Google has repeatedly emphasized how generative AI is making search behavior more complex and circuitous, thereby transforming this channel that remains the pillar of the company's core business. At the Marketing Live summit held on Wednesday, Google released a broad range of advertising and commerce products, showcasing how the tech giant is adjusting brand experiences to adapt to a more conversational search era and reduce friction between AI agents and purchases. Some of these new tools also enable advertisers to leverage Gemini-powered agentic marketing capabilities for more seamless ad campaign creation, management, and reporting.

Take Ask Advisor, for example. This tool, set to launch later this year, is positioned as a unified in-product agent entry point across Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Merchant Center. Dan Taylor, Google's Vice President of Global Advertising, explained that a hair care brand looking to identify new customer segments could use Ask Advisor to pull product details from Merchant Center and launch a Google Ads campaign in one go. Similarly, Ask Advisor can automatically generate performance reports based on data from Google Ads and Google Analytics, without marketers needing to dive into each platform separately.

"In the backend, our agents talk to each other and pass content to one another, forming a continuous thread of intelligence," Taylor said of Ask Advisor during a virtual press briefing ahead of Marketing Live.

Google is also updating Asset Studio, a creative asset generation hub that entered beta testing last August, with the addition of Gemini Omni's computing power. Other digital platforms, such as Amazon, are similarly building one-stop advertising services, which poses a threat to traditional marketing service providers.

"Brands can now describe their goals in natural language and upload marketing briefs directly into Asset Studio," Taylor said. "This means marketers can immediately create a range of high-quality, on-brand text, image, and video assets with just a few words or a full marketing brief."

The Marketing Live announcements follow Google's consumer-facing I/O event earlier this week, which unveiled a revamped search experience that prioritizes AI, including new customizable "information agents," and further downplays the traditional "ten blue links" approach. These changes come as Google faces more intense competition from AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic, and according to some industry analysts' forecasts, its advertising revenue could be surpassed by Meta Platforms for the first time this year.

Search adapted to AI interfaces

About a year after first integrating ads into AI Mode, Google detailed two new explanatory ad formats: Conversational Discovery and Highlighted Answers, which it claims are better suited to how consumers interact with this feature focused on deep chat-based conversations. Google stated at I/O that AI Mode has over 1 billion monthly users and will now be powered globally by its more advanced Gemini 3.5 Flash model.

Conversational Discovery evaluates the context of complex, specific user queries—such as "How can I make my house smell like a high-end spa with low maintenance?"—and generates tailored ad creatives from relevant businesses. Highlighted Answers, on the other hand, generates a curated list of recommendations based on searches like finding the best language learning app for an upcoming trip. Advertisers can insert themselves into this list if relevance matches, with Google emphasizing that any sponsored selections will be clearly labeled.

"These formats rethink not only how ads look, but also the value they provide, because ultimately the best ad is the answer," Taylor said.

In the core search experience, Google is rolling out AI shopping ads for high-consideration purchases, which include explanations of why the advertiser's product is the right choice. AI shopping ads will go live in the U.S. later this year.

Another new AI format attempts to handle complex searches more deeply, called Commerce Agent (leads), currently in beta in the U.S. A student exploring suitable colleges can click on an ad and immediately chat with an agent trained entirely on the advertiser's website, without needing to fill out a static form.

"These ads not only appear when relevant to the user's query, but also show up in AI Overview responses," Taylor said.

Linking AI to transactions

Google I/O introduced the agentic universal shopping cart tool, which will be available across Google's multiple platforms, including Search, YouTube, and Gmail. A theme of Marketing Live was helping merchants create incentives to drive transactions and shorten checkout times.

For example, Google is expanding Direct Offers, a feature that entered pilot in January as a way for retailers to showcase offers directly in AI Mode ads. Direct Offers now allows advertisers to upload various discounts, giveaways, and coupons, and use Gemini to match or combine the most relevant offers based on user searches, forming relevant bundles. The format is already being used by brands like Chewy, Gap, and L'Oréal, and will soon expand to travel platforms such as Expedia and Booking.com.

"Direct Offers are fundamentally different from shopping ads because they leverage the deep context of AI Mode conversations to deliver tailored offers when users are ready to buy," Taylor explained.

To ensure consumers can easily redeem these offers, Google is also implementing a native checkout experience within AI Mode, meaning users don't need to leave the feature to complete a purchase. Native checkout is available to merchants using Google's Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard for agentic commerce that Google launched earlier this year with partners like Walmart, Target, and Shopify.

"UCP addresses a core challenge of scaling agentic commerce across the web by defining a common language that enables agents to connect to businesses securely and seamlessly," said Ashish Gupta, Google's Vice President and General Manager of Merchant Shopping.

UCP is also expanding in several other areas, including multi-item checkout, enabling merchants to capture larger order values; buy-now-pay-later options powered by Google Pay; and upcoming checkout features in YouTube ads, making it easier for viewers to purchase items they see on mobile or connected TV. For consumers who prefer not to complete purchases through Google services, they can now also transfer items directly to the merchant's website.

"Regardless of where and how the customer completes the purchase, the retailer always remains the merchant of record under UCP," Gupta said.