Google may have just created a billion-dollar optimization market

AI visibility struggled to attract serious budget until recently for a simple reason: nobody funds what they can't measure. Now it's measurable, so the money moves.

For years, brands have wanted to know whether AI systems were actually recommending their products, but there was no reliable way to see it. That changed at Google Marketing Live.

Share of voice across AI shopping experiences

Google's new AI Performance Insights, rolling out in Merchant Center, shows a brand's share of voice across AI shopping experiences, not just impressions, but whether products surface when shoppers describe what they want in full sentences instead of keywords, across Gemini and AI Mode.

Conversational Attributes describe products the way shoppers talk

Alongside this, Google introduced Conversational Attributes: a new product-feed field designed to describe items the way customers actually talk about them. Those same inputs help shape what gets recommended.

Measurable means fundable

Marketing budgets rarely shift toward channels that can't be measured. Recommendation visibility was effectively invisible. Now it isn't.

Brands that start pulling these reports over the next few months will see exactly how often they appear in AI-driven shopping journeys, and where they stand against competitors. Those that wait for the landscape to “settle” risk optimizing for a demand model that no longer reflects how people actually shop.