Google is bringing AI agents to the publisher side of its advertising business.
The company announced Ask Ad Manager, a new Gemini-powered assistant built directly into Google Ad Manager. The tool is designed to help publishers troubleshoot delivery issues, create reports, and navigate the platform using conversational commands instead of a manual workflow.
Ask Ad Manager will begin rolling out in beta this month, with additional capabilities planned throughout the year.
What to Ask an Ad Manager
Most of Google’s recent AI announcements have focused on marketers. AI Mode, AI Max, campaign creation tools, and recommendation systems are all designed to help marketers manage campaigns more effectively.
Ask Ad Manager uses the same concept for publisher and ad operations teams.
Rather than helping users create campaigns or understand recommendations, the tool focuses on general functionality within Google’s ad manager. Google highlighted three main use cases: reporting problems, generating reports, and helping users navigate the site more efficiently.
To troubleshoot, publishers can ask an assistant to investigate line item delivery issues instead of manually pulling reports and updating settings on multiple screens. The agent can identify potential causes, provide guidance, and answer follow-up questions as users continue their investigation.
Publishers can also generate custom reports, obtain specific metrics, perform benchmark comparisons, and analyze performance by using data rather than compiling reports manually.
The third skill focuses on navigation. Ask Ad Manager can direct users to the appropriate sections of the forum and load filters based on the context of the conversation, reducing time spent searching menus and settings.
Google says the assistant works from each publisher’s ad manager data and supports dynamic conversations, allowing users to adjust requests without starting over.
How Ask an Ad Manager is Different from Ask Advisor
Some users will quickly compare this implementation to Ask Advisor, but these two products serve different audiences and solve different problems.
Ask Advisor is designed mainly for marketers. A PPC manager might use it to understand a recommendation, learn how a feature works, troubleshoot a campaign setup, or get guidance on Google Ads best practices. It is also used throughout Google Analytics and the Merchant Center.
Ask Ad Manager is designed for publishers using Google Ad Manager.
Ask an Ad Manager isn’t just about displaying documents or answering product questions. It works with account-level data to help publishers investigate delivery issues, analyze inventory performance, generate reports, and complete operational tasks.
To summarize the difference between the two:
- Ask Advisor helps advertisers manage campaigns
- Ask Ad Manager helps publishers manage inventory and ad activity.
What Publishers Should Watch for During Beta
The beta will give publishers the opportunity to test whether Ask an Ad Manager can meaningfully reduce the time spent on common operational tasks.
Troubleshooting delivery issues and custom building reports are logical starting points because they often require a lot of manual steps and valuable time spent moving between reports, settings, and workflows.
At the same time, Google notes that AI’s productive responses are constantly being tested. Publishers should continue to verify reports, recommendations, and troubleshooting guidelines before taking action.
For teams getting beta access, testing the assistant through existing workflows will likely give a clearer picture of your value. Comparing the results against reliable reports and established procedures should help determine whether the tool reduces workload or simply diverts effort into review and validation.
AI Agents Keep Moving Through Ad Tech
Ask Ad Manager may be one of the clearest examples yet of Google bringing conversational AI beyond campaign management and workflow.
Marketers have already seen AI become part of campaign creation, optimization, recommendations, and reporting. This announcement uses many of those same concepts for publisher-side operations.
The long-term success of the product will likely depend on accuracy and reliability. If publishers spend more time verifying responses than they save using the tool, adoption may be limited. That will be one of the first things publishers can test as beta access begins.
Featured Image: Google
