Advertising in AI answers: Google, Bing, ChatGPT and what is available in Canada

As of November 3, 2026, three companies sell advertising inside their AI answers in Canada. Google has shown ads in AI Mode and in AI Overviews since October 28, in English only, drawn from your existing Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns. Microsoft has served ads in Copilot since March 2025, in French as well as English. Ads were also spotted inside Bing's AI Overviews on October 30. OpenAI has sold ads in ChatGPT in Canada since spring 2026, to Free and Go accounts only. Perplexity has stopped selling them, and the Gemini app and Claude show none. For an advertising budget, the consequence is simple: at Google and Microsoft, you are already in without having asked; at OpenAI, it is a separate purchase, and one that earns less per visit than Google Search according to the only independent study published. Advertising in AI answers is therefore prepared inside your current campaigns, not in a new budget.

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This text is for business owners and marketing teams who manage an advertising budget in Quebec or in Canada and who wonder whether advertising in AI answers deserves a budget line in 2027. It takes stock platform by platform, with what is available in Canada at the date of publication, then what has been announced. We have already written about the arrival of Google ads in AI Mode in Canada, about our B2B test of ChatGPT Ads and about why we advise against them. This article ties those pieces together and adds what has moved since.

Where advertising in AI answers is available in Canada

The table sums up the situation as of November 3, 2026. The "how you buy it" column is the one that matters for a budget: some placements are sold with your current campaigns, others require a separate account and a separate spend.

One detail matters for Quebec: AI Mode itself is available in Canada in French, according to the Google Search help page that lists countries and languages. It is the ads inside the answers that are not. A customer who asks a question in French in AI Mode therefore sees an answer without ads, for now.

Google: ads in AI Mode and AI Overviews

On October 28, 2026, Google announced that ads in AI Mode are "scaling" in ten countries, including Canada, after the United States. Brazil, Mexico and the United Kingdom are to follow by the end of 2026. In the United States only, Google is also launching ads in follow-up questions within the same conversation. We detailed how it works in our note of October 29: existing campaigns eligible by default, same auction, "Sponsored" label, reporting blended into Search.

What Google's pages do not say the same way

Three Google documents describe the same new feature and do not say the same thing. The table puts them side by side, because it is in those gaps that a Canadian advertiser finds the answers.

The last two rows are read together. Google tells its advertisers that clicks follow, and its investors that each AI Mode query earns less than a classic search. Both can be true at the same time. A long, exploratory query triggers an ad less often. When it does trigger one, the click is not worth more. "Google Search & other" revenue reached US$63.35 billion in the third quarter of 2026, against US$56.57 billion a year earlier, a 12% increase after 19% in the first quarter and 17% in the second. Pichai replied that Google is "focused on building the best Search user experience, followed by monetization".

How many queries show an ad

The only large-scale independent measurement comes from SE Ranking, which queried the American AI Mode on June 30, 2026 with 50,032 commercial keywords across 20 sectors. The result: 29.45% of queries returned a text ad; when there was one, there were two in 71.1% of cases. Ad presence follows the cost per click: 24.33% of keywords under US$2, 53.56% at US$10 and above. The gaps between sectors are huge, from 2.64% in healthcare to 72.38% for pets. SE Ranking presents its 29.45% as "a floor, not a ceiling," because the same query shows an ad in one session and not in the next.

The most useful figure in that study is elsewhere: only 11.53% of the domains paying for an ad appeared among the sources cited by the answer. For about 85% of keywords, the advertiser's site appeared nowhere in the organic results. Paying for a place in the answer does not make you a source of the answer.

Two other movements deserve attention. On October 29, Google confirmed it was testing, in AI Mode, carousels where sponsored products are mixed with "all products," with a "Sponsored" header to tell them apart. And since October 16, 2026, Google's privacy policy allows summaries drawn from Gmail, Google Photos and Google Drive to personalize ads for people who have connected those apps to Search, a Labs experiment limited to the United States; the advertiser gains no new targeting and no new report from it.

Microsoft: Copilot and Bing's AI Overviews

Microsoft is the only one of the three selling ads inside AI answers in French. In a post dated March 5, 2025, Kya Sainsbury-Carter, corporate vice president of Microsoft Advertising, wrote that ads in Copilot had "fully rolled out in English, French, and German-speaking markets," with Spanish and Japanese due the same month. The post also announced two formats in pilot: Showroom ads, an interactive showcase offered to a person who shows purchase intent, and dynamic filters to narrow a product search without typing another question. Microsoft claimed there, citing internal data, that ad relevance in Copilot was "25% better" than in traditional search.

