Comment by davnicwil

I think weirdly, ads embedded in AI search responses actually maybe do have a chance at being helpful (as long as it's clear from the context of the question that I may be willing to pay for a solution) just because they could potentially be quite well matched to the specific thing I want, or if they're not quite as well matched but offer other benefits, explain the difference.

At the moment search ads aren't very helpful because you have neither of those things. You always get them for any type of query, and when you do get them you don't know if the thing being shown will exactly solve your problem, or only approximately, and the work is much more on you to find that out by reading the product's marketing pages further.

If all that could be done for you up front, reasonably honestly, then I could see it being useful. I mean to be sure, in some small percentage of searches I really am looking to buy something and really do want to be usefully, honestly pitched on available options.