Google expands ai-driven search ads globally amid core ad growth slowdown

Google is expanding AI-powered search ads to international markets, aiming to boost revenue as growth in its core search advertising business slows. The move was announced during Alphabet’s third-quarter earnings call, where the company reported $127.6 billion in revenue, up 25% year over year. However, search ad growth decelerated, with revenue rising 12% year over year, down from 17% in the previous quarter. Google’s chief business officer, Philipp Schindler, stated that the company is scaling high-quality ads within AI overviews globally, including multi-turn ads and AI mode in the U.S. Early results show click-through rates for sponsored product listings in AI Mode are comparable to organic listings. Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, highlighted that Search queries grew at their fastest year-over-year rate in five years, with AI features driving longer, more complex searches. Queries in AI Mode are three times longer on average, and one in five searches involves voice, images, or documents. Alphabet’s Google Services division, which includes Search, generated $96.3 billion in revenue, up 11% year over year, while Google Cloud revenue surged 103% to $30.7 billion. The results follow a busy quarter for Google, including the release of Gemini 4 Argon and the growth of the Gemini app to 1 billion monthly users.