Everything you need to know about advertising on AI search engines
In a world where AI-powered search experiences are redefining how people find answers, AI search engine advertising gives marketers a new frontier for pay-per-click reach. Instead of relying solely on traditional search results, brands can place ads within AI assistants and answer engines such as Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity — landing ad placements inside the conversation, not just above it.
Instead of using AI to manage ads, marketers can now place them directly within AI-driven search experiences. This guide by WebFX explores these emerging paid-search opportunities.
What is AI search engine advertising?
AI search engine advertising is the use of pay-per-click (PPC) ads in AI-powered experiences, like Microsoft’s Copilot or AI Overviews in Google Search. This type of advertising is not the use of artificial intelligence to generate or manage ads.
Why advertise on AI search engines?
Advertising on AI search engines offers a few benefits, including the following:
- Get the first-mover advantage: Becoming one of the earliest companies to advertise on AI answer or search engines gives your organization a competitive edge in the marketplace. You get to own that advertising real estate versus sharing it with competitors.
- Improve paid performance: According to Microsoft, ads within AI-powered search experiences perform better. Copilot ads, for example, have a 69% higher click-through rate and 76% higher conversion rate than traditional search.
- Reach users across search experiences: From using Perplexity to asking ChatGPT, how people search is changing. With multiple advertising outlets, you make it possible to reach users no matter how they search online.
- Scale marketing efforts: Like other paid advertising efforts, ads in AI engines can support other marketing efforts. For example, you could use ads in AI Overviews to achieve micro-conversions like growing an email list via a downloadable resource.
- Expand revenue streams: Investing in new ad placements can create new revenue streams. For example, advertising on Perplexity (a brand-new ad network) could help your organization reach specific audience subsets.
- Offset decreased performance: With search preferences changing, businesses can expect decreased performance, whether in organic traffic or ad conversions. Adapting to this shift, like by advertising on AI answer engines, can offset this change.
For advertisers switching over from an exact-match keyword strategy, it can be difficult to give the AI-powered campaign types the freedom to learn and optimize accordingly. However, once you ensure your data foundations are solid, it’s best to loosen control somewhat.
Continue to monitor performance closely, and definitely monitor search terms and placements for exclusions, but don’t be quite as strict with your controls as you would with traditional exact- and phrase-match search campaigns. Give the campaign room to breathe and learn.
Which AI search engines support advertising?
The following AI search engines or AI-powered experiences support advertising:
- Google AI Overviews
- Microsoft Copilot
- Perplexity
As of now, those are the only three major AI platforms to offer advertising support. However, there have been plenty of rumors that ChatGPT ads might be close, based on a recent code leak. It’s unclear what those ads would look like.
Additionally, some programmatic ad platforms are making plans to incorporate AI platforms into their offering.
Inside the AI answer engines offering advertising
Learn more about the AI-powered experiences offering advertising options now.
Microsoft Copilot
About: Microsoft Copilot is an AI assistant and is available as a standalone product and throughout Microsoft’s product suite. Whether users are looking to search online, generate ideas, or find files within their workspace, Microsoft Copilot can do it.
Placements: Bottom of answer
Since Copilot’s launch in 2023, Microsoft has been researching how Microsoft Copilot ads impact the user experience — and ad performance. So far, various ad types, from Responsive search ads to Multimedia ads, have performed better in Copilot than in traditional search results.
Part of the reason is that Microsoft Copilot uses context to determine if, and when, to deliver an ad. The AI assistant considers the entire conversation and — if an ad seems relevant — shares its reasoning for including the advertisement (Microsoft calls this ‘ad voice’).
You can see an example of an ad voice in the earlier image. Before the ad, Copilot says, “Considering you’re looking for something easy to schedule and close to Alexandria, I’d have a look at these guided activities from…”
Copilot ads have a “Sponsored” label like other Microsoft Advertising ads.
When it comes to getting started with advertising on Microsoft Copilot, advertisers’ existing ads can appear in Copilot conversations. However, whether these ads will appear depends on the ads relevant to the conversation.
Google AI Overviews
About: Exclusive to Google Search, AI Overviews appear above organic search results and aim to answer the user’s search intent with a written summary (including citations) based on the content within Google’s index.
Placements: Above and below the AI Overview
According to Google, AI Overviews have increased user satisfaction with search results — that satisfaction increased when the AI Overview included ads, with users finding the advertisements helpful.
Companies looking to advertise in AI Overviews can do so with these ad and campaign types:
- Search ads
- Google Shopping ads
- Performance Max campaigns
Having said that, in order for search ads to appear in AI Overviews, advertisers must use broad match, AI Max for Search, or Dynamic Search Ads.
Also, for reference, Google Shopping ads require a Google Merchant Center account and a shopping feed. You’ll most often find retail or e-commerce companies versus service providers using this type of Google ad.
Like Microsoft Copilot, AI Overviews uses an ad voice to introduce the ad. In the earlier example, for instance, Google introduces the advertisement with the text, “Here are some products to help get grass stains out.”
Similar to Microsoft Copilot (and Google Ads), AI Overview ads are labeled “Sponsored.”
Perplexity
About: Perplexity is an answer engine. Within its interface, users can ask questions and submit prompts to learn more about a topic, discover brands, research purchases, and more. Understanding its advertising opportunities is a key component of the platform.
Placements: Related Questions, Answer Page, Third-party sites
With Perplexity ads, the company plans to offer businesses across industries, from travel to finance, multiple placement options in its AI-generated answers. Advertisers will also have access to essential data points, like:
- Impressions
- Unique impressions
- Click volume
- Qualifying queries
Like other new ad networks, Perplexity plans to limit access to a “select few partners” at launch. Once opened to all businesses, the network will offer the benefits of AI search advertising.
Since Perplexity doesn’t currently have conversion tracking, metrics like traffic, the post-click user journey, and branded search volume are used for measurement. Measurement platforms can unify visits across sessions to track user behavior from ad click to purchase.
This story was produced by WebFX and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
