19% in the first quarter.

On the earnings call, Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler said lower monetisation in AI Mode was one factor in the slowdown, though he named foreign exchange movements as the biggest. He said Google was now scaling ads in both AI Overviews and AI Mode to more users and queries, and called the international expansion the first time the company was taking its AI monetisation footprint global.

CEO Sundar Pichai said overall search query growth had reached its highest year-on-year rate in five years. He said one in five AI Mode searches globally now involves voice, images or documents, and that Google has crossed 50 billion visual searches a month.

Why it matters for India

India is one of Google’s largest user markets and a major growth engine for digital advertising, so the move matters well beyond Mountain View. As more Indian users ask long, conversational questions, often by voice and in their own languages, the path from search to purchase is moving inside AI-generated answers.

For brands, D2C companies, e-commerce players and agencies, that shift raises practical questions. How do you earn visibility when an AI system summarises the options instead of listing ten blue links? How should search budgets, product feeds and content strategy adapt? And how will performance be measured and attributed inside a conversational interface? Publishers will also watch closely how AI answers with built-in ads affect referral traffic.

There is a trust question too. Clear labelling and relevance will decide whether users accept commercial messages inside answers they treat as advice. That issue is likely to draw attention as India works on its own AI governance framework.

Either way, Google has made its direction clear. Generative AI is becoming the main storefront for search, and ads are moving into the answer. For Indian marketers and technology leaders, the time to rethink search strategy for AI is now.

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