Google is showing a pack of sponsored products from local retailers beneath some AI Mode answers, and a second set of paid listings inside the product panel those answers open, according to two screenshots that SEO consultant Glenn Gabe posted on X today. The sighting comes two weeks after Alphabet told investors, on October 28, that strong growth in AI Mode queries had weighed on Search revenue because of "the lower monetization we were seeing in AI Mode," and that its answer was to scale ads there "to more users and more queries."

In Short

Google's AI Mode showed a pack of sponsored golf shoes from local retailers at the end of an answer, plus more sponsored stores inside the product panel it opens, in screenshots Glenn Gabe posted today, and a second analyst counted four separate ad placements in a single response. It matters because Alphabet said two weeks ago that AI Mode earns less than classic search, one of the reasons Search growth slowed to 12% in the third quarter. Google's stated fix is more ads in AI Mode for more users and more queries, which means more paid space inside AI answers for retailers and other advertisers, with no way to opt out of AI Mode separately. The quarter itself is already booked, though, and at least one of these units, sponsored stores, was first seen in March, so the screenshots show a direction Google announced rather than proof of a reaction to the results.

One golf shoe query, two layers of ads

The post went up at 13:31 UTC on November 12. "Ads and more ads in AI Mode," Gabe wrote. "Pack of ads at the bottom, the sources are from Google's shopping graph, which when clicked, trigger a product panel revealing more ads (Sponsored Stores). Yep, Google is pushing more ads there like we know they have to."

His two images show a single conversation in AI Mode, Google's conversational search interface, about FootJoy golf shoes. The visible part of the answer describes a waterproof "Prohide" leather upper with replaceable "Pulsar" spikes, then ends not with a recommendation but with questions back to the user: men's or women's sizing, wide or extra-wide widths, spikeless shoes or replaceable spikes for hilly or wet conditions, a "mesh sneaker feel" or waterproof leather.

Directly beneath those questions sits a block labeled Sponsored, with a three-dot menu. Its heading is a sentence written in the assistant's voice: "If you're exploring these walking models, here are some options available from local retailers." Four product cards follow:

  • FootJoy Men's Hyperflex Golf Shoes (Previous Season), size 11, at $139.99, down from $189.99, from DICK'S Sporting Goods, rated 4.5 from more than 1,000 reviews
  • FootJoy Men's Flex Golf Shoes 2025, size 11 W, grey, navy and red, at $89.98, down from $109.99, from Golf Galaxy, rated 4.6 from more than 2,000 reviews
  • FootJoy Men's FJ Quantum Golf Shoes, previous season style, at $119.95, down from $169.95, from Golf Headquarters, rated 4.6 from 414 reviews
  • FootJoy Men's Hyperflex Golf Shoes in white, slate and blue, at $139.95, down from $189.95, from Worldwide Golf Shops, rated 4.5 from more than 1,000 reviews

Only the first two cards carry a location pin, reading Fairless Hills and Langhorne, both in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The other two show no location at all, even though the heading presents all four as options "available from local retailers." Every card shows a sale price against a struck-through original.

Sources that lead back to Google

The second screenshot shows what sits below the ads. The answer's source cards are not retailer or publisher pages. Each is labeled "Google," with the Google logo. One, titled "Footjoy Quantum," begins: "Featuring FootJoy's softest, most plush foam, a tongue and insole that mold to your foot, and a breathable, waterproof upper." Another, for the FootJoy Men's Quantum Leather Golf Shoes in White/Harbor Mist/Indigo, size 9.5, reads: "Our softest foam combined with premium leather delivers supreme comfort round after round."

These are entries from Google's Shopping Graph, the product database that feeds Shopping, Search, Lens, AI Mode and Gemini. Clicking one opens the panel in the first screenshot: FootJoy Men's Quantum Golf Shoes, seven product images, a "Try it on" button, color, size and width filters, a "Typically $140-$180" price range and a "Track price" button.

Below that range comes the second paid layer, headed Sponsored stores. DICK'S Sporting Goods lists the Quantum (Previous Season) in size 11, White/White/Gray, at $119.99, marked 29% off a $170 price, rated 4.8 out of 5 with free 90-day returns. Carls Golfland follows at $119.95, also 29% off $170. Both offers sit below the "typical" range the same panel displays.

So a user who asks about a shoe, follows the citation, and opens the product sees two sets of sponsored retailers before reaching anything unpaid, with the citation itself pointing to a Google page rather than to a seller's site.

