--- title: "📣 Google Confirms AI Search Ads Are Less Profitable? No Wonder ChatGPT and Microsoft Are Rushing to Act: AI Marketing Daily" description: "Google's latest earnings report confirms that AI search monetization is low, meaning ad slots will only get more crowded. Today, besides breaking down how Google uses shopping slots to make up for revenue, Muyan will share Microsoft and ChatGPT's latest AI ad safety mechanisms and visual formats. Plus, does opting out of AI search actually cause organic CTR to drop? We'll reveal this surprising test result in a moment." canonical_url: "https://blog.markkulab.net/en/ai-marketing/ai-marketing-2026-10-30" author: "Mark Ku" author_url: "https://blog.markkulab.net/en/author/mark-ku" site: "Mark Ku's Tech Notes" date_published: "2026-10-30T02:00:00.000Z" category: "AI Marketing Daily" tags: ["ai-marketing", "podcast", "AI 行銷", "AI行銷", "Google廣告", "ChatGPT廣告", "微軟廣告", "SEO", "GoogleMerchantCenter"] language: "en" license: "CC BY 4.0" license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" attribution: "when reusing or quoting, credit the author and link back to the original" --- # 📣 Google Confirms AI Search Ads Are Less Profitable? No Wonder ChatGPT and Microsoft Are Rushing to Act: AI Marketing Daily Google's latest earnings report confirms that AI search monetization remains low, meaning ad placements will only become more crowded in the future. Today, besides breaking down how Google is leveraging shopping placements to make up for revenue, I will share the latest AI ad safety mechanisms and visual ad formats being tested by Microsoft and ChatGPT. Also, could opting out of AI search actually cause your organic click-through rate to drop? I will share this surprising test result in a moment. ## Today's AI Marketing Highlights ### 1. Google Earnings Confirm: Lower AI Mode Monetization Drags Down Q3 Search Ad Revenue Growth - **What happened**: Alphabet's Q3 2024 earnings report shows that while Google search query volume hit its fastest year-over-year growth rate in five years, search ad revenue growth slowed to 12% (reaching $63.35 billion). Google's Chief Business Officer, Philipp Schindler, admitted that users shifting to AI Mode search is a primary reason, as the monetization rate of AI Mode is currently lower than that of traditional search. - **Marketer's take**: This is a major warning sign for marketers. It means that to maintain revenue growth, Google will inevitably push more ad placements into AI search results, making the competition for search real estate even more intense. - **Actionable steps**: Closely monitor the average cost-per-click (CPC) of your keyword ads, and re-evaluate the budget allocation between search ads and non-search channels. - **Source**: Search Engine Journal () ### 2. Up to 57% of Product Links in Google's AI Mode Direct Users to Google Shopping - **What happened**: According to a study by Findrix analyzing 55,198 AI-generated responses, an average of 57% of links in Google AI Mode product recommendations direct users to Google Shopping product pages rather than brand websites. In categories like swimwear (60.4%) and women's everyday fashion (57%), this percentage is even higher. - **Marketer's take**: This means that when consumers explore products in AI Mode, they might not visit the brand's official website at all. Traditional organic SEO traffic is facing a serious threat of cannibalization. - **Actionable steps**: E-commerce brands must ensure their Google Merchant Center product feeds are highly complete and optimized, or they risk losing exposure entirely in the AI-driven shopping era. - **Source**: Search Engine Land () ### 3. The Cost of Blocking AI Crawlers? Test Shows Organic Clicks Unexpectedly Drop After Opting Out of Google AI Search - **What happened**: A small case study conducted by SEO expert Cyrus Shepherd revealed that when a website opted out of Google's AI search features (reducing AI impressions to zero), its traditional organic search clicks also experienced an unexpected decline. - **Marketer's take**: This test challenges the intuitive belief that "blocking AI crawlers will protect website traffic." It suggests that appearing in both AI responses and traditional search results builds stronger brand trust and creates a synergistic effect. - **Actionable steps**: Before considering a complete block on AI crawlers to protect copyright, marketers should run small-scale tests to weigh the double impact of opting out of AI search on overall search visibility and traffic. - **Source**: Search Engine Land () ### 4. Microsoft Tests AI Ad Guardrails: Allowing Advertisers to Set "What AI Must Never Say" - **What happened**: Microsoft is testing a new feature called "Messaging Guidelines" for Performance Max and AI-assisted search campaigns. This feature allows advertisers to provide up to 40 instructions defining the tone, themes, and brand-excluded words for AI-generated ad copy. - **Marketer's take**: Although Microsoft emphasizes that advertisers remain fully responsible for AI-generated content, this feature provides a powerful brand safety guardrail. For instance, high-end brands can specify that the AI "must never imply low prices," helping maintain brand consistency in automated campaigns. - **Actionable steps**: Compile a list of core brand "excluded words and communication guidelines" so you can immediately import them into your ad settings once the feature officially rolls out. - **Source**: Search Engine Watch () ### 5. ChatGPT Visual Ads Spotted for the First Time! OpenAI Tests Multi-Image and "Learn More" Buttons in Chats - **What happened**: OpenAI announced that it is testing a new "visual ad format" for both free and paid users during ChatGPT's image generation process, which has already been spotted by users in conversations. The format displays multiple product images, bold promotional text, a "Learn More" button, and is labeled with an "Ad" tag. - **Marketer's take**: Although OpenAI claims that ads will not affect ChatGPT's response content, the commercialization of AI platforms is inevitable. For brand owners, this represents a brand-new, high-intent blue ocean of traffic. - **Actionable steps**: Marketers can start observing how ChatGPT ads are presented and evaluate whether to include them in future multi-channel testing strategies. - **Source**: Search Engine Watch () ## Summary Looking at today's updates, it is clear that Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI are all accelerating the conversion of AI search traffic into ad placements. I recommend closely monitoring changes in your Google Merchant Center data, as this will likely be your most critical traffic gateway in the AI search era. See you tomorrow! --- ## About this article and its author Originally published on [Mark Ku's Tech Notes](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/ai-marketing/ai-marketing-2026-10-30) License: [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — when reusing or quoting, credit the author and link back to the original ### About the author **[Mark Ku](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/author/mark-ku)** — Software engineer - 10+ years as a software engineer - Built North-American e-commerce and AI SaaS subscription billing ### Free tools built by the author All of these are free to use: - [Free PDF Sign Tool](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/pdf-sign): Online PDF sign tool — draw, type, or upload a signature, then drag, resize, and download. Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded. - [VS Code Refactory](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/refactory): Refactory is a VS Code refactoring extension: 34 actions plus a 37-rule code-smell inspection layer with a Code Health dashboard, across 18 languages, backed by 534 tests. It learns your repo's conventions: where interfaces live, where DI is registered, whether 'use client' belongs. It ranks files by git churn × complexity so you know what to fix first, and hands any smell to the Claude Code already on your machine. Free to use, and your source never leaves your computer. - [DB-Kit Database Manager](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/db-kit): DB-Kit is a lightweight, cross-platform database manager built with Tauri + Rust + React. Manage MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle, SQLite, MongoDB, Redis, Kafka, Elasticsearch and RabbitMQ from one consistent interface: passwords encrypted in the OS keychain, SSH tunnels, full CRUD, a visual query builder, stacked multi-statement result sets, cross-connection data transfer, schema & data compare with sync SQL and schema snapshots, Excel / CSV import & export, visualized execution plans, ER diagrams, scheduled backups, SQL stress testing with p50–p99 latency percentiles, a 15-rule SQL review engine, Review & Run (AI review plus per-statement backups and an auto-generated rollback script), Kafka message browsing with monitoring & alerts, an SSH terminal with SFTP / FTP, Docker / Kubernetes, remote desktop (RDP / VNC / RustDesk), file / folder compare, stored procedure integration tests, six UI languages, a built-in AI assistant (a local CLI or any Anthropic / OpenAI-compatible API; natural-language SQL, AI review and