The interesting thing about ads in AI search results is that it fundamentally changes the economic model of SEO. Right now, the entire SEO industry exists to game ranking algorithms. If AI Mode synthesizes answers and presents ads as "helpful suggestions" within the conversation, the incentive shifts from gaming rankings to gaming the AI's understanding of what's "helpful."

That's a much harder problem to police. Traditional search ads are clearly labeled and separated from organic results. Conversational ads embedded in AI responses blur that line to the point where it may not exist anymore. When an AI tells you "Product X might be right for you because..." and that recommendation is a paid placement, the disclosure burden is fundamentally different from a blue link with "Sponsored" next to it.

Google's blog post frames this as "helpful answers that connect people with businesses." But the history of Google's ad products suggests that helpfulness and monetization diverge over time. The early text ads were genuinely useful too. Give it three years and we'll be navigating AI responses where every other sentence is a product placement.

The real question is whether users will tolerate conversational ads or if it drives them to alternatives. The switching cost for search is essentially zero.

Since when have we considered ads something helpful?

Their purpose isn’t to be helpful. They're there to sell you something, and nothing more. Any semblance of helpfulness is misinterpretation and merely coincidental.

I typically block ads as well, but more recently I changed some setting in the default Android newsfeed thing and some ads started to show through amongst the news items.

The ads there are usually fairly innocuous (i.e. not disruptive, not flashing auto play vids etc, they just look like another news item and you can just scroll past them like other news articles you're not interested in), but I have actually found them useful. I am wearing a T-shirt right now in fact that was advertised to me a week or two ago as "on sale" for £8 (eight) and which I clicked through and purchased. There have been one or two other examples of things there that actually have been useful or at least interesting to me right now. So they actually have been useful/helpful in that regard.

So I am a bit conflicted here. It is no cost to me to click on the ad, and I bought some things that I use but would probably have not got otherwise. Am I being manipulated to part with my money? I dunno. Would I have bought a £8 t-shirt anyway if I was just in a shop and saw it? Maybe. Was the ad actually quite well targeted and appropriate? In this case yes.

I think on balance I would say those news feed ads are acceptable to me. I have problems where it is totally irrelevant and disruptive. Hopefully the AI mode ones will be similar to the news feed ones. I would be pretty upset if the ad content was directly worded into the response.

I think weirdly, ads embedded in AI search responses actually maybe do have a chance at being helpful (as long as it's clear from the context of the question that I may be willing to pay for a solution) just because they could potentially be quite well matched to the specific thing I want, or if they're not quite as well matched but offer other benefits, explain the difference.

At the moment search ads aren't very helpful because you have neither of those things. You always get them for any type of query, and when you do get them you don't know if the thing being shown will exactly solve your problem, or only approximately, and the work is much more on you to find that out by reading the product's marketing pages further.

If all that could be done for you up front, reasonably honestly, then I could see it being useful. I mean to be sure, in some small percentage of searches I really am looking to buy something and really do want to be usefully, honestly pitched on available options.

An exception that proves the rule, but KRAZAM's channel on Youtube has legitimately helpful ad reads. Rare Data Hunters [0] for example ends with a 1 minute Cloudflare ad that's basically a crash course in their services. Having worked with GCP and AWS but not so much with Cloudflare, that ad gave me a surprisingly clear idea of what the important pieces would be.

Truly an exception though. I think generally the only people for whom ads are helpful are advertisers.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU4ByUbDKNc

What do you expect them to say? More annoying ads? They're trying to wrap this in a positive way. Everyone knows that ads are annoying.

I have seen 1 "helpful" ad yesterday.

When searching for sonarqube, I received an ad for a competing product I'd never heard of and I'll check them today to see if it fits my need.

I used to see helpful ads every now and then about 18 years ago.

Those ads do help them, though. They're an ad company now

It seems techies collectively try to avoid ads, but clearly other segments of people actively click and buy through ads. I would love to get a marketing expert's view on this. It differs by product obviously, but there must be some common character variables (gender, wealth level, ...)

I bought once through facebook ads, and now I actively try to avoid any ads

Personally, I sometimes like targeted ads. If I'm intentionally shopping, it is nice to see ads relevant to my interests. Not saying the whole Internet should be a highly surveiled mall, but they do have their place

It’s because you haven’t given them enough access to your data. Otherwise they would be able to offer more personalized and accurate ads.

I should know, I block tracking and see annoying and unhelpful ads.

And I browse social media with their algorithmic feeds, where the content is hyper personalized, helpful and mostly ads too.

A pretty high percentage. But that’s only because the ad goes to the same destination as the first organic search result. Just search for a brand whose web address you don’t know, and usually both the ad and the first results goes to the brand’s home page.

this might sound wild but..on some platforms that are good with figuring out the types of things i like, I get many ads that I actually like. facebook for example i almost exclusively go there just to see what kind of products i wouldn't otherwise know about that it might show me (some of which i've bought). plus if it helps pay for services than i'm all for it.

the part that crosses the line for me is when the platforms are peddling malware and scams through ads. google search would have a ton of this suprisingly..so i hope in AI mode they can improve things

Tbh that is a pretty vague statement. Could be 0.01% more and it would still be technically correct. Could be doubling the number of non-helpful ads in the meantime

Some might argue that Adwords got so successful because ads competed like search results, on bid AND relevance, not just bid.

