Google just dropped a suite of AI-powered tools that could reshape how publishers make money online. The tech giant's latest updates to Ad Manager, AdSense and AdMob promise to automate tedious manual work while opening new revenue streams from live content - a move that directly challenges existing ad tech players and puts AI at the center of digital advertising.
Google is betting big on AI to solve publishers' biggest headaches. The company's announcement today introduces three AI-powered tools that promise to automate the grunt work that's been eating into publishers' time and profits.
The centerpiece is an AI brand safety tool that learns from publishers' manual ad review decisions and will soon automatically block unwanted ads. "Our new AI brand safety tool learns a publisher's unique brand standards — above and beyond category restrictions — from the decisions they make in the Ads Review Center," Google VP Scott Sheffer explained in the company blog post.
The timing couldn't be better. Publishers have been drowning in manual ad review processes while trying to maintain brand safety standards. This AI assistant essentially creates a custom brand safety profile for each publisher, moving beyond generic category blocks to understand nuanced preferences.
Google's also rolling out a generative AI reporting tool that lets publishers ask natural language questions like "Which ad units had the highest CPM last week?" instead of wrestling with complex dashboards. For an industry where data analysis often requires technical expertise, this democratizes insights for smaller publishers.
But it's the live content play that could be Google's biggest power move. The new CTV Live-biddable solution targets what BCG research shows is a hot market - 82% of buyers plan to increase programmatic live CTV investment over the next year.
"Unpredictable live events, like a football game that goes into overtime or an award show that runs over, can create high-value audiences," the announcement notes. Google's solution promises real-time audience understanding at scale, letting advertisers bid on those premium moments when viewership spikes unexpectedly.
DAZN is already seeing results. "Google Ad Manager's live CTV solution allowed us to deliver high-quality streams of the FIFA Club World Cup to millions of fans globally," said Ronan McCarthy, the sports streamer's SVP of Media Operations, in a .
