How to Adapt Your Google Ads for AI Mode

AI Mode is finally live in Australia, it should finish rolling out to all users before the end of October.

Google’s AI Mode changes how users search and how ads appear in results. For marketers, we must ensure you are protecting your ad spend from becoming irrelevant in an AI-first search environment. This blog will tell you what you need to fix, and how to do it.

AI Mode 101: What Actually Changed

Google’s AI Mode fundamentally changes how search results appear and how ads fit into that new structure. Instead of a list of blue links with ads scattered around them, AI Mode generates conversational, AI-powered answers that sit at the top of results.

Here’s what users see: When someone searches in AI Mode, Google’s AI compiles information from multiple sources and presents a synthesised answer. Ads can appear within this AI-generated content, but only if they meet specific eligibility criteria.

Here’s what changes for you: Traditional keyword-focused campaigns optimised for specific search terms might not show in AI Mode results. Google prioritises campaigns using broader targeting signals and AI-powered matching over tightly controlled exact-match keywords.

The shift mirrors what we’ve seen with Google’s move toward automation across the platform—less manual control, more algorithmic decision-making, and a requirement for advertisers to feed the machine better data rather than micromanage targeting.

For Australian marketers who’ve built sophisticated keyword structures over years, this feels like starting over. That’s partially true. But it’s also an opportunity to simplify overcomplicated accounts and let Google’s AI handle the heavy lifting, if you set it up correctly.

Eligibility Settings That Matter

Getting your ads into AI Mode results requires meeting Google’s eligibility requirements.

AI Max and Keyword-less Formats

AI Max campaigns and Performance Max both operate without traditional keywords. They use your landing page content, audience signals, and conversion data to decide when and where to show ads.

AI Max specifically targets AI Mode and AI Overview placements. Your existing site content provides assets (headlines, descriptions, images), and Google’s AI decides which combinations to show, to whom, and when.

Performance Max casts an even wider net across Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, and Discover. It’s keyword-less by design, relying entirely on Google’s AI to find the right moments to show your ads.

Why these matter for AI Mode: Both formats are explicitly designed to thrive in AI-driven environments. Traditional Search campaigns might get left behind as Google prioritises formats that align with AI Mode’s structure.

The control trade-off: You lose granular visibility into where ads show and which queries trigger them. You get algorithmic efficiency and access to AI Mode placements in return. Whether that trade-off works depends on your campaign goals and risk tolerance.

The Control Trade-off

Winning in AI Mode means accepting less control over your campaigns. Broad match gives Google more freedom to interpret intent. AI Max and Performance Max hide search term data behind aggregated performance metrics. You can’t build a detailed negative keyword list when you can’t see exactly what you’re showing up for. Additionally, users are going to have conversations with AI Mode so the concept of simple negative keyword lists is archaic.

For control-focused marketers, this is brutal. If you’ve spent years building tightly structured campaigns with exact keyword match types and bid adjustments for devices, locations, and audiences, AI Mode undermines that entire approach.

For results-focused marketers, this is opportunity. If you care more about cost per lead than which specific keyword triggered the ad, Google’s AI often delivers better efficiency than manual management, once it learns your conversion patterns.

An important question to ask yourself is “will trying to keep manual control drive better results than Google’s AI could achieve while the whole of the internet is moving in that direction?”, I doubt it. – Zac Fitzpatrick, Google Ads Lead

The Google Product Strategy: Lean In or Fall Behind

It’s worth noting that this is not ideal, ideally you’d manually vet every search term that comes in with the context of who your business supports. But that isn’t the reality of marketing in 2025, marketers who resist Google’s product direction lose reach. Marketers who lean into what Google wants with caution will maintain or improve performance.

When Google builds and promotes a product, especially one tied to a major platform shift like AI Mode, that product will get preferential treatment in the auction. AI Max and Performance Max are strategic bets Google is making on the future of search advertising.

Marketers that cling to manual control aren’t going to change the tide, they will just lose impression share to competitors willing to adapt.

But there’s a critical caveat: None of this works without proper conversion tracking.

Conversion Quality is Everything

Google’s AI tools learn from your conversion data. If that data is good (actual qualified leads, real purchases, valuable actions), the algorithm optimises toward finding more of the right people. If that data is garbage (page views, button clicks, unqualified form fills), the algorithm optimises toward garbage.

This is the make-or-break factor for AI-driven campaigns. You can adopt broad match, launch Performance Max, embrace reduced visibility, but if your conversion tracking counts a phone call from a recruiter the same as a phone call from a qualified prospect, you’re teaching Google’s AI to find more recruiters.

If your conversion tracking falls into the second category, fix that before adopting AI-driven formats. Otherwise you’re just giving Google’s algorithm bad instructions and wondering why performance declines.

There’s a lot more bots out there that will “convert” than ideal customers and these tools love data to pat themselves on the back with how “optimised” they can be.

The confidence to lean into AI tools without full keyword visibility comes from knowing your conversion data reflects actual business value. When you trust the signal you’re sending Google, you can stop micromanaging Google even when you can’t see every search term that triggered an ad.

Accept that you won’t get perfect visibility into performance anymore. Your conversion quality is your only reliable feedback mechanism.

Zero-Click Concerns

Australian marketers have been vocal about AI Mode’s impact on traffic. In the last year impressions have shot up and for some clicks have decreased as Google answers questions directly in AI-generated responses, users don’t need to click through to your sites.

For advertisers, this has two implications:

First, organic click-through rates are dropping. If Google answers the question in AI Mode, fewer users scroll down to organic results. That makes paid ads more important for visibility.

Second, your content might appear in AI Mode answers without driving traffic to your site. Google’s AI can summarise your blog posts, pull stats from your landing pages, and present your expertise without users ever visiting your domain.

This creates a paradox: You need high-quality content to feed Google’s AI and establish authority, but that same content might reduce your direct traffic as AI Mode uses it to answer queries.

What this means practically: Your SEO strategy and google ads strategy need to align more closely than ever. Content you create for organic visibility now also influences how Google’s AI represents your brand in paid placements.

If your content is thin, generic, or outdated, Google’s AI has less quality material to work with when deciding whether your ads are relevant for AI Mode queries. Strong content creates strong paid opportunities in this new environment.

Brands need to think beyond traditional channel silos. Content marketing, SEO, and paid ads now feed into a unified Google AI system that decides how and when your brand appears across all touchpoints.

The 2025 Reality Check

AI Mode is not optional. Google’s pushing the entire platform toward AI-first experiences, and advertisers who resist will see declining impression share, rising CPCs, and shrinking relevance.

But adaptation doesn’t mean blind trust in automation. It means setting up campaigns with the right structure, feeding Google’s AI quality data through proper conversion tracking, and maintaining strong creative and landing page foundations.

The brands that will succeed with AI Mode right will be those who stopped fighting for granular control and started optimising for algorithmic performance: better audience signals, stronger creative variation, and landing pages that clearly communicate value.

Most importantly, they’re the ones who fixed their conversion tracking first. Without quality conversion data, every other optimisation is pointless. Google’s AI can only optimise toward what you tell it matters, and if you’re telling it the wrong things matter, you’ll get the wrong results.

Unsure where to start with your account? Our digital strategy team can audit your current Google Ads setup, identify AI Mode readiness gaps, and build a transition plan that protects performance while adopting the new formats.

Let’s make sure you’re not left behind as search evolves.

Talk to a Google Ads specialist

Zac Fitzpatrick

PPC Service Lead