It’s common knowledge that Google is an advertising company first and foremost. All of the products weave together this ad network that a lot of governments and organizations consider to be anti-competitive. If you query a standard Google search, you’re starting with sponsored posts, followed by more advertising – which can be hard to navigate when you need accurate and actionable information fast.

Gemini, Google’s AI and LLM platform is just that. It’s a tool for consumers and businesses alike, which can be marketer’s dream. Recently, it was announced that marketers can use the service to insert more strategic ad placement into YouTube. The use of agentics, that is, using GenAI on your behalf to make decisions, automate decision making based on the user’s parameters, and adaptability – is now becoming commonplace among browsers, LLMs, and other AI tools and infrastructure. Marketing and advertising firms will have to adapt to serve these minimally invasive asks with minimal human intervention. The trick is serving ads through these means.

In the first paragraph, I’ll reiterate that Google is an advertising company, thus this is just one more avenue they must figure out to use its closed ad-network to bring in more revenues. They must walk a tight rope though due to antitrust concerns currently before the US federal government and EU agencies. While the early 2000s was dominated by SEO; GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is firstly built to be utilized properly on AI platforms.

Anthropic recently announced that Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix has joined their Board of Directors. This may seem strange on the surface but makes perfect sense when we realize that Netflix has a robust advertising platform as the world’s top streamer. Hastings expertise in this arena will fit in perfectly to what Anthropic wants to pursue – becoming its own advertising platform to rival that of Google, which is no surprise given if the courts rule that Google has to divest Chrome; that Anthropic was a party interesting in purchasing it.

Google’s strategy has always been that of the tech industry as a whole; gaining as many users as possible with a new product, then turn on the spicket of advertising. We can only hope that the sheer number of ads inserted won’t damage the Gemini product as it has Google search. We might not need a government to dismantle the firm, the vast competition within the LLM space and all tech wanting a piece of the pie may force them to retool to strike a balance between users and AdSense. Thus, Google wielding its vast ad network to other products might become a coherent strategy – much as Microsoft focused on cloud rather than Windows throughout the 2010’s.