For months, Google’s position on ads in the Gemini app was pretty clear. In December, Google’s VP of Global Ads called reports about Gemini ad plans “inaccurate” and said there were no current plans to change that. That position didn’t survive the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call.
During the call on Wednesday, Google’s chief business officer Philipp Schindler said the company’s focus right now is on ads in AI Mode, its conversational search experience. Then he added that “a format that works well in AI Mode would transfer successfully to the Gemini app” and that “if done well, ads can be really valuable and really helpful commercial information.” That’s not a denial. The Gemini app currently has no ads, but Schindler was careful not to rule anything out, and the phrasing landed as a pretty clear signal of where things are heading.
For context, Google already serves ads inside AI Overviews in search results and has been testing them in AI Mode. The Gemini app has been expanding rapidly, landing on macOS, replacing Google Assistant across Android, and pulling in 750 million monthly active users according to figures shared on the same earnings call. At that scale, leaving it unmonetized starts to look like a business problem.
How This Fits the Broader AI Landscape
Google isn’t alone in thinking about this. OpenAI already rolled out ads in ChatGPT earlier this year for users on its free and $8-a-month Go plans. Those ads appear below responses, are clearly labeled as sponsored, and OpenAI has said they don’t influence the answers. Anthropic has taken the opposite stance, saying it won’t put ads in the Claude app at all.
Google hasn’t announced a timeline, a format, or any specifics. Schindler’s comment that the company is “not rushing into anything” suggests Gemini app ads aren’t imminent. But the January position of “no plans” has clearly shifted, and Gemini is now Google’s primary AI product across pretty much every surface. At some point, that math was always going to catch up with the ad-free promise.