Who fills the slots

The roster is narrower than it looks. Golf Galaxy is owned by DICK'S Sporting Goods, so two of the four cards in the pack, and the first entry in the panel, belong to the same corporate group. Whether that reflects bidding, inventory data or chance cannot be established from two screenshots.

Four placements in one response

Seven minutes after Gabe's post, Juozas Kaziukėnas, the founder of the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse, which Threecolts acquired in March 2024, replied with his own count. "I raise you one: a sponsored retailer StockX in results, a sponsored store Saucony in product panel, a sponsored product Puma in product list, and ads at the bottom," he wrote. "Four different sponsored placements in a single response."

His post does not name the query behind it. Even so, the four positions he lists, inside the answer, inside the product panel, inside the product list and below the answer, describe a layout in which paid units appear at every stage of a shopping conversation rather than in one block.

Another reply, from Pankaj Gupta, who describes himself as building a company called Zenyro, pointed at what the ads could crowd out: "makes sense. once the ads fill that space, I'd check whether the brand still shows in the answer text itself and not just in the source cards."

Google had not commented publicly on either set of screenshots at the time of writing.

What Alphabet told investors on October 28

Gabe's "like we know they have to" refers to a quarter in which Google itself linked AI Mode to weaker revenue.

Alphabet reported third-quarter results after the US market closed on Wednesday, October 28. Google Search & other revenue rose 12% to $63.35 billion, the slowest growth rate of 2026, after 19% in the first quarter and 17% in the second. Against the second quarter, the line grew by just $79 million. The quarterly filing showed paid clicks up 8% in the quarter, against 11% over nine months, with the average cost per click up 4%.

Usage moved the other way. "Our year-over-year query growth rate is the highest it's been in the last five years," chief executive Sundar Pichai said, according to the transcript Alphabet published. He added that queries in AI Mode "are on average three times longer than traditional searches."

The question that was put directly

JPMorgan's Doug Anmuth asked the question that Gabe's screenshots now illustrate. Noting the fastest query growth in five years alongside slower Search growth, he asked: "Is it simply that you haven't been showing as many ads basically in AI Overviews, in AI Mode," and whether those surfaces were "now becoming a bigger percentage of the overall queries?"

Chief business officer Philipp Schindler did not answer with a number. He gave four reasons for the slowdown from the second quarter, in this order. Foreign exchange "was the single largest driver of Search deceleration relative to Q2." Retail came next: some Asia-Pacific advertisers, he said, were hit by the EU's removal of its de minimis customs exemption. Media and entertainment spending then normalized after a second quarter lifted by the FIFA World Cup, which put more matches, and more ad budgets, into June than July. AI Mode came fourth.

"It's worth noting that the strong growth in AI Mode queries had an impact because of the lower monetization we were seeing in AI Mode," Schindler said. "To be clear, we feel very good about our trajectory here. Our ad experiments have shown promising results, and we're now scaling ads within both AI Overviews and AI Mode to more users and more queries, including, as I mentioned, international markets and multiturn ads in the U.S."

The plan, as laid out in prepared remarks

Earlier in the call, Schindler had set out the same plan in more detail. "Many of these queries are upper-funnel queries, allowing us to capture new high-value commercial intent," he said of AI Mode, and "the majority of AI Mode queries are incremental, creating more monetization opportunities over time." He claimed that "people are comfortable with ads on these surfaces and find them highly relevant," and that "click-through rates are already similar between sponsored and organic product list items within AI Mode." Then the operative sentence: "We are now scaling high-quality ads within AI Overviews and AI Mode to more users and queries."

He described the sequence Google follows as "prioritizing the user experience and engagement first, and then scaling the formats that drive proven ROI for advertisers." Pichai framed it the same way: "Just like our shift to mobile over a decade ago, we are focused on building the best Search user experience," he said, "followed by monetization."

Two other details from the call bear on the golf shoe screenshots. Chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi said Search revenue growth came "with retail driving the largest contribution, followed by finance." And Schindler said Google had made, in the third quarter, the biggest update to product listing ads in a decade, the format behind Shopping ads.

A harder fourth quarter

Ashkenazi's outlook gave Google little room. "We would expect a slightly larger FX headwind to our consolidated revenues in Q4, relative to the prior quarter," she said. "This impact will be seen primarily in Search and YouTube Ads." Google will also "continue to lap the Search performance acceleration that began in the third quarter last year, which will pressure revenue growth in Q4." Asked by Morgan Stanley's Brian Nowak to size that effect, she said it would continue in the fourth quarter, by "a couple points."

