4 ms·

Google Tells Advertisers It'll Bring Ads to Gemini in 2026

45 points by pavel_lishin 11mo ago

hhhh11111 11mo ago
They are not even the leader. Ads too soon seems like a good way to ensure they never will be.
hightrix 11mo ago
I truly wonder how long until there is ublock origin or similar for AI tools. One can only hope a gorhill like figure will emerge to save us.
- ndriscoll 11mo ago
  Assuming you can't just directly filter it, and even if it's hard to run a high quality LLM locally for the time being, it should be feasible to run a smaller model on the returned output of large commercial models to identify and remove any advertising. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if you could plug a model for filtering malicious content from all web pages right into the local translation framework Firefox already has.
  - Imustaskforhelp 11mo ago
    This, I had actually thought about the ads idea but then realized that local models can filter it out. But then again, the ads models have worked out fairly well for google and meta when ublock origin on firefox and for a loong time on chrome too was literally just go to appstore, search ublock origin, click download That was it I am sure that we are gonna see similar innovations happen for these ads too but then again, I think that the key point here is that the ad models works right now when we have ublock origin, so even if we have your tool, maybe most people (would still be ignorant about it?) I think this is what is basing the whole AI industry in but this cannot be the way they can fund trillions of $'s spent. I think what would happen more likely is that they will use AI to create a detailed profile of you and see the code generated, where its deployed, see what username it was and what email, link all your emails to every platform and every connection. Not going to lie, but its a scary thought. I think something scarier can happen if it can actively shadow-ban you like its doing but now from the whole web in a more "personalized way" Imagine if google chrome launches out a feature that blocks websites which can be harmful to you creating an AI generated block-list I guess giving reasons why... I think AI context windows are going to be an issue here and compute required to do this at scale so I don't really know and I am just rambling right now. Personally I don't really know, If Google has ads, I just use gemini web for some vibe coding, I might take more questions to chinese models or even pay for them via something like open router where they might not have ads if this still happens via anonymity or just run the models locally yeah. I wonder if we can create a community of people who have gpu who can have web of trust-like properties and they can share AI access to people who they trust and so on and maybe some gift properties but just niche closed properties where the trust factor is (more?) Maybe offtopic but if we ever implement something like this, I really like https://ch.at https://ch.at 's interface and how minimalist it is.
- debesyla 11mo ago
  Depends on how deeply is the ad hidden. If the LLM-engine is using some deep level manipulations over a long period I'm not sure if blocking that ad would be possible. What I forsee is a future of "local" AI engines. I think Apple is waiting for its moment for when people will ask for private-offline AI tools + a lot of smaller companies will follow. It won't be a huge success, but it will be popular in HN and in tech savvy crowd. Ofc, it's only a personal prediction.
- zb3 11mo ago
  You presume that ads will just be near the content you want.. but what if ads will be served instead of the content, like instead of AI answering the question fully, some of it would be deffered to a book or instead of doing a trustworthy comparison it would bias the result? People would run away, but in Gemini they're already drifting towards this direction with the useless garbage video suggestions..
- recursivecaveat 11mo ago
  It can't be done in general. "Hey Gemini, give me an exercise suggestion". When it suggests going for a run, how much of that is real and how much comes from the Nike campaign? Even google will not know the answer to where ads begin and end. Advertisers might feel a bit weird about paying for something they cannot track, but for eg pharmaceutical companies have been taking doctors out to dinner for forever. Paying to sway the opinion of a communicator instead of paying to communicate is not necessarily new.
s1mplicissimus 11mo ago
Does anyone of the finance pros here know if there would have been a way to profit off predicting that ads would be introduced into chatbot responses?
- msuniverse2026 11mo ago
  There is sure to be a great way to get google to express ads during a chemical weapon recipe though.
  - sekh60 11mo ago
    Consider DuPont for all your chemical weapon ingredients needs!
- seg_lol 11mo ago
  Given that Google makes 85% of revenue from ads, and AI will make ads disappear, adtech company has huge incentive not to slit its own throat, but has no choice. How they gonna maintain that ARPU? The whole economy is being held up by some unpriced asset somewhere. Once PE finds it, we are all cooked.
jack_tripper 11mo ago
Teacher: Did you use AI to write your biology paper? Student: no The student's paper: "And you know what else helps wounds heal besides Aloe Vera? Playing War Thunder! The most comprehensive free-to-play, cross-platform, MMO military game"
kelseyfrog 11mo ago
The most enviable part of Star Trek isn't warp speed or teleporters; it's the complete lack of advertisements shown to the characters. Moreover, there isn't a technological barrier to an ad-free life like the other technologies. We just haven't the collective social will to make it happen. In some sad way it feels even more impossible than FTL.
- corobo 11mo ago
  The second most enviable is locally hosting "Computer" The entirety of the future Starfleet on our current timeline gets bricked whenever us-east-1 goes offline
- ndriscoll 11mo ago
  It's totally possible. My computer blocks ads, and the city I live in bans billboards and requires things like an evergreen hedge to block commercial parking lots from being visible from an arterial (the required greenery scales with the lot, so you can generally see names on the front faces of small strip malls, but big-box stores are completely hidden). The signs businesses are allowed to have are there to help you find where to turn, and have things like size restrictions and aesthetic requirements.
  - ElijahLynn 11mo ago
    That's great to hear that your city bans billboards, which I believe to be a safety hazard for drivers on the road. May I ask which city it is?
    - ndriscoll 11mo ago
      Generally speaking from what I've seen, the "nice part" of any suburban metro across the US has such a ban in place. Chatgpt can give lists for specific regions.
      - ElijahLynn 11mo ago
        But I'm asking you specifically what your city is that has this feature?
metallichrome 11mo ago
Google could easily afford to make Gemini ad-free, effectively the only consumer LLM with that as the base experience
- seg_lol 11mo ago
  As long we freeride on all the other rubes that don't have adblock.
hapticmonkey 11mo ago
This is like the Rick and Morty “you pass the butter” joke. All the talented engineers pouring into AI realising they’ve just been used as tools of the ad-tech market to serve more ads to people. That’s their real purpose. Please get out and go and make something better. Before even your most treasured moments, like reading kids bedtime stories, become commodified with ads. https://ai.google.dev/competition/projects/storybook-ai-bedtime-stories https://ai.google.dev/competition/projects/storybook-ai-bedt...
- sidereal1 11mo ago
  The crazy part of that is how much it undermines all the apocalyptic hype about AGI replacing our entire workforce. Surprise, it's just another app filled with ads and premium subscriptions.
zb3 11mo ago
For me they've already enshittified Gemini (at gemini.google.com) by making it recommend useless YouTube videos which I don't want to watch because I want to get the answer - that's why I use AI.
debayande 11mo ago
Believe Google's pushed back on this: https://www.theverge.com/news/840438/google-pushes-back-on-a-report-saying-ads-are-coming-to-gemini https://www.theverge.com/news/840438/google-pushes-back-on-a...

