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, 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 capabilities planned throughout the rest of 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 largely been designed to help advertisers manage campaigns more efficiently.
Ask Ad Manager applies a similar concept to publisher and ad operations teams.
Rather than helping users build campaigns or understand recommendations, the tool focuses on common workflows inside Google Ad Manager. Google highlighted three primary use cases: troubleshooting delivery issues, generating reports, and helping users navigate the platform more efficiently.
For troubleshooting, publishers can ask the assistant to investigate line item delivery issues instead of manually pulling reports and reviewing settings across multiple screens. The agent can surface 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 through prompts rather than manually assembling reports.
The third capability 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 the time spent searching through menus and settings.
Google says the assistant works from each publisher’s own Ad Manager data and supports multi-turn 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 serve different audiences and solve different problems.
Ask Advisor is designed primarily for advertisers. A PPC manager might use it to understand a recommendation, learn how a feature works, troubleshoot a campaign setup issue, or get guidance on Google Ads best practices. It’s also used across Google Analytics and Merchant Center.
Ask Ad Manager is built for publishers using Google Ad Manager.
Ask Ad Manager is not simply surfacing documentation 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 operations.
What Publishers Should Watch During The Beta
The beta will give publishers an opportunity to evaluate whether Ask Ad Manager can meaningfully reduce the time spent on routine operational tasks.
Troubleshooting delivery issues and building custom reports are logical starting points because they often require multiple manual steps and significant time spent moving between reports, settings, and workflows.
At the same time, Google notes that generative AI responses remain experimental. Publishers should continue validating reports, recommendations, and troubleshooting guidance before taking action.
For teams that receive beta access, testing the assistant against existing workflows will likely provide the clearest picture of its value. Comparing outputs against trusted reports and established processes should help determine whether the tool is reducing workload or simply shifting effort into review and validation.
AI Agents Continue Moving Through Ad Tech
Ask Ad Manager may be one of the clearest examples yet of Google bringing 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 those 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 save using the tool, adoption may be limited. That will be one of the first things publishers can evaluate as beta access begins.
Featured Image: Google
