News Google has ‘very good ideas’ for native ads in Gemini

[News]

Google’s Gemini AI assistant doesn’t have ads today, but the company has “very good ideas” for ways they could show up down the road, CEO Sundar Pichai said on an investor call this afternoon. Right now, you can access Gemini for free or pay for a subscription to use advanced features, but it sounds like ads could be part of the product at some point.

On the call, a Wells Fargo analyst asked Pichai how people should think about the “future monetization opportunity of Gemini” and if Google sees a potential “ad component.” Here’s my transcription of Pichai’s answer, which I’ve lightly edited for clarity:

On the monetization side, for now, we have focused on a free tier and subscriptions. But as you’ve seen [with] Google over time, we always want to lead with the user experience and we do have very good ideas for native ad concepts. But you will see us lead with the user experience.

I do think we’re always committed to making the products work and reach billions of users at scale. And advertising has been a great aspect of that strategy. Just like you’ve seen with YouTube, we’ll give people options over time. But for this year, I think you’ll see us be focused on the subscription direction.
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Based on that last sentence, it doesn’t seem like you’ll have to worry about ads in Gemini at least through this year. But Google’s overall business is built on ads, and it seems like we should expect them to come to Gemini at some point. They’re already in AI Overviews, after all.

Google didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

As part of its earnings, Google also announced that it plans to spend $75 billion this year on capital expenditures to help it keep up in the AI race.