Google said on October 28, 2026 that it is scaling ads in AI Mode, its conversational search product, to Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Singapore. In the same post on the Google Ads & Commerce Blog, Shashi Thakur, vice president and general manager of Google Search Ads and Ads on Google Experiences, said Google plans to add Brazil, Mexico and the United Kingdom in the fourth quarter of 2026, and that it is launching multiturn ads in the United States so that ads can appear on follow-up questions.

In Short

Google has started putting ads inside the chat-style answers of AI Mode in 10 more countries, including Australia, Canada, India and Nigeria, after first doing so in the United States. Businesses in those countries that already advertise on Google Search can now appear in those answers automatically, and they cannot switch that placement off on its own. In the United States, ads can now also appear when people ask follow-up questions, and Google says Brazil, Mexico and the UK come next, before the end of 2026.

What Google announced

The post is short, at fewer than 200 words under the headline "Ads in AI Mode expand to new markets," and it opens with a single sentence: "We're bringing ads in AI Mode to new countries."

Thakur frames the move around how people now phrase their searches. "As AI transforms how people search, queries are becoming increasingly conversational. In AI Mode, queries are, on average, three times longer than traditional searches," he wrote. "AI helps us better understand what people are looking for, allowing us to connect them to the businesses and services that best match their needs."

He then turns to user reaction and click-through rates. "Our research shows that people are comfortable with ads in AI Mode and find them highly relevant. In fact, click-through rates are already similar between sponsored and organic product list items within AI Mode."

The market list follows. "Now we're scaling ads in AI Mode in Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Singapore. In Q4 2026, we plan to expand to additional locales, including Brazil, Mexico, and the United Kingdom."

The last two announcements are a US product launch and a labeling commitment. "To allow ads in follow-up queries in AI Mode, we are launching multiturn ads in the U.S.," according to the post. "Ads will be clearly labeled as 'Sponsored.' We'll continue testing new formats to ensure ads remain helpful and relevant."

Some arithmetic frames the scale. With the United States, ads inside AI Mode now run in 11 countries. Google rolled out AI Mode itself to more than 200 countries and territories by October 2025, so the advertising footprint covers a small fraction of the places where the product is available. The fourth-quarter plan would take that count to at least 14; the word "including" leaves room for more. On PPC Land's count, the post went up with 64 days of the quarter left, from October 29 to December 31.

The post was published late on October 28, the day Alphabet reported third-quarter results in which Search & other revenue grew 12% to $63.35 billion, according to Alphabet, against 17% growth in the second quarter.

Where the list comes from

The 10 countries are not a new selection. Google placed ads inside AI Overviews, the AI summaries at the top of standard results, in 11 more countries on December 19, 2025: Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Singapore. Take Indonesia out, and that is the AI Mode list announced on October 28. That December change came through an update to a help page rather than a blog post, and it excluded sensitive categories including adult, alcohol, gambling, finance, healthcare and politics. Ads in AI Overviews had launched for mobile users in the United States on October 3, 2024.

Google's help page on ads in AI-powered Search experiences, which the October 28 post links to, sets out the current position. As of November 1, it lists the countries where ads can appear within AI Overviews and AI Mode as the United States, Australia, Canada, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Singapore, with two qualifiers. Indonesia is marked as AI Overviews only. Pakistan is marked as text ads only. The only language listed is English, and the page describes availability as the United States and select English-speaking markets. Ads placed above or below an AI Overview, rather than inside it, can run in all of the more than 200 countries and territories where AI Overviews are available, according to the same page.

Two of the three markets named for the fourth quarter sit outside that English-language pattern. Portuguese is the main language in Brazil and Spanish in Mexico. Google's post does not say whether ads in AI Mode will run in those languages, or in English only. The United Kingdom does not appear on the help page's list for either AI Mode or AI Overviews, and no member state of the European Union is on it either.