tuning advice) and the dbk CLI. Free and open source (MIT), with installers for Windows, macOS and Linux. - [VS Code Super Mermaid](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/super-mermaid): Super Mermaid is a VS Code extension for beautiful Mermaid diagrams out of the box: auto-colored live preview, mouse pan & zoom, high-res PNG / SVG export, 21 templates and multiple themes. Free and open source (MIT). - [React Super Mermaid](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/react-super-mermaid): react-super-mermaid is an open-source React component library: render beautiful Mermaid diagrams with a single , with built-in colorful / sketch themes, pan & zoom, in-diagram search, and high-res SVG / PNG export. Lightweight, SSR-safe, fully typed. 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No sign-up, nothing uploaded to a server, and mermaid.live share links work as-is. - [React Intl Phone Number](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/react-intl-phone-number): react-intl-phone-number is an open-source React component: framework-agnostic and antd-free, with E.164 in/out, a searchable flag / country-code dropdown, configurable validation levels (strict / mobile-strict / loose), themeable CSS, and i18n — phone logic powered by google-libphonenumber. Lightweight and fully typed. Free and open source (MIT). - [Uptime Kuma Cluster](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/uptime-kuma-cluster): Turn single-node Uptime Kuma into a highly available cluster: OpenResty + Lua smart load balancing, shared MariaDB state, health checks and automatic failover, plus cluster-management REST APIs. One Docker Compose command to start. Free and open source (MIT). - [AI Podcast Cut](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/ai-podcast-cut): Drop in a recording and it removes fillers and stutters, levels loudness segment by segment, and sends a second agent to review every cut. Cut points snap to word boundaries and zero crossings, every splice gets a fade, and sentence-end breaths are preserved. Desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux. MIT licensed; the Windows installer bundles ffmpeg. - [AI Video Cut](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/ai-video-cut): Pick something in your video: type it (face, license plate, phone screen, logo), click points or drag a box, or let Claude Code / Codex pick it. AI Video Cut tracks it frame by frame, then mosaics or blurs it, recolors it, pins stickers and text to it, swaps a screen or poster for your own image or video, or removes it using background that other frames actually captured. Plus sequence editing, local captions and an AI assistant. Free, open-source (MIT) Windows desktop app (macOS / Linux experimental) that runs locally, nothing uploaded. - [open-pos restaurant POS](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/open-pos): One computer and one receipt printer is enough to open the shop. Your data lives on your own disk, no subscription, no lock-in, MIT licensed. Money is integer New Taiwan dollars with tax split by the statutory formula, so sales + tax always equals the total. Printing goes straight over ESC/POS on TCP 9100, with no vendor driver. Tauri + Rust + SQLite desktop app, v1.0 in development. - [.NET e-commerce API template](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/dotnet-ecommerce-api): An e-commerce backend API template built on .NET 10: Controller → Service → Repository layering, Autofac convention-based registration, SqlSugar for MySQL / MariaDB and SQL Server, Redis cache and message queue, Hangfire jobs, JWT auth, and an extensible payment provider module (ECPay, Newebpay). Apache 2.0. - [Open Token Monitor team AI usage](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/open-token-monitor): Collect token usage and equivalent cost from every employee's AI coding tools into a hub you host yourself: PostgreSQL, org roster, dashboards compared by company and department, and a reports API. Electron and Rust/Tauri clients upload every 30 minutes. MIT licensed, one Docker command. - [ai-security-monitor defensive security](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/tools/ai-security-monitor): Your website is live. Who checks its certificates, security settings and known vulnerabilities? A self-hosted Security Hub brings website scans and host monitoring together, deduplicates findings and compares scans after fixes. ### Daily podcasts - [Mark's Tech Insights — Daily AI News](https://blog.markkulab.net/en/category/tech-news): Daily curated AI and tech trends. 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