Investors had already reacted. Alphabet's Class A shares fell 12.6% on October 29, their worst day since 2004, although executives ranked currency ahead of AI Mode and several analysts put at least as much weight on AI Overviews.

Two weeks of AI Mode ad changes

What has happened in AI Mode since the call follows Schindler's script closely.

On October 28, the day of the results, Google took ads in AI Mode to 10 more countries: Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Singapore, with Brazil, Mexico and the UK to follow in the fourth quarter. Multiturn ads, which appear on follow-up questions, were announced for the US. Advertisers cannot opt out of AI Mode separately from Search.

The same day, Search Engine Watch's Sachin Patel spotted a test that groups AI Mode shopping ads under a single "Sponsored" heading, with unpaid items under "All products" in the same carousel. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Roundtable it was an experiment: "Shopping Ads can appear alongside organic visual search results within carousels for commercially relevant queries," according to Search Engine Roundtable.

By November 4, AI Mode had been seen showing four text ads beneath a single answer, where one to three had been the usual count. On Friday, November 6, Barry Schwartz saw multiturn ads live in his own searches, and Google confirmed them to Search Engine Roundtable on November 9. "Multiturn ads show up on responses to follow-up user queries as users engage in back-and-forth conversations with AI Mode," Google said, according to Search Engine Roundtable. "Ads will be clearly labeled as 'Sponsored.' We'll continue testing new formats to ensure ads remain helpful and relevant."

Today's screenshots add a third kind of unit to that list: a shopping pack that presents itself as local, introduced by a generated sentence, beneath an answer that had not yet narrowed down a product.

Not all of it is new

Several of the pieces are older than the quarter that supposedly prompted them. Gabe himself first found the sponsored stores unit on March 25, 2026, when he spotted it in the right-hand product panel of AI Mode, sitting above the organic "All stores" list for a Gap product priced at $29.00. Google had formally announced shopping ads in AI Mode on February 11, 2026. On August 31, Google was seen testing two shopping ad placements inside AI Mode answers, one inline in the answer and a second sponsored block at the foot of the page.

The local element also predates today. Google's help page on ads in AI-powered Search experiences says text ads and Shopping ads can appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and adds: "We are also experimenting with other types of ads such as local inventory ads and vehicle ads." That line was already on the page on November 1. The FootJoy pack, with its "local retailers" heading and store pins, is consistent with that experiment, although Google has not identified the format, and two of its four cards show no location.

Nor did ad density in AI Mode start rising in October. On June 30, 2026, the SEO software company SE Ranking checked 50,032 commercial keywords in US AI Mode, chosen to trigger text ads rather than product carousels, and found a text ad on 14,733 of them, or 29.45%, with two ads shown together on 71.1% of those. The company called its figure "a floor, not a ceiling." That is one vendor's sample on one day, not Google data.

A year ago, Google's position was more cautious. On the third-quarter 2025 call, Schindler said of AI Mode: "We're testing ads in AI Mode, and we'll continue to test and learn before we expand this any further." Of AI Overviews, he said that "even at our current baseline of ads, whether above, below, and within the AI response, overall, we see the monetization at approximately the same rate." A year on, the claim of parity has been replaced by an admission of lower monetization in AI Mode, and the test has become an expansion.

So is Google trying to recover the quarter with AI Mode?

Not the quarter, which is booked. What Google can still affect is the fourth quarter and 2027, and on that, its executives have been plain: AI Mode earns less, and the response is more ads in AI Mode, in more markets and on more queries. In that sense, the screenshots Gabe posted are not a hidden shift. They are what the stated plan looks like on a results page.

The calendar adds weight. Retail was the largest contributor to Search revenue growth in the third quarter, by Ashkenazi's account. Black Friday falls on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30, inside a quarter in which Alphabet has already warned of a larger currency drag and a tougher comparison. Shopping ads inside AI Mode in mid-November sit exactly where Search revenue is most concentrated. That is a PPC Land reading of timing and incentives, not something Google has said about this unit.

What the evidence does not show

The public record falls short of a direct link in several places.

No causal statement. Google has not tied any specific placement to the third-quarter results. The 10-country expansion and the multiturn ads were announced on results day itself, which means they were planned before the numbers were public. Sponsored stores have existed since at least March.

No frequency data. Two screenshots and one reply show what can appear, not how often. Neither Gabe nor Kaziukėnas said how many queries they ran, and Google publishes no figures for ads per AI Mode response.

No revenue per query. Alphabet has not disclosed AI Mode revenue, AI Mode's share of queries, or how much less an AI Mode query earns than a classic one. Without those, the gap that more ads would need to close cannot be measured from outside.