The post is also silent on whether the sensitive-category exclusions from December 2025 apply to AI Mode in the new markets. Google has been testing healthcare ads in AI Mode and AI Overviews since Google Marketing Live in May 2026, but that test was limited to English-language queries in the United States.

How ads in AI Mode are served

Eligibility and formats

No setup is involved. According to Google's help page, advertisers do not need new campaigns or separate budgets: existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns are automatically eligible to serve within AI Overviews and AI Mode through the regular Google Ads auction. Text ads and Shopping ads can appear in both surfaces. Google says it is also experimenting with other types, naming local inventory ads and vehicle ads.

Matching

Google describes two ways of matching an ad to a conversation. When a query already carries clear commercial intent, the ad is matched to the query directly, which Google calls direct query matching. When the question is longer or exploratory, and commercial intent emerges from the next steps suggested in the answer, the ad is matched to both the query and the AI-generated response, which Google calls contextual matching.

Which keywords can take part depends on that split. AI Max for Search, broad match, Shopping campaigns and Performance Max are eligible for both kinds of matching, according to the help page. Exact and phrase match keywords are eligible only when the query itself expresses direct commercial intent, and not for contextual matching on broader questions. Long exploratory questions, the kind Thakur cites as the direction of travel for search, are where exact and phrase match keywords lose eligibility.

Ads combine assets such as headlines, descriptions, images, prices and landing pages with a "Sponsored" label. Google can also place what it calls AI explainers around them. These are not part of the ad copy, and advertisers cannot write, edit, approve or opt out of them, according to the help page.

Controls, reporting and billing

Existing controls, including negative keywords, asset pinning and brand exclusions, continue to apply. What advertisers cannot do is target AI Overviews or AI Mode on their own, or opt out of showing ads there separately from Search. Google's help page treats both as core parts of Search.

Reporting is aggregated. Impressions, clicks, conversions and cost from AI Overviews and AI Mode are folded into standard campaign reports, and the queries that trigger those ads appear in the search terms report in aggregate. The help page does not describe a segment that separates AI Mode performance from the rest of Search.

Billing follows the standard Search model, with the same auction and cost-per-click or conversion-based bidding, no extra charge for the placement, and the usual invalid traffic protections. Google also says paid ads do not influence organic AI responses, and that whether a site is cited organically has no bearing on its ad auction eligibility.

Multiturn ads in the United States

The multiturn ads launch is confined to the United States. Its purpose, in Thakur's words, is "to allow ads in follow-up queries in AI Mode." The phrasing implies that ads in AI Mode had been limited to the opening exchange of a conversation, although the post does not say so directly. Google's help page now says ads can appear within or alongside AI responses, including across follow-up questions in AI Mode.

Follow-up questions are a growing share of AI Mode traffic. Google's AI Mode report of May 19, 2026 said follow-up queries in AI Mode had increased by more than 40% on average per month in the United States. In the United States, each extra turn in a conversation is now a potential ad slot.

How many ads a single conversation can carry, whether a multiturn ad can repeat an advertiser already shown earlier in the same conversation, and whether multiturn placements will be reported separately are not addressed in the post. Nor does it give a date for multiturn ads outside the United States.

What the evidence covers

Both statistics in the post come from US data. Google's source notes attribute the query-length figure to its AI Mode report covering the United States, dated May 2026. Alphabet had already said in February that AI Mode queries in the United States averaged three times the length of traditional searches, so the figure has been unchanged for about nine months.

The click-through claim rests on Google's internal US data from August 20 to September 3, 2026, a window of 15 days. The post gives no rates, no number of queries or impressions, and no definition of a "product list item." The comparison covers product listings only, which means it says nothing about how text ads perform inside AI Mode, and it was measured in a market where ads in AI Mode had been running for months, not in any of the 10 new countries. Nor has Google published the research behind the statement that people "are comfortable with ads in AI Mode and find them highly relevant."

That measurement window also straddles a layout change. Shopping ads moved into the body of AI Mode answers on August 31, 2026, with a sponsored carousel between the generated text and the suggested follow-up questions and a second sponsored block at the foot of the page. Google's note does not say which layout, or layouts, the data covers.

