Google opens the door to ads in Gemini after earlier pledges to keep it ad-free

Google no longer rules out ads in Gemini. After months of cautious statements, the company has acknowledged that successful ad formats from AI Mode could eventually move into the standalone chatbot app.

Why the tone has changed

Back in January 2026, Google's leadership said Gemini had no plans for ads. By the end of April, the rhetoric had shifted noticeably. On a quarterly investor call, Google's chief business officer Philipp Schindler said outright that the company is currently focused on ads in AI Mode, but that a format that proves itself there could successfully move to Gemini as well. This is no longer a denial. It is careful groundwork for a new scenario.

The reason is clear: Gemini is growing fast, and a free AI service with millions of users is very expensive to run. Google already has subscriptions and paid AI plans, but a subscription model alone may not be enough to scale such a product to the entire mass audience. For Google, advertising is not an experiment from scratch but a familiar business tool that it is now trying to adapt to a conversational interface.

Testing in search first

Google is in no hurry to insert ads directly into the standalone Gemini app. Instead, it is using AI Mode and AI Overviews in search as a proving ground. The logic is simple: users in search have long been accustomed to ad blocks, so testing new formats there is safer than changing the experience in a chatbot right away, where any intrusive insertion is felt more painfully.

According to Google's leadership, the basic principles are already clear:

• Ads must be separated from the organic answer
• Ads must be clearly labeled
• It makes sense to show them only when relevance is high
• They will not be rushed into Gemini
• For now, free access and subscriptions remain the priority

This approach shows that Google wants first to find a format that does not break the user's workflow. That is also the main risk: in search, ads look familiar, while in a dialogue with an AI they can easily start to feel like interference in the answer itself. Schindler specifically stressed that, done correctly, advertising can be useful commercial information rather than noise. That is why the company is choosing a highly cautious pace.

"If everything is done right, advertising can be useful commercial information."

How ChatGPT differs

OpenAI took this step earlier. Since February 9, 2026, the company has been testing ads in ChatGPT in the US for users of the free tier and the Go plan. Ads appear below the answer, carry a "sponsored" label and are visually separated from the main text. The paid Plus, Pro, Business, Enterprise and Edu plans have no ads. OpenAI has also excluded ads next to sensitive topics such as health, mental state and politics.

OpenAI has already described its personalization rules as well. The system can select ads based on the content of the current chat and, with personalization enabled, also on past chats and memory. The company separately stresses that advertisers do not get access to conversations and cannot influence the model's answers.

For Google, this is a convenient market test: it can see how painfully users take ads in an AI interface and which restrictions actually help preserve trust.

What this means

The era of entirely ad-free mass-market AI chats appears to be ending. Google has not yet announced a launch of ads in Gemini, but the move from "we have no plans" to "we do not rule it out" is already an important shift. For users, it is a signal that free AI products will increasingly be monetized by more than subscriptions. For the market, it means ad formats are gradually moving from search results into conversational interfaces.