New forms of ads in Agentic AI

Advertising is inevitable. The idea that AI tooling like ChatGPT or Gemini remain ad free was only ever going to be short lived. With so much intent-led data about users and multiple turns at refining and discovering products, the potential for smart, dynamic and personalised advertising is also high. With new channels comes new opportunities.

A user gives their query, and adverts show up based on what they prompted. The difference here is that they will be hyper-personalised because your history and context can also be accessed to give a better ad. I don’t think companies like Google will release the detailed, rich history of a user though. One, for privacy, but two, it is their data gold to meter out. It will likely break down to trends: think “tends to search for brands like xyz” or “Has an estimated disposal income of greater than abc“.

Ads that follow you around. We’ve all had them. Look at one product once, and via the magic of cookies, it follows you around for the better part of a decade before you trigger it with something else. This time, it’ll be smarter. Due to the rich nature of what you queried and the back and to, the combination of that data and it’s ability to be used will produce something better. “Come back to TUI to finish booking your holiday starting November 2nd to Lanzarote”. Combining both AI creation of the ad with the rich data available. Also: think about how brands will advertise based on areas you searched for. As an example, say I was having a conversation about protein ice cream and how to make the healthiest ice cream out there. In the ad network, Ninja could sponsor that area and the ad following me is not for a product I explicitly searched for, but addresses my need “Make the best protein ice cream for a Ninja Creami“

Immediately on opening your favourite tool, there may be some suggested prompts before you even start based on history. “Want to continue searching for that TV?“, “Want to checkout LG’s latest TV release?“ or “Summarise the best places for winter sun right now“. All of these could be sponsored, and targeted as places to start. Social Media did a good job of giving endless entertainment: these engines could give you endless areas to explore with the view to funnelling us towards purchase.

As we have a turn based architecture like never before where we can go in different directions and deeper refinement, we have the ability to suggest smart things that the user may want, that are ads too. “Check out the latest LG 65” TVs“ to a TV discovery conversation is a simple one. How about “Build me an itinerary for some of the best places to stay in northern Italy“ and that happens to be sponsored by a hotel chain. We got quite good at spotting ads vs search results in Google, we will need to be the same here. Right now, the engines often end with suggested next step or question. Quickly this will turn into a set of pre-canned and suggested next steps you can just tap, to keep the conversation going. Ease of use drives usage.

Could you bid on other brands? Returning to our TV example: I have been searching for TVs and seem to be narrowing down to LG specifically. Can Samsung then sponsor a prompt suggestion “How do Samsung compare to this one?“. On the face of it this is very plausible suggestion from the engine, and it can easily be sponsored too. Less in your face, yes, a much softer approach, but sponsored all the same.

A variation on a sponsored answer: but more directive. “Book this hotel”, “Buy this now”, “Send my details” are all variations on this theme. Your tool already has your details, why can’t it complete the action? Think protocols like UCP (universal commerce protocol) that are starting to explore this area. But could you pay to get an action?

How to move up the answer stack? We speak about optimising for these new tools like we did with SEO, but there may be a way to just pay your way in. Could I pay to ensure I have some of my best content prioritised by the answer engine? My hub piece on winter jackets that leads to my products, being a prioritised piece of content? Trust is key here. I trust the agent to find what is genuinely useful. If that trust erodes because of this kind of ad placement: I might go somewhere else. It is a little too murky or easy to miss the sponsored nature of the content when its being paid to be included.

Don’t scoff at this too quickly: it will happen faster than we think. No images. Just programmatic ads directly to your personal agent. You could have an agent that just fields these ‘offers’ everyday and sends what it thinks are the best to you. Not just a product and a link, but a personalised offer, discount or package based on your preferences. Brave new world.

As we become more familiar and trusted with our favourite tooling, there’s no doubt that push notifications will also appear. Push based on previous conversation history, as well as interests and context that runs deeper than any keyword based search engine could dream of. I could’ve had many conversations about TVs, cars, holidays and more. The idea that a holiday brand could push a sponsored question to start a conversation “Want to start planning your normal easter vacation?“ is not hard to foresee.

We’re approaching a brave new world of advertising surfaces and formats. It will increase load on retailers and merchants to meet those new formats with their own ingenuity and skill to produce content to match. To figure out what really works for your brand. The richness of context and depth of data driven through these tools also gives us many more rich veins of niches and combinations to explore. “Holiday in Devon“ is now “Holiday on the south coast with my 3 kids, as well as my Mom, Dad who can’t walk too far and loves to go bird watching“. It’ll lead to a lot more creativity and audience discovery than ever before.

We can’t wrap up without a comment on disclosure and trust. With new opportunities come new ways to erode your brand trust with consumers. Retailers need to ensure they’re the right side of the line when using these formats, in line with their values.

As a final thought, we need to think about the burden that these new opportunities put on business teams. It is inevitable that to meet this load, you’ll need tooling that can create these ads, copy and design on the fly, to meet new needs and searches: this isn’t a static exercise. Expect an explosion of tooling to help meet the new world: copy generators, campaign managers and more.