Wire Report: AI Search Ads Need A Readiness Audit

Google and OpenAI are moving ads into AI-mediated search and answer surfaces. The immediate GTM question is not whether to move budget. It is whether the team has the inputs needed to test these surfaces without losing control of message, landing page fit, and measurement.

What Changed

OpenAI updated its ad policies on May 26, 2026, adding more detail on placement standards, safeguards, and enforcement. Google announced AI Mode ad formats at Google Marketing Live, including ads that can appear in conversational discovery and recommendation-style answer experiences. Google also said Dynamic Search Ads and related legacy settings will upgrade to AI Max starting in September 2026.

Google's AI Mode behavior update is the bigger signal for GTM teams: AI search sessions use longer, more natural questions and more multimodal inputs than traditional search. That means old keyword lists are a weak proxy for the actual buyer conversation.

GTM Use Case

Demand gen teams should create an AI Search Ads Readiness Audit before spending on new AI search placements.

The audit should answer five questions:

1. Which buyer questions are worth paying to enter?
2. Which landing pages can continue those questions without generic copy?
3. Which proof points are missing from the page?
4. Which policy or brand-safety constraints apply?
5. Which campaign settings should be controlled before AI Max migration?

Workflow

1. Pull the top 25 converting search terms and top 25 sales-call questions.
2. Cluster them by buyer job: compare, shortlist, troubleshoot, justify, migrate, or buy.
3. Pick five questions where a paid answer would be useful.
4. Check current AI answers and cited sources for those questions.
5. Map each question to the best landing page.
6. Mark missing proof, unsupported claims, competitor mentions, and policy-sensitive language.
7. Build one test brief with budget cap, landing page, creative angle, exclusions, and success metric.
8. Run a small test before shifting core search budget.

Operator Prompt

Use the source updates, our search terms, sales-call questions, landing pages, and policy constraints to build an AI search ads readiness audit. Return buyer-question clusters, best-fit landing pages, proof gaps, policy risks, campaign controls, and the first safe test.

Risk

The risky move is not testing AI search ads. The risky move is letting a platform migration or beta surface decide targeting, page fit, and message quality before the team has defined the buyer questions it wants to own.

Test This Week

Run the audit for one campaign family and turn the results into one page refresh plus one controlled test brief.

Operator Checklist

Field Decision Owner Demand gen with RevOps support Workflow AI search ads readiness audit Inputs Search terms, sales-call questions, landing pages, policy constraints, proof points Human review Campaign brief, landing page fit, claims, exclusions, and budget cap Metric Qualified conversion rate and downstream opportunity quality First test Run one campaign family for seven days with capped spend, then ship, stop, or expand Source Links

- https://openai.com/policies/ad-policies/
- https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/google-marketing-live-search-ads
- https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/ai-mode-us-insights/
- https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/dsa-upgrade-to-ai-max-2026/