If your ads inventory is big enough, ads can actually be a better answer to your intent than organic content, because the companies behind the ads have a much stronger incentive to satisfy your need.

Maybe one or two in an ocean of crap. And even the ones I do see which are interesting I start despising, because I will see them hundreds of times. Base44 - I will never use your services because of the ad bombardment. Same with that fucking toothbrush that doesn't have bluetooth. It never amazes me that ad agencies just serve me 1 or 2 same ads all the time, but :shrug:

I find helpful ads on Google Search sometimes, and it can be the easiest way to get results, but most of the time, ads (and SEO) ruin search accuracy to the point that it's becoming totally useless

For people who think often, ad is only useful in very few situations.

The ability to think often is ultimately a capability that only a minority of humans possess. Therefore, for the vast majority of people, ad is very useful.

For example, my retired parents enjoy buying little gadgets from ads.

Well, they are definitely helpful for Google incomes

I have to wonder if helpful ads most likely refers to the type of add for the exact search result… So, for example if you search for Coca-Cola the first ad will be something Coke has paid Google for. That helps Google earn $ and helps Coke not loose to a site with better SEO and confusion. Does it help you… maybe.

I don't have an ad blocker on my laptop. The ads I get are pretty much entirely generic and irrelevant to me, I don't remember ever consciously clicking on an ad.

When I want to buy something I search for it or ask AI for recommendations etc. Why not have a toggle, this is a search for product so shower me with ads related. Not all the time when I am just causally browsing.

Recently I’ve been starting up quick web projects and a number of external services are recommend (Neon, Resend, Railway), and if I just let the agent rip, signed-up for and implemented. Is it confirmed any LLM producer or provider has been receiving kickbacks for these technical decisions?

I use an adblocker and despise most ads with a burning hatred, but the absolutist position of "never helpful" isn't right. My example: A game I've been wanting to buy for a while recently went on sale on Steam. I saw an ad when I opened Steam. I bought the game for the low price, and it is now one of my favorite games I've ever played (Burnout Paradise City - highly recommend, but wait for a sale)

If an advert was helpful I would be able to click the "show ads" button

I used to do this. I used to pay for adverts -- computer shopper was a magazine I traded real money for to get the adverts.

If ads aren't opt in, they aren't useful.

> I have never seen a helpful ad

There, I fixed it!

None.

The only helpful ads are the ones that waste money on Google (namely those companies/products/results that show up on top anyway, right below the sponsored very same ad)

I have never seen a helpful ad in google search

That's a good thing.

I don't mind ads, as I understand that without money, web sites go away. But I'm very careful about being tracked. That, I don't think is cool.

It's not unusual for me to see ads for companies hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and often selling things for which I do not possess the correct body parts.

I consider that affirmation that I am mostly successful at staying off the ad-tech radar.

> I have never seen a helpful ad in google search

I have, fairly often in fact. That's why Google makes such a bucket load of money from their ads - they're actually vaguely relevant.

I've don't think I've ever seen a relevant ad outside of Google though, and I still wouldn't say "yeay, helpful ads!". Nobody is going to want them even though I occasionally get relevant ones and click on them.

> I have never seen a helpful ad in google search, but well I have been using adblockers forever so I would not know.

That this self-awarely-self-contradicting quip is the top comment on the page is about as essential a summation of HN's collective thought as I can think of.

I remain amazed at the pathology that results in the truth that, even in the world as it exists today, the one enemy that truly unites the supposedly-elite techno-leaders of our increasingly advanced society is...

...horror about seeing advertisements for products we're probably buying anyway.

I search for Converse sneakers and top result is an ad for Converse sneakers! Genius! Pay these genius engineers more! So incredible. How are they smart enough to show me exactly what I search for?!

But seriously. What are we paying advertisers for? Converse pays Google so that they don't show Vans when I search for Converse? Sounds like extortion or protection money.

I never have on Google Search (I also block them to be fair), but I've booked a lot of shows through Instagram ads actually. Shows I learnt about only through those ads and I would have been disappointed to miss.

But yeah that's literally the only platform where I've ever had useful ads. Even other meta products only have absolute garbage ads.

“Helpful to our short-term bottom line”

> I have never seen a helpful ad

I have never purchased anything [just] because of an ad, nor do I know anyone who has.

But I have been turned off from EVER buying some things because of their obnoxious ads.

The whole ads racket is a case of the emperor with no clothes, an ugly self-justifying cancer infesting human civilization.

And to those perpetuating the racket who'll say "but how will people find out about products??" the answer is fucking better search and filtering systems.

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