Google AI Mode Ads Appear on 29.45% of Queries

Google's AI Mode began displaying text ads on commercial search queries at a rate of 29.45%, according to a study by SE Ranking conducted in mid-2026. This analysis examined U.S. commercial searches where text ads could appear, excluding product carousels, and found that ads started appearing in AI Mode responses in late 2025. The study suggests the actual ad rate might be higher due to the inconsistency of AI Mode results across different user sessions. The adoption of ads within AI Mode accelerated significantly, with nearly one in three commercial queries in the dataset featuring a text ad by mid-2026. Most instances of ads in AI Mode involved multiple advertisers, with 71.1% of ad-triggering queries showing two ads in the same AI Mode response, while 28.9% displayed only one. Keyword cost-per-click (CPC) emerged as the strongest predictor of ad visibility. Keywords with CPCs below $2 showed ads on 24.33% of queries, rising to 32.45% for keywords between $2 and $10, and jumping to 53.56% for keywords costing $10 or more. Search volume and keyword difficulty did not exhibit the same correlation with ad frequency. Ad presence varied considerably across different categories. The Pets category had the highest ad rate at 72.38%, while Healthcare had the lowest at 2.64%. Categories with higher ad rates typically represented lead-generation markets with clear conversion paths, whereas lower-ad categories often involved informational or Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) intent, suggesting potentially lower commercial demand or increased caution from Google. Interestingly, advertisers whose ads appeared in AI Mode were rarely cited as sources within the same AI-generated response. Only 11.53% of advertiser domains were listed among the cited sources for the keywords they advertised on, and at the URL level, this overlap decreased to 1.95%. This finding held true even when comparing advertisers with similar non-advertising domains based on domain strength and backlinks.