Google Search’s New AI Overviews Will Soon Have Ads
Google Search’s New AI Overviews Will Soon Have Ads
Google is set to start mixing ads into its new AI-generated search answers. It’s a test of how the company’s biggest revenue stream can adapt to the age of generative AI.
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Why is Google determined to kill one of its cash cows? Cramming AI into search results feels like “New Coke”.
There's been ads in Google for over a decade now.
Google started introducing advertisements into its search engine in the year 2000. This was through the launch of the Google AdWords program.
Google doesn’t have a choice. Consider how few in the younger audience actually use proper search engines. Heaven forbid, they ask their questions on TikTok. It’s a mighty gamble but without a doubt hesitation is failure now that AI is yet another competitor eating up the search space.
This is one thing I would love to actually see some data about, because I have never seen people not using search engines, no matter the age, but I see a lot of people on the internet claiming that younger people don't use search engines anymore.
Sadly I don’t have such data. The best I have is anecdotal from teachers that I know.
I've seen this mentioned a few times before but never get how it works. How do you even use TikTok as a search engine?
Never used TikTok. I guess one searches "How to do X?" and shows tutorial videos each a mintue or so? Or "the Best birthday gifts" then a bunch of video trys to sell you the "best" gift? I have no idea.
Badly. You search for videos that match the form of a question. It’s not effective at all, but wildly popular according to my aunt who is a high school teacher.
The accessibility of technology has produced a generation of people who don’t understand how to use it in basic ways, but that’s another discussion.
I have given it a try a few times, to see if it makes sense to search on tiktok. I tried things like "[generic topic I'd like to know more about]", "history of [topic]", "[topic] lecture/course", "how to replace screen of [phone model]", "how to fix [device model]", "how to make [recipe]", [product] review, [software] tutorial, and a few others, both in english and in my mother language, and in all cases, the results were poor, barely related to my search or nonexistent.
It makes me wonder if: 1- people don't actually search on tiktok as much as people make it look like 2 - there's some different way to write the search terms that I'm unaware of, or perhaps, the results would be different if I was logged in 3 - people are simply getting poor results and that's it 4 - my search interests differ too much from what people search on tiktok