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[00:00:23] Marcus Johnson: Hey, gang. It's Monday, November 9th. Marisa, Cindy, Nate, and listeners, welcome to Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast made possible by AI Digital. I'm Marcus, and joining me for today's conversation we have three folks now calling Boston home, newsletter analyst Marisa Jones.

[00:00:38] Marisa Jones: Hi, Marcus. Thank you for having me.

[00:00:39] Marcus Johnson: [00:00:40] Hello there. Thanks for being here. In New York, director of forecasting, Cindy Liu.

[00:00:44] Marisa Jones: Hi, Marcus. It's been a while.

[00:00:46] Marcus Johnson: It has. Finally convinced her, Nate did, to be on the show, uh, so thank you for that. Nate, uh, sometimes in New York, currently in New York, mixed with a little bit of North Carolina, but not at the moment, principal AI analyst Nate Elliott.

[00:00:59] Nate Elliott: Hey, Marcus. [00:01:00] I'm caught off guard by the fact that Marssa doesn't live in New York anymore.

[00:01:03] Marisa Jones: Yeah. It's been a minute.

[00:01:05] Nate Elliott: Okay.

[00:01:05] Marcus Johnson: Snuck out.

[00:01:06] Nate Elliott: That shows how often I get to the office.

[00:01:10] Marcus Johnson: Wait, it's re- you recently- it was, like, a couple of weeks? Has it been a month now?

[00:01:13] Marisa Jones: Like-

[00:01:13] Marcus Johnson: Yeah ...

[00:01:14] Marisa Jones: about two months now.

[00:01:15] Marcus Johnson: Whoa, okay. Wow. Yeah,

[00:01:16] Marisa Jones: close to two.

[00:01:17] Marcus Johnson: That's moving real quick. Well, they are our guests for today, and we [00:01:20] start, of course, with a fact of the day.

[00:01:26] Marcus Johnson: So Nate, this one's for you. As a sailing man, so you probably know this, but for myself and other folks, I went away and learnt why it's called port and starboard. I can't believe I've not looked this up until, till now. I just was like, "Well, that's what it is, so deal with it." Uh, [00:01:40] so starboard, uh, from what I was reading, comes from the old English, uh, steerboard, meaning steering side.

[00:01:46] Marcus Johnson: And so early ships typically steered using a large oar mounted on the right-hand side, which became known as the steering board, eventually evolving into starboard. Because the steering oar stuck out on the right, uh, ships would typically approach a [00:02:00] dock, uh, with their left side facing the harbor or the port to avoid damaging the steering gear.

[00:02:06] Marcus Johnson: And that side became known first as larboard, which in English means loading side, but the word sounded too similar to starboard, and so sailors adopted port instead, referring to the side facing the port or the harbor.

[00:02:19] Nate Elliott: You know, I've [00:02:20] heard, uh, probably a dozen different explanations for why they're called- Oh, really?

[00:02:23] Nate Elliott: starboard and port. I, I have, I've given up on ever knowing- ... what the true answer is, but that sounds as plausible as any.

[00:02:29] Marcus Johnson: This is the one I found. Yeah, I like this one. So that's why it's called it. I still think left and right would really ... Like, we couldn't have just changed it? Although port has the same number of letters as left, so [00:02:40] that's now how I remember it, which helped.

[00:02:41] Marcus Johnson: I'm never on a ship. I don't need to know this.

[00:02:43] Nate Elliott: You should get on more ships.

[00:02:44] Marcus Johnson: I should. We'll see. Anyway, today's real topic. The big three questions for Google

[00:02:56] Marcus Johnson: All right, so let's set the table first. Uh, [00:03:00] Q3, how did they do? Alphabet's parent company, uh, they, it reported total revenue of $128 billion, uh, in Q3. That's up nearly 25% year over year, stronger than the 16% last Q3. 64% of that money comes from ads. That's its lowest share to date. And as recently as [00:03:20] mid-2025, yeah, so a year ago, 74% of their money was coming from advertising to, uh, in Q3 it was 64%, so quite a drop there.

