This week I am virtually reporting on the goings-on at Mountain Village, California, where Google is hosting its Google Marketing Live event.
I happened to be in Las Vegas for AdExchanger’s Programmatic AI show. I much regret not being able to hop over to the Sweets & Snacks Expo, also happening in Vegas right now. Next time.
Anyways, back to Google HQ.
A week ago, I wrote about the unresolved question that plagues many tech companies right now: Is agentic shopping a mirage?
From Google’s perspective, the answer is clear: Agentic shopping is the next big thing. At least that’s the message from Google’s big annual conference for ad product updates.
“2026 is the year I see us fully transitioning from AI’s potential into its everyday reality,” said Google VP of Global Ads Dan Taylor in a press briefing earlier this week.
What’s new?
The GML event spans the entire Google ads and analytics product suite, as well as updates to its consumer-facing businesses, which were announced a day earlier. Perhaps you caught the news that Google will overhaul its legacy search bar to infuse it with more AI prompting and query-filling.
This year, the Ads group’s focus centered on the parallel tracks of retail media and agentic commerce.
Google is expanding its native checkout integration, the company announced during the GML event on Wednesday. Now merchants or marketplaces that participate in Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) can process a purchase without that user leaving Google’s AI chat.
ChatGPT tried a similar native checkout product, which it has since folded due to lack of actual shopping within the chatbot. OpenAI’s backpedaling here is seen by many as a rationale for why this whole agentic shopping thing is a mirage, not a miracle or an oasis.
But Google is rushing headlong into agentic shopping. The UCP checkout integration will also now be available within ads on YouTube. In theory, someone can process a purchase via an agentic ad on their video, while they’re still watching. And the UCP integration will also include other Google “surfaces” (Google’s preferred term). A Google Maps ad masquerading as an agentic conversation can immediately convert someone into a hotel booking, say, or a food delivery order.
And Google is adding benefits to bring more merchants onto the UCP platform. The platform is competing against other agentic protocols – namely, the Agentic Commerce Protocol, which is backed by OpenAI, PayPal, Stripe and others. One new improvement is that retailers or brands that integrate with UCP will be able to export their loyalty points or exclusive discounts for members directly into agentic ads.
Google is also publicly rolling out new AI-based ad formats that represent new ways for the company to earn money on AI searches. The Direct Offers beta program allows merchants and brands to upload discounts, local coupons and other incentives that Google can “match or combine on the fly to present the most compelling offer” to that AI search user.
In his press briefing, Taylor used the example of a grill manufacturer offering a 10% discount, plus adding a free accessory if it needs to close the sale.
There are also new AI-generated shopping ad units, which, he said, are best-suited for higher consideration or research purchases, like consumer tech or household appliances. These AI ads include AI explainers that elaborate on the item and why it’s a potential fit, and which users can prompt for more info without leaving the page.
A new product called Business Agents for Leads – “This one’s my favorite,” Taylor added – brings Gemini AI into an ad unit so users can prompt and interact within the ad itself. The agent in this case is trained on the particular advertiser’s site. So, for example, an auto brand or university might pay to place an agent within an ad on a general research query.
Users may not even know that it’s a lead generation tool, rather than being a purely informational service. Although the agent is apparently quick to ask for contact details (to pass along as the lead) based on the example given of a prospective college student being routed to the Rainier University admissions pipeline.
The new business agents create value by “turning a helpful interaction into a valuable lead for the advertiser,” Taylor said.
“We see ourselves as a matchmaker, connecting shoppers directly with businesses,” said Ashish Gupta, Google’s VP and GM of merchant shopping, during the press briefing.
When asked directly whether users actually want to shop in agentic chats, considering ChatGPT’s walk-back on native checkout, Gupta responded, “What we are seeing right now is more and more people are coming to AI surfaces to shop.”
He then added the perfectly Freudian addendum: “And these queries are getting much richer.”
