Google plans to put ads in AI Mode in the UK

The 10 countries getting ads in AI Mode now are Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Singapore. In the US, Google is also launching multiturn ads, which can appear on follow-up questions. A Google spokesperson told Search Engine Roundtable that they "show up on responses to follow-up user queries as users engage in back and forth conversations with AI Mode."

Ads will be labelled "Sponsored". Google says AI Mode queries in the US are on average three times longer than traditional searches, and that click-through rates are "already similar between sponsored and organic product list items within AI Mode", from its own US data for 20 August to 3 September 2026. That second figure covers product listings, not text ads, and neither comes with data you can check.

Google's help page on ads in its AI search features separates two placements. Ads above or below an AI Overview can run in every country and language where AI Overviews are available, and AI Overviews already appear on Google UK, as our reading of UK brand searches found. Ads inside AI Overviews and AI Mode are listed for the United States, the 10 countries above and Indonesia (AI Overviews only), in English only, with Pakistan limited to text ads. Google says the list may not be exhaustive, and the UK is not on it yet.

No new campaign is needed when it arrives. The same page says existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns are automatically eligible, that you cannot opt out of AI Overviews or AI Mode separately from Search, and that you cannot target either one on its own. Negative keywords and brand exclusions are the tools Google names for limiting when ads serve. Performance in AI Overviews and AI Mode is included in aggregate in your reports, and the page describes no separate AI Mode line.

No, according to Google. Its help page says "Paid advertising does not influence the organic responses generated by Google AI." Ads are matched either to the searcher's query or to both the query and the AI response, so the answer can shape which ad appears, but the ad does not shape the answer. That leaves room for a business to pay for the sponsored slot beside an answer that names its competitors.

Ranking well on Google does not settle the answer either. When Discoverable's UK AI Shortlist Study put 1,000 buying questions to Google AI Mode on 6 and 7 September, AI Mode did not name the business ranked first on Google in 61.7% of eligible answers (1,005 of 1,630). From the fourth quarter, UK businesses left out that way will be able to buy a place on the same screen. The sentence that recommends a business will still be the unpaid one.

If you run Search, Shopping or Performance Max in the UK, assume those campaigns will serve in AI Mode when it opens here, because Google gives no separate switch. Review your negative keywords and brand exclusions now for the longer, conversational questions AI Mode gets, and decide which of them you would rather not pay for.

Take a reading of the organic side before the ads arrive. Once a sponsored slot sits beside the answer, a change in clicks from AI Mode could come from either, and Google says AI Mode ad performance is included in aggregate in your standard reports. Write down, for your main buyer questions, whether AI Mode names you, who it names instead and which pages it cites.

For a quick reading of who AI names in your category today, the free AI visibility check asks buyer questions about your business on Claude with live web search, with no login, and shows who it names instead of you and the sources it cites. Our Google AI Mode tracker page explains how Discoverable reads AI Mode answers.

The AI Mode figure comes from the UK AI Shortlist Study. Its 1,000 buying questions were fixed before collection, covered 25 commercial categories and were each put to Google AI Mode three times on 6 and 7 September 2026, with the country set to the UK. An answer was eligible when Google's first organic result for the same question was a supplier's own website, and it counted as not naming that business when the business did not appear in the answer text. Missing answers and ambiguous matches were excluded. The figure is read from the study's headline CSV, which is free to download from the study page with the full evidence bundle. The readings were taken before AI Mode carried ads in the UK.