AI-search ads are paid placements inside the new AI answer engines: ads in Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, and the sponsored and shopping results now appearing in tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. We help ecommerce brands show up and get bought when people ask an AI assistant what to buy, instead of typing a query into a classic search box. This is early, it is moving fast, and we are running it on our own agency before we recommend it to anyone.
The buying behavior has already shifted. People increasingly ask an assistant for a recommendation and act on the answer, which means the work splits into two halves that have to move together.
What this involves
- Setting up and managing the paid formats as Google and the AI platforms roll them out, including AI Overview and AI Mode placements tied to your existing Shopping feed.
- Making sure your product feed and structured data are clean, because the same data that wins Shopping is what these engines pull from.
- Pairing the paid side with the unpaid side: being recommended organically by AI search, which is the SEO, AEO, and GEO work that is our deepest discipline.
- Measuring what these placements actually return, separately from regular search, so you know if the spend is real.
Here is the honest part. A lot of this inventory is new and still proving itself, so we treat it as a test budget alongside channels we already trust, not a place to bet the quarter. The brands that win here will be the ones already structured to be found by AI, which is why we start there.