Google is expanding its AI-search advertising and checkout tools, introducing Business Agent for Leads, a Gemini-powered brand chatbot that replaces static contact forms inside the search interface, according to PYMNTS. Google's Direct Offers pilot, which lets shoppers complete purchases within AI-assisted search, now includes native checkout for Universal Commerce Protocol merchants, with Chewy, Gap, and L'Oréal already live and Expedia and Booking.com set to join. Universal Cart, Google's cross-service AI shopping cart, also now embeds Affirm and Klarna as buy-now-pay-later options inside Google Pay, with the retailer remaining merchant of record wherever the transaction completes. Google said more than 30% of search ad spend now uses AI-enabled campaign tools, and that queries in its AI Mode run three times longer than traditional searches. The shift leaves advertisers with a measurement gap, since conversational queries don't map cleanly onto keyword-level attribution.