A narrow click claim. Google's statement that click-through rates are "already similar" compares sponsored and organic product listings within AI Mode. It does not compare AI Mode ads with ads on the classic results page, which is the comparison that matters for revenue. Earlier Google statements traced the figure to internal data from August 20 to September 3, 2026.

A stated order of priorities. Pichai and Schindler both describe user experience first and monetization second. A page on which the answer is still asking about shoe width while the sponsored pack already offers a size 11 is one data point on how that order plays out in practice. It does not settle the question.

Gabe's own phrase, that Google is pushing more ads "like we know they have to," is his interpretation. It is consistent with what Alphabet told investors, but it is not a statement from Google.

Why this matters for the marketing community

For advertisers, the screenshots show where Google's new inventory is going. Under the help page's rules, existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns are automatically eligible for AI Mode, results are reported in aggregate with the rest of Search, and there is no way to target or exclude AI Mode on its own. Google can also wrap ads in what it calls AI explainers, generated text that advertisers cannot write, edit or opt out of, according to Google's help page. The line "If you're exploring these walking models, here are some options available from local retailers" matches that description. A brand's offer can therefore appear under a sentence it never approved, in a placement it cannot measure separately.

For retailers, the layout changes the route to a sale. In July, Productrise found that AI Mode surfaced roughly 95% fewer product listings than standard search on identical shopping queries. When fewer products are shown and the cited sources are Google's own product pages, paid slots at the foot of the answer and at the top of the product panel take up a larger share of the remaining space. The panel is also turning into a place to transact: Google's Universal Cart reached US Search on October 15, and standard product panels have since gained "Add to cart" and "Buy now" buttons. Local stores face a particular question: whether a pack labeled "local retailers" that also includes sellers without a location pin rewards physical presence or simply bids and feed data.

The ad load question is also new. When Google grouped text ads under one "Sponsored results" label in October 2025, it said users would never see more than four text ads in a grouping. That limit concerned text ads on the classic results page. Kaziukėnas's four placements are of four different types, spread across the answer, the product list and the panel, and no published Google limit covers that combination.

Publishers sit at the other end. On October 29, Reddit chief executive Steve Huffman told analysts that "AI Mode does not drive traffic. Not for us, and not to anybody as far as I know." In the FootJoy example, none of the visible sources leads to a publisher or a retailer's own page. Media buyers have also started to question or reallocate parts of their Google budgets, according to agency estimates reported by Digiday.

The test of whether Google's approach works will come with Alphabet's fourth-quarter results in early 2027. Until the company publishes an AI Mode monetization figure, the only measure available from outside is the one Gabe and Kaziukėnas used today: counting the sponsored labels.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Google and its parent Alphabet, including chief business officer Philipp Schindler, chief executive Sundar Pichai and chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi; SEO consultant Glenn Gabe, who posted the screenshots; Marketplace Pulse founder Juozas Kaziukėnas, who reported four sponsored placements in one response; and the retailers in the example, DICK'S Sporting Goods, Golf Galaxy, Golf Headquarters, Worldwide Golf Shops and Carls Golfland.

What: For a FootJoy golf shoe query, Google AI Mode showed a "Sponsored" pack of four products introduced as "options available from local retailers," and the Google-sourced citations opened a product panel with a further "Sponsored stores" list. Kaziukėnas counted four different sponsored placements in a single response. The sighting follows Alphabet's statement that lower monetization in AI Mode weighed on third-quarter Search growth of 12%, and its stated plan to scale ads in AI Mode to more users and queries. Sponsored stores have existed in AI Mode since at least March, Google lists local inventory ads as an experiment, and Google has not commented on these screenshots.

When: Gabe posted the screenshots today, November 12, 2026, at 13:31 UTC, and Kaziukėnas replied at 13:38 UTC. Alphabet reported the third-quarter results on October 28, 2026. Black Friday falls on November 27.

Where: Google AI Mode in the United States, with location pins for Fairless Hills and Langhorne in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. AI Mode ads are also running in 10 more English-language markets, with Brazil, Mexico and the UK due in the fourth quarter.

Why: Alphabet says AI Mode is drawing more, and more commercial, queries that currently earn less than classic search, at a time when Search growth has slowed and currency and tougher comparisons will weigh on the fourth quarter. More sponsored units in AI Mode are Google's stated response. Whether they close the gap cannot be judged until Alphabet discloses AI Mode monetization or reports fourth-quarter Search revenue.