Ads in Google AI Answers Cluster in Apparel and Electronics

What happened

Adthena, an ad-tracking vendor, published a holiday AI paid search report. According to coverage from Search Engine Journal, it found roughly 175,100 paid placements inside Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode in the U.S. between June and September. The report covered five categories: apparel, consumer electronics, travel, beauty, and toys and games.

The spread is very uneven. Apparel had about 111,000 placements and consumer electronics about 55,000. Travel had roughly 6,500, beauty about 2,100, and toys and games around 685.

Over the same months and categories, Adthena counted 204,489 ChatGPT ad placements. Apparel led there too, with 90,517. Consumer electronics had 56,569 and travel 48,134, while toys and games (4,694) and beauty (4,575) were small.

Why it matters

Google is not selling AI answer ads as a separate product. Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns are automatically eligible. You can't target only AI Overviews or AI Mode, and you can't opt out of them separately from Search. You can still use negative keywords and brand exclusions.

So if you run those campaigns, some of your ads may already be showing inside AI answers, and your standard reports blend that traffic with everything else. You can't cleanly separate it.

The report also shows how fast the surface is growing. AI Overview appearances in the U.S. rose 89%, from 304 million to 575 million, comparing August 2025 with August 2026. The UK/EU rose 160% and Australia 536%. The report doesn't say which queries sit behind those counts or whether the set stayed the same, so treat them as directional.

ChatGPT is moving quickly as well. Adthena counted 1,082 advertisers in these five categories in June, 3,741 in July and 6,333 in August. OpenAI also expanded availability during that window, so the growth isn't a like-for-like trend.

The ChatGPT prompt mix

The report sorted ChatGPT ads by the kind of prompt they appeared against. In beauty, 83% of ads ran on research and discovery queries, meaning people comparing options or asking what's best without naming a product. Travel was at 69% and toys and games at 67%. Apparel (48%) and consumer electronics (42%) were under half.

In plain terms, in some categories ads show up when people are still deciding what to buy. In others they show up closer to the point where shoppers already know what they want.

What the data doesn't tell you

This is a count of where ads appeared. It doesn't include clicks, spend or conversions on either Google or ChatGPT. It can't tell you whether AI placements are profitable.

Adthena also sells tracking for both platforms and promotes a free trial of its ChatGPT Ads product. That doesn't make the data wrong, but it's worth remembering when you read it.

The data ends in September. Since then Google announced multi-turn ads in the U.S. on October 28, letting ads appear on follow-up queries in AI Mode. It also said AI Mode ads are scaling to ten more countries, including Canada and Australia, with Brazil, Mexico and the UK planned for Q4 2026. OpenAI expanded ChatGPT Ads to 89 countries on October 21 and said more than 100,000 advertisers have run campaigns since opening to outside advertisers.

What to do now

• Audit your Google campaigns. If you run Search, Shopping or Performance Max, assume AI placements are in the mix. Check your search terms for longer, conversational queries.
• Tighten controls. Use negative keywords and brand exclusions where AI answers could pull in poor-fit traffic.
• Watch conversion quality. Compare new-customer rates, margin and return rates on conversational queries against your usual ones, rather than relying on click-through rate alone.
• Test ChatGPT small. If you sell in apparel, electronics or travel, run a capped test with clear goals. Competition there is already building.
• Don't neglect organic. Paid placement is only one way to appear in AI answers. Strong product data, reviews and comparison content still matter.
• Look beyond the U.S. Rollouts are widening, so check availability and your reporting in your own markets.