On October 30, 2026, Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Roundtable relayed a screenshot showing "Sponsored Results" inside Bing's AI Overviews, the summary Bing displays at the top of its results. Microsoft did not comment, and Schwartz could not trigger those ads himself. So the placement exists, without anyone knowing yet in which countries or with which formats.

For a Canadian advertiser, the practical question is whether their Microsoft Advertising campaigns already feed Copilot. Microsoft publishes no page that answers it for Canada. The company's texts describe Copilot ads as separate from the answers, marked as sponsored and shown "only when highly relevant and from trusted sources": nothing there describes a separate campaign to create. The check is done in the account, campaign by campaign. If you are testing Microsoft Ads for a B2B market, our test method applies as is.

ChatGPT: a separate purchase that only reaches free accounts

OpenAI sells its ads in a separate manager, with a separate account and budget. On October 21, 2026, the company added 26 countries, for a total of 89. It says that more than 100,000 advertisers have run a campaign since the launch, in February 2026. Canada has been included since spring 2026: that is what allowed us to run our own B2B test there, where ChatGPT Ads converted at 0.9% against 5.95% on Google Ads for the same client.

Three October changes affect advertisers already running. Since October 30, "creative enhancements" are turned on by default on all campaigns, new and existing: OpenAI's system can rewrite headlines and descriptions, translate the text, resize the image and even change the landing page to another page on your site, with no preview of each variation and no separate report. The setting is turned off under "Manage settings," at the account or campaign level. A wider card, which uses more of the conversation width on desktop, is rolling out with no action from the advertiser. Multi-image ads are open to everyone in beta.

On frequency, SE Ranking repeated its exercise on ChatGPT on July 23, 2026, with 50,006 American commercial prompts: 25.94% returned an ad, always a single one, always below the answer. The advertiser was cited among the answer's sources in 3.63% of cases, and 14.35% of ads were no more related to the question than an ad picked at random.

On returns, a single independent study existed as of November 2026. Maximilian Kaiser (Vienna University of Economics and Business) and Christian Schulze (Frankfurt School of Finance & Management) analyzed, from the Google Analytics data of 102 American merchant sites, 60 weeks ending August 22, 2026. A visit from a ChatGPT ad brought US$0.89 in sales, against US$2.45 for a visit from a Google Search ad; conversion rates were 0.37% against 1.17%. For a ChatGPT click to be worth as much as a Google click, it would have to cost about US$0.26, while OpenAI recommends starting bids of US$3 to US$5. The study is a working paper, under review, based on last-click attribution and on advertisers who chose to buy: it describes, it does not prove a cause. It matches what we measured in the spring.

Those who do not sell ads: Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Meta AI

Perplexity went the other way. After launching ads at the end of 2024, the company told the Financial Times in February 2026 that it was dropping them because advertising "makes users suspicious of everything" and because it lives off subscriptions. Anthropic wrote on February 4, 2026 that Claude "will remain ad-free," with no sponsored links next to conversations and no product placements in the answers. The Gemini app shows no ads; in May 2026, Philipp Schindler only told investors that a format that works in AI Mode "could carry over with some success to the Gemini app," without a date. Meta shows no ads in Meta AI, but since December 16, 2025, your conversations with its assistant have been used to personalize Facebook and Instagram ads, except on sensitive topics.

For a budget, these four cases count as much as the first three: a share of your customers' AI conversations cannot be bought at all. The only way in is unpaid visibility, that is, being cited in the answer.

What it changes for your advertising budget

The common thread: advertising in AI answers does not call for a new budget, it calls for managing the one you have better. The two platforms that matter most in Canada, Google and Microsoft, draw on your current campaigns. The only one that sells a separate purchase, ChatGPT, is also the one with the weakest measured return.

What to prepare now

What has been announced and what has not

What Google has announced: Brazil, Mexico and the United Kingdom by the end of 2026; ads in follow-up questions, in the United States only; tests of local inventory ads and vehicle ads. Two formats presented at Google Marketing Live on May 20, 2026, conversational discovery ads and highlighted answers, remain American tests. What Google has not announced: a date for French, a separate report for AI Mode, a way to opt out.

What OpenAI has announced: the expansion to 89 countries, wider and multi-image formats, a Shopify integration internationally. What OpenAI has not announced: ads to paid accounts, targeting by job title or by company.

What Microsoft has announced: interactive formats in Copilot. What Microsoft has not confirmed: the ads in Bing's AI Overviews seen on October 30.

The trend is clear: advertising in AI answers follows the path of search, one country at a time, in English first, drawn from the campaigns you already have. French-speaking Quebec comes at the end of the list. That is a window, not a delay: time to put your campaigns, your exclusions and your pages in order before French opens up.

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