Everything You Need to Know About Advertising on AI Search Engines

Got ads? Get more with the AI-powered experiences from Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity. With these three platforms and their advertising options, it’s possible to expand your online reach and revenue. Learn all about advertising on AI search engines now!

What is AI search engine advertising?

AI search engine advertising is the use of pay-per-click (PPC) ads in AI-powered experiences, like Microsoft’s Copilot or AI Overviews in Google Search. This type of advertising is not the use of artificial intelligence to generate or manage ads.

Why advertise on AI search engines?

Advertising on AI search engines offers a few benefits, including the following:

• Get the first-mover advantage: Becoming one of the earliest companies to advertise on AI answer or search engines gives your organization a competitive edge in the marketplace. You get to own that advertising real estate vs. sharing it with competitors.
• Improve paid performance: According to Microsoft, ads within AI-powered search experiences perform better. Copilot ads, for example, have a 69% higher click-through rate and 76% higher conversion rate than traditional search.
• Reach users across search experiences: From using Perplexity to asking ChatGPT, how people search is changing. With multiple advertising outlets, you make it possible to reach users no matter how they search online.
• Scale marketing efforts: Like other paid advertising efforts, ads in AI engines can support other marketing efforts. For example, you could use ads in AI Overviews to achieve micro-conversions like growing an email list via a downloadable resource.
• Expand revenue streams: Investing in new ad placements can create new revenue streams. For example, advertising on Perplexity (a brand-new ad network) could help your organization reach specific audience subsets.
• Offset decreased performance: With search preferences changing, businesses can expect decreased performance, whether in organic traffic or ad conversions. Adapting to this shift, like by advertising on AI answer engines, can offset this change.

Which AI search engines support advertising?

The following AI search engines or AI-powered experiences support advertising:

• AI Overviews
• Microsoft Copilot
• Perplexity

While other AI answer engines, like SearchGPT, are rumored to support paid advertising, the option remains unavailable. Watch these answer engines for announcements so you can launch ads there before the competition.

Inside the AI answer engines offering advertising

Learn more about the AI-powered experiences offering advertising options now:

Microsoft Copilot

About: Microsoft Copilot is one of the most well-known AI assistants and is available as a standalone product and throughout Microsoft’s product suite. Whether users are looking to search online, generate ideas, or find files within their workspace, Microsoft Copilot can do it.

Placements: Bottom of answer

Since Copilot’s launch in 2023, Microsoft has been researching how Microsoft Copilot ads impact the user experience — and ad performance. So far, various ad types, from Responsive search ads to Multimedia ads, have performed better in Copilot than in traditional search results.

Part of the reason is that Microsoft Copilot uses context to determine if, and when, to deliver an ad. The AI assistant considers the entire conversation and — if an ad seems relevant — shares its reasoning for including the advertisement (Microsoft calls this ‘ad voice’).

You can see an example of an ad voice in the earlier image. Before the ad, Copilot says, “Considering you’re looking for something easy to schedule and close to Alexandria, I’d have a look at these guided activities from…”

Copilot ads have a “Sponsored” label like other Microsoft Advertising ads.

When it comes to getting started with advertising on Microsoft Copilot, advertisers’ existing ads can appear in Copilot conversations. However, whether these ads will appear depends on the ads relevant to the conversation.

AI Overviews

About: Exclusive to Google Search, AI Overviews appear above organic search results and aim to answer the user’s search intent with a written summary (including citations) based on the content within Google’s index.

Placements: Above and below the AI Overview

According to Google, AI Overviews have increased user satisfaction with search results — that satisfaction increased when the AI Overview included ads, with users finding the advertisements helpful.

Companies looking to advertise in AI Overviews can do so with these ad and campaign types:

• Search ads
• Google Shopping ads
• Performance Max campaigns

For reference, Google Shopping ads require a Google Merchant Center account and a shopping feed. You’ll most often find retail or ecommerce companies vs. service providers using this type of Google ad.

Like Microsoft Copilot, AI Overviews uses an ad voice to introduce the ad. In the earlier example, for instance, Google introduces the advertisement with the text, “Here are some products to help get grass stains out.”

Similar to Microsoft Copilot (and Google Ads), AI Overview ads are labeled “Sponsored.”

Perplexity

About: Perplexity is one of the most popular answer engines. Within its interface, users can ask questions and submit prompts to learn more about a topic, discover brands, research purchases, and more.

Placements: Related Questions, Answer Page, Third-party sites

With its advertising solution expected to launch before 2025, Perplexity plans to offer businesses across industries, from travel to finance, multiple placement options in its AI-generated answers. Advertisers will also have access to essential data points, like:

• Impressions
• Unique impressions
• Click volume
• Qualifying queries

Like other new ad networks, Perplexity plans to limit access to a “select few partners” at launch. Once opened to all businesses, though, it’s worth diverting some ad spend to test the network and get some of the benefits of AI search advertising.

FAQs

Learn more about advertising on AI search engines with these FAQs:

What are AI search engines?

AI search engines describe platforms that integrate artificial intelligence to generate responses to user queries. In some cases, AI search engines are described as answer engines since the engine answers the user’s question instead of directing the user to a search result list.

How much does advertising on AI search engines cost?

Like other paid advertising efforts, advertising costs for AI search engine ads depend on multiple factors, from the amount of engagement the ad receives to the pricing model used by the ad network.

In most cases, ad networks with fewer advertisers (think Perplexity) are often cheaper than established ad platforms like Google Ads. That’s because there is less competition when bidding for ad space.

What ad types are available on AI search engines?

Existing AI search engines, like Microsoft Copilot and Google’s AI Overviews, re-use existing ad types from their respective ad networks, Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads. These ad types include text-based ads and shopping ads.

What PPC metrics do AI search engines track?

While Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads track PPC metrics like impressions, clicks, and conversions for the ad types available in AI-powered search experiences, the networks do not report how ads in AI-powered experiences vs. traditional experiences performed.

For example, businesses cannot track how ads displayed in AI Overviews performed against ads displayed in traditional search results. This setup creates a blind spot for advertisers. However, it’s likely these ad networks will evolve their reporting.

Get found on AI search engines with paid ads

Congrats! You’ve learned the basics of advertising on AI search engines. Now, take the next step and start advertising on these platforms. If you’re looking for professional help getting started, contact us online to receive a custom proposal!