Have No Fear, Google Has Plans to Enshittify AI Search With Ads, Too (Gizmodo)

[highplainsdem]

https://gizmodo.com/have-no-fear-google-has-plans-to-enshittify-ai-search-with-ads-too-2000680278

Google’s AI Overview has somehow successfully managed to get people to be less engaged with search results, clicking through less often, and less likely to fact-check the information presented to them. So you know what that means: it’s time to monetize! According to a report from Search Engine Land, Google is planning to introduce advertisements inside its AI experiences.

Per the report, Google Vice President of Search, Robbie Stein, said that he doesn’t see advertisements going away any time soon, and in fact expects that they will evolve to integrate into AI tools. Stein said the company has already “started some experiments on ads within AI Mode and within Google AI experiences,” and expects that “new and novel ad formats” will be introduced in the future so advertisers can continue to target users and give Google money for the right to do so.

What are those “new and novel” formats, exactly? Stein floated one example of a person searching for information during a home remodel, in which a person could provide information to the AI-powered search, and it “could give even more fine-tuned recommendations or potential other services that you could consider, or deals that could be more useful to you.” So like…personalized and sponsored advertisements, but spit out by AI, apparently? It’s not entirely clear what is novel about that, other than the fact that the person searching will likely be less discerning about what sort of paid placements they are being exposed to. Of course, there’s always the possibility that your favored chatbot will collect even more detailed data about you, but that’s not really an innovation on the ad side of things.

For now, the company insists that it’s focused on building “consumer products first and foremost,” but is obviously thinking about how to turn a profit on this thing that it has invested billions of dollars into developing. Stein also claimed that, for the time being, AI recommendations include “organic” results first and aren’t driven by ad inputs. Keep tabs on that to see how long that lasts.

-snip-

[canetoad]

1. Not surprising

As Google is primarily an advertising company. They lured people in with their giveaways - mail, storage, maps etc. Once you are hooked, like most people, you'll be resistant to change. It's human nature.

Give the company a miss. There are plenty of alternatives.

[AZJonnie]

2. Speaking of this subject, here's some news from my boss who's very much in the know about such things

He says SEO will soon be more of an afterthought, replaced more and more by AIO. AKA AI optimization. That may not be the correct acronym but it's the idea. Eventually you'll go to Google (or the like) and you're just not going to get that big list of sites generated by SEO techniques. Instead, AI is just going to spit out what it thinks you want to see based on your search terms/prompt.

Since he runs a tech company obviously this is a business opportunity to him, esp. because he is SO well-versed in AI, and he's already bringing it up to potential clients to drum up (much needed) business. The thrust is simple: the companies that will be most successful at bringing in new business will be the ones that AI flags to present to users. He says SEO will still have a big role in that, at least for a time, but its no longer enough to just have good SEO metrics, you also need good AI metrics, you need the AI's of the world to 'notice you' because it is driving more and more purchase choices.

Neat, huh?

[highplainsdem]

3. Disgusting. Enshittification, as the article says.