While SEOs spent much of 2025 worrying that AI Overviews (AIOs) would drive more organic traffic, Google was figuring out how to balance improving AI search experience with their need to maintain their ad revenue model.
Towards the end of the year, we noticed Google increasing this combination of AIOs and ads on search engine results pages (SERPs).
How Much Ads From AI Overview SERPs Have Increased
In October 2025, Google Ads appeared in 25.56% of search results that included AI Overview—up from 5.17% in March.
That’s a 394% increase in eight months.
We found this when reviewing our AI research that tracked over 10 million keywords in 2025.
The data reveals a targeted overhaul from Google to redesign how marketers can reach customers in AI-driven search.
Where Google Ads Appear in SERPs with AI Overviews
If we look deeper into this increase in ads, we can see that the placement of ads was not the same as the overall SERP.
Some ads appeared below the AI Overview, while other ads appeared at the top of the SERP, before or below Google’s AI summary.
From March to August, the occurrence of ads in SERPs with AI overview remained below 10% in all positions.
Then in September, all three types of placements grew simultaneously—suggesting that Google made a decision here.
- By October, lower SERP ads had reached 25% of AIO results
- Middle-of-SERP ads grew in September but remained around 13% in October
- Google’s top SERP ads grew in October, but ranked lower than ads at the bottom or middle of the SERP.
It is worth noting that of the 25.58% of AIO SERPs with a Google ad in October 2025, 25.01% of those SERPs include ads at the bottom.
This means that if Google includes ads in AI-driven results, the placement at the bottom of the page (or without other placement of ads) is likely to be true.
What Types of Searches Include AI Overview
The increase in ads makes sense when you see how AI Overview has expanded into more search types.
At the beginning of 2025, AIOs were very informative. Now, they appear conditionally throughout the funnel.
- January 2025: 91.3% of questions that trigger the AI Overview had an informational purpose
- October 2025: 57.1% of the questions triggering the AI Overview had an informational purpose. Another 42.9% were for commercial, commercial, or travel purposes.
This increase in AI overviews from SERPs for navigation, commerce, and transactional search is in line with the trend we’ve seen in more AI SERPs that contain ads.
This is because those types of targets have a higher number of businesses, and therefore, more advertisers.
What this information means for search marketers
At the beginning of their release, AI Overview was seen as a major obstacle to information search. The top of the SEO funnel was shrinking.
But the combination of AI Overviews and ads is changing the dynamic.
If both appear in the SERP, users are likely to stay on the results page—reading the AI summary or clicking on the ad to convert it.
Both results benefit Google, which explains why this combination is so common.
And this trend is not slowing down. Google already checks ads inside AI Overviews by itself, not just next to it on the results page.
Therefore, we should expect AI Overview SERPs with ads to become the norm—not the exception.
Marketing teams need to figure out how to best attract customers with both ads and AI Overview in the picture, which may involve both pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and SEO.
We’ve known for a long time that PPC and SEO reinforce each other:
- Ads capture high-target traffic and visibility now. They appear almost immediately and can convert users who are ready to act quickly. And the information from the ads can be used for SEO win.
- SEO provides continuous and unpaid visibility. Strong organic rankings provide visibility that can last weeks, months, or even years among people scrolling past AI and ads on Google.
That relationship extends to AI search as well.
When users see your product in multiple places (in advertising, AI summary, and organic results), it builds more trust that can ultimately drive action.
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