45 points by pavel_lishin 11mo ago

They are not even the leader. Ads too soon seems like a good way to ensure they never will be.

I truly wonder how long until there is ublock origin or similar for AI tools. One can only hope a gorhill like figure will emerge to save us.

ndriscoll 11mo ago
Assuming you can't just directly filter it, and even if it's hard to run a high quality LLM locally for the time being, it should be feasible to run a smaller model on the returned output of large commercial models to identify and remove any advertising. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if you could plug a model for filtering malicious content from all web pages right into the local translation framework Firefox already has.
- Imustaskforhelp 11mo ago
  This, I had actually thought about the ads idea but then realized that local models can filter it out. But then again, the ads models have worked out fairly well for google and meta when ublock origin on firefox and for a loong time on chrome too was literally just go to appstore, search ublock origin, click download That was it I am sure that we are gonna see similar innovations happen for these ads too but then again, I think that the key point here is that the ad models works right now when we have ublock origin, so even if we have your tool, maybe most people (would still be ignorant about it?) I think this is what is basing the whole AI industry in but this cannot be the way they can fund trillions of $'s spent. I think what would happen more likely is that they will use AI to create a detailed profile of you and see the code generated, where its deployed, see what username it was and what email, link all your emails to every platform and every connection. Not going to lie, but its a scary thought. I think something scarier can happen if it can actively shadow-ban you like its doing but now from the whole web in a more "personalized way" Imagine if google chrome launches out a feature that blocks websites which can be harmful to you creating an AI generated block-list I guess giving reasons why... I think AI context windows are going to be an issue here and compute required to do this at scale so I don't really know and I am just rambling right now. Personally I don't really know, If Google has ads, I just use gemini web for some vibe coding, I might take more questions to chinese models or even pay for them via something like open router where they might not have ads if this still happens via anonymity or just run the models locally yeah. I wonder if we can create a community of people who have gpu who can have web of trust-like properties and they can share AI access to people who they trust and so on and maybe some gift properties but just niche closed properties where the trust factor is (more?) Maybe offtopic but if we ever implement something like this, I really like https://ch.at https://ch.at 's interface and how minimalist it is.
debesyla 11mo ago
Depends on how deeply is the ad hidden. If the LLM-engine is using some deep level manipulations over a long period I'm not sure if blocking that ad would be possible. What I forsee is a future of "local" AI engines. I think Apple is waiting for its moment for when people will ask for private-offline AI tools + a lot of smaller companies will follow. It won't be a huge success, but it will be popular in HN and in tech savvy crowd. Ofc, it's only a personal prediction.
zb3 11mo ago
You presume that ads will just be near the content you want.. but what if ads will be served instead of the content, like instead of AI answering the question fully, some of it would be deffered to a book or instead of doing a trustworthy comparison it would bias the result? People would run away, but in Gemini they're already drifting towards this direction with the useless garbage video suggestions..
recursivecaveat 11mo ago
It can't be done in general. "Hey Gemini, give me an exercise suggestion". When it suggests going for a run, how much of that is real and how much comes from the Nike campaign? Even google will not know the answer to where ads begin and end. Advertisers might feel a bit weird about paying for something they cannot track, but for eg pharmaceutical companies have been taking doctors out to dinner for forever. Paying to sway the opinion of a communicator instead of paying to communicate is not necessarily new.

s1mplicissimus 11mo ago

Does anyone of the finance pros here know if there would have been a way to profit off predicting that ads would be introduced into chatbot responses?

msuniverse2026 11mo ago
There is sure to be a great way to get google to express ads during a chemical weapon recipe though.
- sekh60 11mo ago
  Consider DuPont for all your chemical weapon ingredients needs!
seg_lol 11mo ago
Given that Google makes 85% of revenue from ads, and AI will make ads disappear, adtech company has huge incentive not to slit its own throat, but has no choice. How they gonna maintain that ARPU? The whole economy is being held up by some unpriced asset somewhere. Once PE finds it, we are all cooked.

jack_tripper 11mo ago

Teacher: Did you use AI to write your biology paper? Student: no The student's paper: "And you know what else helps wounds heal besides Aloe Vera? Playing War Thunder! The most comprehensive free-to-play, cross-platform, MMO military game"

kelseyfrog 11mo ago

The most enviable part of Star Trek isn't warp speed or teleporters; it's the complete lack of advertisements shown to the characters. Moreover, there isn't a technological barrier to an ad-free life like the other technologies. We just haven't the collective social will to make it happen. In some sad way it feels even more impossible than FTL.

corobo 11mo ago
The second most enviable is locally hosting "Computer" The entirety of the future Starfleet on our current timeline gets bricked whenever us-east-1 goes offline
ndriscoll 11mo ago
It's totally possible. My computer blocks ads, and the city I live in bans billboards and requires things like an evergreen hedge to block commercial parking lots from being visible from an arterial (the required greenery scales with the lot, so you can generally see names on the front faces of small strip malls, but big-box stores are completely hidden). The signs businesses are allowed to have are there to help you find where to turn, and have things like size restrictions and aesthetic requirements.
- ElijahLynn 11mo ago
  That's great to hear that your city bans billboards, which I believe to be a safety hazard for drivers on the road. May I ask which city it is?
  - ndriscoll 11mo ago
    Generally speaking from what I've seen, the "nice part" of any suburban metro across the US has such a ban in place. Chatgpt can give lists for specific regions.
    - ElijahLynn 11mo ago
      But I'm asking you specifically what your city is that has this feature?

metallichrome 11mo ago

Google could easily afford to make Gemini ad-free, effectively the only consumer LLM with that as the base experience

seg_lol 11mo ago
As long we freeride on all the other rubes that don't have adblock.

hapticmonkey 11mo ago

This is like the Rick and Morty “you pass the butter” joke. All the talented engineers pouring into AI realising they’ve just been used as tools of the ad-tech market to serve more ads to people. That’s their real purpose. Please get out and go and make something better. Before even your most treasured moments, like reading kids bedtime stories, become commodified with ads. https://ai.google.dev/competition/projects/storybook-ai-bedtime-stories https://ai.google.dev/competition/projects/storybook-ai-bedt...

sidereal1 11mo ago
The crazy part of that is how much it undermines all the apocalyptic hype about AGI replacing our entire workforce. Surprise, it's just another app filled with ads and premium subscriptions.

zb3 11mo ago

For me they've already enshittified Gemini (at gemini.google.com) by making it recommend useless YouTube videos which I don't want to watch because I want to get the answer - that's why I use AI.

debayande 11mo ago

Believe Google's pushed back on this: https://www.theverge.com/news/840438/google-pushes-back-on-a-report-saying-ads-are-coming-to-gemini https://www.theverge.com/news/840438/google-pushes-back-on-a...