Google does not rule out ads in Gemini: VP Nick Fox on AI monetization

Advertising in AI assistants — it's not a question of "if," but "when" and "how." Google, whose business model relies on advertising revenue by more than 75%, officially confirmed: showing ads in Gemini is not ruled out. Senior Vice President Nick Fox gave an interview to Wired and for the first time spoke openly about how artificial intelligence is changing Google's advertising business.

Nick Fox heads the "knowledge and information" division at Google — a subdivision that determines the architecture of search, AI Overview, and Gemini itself. His public statements are rare, so the interview carries particular weight: the company chose this person specifically to begin the conversation about monetizing AI products. This is no accident.

In 2024, Google earned approximately $265 billion from advertising — nearly all of Alphabet's parent company income. The transition to AI search posed a critical question for the corporation: how to preserve these revenues if users increasingly receive complete, detailed answers from AI rather than clicking on blue links? The traditional model of "contextual ads next to search results" is beginning to fail — when Gemini answers with full text, there's simply no physical space for a standard advertising block.

Google already began testing ads within AI Overview in 2024 — a feature on the search results page that delivers a summarized AI answer. Blocks were embedded directly beneath or within the answer. Click-through rates turned out to be lower than traditional ads, but the company did not back down and continues experimenting.

Fox neither promised the imminent appearance of ads in Gemini nor closed off the topic: he made it clear that the team is searching for formats that fit organically into the AI experience and don't irritate users. Notably, this conversation is happening precisely now. Google is experiencing one of the most acute periods of transformation in its history: antitrust investigations in the US threaten the company's dominance in search, and competition from OpenAI and Microsoft is intensifying.

Competitors are currently choosing different monetization models — OpenAI is betting on subscriptions, Perplexity is embedding sponsored content, Microsoft is integrating ads in Copilot selectively. Google has the opportunity to set an industry standard — and that's precisely why every move it makes is so carefully monitored by the market. For the advertising industry, Fox's words are a clear signal: Google has no intention of sacrificing revenue for the sake of "purity" in the AI interface.

The one who first finds the balance between useful AI answers and unobtrusive advertising will gain a colossal competitive advantage. Google clearly intends to be first.