Google wants AI to become marketers' strategist. Is the industry ready?

For years, artificial intelligence has largely been marketed to advertisers as a way to automate repetitive tasks. It could optimise bids, tweak targeting, improve reporting and generate creative variations, helping marketers execute campaigns more efficiently.

Google now wants AI to play a much bigger role.

At Google Marketing Live 2026, the company unveiled a suite of Gemini-powered advertising tools spanning campaign planning, creative generation, lead generation, measurement and analytics. Taken together, the announcements signal Google's ambition to move beyond marketing automation towards what it describes as “marketing intelligence,” where AI acts as a strategic partner rather than simply an execution engine.

Among the announcements were Business Agent for Leads, which enables consumers to interact with an AI agent inside Search ads; YouTube BrandStack, an India-developed solution that combines campaign planning, buying and measurement; AI Max for Shopping; expanded creative capabilities in Asset Studio; and Ask Advisor, an AI assistant that works across Google Ads, Analytics and other marketing products.

For marketers, however, the bigger question is whether these launches represent a genuine shift in how advertising will be planned and managed, or simply the next stage in Google's long-running AI roadmap.

Industry executives believe the answer lies somewhere in between.

“There is real continuity here,” said Prashant Puri, Co-Founder and CEO of AdLift. “Google has been building toward a connective layer for years through GA4, through Performance Max, and Ask Advisor is the next step in that direction rather than a clean break from it.”

Yet he believes the organisational implications are much larger than the technology itself, saying, “Where I do think the shift is real is in how much control gets consolidated. When an AI agent can reason across your entire funnel, the marketer's day-to-day job changes. That's a meaningful change in how campaigns get planned and run.”

At the same time, Puri cautioned that widespread adoption of the same AI systems could also reduce competitive differentiation. “If every brand in a category leans on the same underlying intelligence, how do you keep your strategy distinct? These tools work best as an accelerant, not a replacement for brand judgment.”

Others argue the shift is less about replacing marketers than changing the kind of work they perform.

Shradha Agarwal, Co-founder and Global CEO of Grapes Worldwide, believes AI is expanding across the entire marketing lifecycle rather than remaining confined to campaign execution.

“What is changing is the role AI plays across the marketing lifecycle. Instead of simply helping execute campaigns faster, it is beginning to assist with planning, creative development, audience discovery, optimisation and measurement in a far more connected way,” she said.

According to Agarwal, this allows marketers to spend less time on repetitive operational work and more time focusing on brand building, customer experience and strategy.

Ajay Kulkarni, Business Head at Ykone Barcode, echoed that view.

“For years, AI has helped marketers automate tasks like bidding, targeting or reporting. What Google is now attempting is to move AI much earlier in the decision-making process, helping marketers think, plan and predict, not just execute,” he said.

“The best campaigns are still built on human insight, cultural relevance and creativity. What AI will do is remove a lot of the guesswork, allowing teams to test more ideas, move faster and make better-informed decisions.”

What could matter most for India?

Executives are fairly confident on which of Google's announcements is likely to have the greatest impact on Indian advertisers.

"What's new with Ask Advisor and Meridian-in-Analytics-360 is that Gemini now sits across the planning, execution, and measurement layers simultaneously, not just optimizing one campaign in isolation. That's the real change: marketers move from operating individual levers to setting strategy and guardrails while AI handles orchestration end-to-end," says Gopa Kumar Menon, Co-Founder and COO, Theblurr.

"For India specifically, I'd say on the lead-gen and creative tools before the conversational commerce layer. Business Agent for Leads replacing static forms with a Gemini chat agent embedded in the ad solves a real pain point for India's massive SMB and BFSI/real estate/education lead-gen advertiser base, where lead quality and drop-off have always been the weak link. Asset Studio with Gemini Omni is the other one: for advertisers who can't afford large production budgets, brief-to-video generation in regional languages could meaningfully democratize quality creative for tier-2/3 brands. All of these changes are exciting and will give more ammunition to advertisers," adds Menon.

“Advertisers here live and die by lead quality, and a Gemini agent that qualifies intent in real time is a genuinely useful idea,” observed Puri.

He also pointed to India's rapid shift towards conversational search, although he added that the commercial impact of Google's AI-powered Search experiences remains to be proven. “My bet is still on Business Agent for Leads. Lead-generation economics in India push advertisers to adopt fast.”

Kulkarni, meanwhile, expects Google's AI-powered creative capabilities to have the broadest impact. “India isn't one market. It's hundreds of micro markets across languages, regions and consumer segments. Creating relevant communication at that scale has always been expensive and time-consuming,” he said.

AI, he argued, fundamentally changes that equation by allowing brands to adapt messaging and creative assets for different audiences without proportionately increasing production costs.

“The brands that will benefit the most won't necessarily be the ones using the most AI. They'll be the ones combining AI's speed with strong human judgment, cultural understanding and creative thinking.”

Agarwal similarly believes campaign planning and AI-assisted creative development are likely to deliver the greatest benefits for Indian marketers over the next year, particularly as brands attempt to respond to increasingly fragmented consumer behaviour across channels.

Automation isn't autopilot

Despite the optimism, several executives cautioned against viewing Google's latest AI capabilities as fully autonomous systems capable of replacing marketing expertise.

Dr Siddhant Sethi, AI Professional and Specialist at White Rivers Media, described the announcements as “a real shift, but not autopilot.”

“Google is putting AI into almost every part of advertising. Planning, creatives, search, optimisation, measurement and account support. That does change the job of a marketer,” he said.

However, he argued that the effectiveness of these systems would ultimately depend on the quality of an advertiser's first-party data, business goals and brand guardrails.

“If it is not grounded properly, it can sound confident and still be wrong. In advertising, that is dangerous because wrong assumptions can quickly become wrong spends.”

According to Sethi, marketers may spend less time adjusting campaign settings but considerably more time defining objectives, validating AI recommendations and ensuring the technology is optimising for the right business outcomes.

“The marketer's role is to set the direction, ask better questions, review the output and make sure the machine is not optimising in the wrong direction,” he said.

He expects AI-assisted campaign optimisation and AI Max for Search to see the fastest adoption in India because of the country's strong focus on return on investment and its diverse consumer landscape.

At the same time, he warned against treating automation as infallible. “AI can help advertisers move faster. But speed without judgment is just a faster way to make mistakes.”

Google's announcements suggest the company sees the next phase of advertising as increasingly conversational, predictive and agentic, with AI participating in decisions that have traditionally belonged to marketers themselves. Whether brands are prepared to hand over that responsibility (or where they choose to draw the line between machine intelligence and human judgment) may ultimately determine how quickly that vision becomes reality.

Google did not reply to queries at the time of writing.