Google turned on ads inside AI Mode for ten more countries on 28 October 2026, including Canada and India, two of the markets we build for. It also started running ads on follow-up questions inside AI Mode conversations, for now only in the US. If you're running Google Ads in either Canada or India, your account already includes placements you didn't explicitly buy.
What Did Google Actually Change in AI Mode Ads?#
Google expanded Google AI Mode ads to ten more countries on 28 October 2026, with Pakistan limited to text ads. It also started showing ads on AI Mode's follow-up-question responses, but only in the US so far. The new countries:
- Australia
- Canada
- India
- Kenya
- Malaysia
- New Zealand
- Nigeria
- Pakistan (text ads only)
- The Philippines
- Singapore
Google confirmed the rollout to Relevant Audience on 28-29 October. Brazil, Mexico, and the UK are next, planned for Q4 2026. Existing Search, Shopping, and Performance Max campaigns participate automatically: there's no new campaign type to turn on, and no way to exclude AI Mode specifically while staying in standard Search. The same day, Alphabet reported Q3 2026 Search revenue of $63.35 billion, up 12% year over year but close to flat versus Q2, and Winbuzzer reported that Google pointed to softer AI Mode monetization as part of the reason.
Does This Affect You If You're Not Advertising in Canada or India?#
Not yet. If none of your Google Ads budget touches Canada, India, Australia, Kenya, Malaysia, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, or Singapore, nothing in your account changed this week. GCC and most of Europe aren't on the list, and Google hasn't said when, or if, they're next.
At WebEpex, we build paid search for clients across the GCC, Europe, USA, Canada, and India, and Canada and India are the two markets in that list where we're actively running Google Ads campaigns for clients today. So this is the update we read on launch day, not one we caught up on later. If you're also watching Meta ad costs climb this quarter, this is one more platform where paid acquisition economics are moving without much advance notice. Your existing negative keywords and brand exclusions still apply, but you can't carve AI Mode out of a campaign the way you'd pause a placement you didn't like.
The Honest Pros and Cons of Ads Inside AI Mode#
The case for it: Google says click-through rates on sponsored and organic product entries inside AI Mode are already similar, based on its own US data from two weeks in August and September. If that holds in Canada and India too, an AI Mode placement isn't automatically worse inventory than a normal search ad. It's just inventory you can't isolate in reporting yet.
The case against it: you can't see it separately. AI Mode, AI Overviews, and standard Search ads all land in one aggregate report, so you can't tell whether next month's dip or lift came from the new placements or from something else in the account. Google also generates short AI explainer text that can appear next to your ad, and you can't write, edit, approve, or opt out of it. My honest read: that's the part that should worry you more than the placement itself. A line of AI-written copy next to your brand that you didn't approve is a bigger risk than one more ad slot.
How We're Already Adjusting Client Campaigns#
At WebEpex, we pulled the account-level reporting for every Canada- and India-facing Google Ads account we manage the week of 27 October 2026, split by match type, and flagged every campaign on broad match or Performance Max with no manual placement review in the last 30 days. That's most of them. Broad match and PMax are built to run themselves, which is exactly why they're the ones most exposed to a change like this.
We didn't touch budgets. We tightened the review cadence on those campaigns from monthly to weekly for the next quarter, and we're comparing search-term reports week over week for anything that reads like a conversational, multi-turn query instead of a direct one. We flagged the same pattern when Google reversed its Personal Intelligence ad-free promise inside AI Mode. We don't wait for a second reversal before we start checking, and we treat automated channel-prioritization shifts in Google Ads the same way: the default setting serves Google first, the advertiser second.
For clients outside Canada and India (mostly GCC and Europe), we're not changing anything yet, because nothing in their accounts changed yet either. We'll revisit when the UK goes live in Q4, since that's the one that'll actually touch our European client base.
What I'd Tell a Client Asking About This#
If you're spending in Canada or India: pull your search-term report for the last two weeks and look for longer, conversational-sounding queries you haven't seen before. That's AI Mode traffic showing up in the aggregate. You don't need to pause anything. Just move your negative-keyword review from monthly to weekly for the next month or two.
If you're GCC- or Europe-based, or not spending in those two markets yet: do nothing. This doesn't touch your account today, and I'd rather say that plainly than invent urgency you don't have.
If you want a second pair of eyes on whether your Canada or India campaigns picked up anything odd this month, send me the account and I'll tell you straight: two minutes, no pitch. cal.com/webepex/growth-review
