Google's Global VP of Advertising: From AI Mode to Agentic Commerce—How AI is Transforming Traditional Search

Ebrun Exclusive: Recently, at a Google Asia-Pacific media roundtable, Dan Taylor, Vice President of Global Advertising at Google, shared the company's progress in AI-powered search, shopping, and AI advertising.

Firstly, AI has driven an increase in Google's search volume. Official data shows that Google now processes over 5 trillion searches annually, with overall query volume continuing to grow year-over-year.

Additionally, Google has introduced AI Overviews in search, which use AI to generate informational snapshots and deep-link suggestions to assist users. Starting in 2024, Google began placing ads above, below, and within the content area of AI Overviews. These AI Overviews can match ads based on user search queries and contextualize them within the provided answers. Dan Taylor also noted that the current commercial conversion rate for AI Overviews is roughly on par with that of traditional search.

However, he pointed out that users are increasingly moving away from traditional keyword-based searches towards visual search and AI-powered search methods. For example, Google Lens now handles over 25 billion searches per month, with one in every five Lens searches having commercial intent.

Bridging the gap between chatbots and traditional search engines, Google has also launched an AI Mode within search. User feedback has been highly positive: official data indicates that the average query length in AI Mode is three times longer than in traditional search, and the proportion of commercial queries has significantly increased. Since May 2025, Google has been piloting in the U.S. market the integration of search and shopping ads below and within the content stream of AI Mode responses.

Earlier this year, Google also launched a pilot program in the U.S. called "Direct Offers" within AI Mode, which displays promotions to high-intent shoppers at the moment they are ready to purchase, helping merchants close deals. Through Direct Offers, businesses can provide tailored discounts to ready-to-buy shoppers without affecting regular pricing. In the future, Google plans to expand this functionality beyond pricing to include dimensions such as membership benefits and product bundles.

Beyond integrating AI ads into the traditional search framework, Google has also introduced ads within its AI portal, Gemini, and is continuously advancing its efforts in Agentic Commerce.

According to official information, Gemini is consistently enhancing ad relevance, improving query understanding through Gemini updates at a near-monthly frequency. By integrating Gemini into Google's ad quality assessment system, the average mis-trigger rate for irrelevant ads has been reduced by 40%.

Google itself is continually launching AI-driven advertising solutions, such as AI Max for Search and Performance Max campaigns. These solutions leverage marketer-provided assets—like landing pages, creative materials, and objectives—to match ads based on users' genuine intent. In 2025, the volume of Gemini-generated creatives produced by advertisers tripled.

In the realm of AI-powered shopping, earlier this year Google announced a new Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open-source agent protocol for the Agentic Commerce domain. UCP covers the entire shopping journey from product discovery and recommendation to ordering, payment, order management, and post-sale support, establishing a unified, universal standard. This enables AI agents (such as Google Search's AI Mode or Gemini) to execute complete shopping processes across different platforms and systems without requiring separate, cumbersome integrations for each system. Currently, UCP already supports U.S. consumers in making purchases directly within the AI Mode of Search and the Gemini app.

Furthermore, Google is developing new features, such as AI-assisted price tracking, where the AI can automatically place orders on behalf of consumers when a product's price falls within their budget.