By: Michael Yavonditte, CEO
In 2026, we’re going to see an explosion of AI-powered search products. The most exciting aspect of these search products will be the experimentation of ads existing in these platforms.
The industry is being forced to ask a very basic question again: what does an ad look like when the experience is no longer a list of links?
As AI search replaces SERPs with answers, no one truly knows what the “right” ad format is yet. That uncertainty is not a problem but an opportunity to truly experiment after taking a hiatus during the programmatic era.
During that era, true testing quietly went out of style. Standardized units, established pipes, and optimization frameworks narrowed the range of what was possible. As the interface will now change, every assumption about advertising has to be re-examined.
You’ll see sponsored answers. You’ll see contextual placements embedded directly inside AI responses. You’ll see utility-based recommendations embedded in task flows. You’ll see outcome-priced models tied to completion instead of clicks. And you’ll see multimodal units blended directly into the experience.
A lot of it will be custom. Some of it will fail. Some will annoy users, break trust, or get rolled back.
But this phase is natural. This is how we learn.
Advertising is shifting from “interrupting for attention” to “participating in intent”. When an AI system understands what a user is trying to accomplish, advertising has the opportunity to align with the message instead of competing with it. When this is done well, ads stop feeling like distractions and start feeling useful.
The winners in this next phase won’t necessarily be the most obvious companies. My money will be on one major LLM figuring out how to build a high-performing search advertising system, with many of the rest copying what is working. But that will be harder than it sounds.
Monetizing intent at this level requires precision across countless variables, from UI to pricing dynamics to auction mechanics, all carefully organized within transparent systems that customers can trust. Most systems will underestimate this complexity.
What makes this moment so important is not just the technology. It’s the industry acknowledging this shift.
The next year will bring more AI search products than anyone can keep track of. Only a handful will matter from an advertising perspective. And the ones that do will shape how intent is monetized for the next decade.
This is the most experimental moment in advertising since the birth of search ads, and likely one of the most important.
