Google has introduced ads in AI Mode in New Zealand. Find out which Google Ads campaigns are eligible, what’s changing, and how marketers can prepare.

  • Ads can now appear in and alongside Google’s AI Mode answers in New Zealand, following Google’s announcement on 28 October 2026.
  • There’s no new campaign type. Performance Max, Shopping and broad match Search campaigns, including AI Max, are eligible. Accounts running only exact and phrase match probably aren’t.
  • As far as we can tell, you can’t target AI Mode on its own or see its results separately.
  • What to do now: review your ad assets, and test AI Max in one campaign before going wider.

Google has started showing ads in AI Mode in New Zealand, following Google’s announcement of the expansion on 28 October 2026. Sponsored results can now appear in and alongside the AI-generated answers people get when they ask longer, more conversational questions. Google’s US research shows AI Mode queries are on average three times longer than traditional searches.

Who’s eligible

There’s no new campaign type to buy. Google has said Performance Max, Shopping, and Search campaigns using broad match, including AI Max for Search, are eligible. Search campaigns built only on exact and phrase match don’t appear to qualify, because a tight keyword list rarely lines up with a long, conversational question. That isn’t automatically a problem, since tight control suits accounts with limited budgets or strict compliance requirements.

Broader matching does hand more decisions to Google, as we covered in The Brief Is the Strategy. When Google chooses the query, the landing page and the copy, your landing pages, conversion data and exclusions are how you steer it.

What we don’t know yet

As far as we can tell, you can’t target AI Mode on its own, and its results aren’t reported separately from the rest of your campaign. Google has launched ads on follow-up questions in the US but hasn’t said when they’ll reach New Zealand, so expect the details to change.

Where to start

Review your Search and Performance Max ads first: Ad Strength (Google’s score for the relevance, quantity and variety of your ad copy), your headlines and descriptions, and whether text customisation, which adapts your copy to the query, is switched on. Then test AI Max in one campaign as a Google Ads experiment against a control, and compare conversions, cost per acquisition and lead quality before going wider.

If you’d like to talk through how this fits your Search strategy, we’re happy to look at your account with you.

 

Author: Rod Russell, Managing Partner, ADMATIC, 10th November 2026