Dan Taylor, Vice President of Global Advertising Strategy at Google who leads Google’s go-to-market strategy for global performance advertising asserts that
advertising has always been about connecting businesses to relevant potential customers. He explains how AI is enhancing this already vibrant digital advertising ecosystem, helping us move at what he calls “the speed of the consumer.” He further elaborates on what makes Google AI, Search, and YouTube uniquely positioned to help advertisers succeed in this moment.
“Google is an AI-first company. We bring a full-stack approach to AI: infrastructure, research, and scale—and this extends to Google Ads.,” Taylor emphasizes. “Our infrastructure has supported advertising results for over a decade. Analytical and predictive AI has helped us serve the right ad to the right person at the right time. Tools like broad match in Search and fully AI-powered campaigns like Performance Max have been running in the background, delivering results.”
Today, he claims that AI is front and center in Google. Generative AI has captured imaginations because it’s visible and tangible—it enhances both consumer experience and advertising capabilities.
Generative AI in Creative
A major impact of Generative AI is in content creation. Early adopters of generative AI report that content generation is 4x faster and copywriting is 5x faster. That’s a real force multiplier.
“We recently announced that advertisers can now use ImageN3, a part of Gemini, to generate images featuring people and faces using text prompts. This is now available across Performance Max, Demand Gen, Display, and App campaigns, making it much easier to create relevant, customized advertising,” he states.
Today, over 80% of Google’s advertisers use at least one AI-powered Search Ads feature. Taylor notes that these tools are increasingly becoming foundational to how campaigns are built.
He also observes that this creative acceleration is matched by a shift in how consumers behave online. Taylor reflects that consumer behavior has also changed. It’s now predictably unpredictable and multi-modal. People are streaming, scrolling, searching, and shopping but in overlapping, non-linear ways.
For example a photo can be a search. Scrolling might happen on a smart TV. A paused video might become a product discovery moment. “Traditional media planning can’t keep up. Marketers now need to engage with consumers in every moment—from discovery to decision. Google is uniquely positioned to enable this across Search, YouTube, Maps, Shopping, and more.”
YouTube evolves
“As consumer attention shifts, nowhere is the transformation more visible than on YouTube particularly in the living room. Today, people globally watch over 1 billion hours of YouTube on TVs each day,” Taylor believes.
He reveals that, “In APAC, YouTube CTV (Connected TV) viewership has doubled or tripled in countries like Taiwan, India, and Japan. YouTube is the most-watched streaming service on CTV in India and Japan. Furthermore, shorts ads are not only being viewed more but are also better liked and perceived as more relevant compared to ads on other platforms.”
Search and Intent: Still the Core
Search remains central to discovery. Google Search has evolved from just blue links to include: Images, Videos, Knowledge cards and Conversational results. He highlights that with over 5 trillion searches annually, and 15% of daily searches being brand new, search is constantly evolving, he highlights.
Taylor points out that users who engage with AI Overviews search more, visit a wider range of websites, and respond more to ads within those Overviews and
this has led to an increase in commercial queries. According to him, this makes the search experiences of younger generations more useful. Visual search is exploding Google Lens now sees 20 billion visual queries per month, and 1 in 4 of those has commercial intent.
Taylor notes that the customer’s casual curiosity has turned into real-time product discovery. “Shopping ads appear alongside Lens results, helping brands reach customers right at that visual inspiration moment. Shopping behavior is massive across Google. Over 1 billion shopping-related actions happen daily. Google and YouTube are involved in two-thirds of purchase journeys where new brands or products are discovered. Between Feb 2024 and Jan 2025, users watched 35 billion hours of shopping-related content on YouTube.”
India Case Study: Puma
Zooming into India, Taylor cites Puma as an example of AI’s local impact. The brand used Performance Max to reach website visitors who didn’t convert earlier. The result led to 35% lower cost per sale than other paid channels and 66% higher ROI than other channels.
He adds, “We’re using models and AI to enhance the scale and accuracy of our enforcement efforts. These technologies are helping our safety teams identify bad actors earlier than ever, and that has significantly strengthened our ability to act against malicious practices—on both the organic and paid advertising sides.”
In fact, Google blocked or removed over 5 billion ads for violating its policies before they ever served. It also suspended more than 39 million advertiser accounts and removed ads from over 222,000 publisher sites.
These developments illustrate not just Google’s AI push, but a broader industry shift where the lines between platforms, behaviors, and advertising formats are blurring.
Read More:Inside CTV’s explosion: How brands are leveraging immersive storytelling and data