Google ads enter AI Mode, Walmart Sparky quadruples sales: week in AI marketing
Four announcements from the week of May 17 to May 24, 2026 landed close enough together to read as a single signal: the place where discovery, ads, and purchase decisions happen is moving off your website and into AI interfaces. Here is what each one means for anyone running a product, a campaign, or a content strategy.
Google Marketing Live: ads are now inside AI Mode
On May 20, Google announced two new Gemini-built ad formats for AI Mode. Conversational Discovery ads tailor creative to the user’s specific query and appear alongside an independent Gemini-written explainer. Highlighted Answers make ads eligible to appear as recommendations inside list-style AI responses.
Also announced: Business Agent for Leads, which replaces a static lead form with a Gemini-powered chat agent embedded directly inside the ad, grounded in the advertiser’s website. It’s rolling out in open beta for US advertisers in automotive, education, and real estate.
The Direct Offers pilot, which launched in January with Chewy, Gap, and L’Oreal, is adding promotion bundling where Gemini constructs a deal per query, native checkout for merchants, and a travel expansion with Booking and Expedia surfacing offers inside AI-assisted trip planning.
The operator implication: creative generation is now handled by Gemini, which means the quality of your product data and landing page content matters more than the ad copy itself.
Publicis buys LiveRamp for $2.2B: the biggest agency deal was a data play
On May 17, Publicis Groupe announced an all-cash acquisition of LiveRamp at $38.50 per share, a 29.8% premium to LiveRamp’s closing price, for a total enterprise value of $2.167 billion. LiveRamp posted full-year fiscal 2026 revenue of $813 million, up 9% year over year, with subscription net retention at 107%.
Publicis already owns Epsilon and Lotame. Adding LiveRamp’s data collaboration platform gives it a thicker identity stack to feed agentic AI campaigns. Publicis raised its 2027 to 2028 growth targets on the back of the deal and positioned the acquisition as foundational to what it calls “data co-creation” for agentic AI, noting that 93% of companies lack the right data to make AI effective.
LiveRamp will continue operating independently under CEO Scott Howe, reporting directly to Publicis CEO Arthur Sadoun.
The operator implication: the competitive moat in AI-powered marketing isn’t the model. It’s the proprietary data you can feed it. If you don’t control your own data layer, someone else will.
Walmart Sparky: AI shopping agent quadruples unit sales
On Walmart’s Q1 earnings call on May 22, CEO John Furner reported that units purchased through the Sparky AI shopping agent have more than quadrupled since the previous quarter. Weekly active users are up over 100%, and average order value from Sparky users is roughly 35% higher than non-users.
Sparky is now live across Walmart’s website, mobile app, and physical stores, with capabilities including personalized replenishment, meal planning, and inventory-aware recommendations. Walmart has begun running sponsored product ads inside Sparky’s AI-generated responses through its Walmart Connect ad inventory.
Walmart advertising revenue grew 37% globally in Q1. The company also launched Marty, an AI advertising assistant that helps brands build, optimize, and manage sponsored search campaigns.
Google I/O: AI Mode hits 1 billion users, search agents arrive
At Google I/O on May 19, Google confirmed that AI Mode has surpassed one billion monthly users with queries more than doubling every quarter. Gemini 3.5 Flash is now the default model. The May 2026 core ranking update started rolling out on May 21, the second of the year and fourth overall.
Google also redesigned the search box for the first time in over 25 years. It now expands dynamically, accepts multimodal inputs including images, files, video, and Chrome tabs, and delivers AI-powered suggestions beyond autocomplete. Over 16% of searches already use voice, image, or video inputs.
Coming this summer for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers: information agents that monitor the web continuously on a user’s behalf, agentic booking tools that can call businesses directly, custom AI-generated dashboards, and a Universal Cart for agentic commerce. Some purchase journeys may complete without the user visiting a brand’s website at all.
The operator implication: if your measurement stack still starts at the website visit, you’re tracking the wrong moment. Discovery, decision, and purchase can now happen entirely inside Search.
Quick hits
- Google’s May 2026 core update started rolling out May 21, just six weeks after the March update wrapped.
- X launched Creator Connect, an xAI-powered marketplace matching brands with niche creators based on real-time trends.
- Figma launched AI design agents in beta, with multiple agents running simultaneously inside the collaborative canvas via natural-language prompts.
- OpenAI, Nvidia, and others adopted Google’s SynthID watermarking technology, already used on over 100 billion AI-generated images and videos.
- Kovva launched AI agents to automate programmatic busywork including QA checks, discrepancy investigations, and creative fatigue detection across platforms.
- Marketers at Digiday’s Programmatic Summit are imposing guardrails on AI agents, with Bayer and KSM using spend caps and gatekeeper agents.
- Programmatic ads expanded to car-mounted LED screens via Adtelligent and Uklon, bringing ride-hail rooftops into automated DOOH.
- Retail media faces disruption as AI shopping agents route purchases away from retailer sites, shrinking on-site ad inventory.
I’m founder of BizStack at Cagri Sarigoz LLC and a passionate advocate for entrepreneurs.
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