Google is integrating AI agents into the publisher side of its advertising business.
The company announced Ask Ad Manager, a new assistant powered by Gemini and integrated directly into Google Ad Manager. The tool is designed to help publishers resolve delivery issues, generate reports, and navigate the platform through conversational prompts instead of manual workflows.
Ask Ad Manager will begin rolling out in beta this month, with additional features planned throughout the year.
What Ask Ad Manager does
Most of Google’s recent AI announcements have focused on advertisers. AI Mode, AI Max, campaign creation tools and recommendation systems have been largely designed to help advertisers manage their campaigns more effectively.
Ask Ad Manager applies a similar concept to publisher and ad ops teams.
Rather than helping users create campaigns or understand recommendations, the tool focuses on common workflows in Google Ad Manager. Google highlighted three main use cases: troubleshooting delivery issues, generating reports, and helping users navigate the platform more efficiently.
To troubleshoot issues, publishers can ask the assistant to investigate line item delivery issues instead of manually pulling reports and checking settings across 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, retrieve specific metrics, create benchmark comparisons, and analyze performance via prompts rather than manually assembling reports.
The third ability focuses on navigation. Ask Ad Manager can direct users to relevant sections of the platform and load filters based on the context of the conversation, reducing time spent searching through menus and settings.
Google says the assistant works off each publisher’s Ad Manager data and supports multi-round conversations, allowing users to refine requests without starting over.
How Ask Ad Manager differs from Ask Advisor
Some users will immediately compare this launch to Ask Advisor, but the two products are aimed at different audiences and solve different problems.
Ask the advisor is designed primarily for advertisers. A PPC manager can use it to understand a recommendation, learn how a feature works, troubleshoot a campaign setup issue, or get advice on Google Ads best practices. It is also used in Google Analytics and Merchant Center.
Ask Ad Manager is designed for publishers using Google Ad Manager.
Ask Ad Manager is not just about displaying documentation or answering product questions. It works with account-level data to help publishers investigate delivery issues, analyze inventory performance, generate reports, and perform operational tasks.
To summarize the difference between the two:
- Ask Advisor helps advertisers manage their campaigns
- Ask Ad Manager helps publishers manage ad inventory and operations.
What Publishers Should Watch During Beta
The beta will give publishers the opportunity to evaluate whether Ask Ad Manager can significantly reduce the time spent on routine operational tasks.
Troubleshooting delivery issues and creating custom reports are logical starting points because they often require multiple manual steps and considerable time spent moving between reports, settings, and workflows.
At the same time, Google notes that generative AI responses remain experimental. Publishers should continue to validate reports, recommendations, and troubleshooting tips before taking action.
For teams with beta access, testing the assistant against existing workflows will likely provide the clearest picture of its value. Comparing results with reliable reporting and established processes should help determine whether the tool reduces workload or simply directs effort toward review and validation.
AI agents continue to evolve thanks to advertising technology
Ask Ad Manager is perhaps one of the clearest examples yet of Google integrating conversational AI beyond campaign management and into operational workflows.
Advertisers have already seen AI become part of campaign creation, optimization, recommendations and reporting. This announcement applies many of these same concepts to publisher-side operations.
The long-term success of the product will likely depend on accuracy and trust. If publishers spend more time validating responses than they earn using the tool, adoption may be limited. This will be one of the first things publishers can evaluate as beta access begins.
Featured image: Google
