Google has launched Ask Ad Manager, a Gemini-powered conversational AI agent built natively into its Google Ad Manager ad serving platform for publishers, with public beta access rolling out gradually starting in June 2026.
The tool is built to eliminate repetitive manual work for publisher ad operations (ad ops) teams. Public beta access rolls out gradually to all Google Ad Manager users starting in June 2026, with additional agentic capabilities launching on a staggered schedule through the end of 2026 1.
The initial public beta focuses on three high-volume manual ad ops tasks that typically consume significant team time. Publishers can query the agent to diagnose line item underperformance, inventory delivery issues, or revenue gaps without manually generating and cross-referencing multiple separate reports, with support for follow-up questions to speed resolution.
The agent also generates formatted tables, comparative benchmarks, or custom reports in seconds for specific metric requests, eliminating the need to build and export custom reports from the Ad Manager UI for one-off data needs.
It also provides direct, pre-filtered links to the exact Ad Manager sections relevant to a user’s current task, pre-loaded with the correct filters and settings to cut down on time spent navigating multi-level menus 1.
Google’s broader agentic ad roadmap aims to build a closed-loop system where AI handles the full campaign lifecycle, from inventory discoverability and pricing to execution and optimization, all within the Ad Manager ecosystem. This consolidation is designed to reduce reliance on disparate third-party tools for different stages of ad operations for publishers 1.
The company is already running partner pilots to test extended functionality: for example, Yahoo is integrating Ad Manager data into custom internal agents to automate end-to-end ad ops workflows, including inventory forecasting, line item creation, performance reporting, and campaign optimization.
To support broader custom agent development across the ad tech ecosystem, Google will release new REST APIs and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server later in 2026, designed to streamline key trafficking workflow integrations for third-party tools.
The company is also building specialized native agents for publishers and agencies to handle campaign discovery, negotiation, and execution directly within the Ad Manager platform, plus infrastructure to enable first- and third-party agents to interact at scale 1.
