AdSense apparently began experimenting with ads for AI chatbots, or, as they call it «conversational AI,» in chatbots iAsk and Liner, according to Bloomberg, which is paywalled.
Just a test?
SEO roundtable quotes Bloomberg as saying that AdSense had «expanded to include conversations with chatbots operated by AI startups.»
The test was conducted last year and earlier this year with «a handful of startups.» And as far as I can tell, there are no current AdSense ads on these websites today.
Industry is monetizing
The news comes hot on the heels of OpenAI saying they reached a threshold of a billion searches per week and the recent launch of a shopping service, which could be an early move towards monetization.
Google has been aggressively competing with OpenAI as of late, delivering state of the art models such as Gemini 2.5 Pro to their free tier with no limits. While this has gained them a lot of users, it is surely also costing them a lot of money.
Ads already in AI Overviews
With the successful conclusion of the AdSense tests, and a cryptic update on AdSense policies this week, no one should be surprised if ads appear on the Gemini app sometime soon.
Google is already showing ads on their AI Overviews on their regular search pages in the USA as of October, 2024.
Read more: Ars Technica writeup, TechCrunch summary, and with commentary from SEO roundtable.