For months, Google’s position on ads in Gemini apps was quite clear. In December, Google’s vice president of global advertising described reports about Gemini advertising plans as “inaccurate” and said there were no current plans to replace it. That position didn’t hold up in the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call.
During the call Wednesday, Google Chief Business Officer Philip Schindler Said that the company’s focus right now is AI mode has ads on it, its a conversational search experience. He then added that “the format that works well in AI mode will transfer successfully to the Gemini app” and “if done well, ads can be really valuable and really useful business information.” This is not a denial. The Gemini app currently has no ads, but Schindler was careful not to rule anything out, and this phrase landed as a clear indication of where things were headed.
For context, Google already serves ads inside AI overviews in search results and is testing them in AI mode. The Gemini app is expanding rapidly, landing on macOS, replacing Google Assistant on Android, and pulling in 750 million monthly active users, according to data shared on the same earnings call. At that scale, leaving it monetized starts to look like a business problem.
How does it fit into the broader AI landscape
Google is not alone in thinking about this. OpenAI had already started advertising in ChatGPT for users of its free and $8-a-month Go plans earlier this year. Those ads appear below the responses, they are clearly labeled as sponsored, and OpenAI has said that they do not influence replies. Anthropic has taken the opposite stance, saying it will not place ads in cloud apps at all.
Google hasn’t announced a timeline, format, or any specific details. Schindler’s comment that the company is “not rushing into anything” suggests that ads for the Gemini app are not imminent. But the January position of “no plans” has apparently changed, and Gemini is now Google’s primary AI product on almost every surface. At some point, that math was always going to fulfill the ad-free promise.
