Ads in AI Overviews are paid search or shopping ads that Google places inside, or directly attached to, the AI-written summary at the top of some results pages, labelled as sponsored. They come from your existing campaigns rather than a separate campaign type, so the question for most advertisers is less how to buy them and more whether their campaigns are eligible and what that does to their results.
How ads in AI Overviews work
An AI Overview is Google’s generated answer to a search, with links to the pages it drew from. When the query has commercial intent and the summary is relevant to what an advertiser sells, Google can show an ad within that answer. A search for how to get a stain out of a sofa might produce an overview with a sponsored result for an upholstery cleaning service or a cleaning product.
Google matches the ad to both the search and the content of the overview, not just the keywords in the query. That is why eligibility has so far been tied to campaigns using broader, signal-based matching: Performance Max, Shopping, and Search campaigns using broad match or AI Max for Search. A tightly built exact-match campaign is less likely to be considered. There is no separate bid, budget or targeting setting for the placement; you take part through those campaign choices or you do not.
Google has also said that some sensitive categories are not eligible for the placement. If you advertise in a regulated sector, check the current list on its help page rather than assuming your ads can appear there.
Why it matters
AI Overviews have shown to UK searchers since August 2024, and they take up a large part of the screen when they appear, especially on mobile. That pushes the traditional ad slots and organic results further down. Whether or not ads appear inside the overview in the UK, the summaries change how people click, so your click-through rates and impression share on informational and research-style searches deserve a closer look than they used to.
On availability: Google launched ads in AI Overviews in the United States in 2024 and extended them to a group of English-language markets in December 2025. Reports of that expansion did not list the UK. At the time of writing (October 2026) I would check Google’s own Ads Help Centre page on the placement before assuming UK campaigns can appear there, because Google has tended to update that page quietly rather than announce each new country.
Common mistakes
- Switching every campaign to broad match in the hope of appearing in overviews, without the conversion tracking and negative keywords that broad match depends on.
- Assuming a drop in click-through rate means the ads got worse, when the page layout around them changed.
- Expecting separate reporting for the placement. At the time of writing Google does not let most advertisers isolate these impressions, so do not build a plan that depends on measuring them on their own.
- Writing ads that only make sense next to a list of links. An ad shown beside an explanation should continue that conversation clearly.
How to act on it
Start with the basics that decide eligibility for any automated placement: accurate conversion tracking, a clean list of negative keywords, and landing pages that answer the question the searcher was asking. Review the search terms report for longer, question-style searches, which are the ones most likely to trigger an overview, and decide whether you want to pay for them.
If you run broad match or Performance Max, keep an eye on cost per conversion for research-stage searches rather than chasing volume. If the UK becomes eligible, test the placement deliberately on one campaign rather than reshaping the whole account. This is part of how I run Google search ads management for UK accounts: change one thing, measure it, then decide.