Google has announced plans to place advertising directly into its new AI-powered search results, stoking concerns from news publishers that the controversial overhaul of the world’s most popular search engine could deal a devastating blow to site traffic and advertising revenue.
The tech giant plans to begin testing search and shopping ads within automatically generated AI summaries. This rolled out to US users last week, effectively demoting links to content providers that previously appeared at the top of results.
As an example, Google’s Tuesday blog post In this regard, search results for the query “How do I get wrinkles out of my clothes” include a “Sponsored” section within the “AI Overview” that includes ads for Downy and other laundry brands. I did.
The company said sponsored ads will be shown “when relevant to both the query and the AI summary information.”
Google derives the majority of its annual revenue from digital advertising, generating $237.86 billion in revenue in 2023 alone.
The Department of Justice and several states are currently suing Google for allegedly maintaining an illegal monopoly through its advertising technology platform.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company also faces a landmark Justice Department lawsuit targeting its online search empire, which holds a staggering 90% share of the market. A federal judge is expected to rule on the case later this year.
The company’s stock fell 1% in morning trading Wednesday.
Google and Microsoft-backed OpenAI has come under heavy criticism for using publisher content to “train” AI chatbots without proper credit or compensation, and for deploying AI in a way that further exploits viewers. exposed.
The latest ad test is likely to make the backlash even worse, said Sherry Palmer, a prominent technology industry expert.
“The problem is that while ads in AI summaries may be profitable for Google, they do not provide any compensation or support to the content creators and publishers who trained them to provide the AI summaries themselves,” Palmer said of Google’s ad tests in a Wednesday newsletter.
The Washington Post has reached out to Google for comment.
As the Post reported, advocates had already warned that Google’s latest AI overhaul would be a nightmare for cash-strapped news publishers and content creators.
Last week, Daniel Coffey, CEO of the News Media Alliance, which heads a nonprofit representing more than 2,200 publishers, including The Post, called Google’s plan a “perverse twist on innovation.” “This would have a devastating impact on our traffic,” he said.
“Google’s new products will further reduce the limited traffic publishers rely on to invest in journalists, uncover and report on important issues, and power AI summaries in the first place.” Coffey he told the Post. “Accepting this fate with dominant monopolies creating the rules is offensive and potentially illegal.”
Google denied this concern, saying news publishers would continue to receive traffic from searches and simpler search queries would continue to generate the traditional set of links in results.
“We’ve found that links included in AI summaries receive more clicks than if the page appeared as a traditional web listing for that query,” Google search head Liz Reid said last week. “As we expand this experience, we remain focused on sending valuable traffic to publishers and creators.”
