Google used Marketing Live 2026 to rebuild its ad stack around Gemini. New formats put a chat agent inside lead ads and let AI write custom shopping explainers, moving the ad from a link to a conversation that happens before anyone reaches your site.
The ad is no longer a link to your site. It is a conversation that happens before anyone gets there.
Google used its Marketing Live 2026 event to move advertising inside the AI answer itself. The headline launches put Gemini at the centre of how ads get made, served and shopped, and they push the click further out of the picture.
Business Agent for Leads replaces the static lead form with a Gemini chat agent built into the ad and grounded in the advertiser's website. Instead of filling out a form, a person clicks chat and gets answers pulled straight from your site. It is in open beta for US advertisers. AI-powered Shopping ads use Gemini to surface relevant products for a category query like espresso machines and write a custom explainer for each, with a rollout expected later this year in the US. Google also showed Ask Advisor, a unified cross-product agent, alongside new Demand Gen features on YouTube and AI creative production in Asset Studio.
Why it matters
For Australian advertisers this is the same shift hitting organic search, now arriving in paid. The click is being replaced by an answer. If your product feed, your website copy and your landing pages are thin, Gemini has nothing good to pull from and your ad reads worse than a competitor's. Feed quality and site content stop being housekeeping and become the input that decides how your paid ads get written.
Google rebuilt its ad stack around Gemini across five pillars: AI Mode ads, Universal Commerce Protocol, YouTube Demand Gen, Asset Studio creative and the Ask Advisor agent
What to do about it
Audit your Merchant Centre feed now. Clean titles, real attributes and accurate stock. Gemini writes from this data.
Tighten website copy on your key product and service pages, because the agent grounds its answers in your site.
Test Business Agent for Leads when it reaches Australia and watch lead quality, not just lead volume.
Do not hand creative fully to Asset Studio without review. Machine output still needs a human who knows the brand.
Rebuild reporting around assisted conversions, because the first interaction now happens inside the ad.
The businesses that win here are the ones whose data and content are good enough for a machine to sell on their behalf.