Similar to what, exactly? The organic side of the comparison is thin. A Productrise study of more than 100,000 US and UK queries over 21 days in July found that AI Mode showed products on about 23% of tracked shopping queries, against about 88% in standard search, with an average of 4.3 listings per page where products appeared, against 22.5. Sponsored listings in AI Mode are competing with a short organic list, not a full shopping grid.

How ads reached AI Mode

Advertising in AI Mode has arrived in steps. Robby Stein, Google's vice president of product for Search, said in an interview recorded on October 30, 2025 that Google had started experiments with ads within AI Mode. Google introduced shopping ads in AI Mode on February 11, 2026, when the product had more than 75 million daily active users, with Target and B&H shown as example advertisers beneath headphone recommendations.

At Google Marketing Live on May 20, 2026, the company introduced Conversational Discovery ads and Highlighted Answers for testing in AI Mode in the United States. Later that month, a US AI Mode answer to a coffee maker query showed a paid product card in the middle of the response, with a product image, price, rating and merchant, marked only by a small "Sponsored" tag.

The most recent step before the expansion involved personal data. In October, Google confirmed it was testing ads in AI Mode for users with Personal Intelligence switched on, the feature that connects apps such as Gmail and Photos, after saying in March that AI Mode with Personal Intelligence would carry no ads. The October 28 post does not mention Personal Intelligence.

Why this matters for the marketing community

For advertisers in the 10 countries, the change requires no action and offers no exit. Any Search, Shopping or Performance Max campaign running there is now eligible for a placement inside AI-generated answers, and spend on that placement will appear in the same reports as the rest of Search, without a separate line. Advertisers with strict geographic or brand rules have negative keywords and brand exclusions to work with, but no switch for AI Mode as such.

The matching rules point in one direction. Exact and phrase match keywords reach AI Mode only on queries with explicit commercial intent, while the exploratory, multi-sentence queries that Google says now dominate AI Mode are open to broad match, AI Max, Performance Max and Shopping. The rollout gives those campaign types inventory in 10 more countries that keyword-controlled campaigns reach only in part.

Pakistan is the exception in format terms, with text ads only, and Indonesia, which has carried ads in AI Overviews since December 2025, is left out of AI Mode altogether. Google gave no reason for either.

The evidence offered to advertisers is limited. Both figures in the post are from the United States, one is a 15-day internal measurement with no published numbers, and neither speaks to text ads or to the 10 markets now included. Brazil and Mexico, if they arrive in the fourth quarter as planned, will also show whether ads in AI Mode move beyond English for the first time.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Google, through Shashi Thakur, vice president and general manager of Google Search Ads and Ads on Google Experiences, and advertisers running Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns in the affected countries.

What: Google is scaling ads in AI Mode to Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Singapore, plans Brazil, Mexico and the United Kingdom in the fourth quarter, and is launching multiturn ads on follow-up queries in the United States. Existing campaigns are automatically eligible, ads carry a "Sponsored" label, advertisers cannot opt out of AI Mode separately from Search, and results are reported in aggregate. Google's help page lists English as the only language, Pakistan as text ads only, and Indonesia as AI Overviews only.

When: The announcement was published on October 28, 2026, the same day Alphabet reported third-quarter results. The next markets are planned for the fourth quarter of 2026.

Where: Ten countries across Asia-Pacific, Africa and North America, joining the United States, with multiturn ads limited to the United States. The announcement appeared on Google's Ads & Commerce Blog.

Why: Google says AI Mode queries are three times longer than traditional searches and that sponsored product listings in AI Mode draw click-through rates similar to organic ones. Both figures come from US data, the second from a 15-day internal measurement with no published rates. For advertisers, the expansion adds inventory that broad match, AI Max, Performance Max and Shopping can reach and exact and phrase match keywords largely cannot, with no separate reporting line to measure it.