• by Laurie Sullivan , Yesterday

Google quietly added sponsored ad placement in the search page within AI Mode, the conversational search interface.

While the format is not new, onlookers believe the number of times this ad appears continues to increase.

The paid listing appears in the middle of an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated response, identified in the organic recommendation listing by a "Sponsored" tag.

AI Mode has surpassed a billion monthly active users globally, Google publicly announced last week at Google I/O 2026 keynote, and Query volumes in AI Mode has more than doubled every quarter since launch. And, as a result of new AI integrations, Google reported that total search volumes hit an “all-time high” in the first quarter of 2026.

Juozas Kaziukenas, an entrepreneur based in New York, shared in a LinkedIn post that he believes Google broke AI’s biggest promise to users by adding the ads in mid-conversation.

“I asked for coffeemaker recommendations, and it inserted a sponsored listing in the middle of organic results,” he wrote.

Kaziukenas explained how the sponsored listing is like what “Anthropic mocked in its Super Bowl ads in February because ChatGPT was getting ready to introduce ads.”

Once ads appear mid-conversation, they are influencing how users read the answer, Kaziukenas explains.

“AI Mode is where Google is first monetizing its AI,” he wrote. “It is inevitable that ChatGPT will do the same and lift ads from the bottom of the response and integrate them into the response.”

A screenshot shared by Kaziukenas shows Google's AI Mode with a sponsored listing that resembles the other results. He highlights that Google had introduced this type of ad a month prior to OpenAI ChatGPT.

With this type of growth, it is likely this is more than a random test and the beginning of what advertisers can expect in the future.

Google calls these ads “Highlighted Answers” -- a type of ad announced last week, among the dozens of features and ad units it began to publicly describe and roll out.

Debra Aho Williamson, founder and chief analyst at Sonata Insights, called out the copy beneath the ad that Kaziukenas posted. She noticed that it appears to have been AI-generated, rather than advertiser-written copy.

“That blending of organic and sponsored is what is troubling for me,” she wrote in a comment on LinkedIn.

Matt Gilbert, CEO and board director at Partnerize, said the ad looks like Ask Jeeves’ “Branded Response” ad from the early 2000“The difference now is AI is not just organizing information,” he wrote. “It is increasingly shaping the decision itself. That changes the economics entirely.”

There are always two sides to each story. Reed Donaldson, senior manager of business development at QuinStreet, a banking and wealth development firm, wrote on LinkedIn: "I don’t understand why we hate this. Ads are everywhere!"

"Google obsesses over search ads being relevant to the consumer," Donaldson said, adding that "if your ad sucks, the experience is horrible, or the product isn’t relevant Google moves you down the list. Assuming this is similar (and other ai to follow) if the product is really filling a consumer need, why shouldn’t that be a lever for brands to utilize."