Google will expand advertising inside its AI search experiences to international markets after core Search advertising growth slowed to 12% in the third quarter. The plan was announced during Alphabet's earnings call, where the company reported $127.6 billion in revenue, up 25% year over year. Alphabet shares fell 8% after the results, which underlines why converting AI usage into advertising income matters now.
Ads in AI Mode go international
Chief business officer Philipp Schindler said Google is scaling high-quality ads within AI Overviews in AI Mode to more users and queries. The company is taking its monetization footprint global for the first time, with expansion of ads in AI Mode into international markets alongside multi-turn ads and AI Mode in the U. S. Early results look encouraging for Google, with click-through rates for sponsored product listings in AI Mode already comparable to organic listings. User research cited by Schindler also indicates that people find the ads relevant.
The new formats build on ad products introduced in May and powered by Gemini, including conversational discovery ads that respond to user questions. Another format places sponsored recommendations directly inside AI-generated answers, which changes placement from separate links to part of the response. Queries in AI Mode average three times longer than traditional searches, giving the system more context for matching an offer. One in five AI Mode searches globally involves voice, images or documents, while visual searches have passed 50 billion per month.
The announcement came against slower Search momentum, with growth falling from 19% in the first quarter and 17% in the second quarter to 12% in the third. At the same time, CEO Sundar Pichai said Search queries grew at the fastest year-over-year rate in five years, without disclosing the figure. He linked the shift to AI features that prompt longer, personalized and multimodal requests. Alphabet's Google Services division generated $96.3 billion in revenue, up 11%, while Google Cloud revenue surged 103% to $30.7 billion.
What AI search ads mean for advertisers
For companies that buy search traffic, a new inventory class is emerging inside AI answers rather than around ten blue links. Longer queries and multimodal input can improve intent signals, because a three-sentence request with an image reveals budget, context and constraints. Small advertisers may reach buyers through sponsored product listings that perform on par with organic results in early tests. Large advertisers gain multi-turn placements in the U. S. that can stay present across follow-up questions instead of winning one click.
The format also raises selection and measurement issues that procurement teams should clarify before increasing budgets. Relevance findings cited by Google come from its own user research, and click parity for sponsored listings does not by itself prove incremental sales or stable acquisition cost. Advertisers need to ask how sponsored recommendations are labeled, which queries trigger them, and how reporting separates AI Mode from traditional Search. It would also be wrong to read global expansion as uniform availability, since rollout pace and ad load may differ by market.
The marker to watch is whether AI ad formats stabilize Search revenue growth in the next two quarterly reports. If click performance holds as international inventory expands and multi-turn ads scale in the U. S., AI search becomes a durable sales channel. If growth keeps sliding from 12% despite wider placement, the issue is demand and pricing rather than distribution. The parallel signal is query behavior, including length, voice and visual share.
