By Ronan Shields
Publication Date: 2026-04-30 13:01:00
The agentic era of the internet is well and truly underway, with the accompanying quest on how to monetize it, i.e., the AI ad wars, occurring simultaneously.
OpenAI’s advertising pilots in ChatGPT have garnered much of the recent headlines, although the biggest company in adland — that’s still Google, BTW — is likewise evolving its offering.
Google is widening the scope of its AI Max ad product, extending it beyond search into shopping and travel, while introducing new controls designed to make automation more steerable for advertisers.
The updates, unveiled this week — and just a day after its parent company Alphabet posted Q1 revenues of $110 billion, up 22% annually — point to a familiar trajectory: more AI-led execution, with marketers now operating by feeding inputs into a platform, rather than manually operating it.
Here’s what you need to know.
What’s new?
Google is pushing AI Max deeper into its core ad stack with three main updates:
