On 28 October 2026 Google announced it is expanding ads inside AI Mode, the search mode that answers with written text instead of a list of links. Until now they ran in the United States. They now also run in Australia, Canada, India, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Singapore. In the last quarter of 2026 Google plans to add Brazil, Mexico and the United Kingdom. Israel is not on the list, and the ads only show on English queries.
An Israeli business advertising on Google in Hebrew to a local audience will see no change for now. The business affected today is an Israeli one running an English campaign aimed at one of those countries: an online store shipping abroad, a software company selling to customers in Canada, a studio working with clients in Australia.
Your existing campaign is already in
According to Google Ads Help, existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns are automatically eligible to appear in AI Mode. There is no new campaign to set up and no budget to raise. The ad can appear inside the answer itself or next to it, including on the user's follow-up questions, and it carries a "Sponsored" label.
AI Mode cannot be removed from a campaign. Google states plainly that an advertiser can neither target ads to AI Mode alone nor opt out of it separately from regular Search. The controls left are negative keywords, brand exclusions and asset pinning.
Reporting does not separate it either. AI Mode data goes into the campaign report and the search terms report together with regular Search, with no segment of its own. An advertiser who sees cost per click or conversion rate shift on an English campaign has no way to isolate how much of it comes from AI Mode.
Broad match against exact match
The keyword match type decides how often an ad shows there. Broad match, Shopping, Performance Max and AI Max for Search can show an ad when the question is only related to the business's field. Exact match and phrase match show only when the question carries direct buying intent.
Google says AI Mode queries are on average three times longer than regular searches. It adds that for products shown in AI Mode, click-through on ads is already similar to click-through on organic results, based on internal US data. In the US it is also launching ads that run across a conversation of several questions.
Data from Gmail and Google Photos
A second change took effect on 16 October 2026, in Google's privacy policy. Until then it said Google does not show personalized ads based on content from Drive, Gmail or Photos. The new version adds an exception: unless the user chooses to make data from these services available to other Google services that support personalized ads.
That connection is called Personal Intelligence. A user links Gmail and Google Photos to Search, and AI Mode uses them to answer. Google's Search Help page lists Israel among the countries for the feature and Hebrew among its languages. Google writes there that ads will not be based directly on the inbox or the photo library, but that information from connected apps may be used to show ads. Advertisers get no access to the content itself. Google is currently testing ads for users who turned the feature on, and has not said in which countries.
Steps for advertisers and users
An advertiser running an English campaign in one of the listed countries should go through the search terms report, because AI Mode queries land there alongside regular Search. A query that does not fit the business becomes a negative keyword. A campaign built on broad match will show in AI Mode more than one built on exact match, so widening match types now also widens exposure in AI Mode.
A user who connected Gmail or Google Photos to Search and does not want that data used for ads can disconnect them at any time in Search personalization settings, under connected content apps.