[00:03:27] Marcus Johnson: Uh, but that's its share. Uh, it made $82 billion. The, the, the, the dollars are up, uh, the, 11%, um, but down a touch from the 13% growth they had last Q3 in advertising. Uh, and then YouTube, interesting line [00:03:40] item for them, uh, made 11 billion. That's up 9% in Q3 year over year, down from 15% the same quarter last year.

[00:03:48] Marcus Johnson: Um, Cloud did very well, 31 billion, up 100% year over year. So that's how it's been doing, uh, financially, but we're here to talk about the big three questions for Google at the moment. Uh, Marisa, what's one on your [00:04:00] list?

[00:04:00] Marisa Jones: So my biggest question for Google is Google's advertising business we see is helping fund its AI ambitions, but can that business continue generating enough growth to justify the cost of competing in AI that Google is seeing now?

[00:04:15] Marisa Jones: So advertising is still Google's largest revenue category, like you just said, is decreasing, [00:04:20] but it is still well over half of their revenues. In Q3 it grew about 10.6%, so not super big, but definitely not bad at all. But we're also seeing their purchases of property equipment more than doubling year over year, growing 114% to about 51 billion.

[00:04:37] Marisa Jones: So the question now I feel for Google is whether [00:04:40] they can, one, translate their AI investments into sustainable growth across its core advertising business and newer AI advertising products. Um, AI is contributing to search query growth, according to Google. They did point that out in their earnings, but they haven't yet demonstrated that these investments are meaningfully generating [00:05:00] advertising revenues and other returns at a scale that is justifying their costs.

[00:05:04] Marcus Johnson: I read a quote in Reuters, Dave Wagner, portfolio manager at Aptos Capital Advisors, who said, quote, "In a market worried about AI cannibalizing the franchise, investors need to see search accelerating, not decelerating." Nate, how, how relevant is this concern in your opinion?

[00:05:19] Nate Elliott: It's a valid [00:05:20] concern, but as you said, Marcus, they're doing incredibly well in the cloud business right now.

[00:05:24] Nate Elliott: These investments aren't just paying for consumer usage that's funded by advertising. They're paying for the cloud business. Uh, and so they're making these investments because they can't not make them. And the amount of money that they're making from their ad business [00:05:40] continues to grow for more than three years.

[00:05:43] Nate Elliott: It's grown by double digits every single quarter. The amount of money they're making from their cloud business continues to grow even faster than that. I mean, it's a relevant question. Are they making enough money from advertising to help pay for all this? But it's important to remember as well that advertising is not the only source of revenue they have to [00:06:00] pay for these investments.

[00:06:01] Cindy Liu: I guess what's interesting is I think, you know, obviously Google is recognizing this pressure, right? I think they just announced after their earnings call that they're going to bring AI-powered search experiences globally now So they're opening these types of, you know, opportunities and ad- this ad [00:06:20] business, um, globally.

[00:06:21] Cindy Liu: So, and you know, I think they recognize that there's this growing pressure.

[00:06:24] Nate Elliott: Mm-hmm. It was the AI mode ad business, right? Yeah. That they said they were gonna- Yeah ...

[00:06:27] Cindy Liu: take global- The AI mode ad, international markets ...

[00:06:29] Nate Elliott: and they're introducing multi-turn advertising opportunities in the US. I mean, they're, they're, they're taking the right steps.

[00:06:36] Cindy Liu: I mean, I think it's clear that there's, like, tremendous opportunity here. [00:06:40] You know, like, the amount of opportunity and, like, the, the amount of ads, the placements of ads and, you know, AI conversations. I think Google is being smart about being... They don't want to, um, jeopardize the experience that consumers have- Yeah

[00:06:54] Cindy Liu: within these AI experiences, right? So I think that's still a challenge for them.

[00:06:57] Nate Elliott: And the question that you asked, Marisa, ties into [00:07:00] one of my big questions for Google, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna jump the gun and, and put that one out there now, which is when are they gonna start talking to us about AI search separately from traditional search?

[00:07:11] Nate Elliott: And I don't have that question primarily as an analyst who wants to understand the ad business like you just asked, although I am very [00:07:20] curious as an analyst who wants to understand the ad business. I ask the question because advertisers and marketers need to see different data for these different services and different experiences.

[00:07:30] Nate Elliott: Right now, the brands who optimize for organic placement in Google have no really good way of understanding what that looks like in traditional search results [00:07:40] versus AI Overview, AI Mode, and Gemini. And perhaps more importantly, the brands who are spending money with Google to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars every year have literally no idea how many of their ads have appeared in an AI Overview or AI Mode, or how those ads are performing compared to traditional search.

[00:07:59] Nate Elliott: This is the stuff [00:08:00] that good search advertisers and marketers have always relied on for successfully optimizing their campaigns, and as it becomes a bigger mix, the longer Google goes without teasing out these different surfaces and allowing advertisers to bid on them differently and optimize them differently, the harder it's gonna be to continue to [00:08:20] generate a really good ROI from Google Ads.

[00:08:22] Nate Elliott: So I think they have to start showing us that data or showing marketers that data at some point sooner than later, and also that will be really good for all of us as analysts, 'cause it'll give us a lot of information that we'd love to know.

[00:08:34] Marcus Johnson: We'd really appreciate it, Google, if you could get on that. Why do you think they haven't to date, Nate?

[00:08:38] Marcus Johnson: What do you think the reasoning might be?

[00:08:39] Nate Elliott: Because the [00:08:40] numbers aren't where they want them to be- Right ... most likely. I mean, it, it is, it is a competitive advantage for them to know that and for no one else to know it. No one else is in the seat that they're in. OpenAI has a similarly sized AI business to Google, um, but no one has a similarly sized search business, and [00:09:00] knowing what the interplay is of traditional search and AI search results in all their different flavors is something that one company on this planet knows right now.

[00:09:08] Nate Elliott: The longer they can keep that in-house, the- greater their competitive advantage when talking to or, or competing against rather, um, AI platforms. And I also think, uh, honestly [00:09:20] they, they want the numbers to be bigger before they start publishing them is, is my other guess.

[00:09:24] Cindy Liu: I mean, I think they also have to prove like incrementality, right?

[00:09:28] Cindy Liu: Like, is it just shifting from traditional search? So they, I think they need to also prove that it's adding incremental growth, like new, new opportunities.

[00:09:37] Nate Elliott: And they, they continually talk about how they [00:09:40] view AI as additive to their search business. Right. But they very cannily don't actually give us any of the numbers- Yeah

[00:09:45] Nate Elliott: that would allow us to verify that statement.

[00:09:48] Marcus Johnson: Yeah, their chief business officer, I thought this was interesting, uh, Philipp Schindler attributing a large unexpected deceleration in search advertising growth to the greater use of AI mode.

[00:09:57] Nate Elliott: He also pointed out that, uh, it didn't [00:10:00] grow as much as it might have because Q2 was so good with the World Cup.

[00:10:03] Nate Elliott: I mean, there are days that I'm glad I'm an industry analyst and not a financial analyst. Uh, those days perhaps not coincidentally are often the days that Google releases its results because again, this is a incredibly large, very mature business that continues to grow by [00:10:20] double digits quarter after quarter for years on end, and then the market punishes them because the market guessed wrong exactly how many double digits it would grow this quarter seems a little bit bananas to me.

[00:10:32] Nate Elliott: Um, i- it's a good, big, strong business that continues to grow and they have some headwinds, they have some challenges they need to figure out, [00:10:40] but they're still growing remarkably, uh, in the face of all those challenges right now.

[00:10:45] Marcus Johnson: That's a really good point. I, I hadn't noticed that when I was looking through their numbers, but their Q2 number Their growth in advertising was 14.4%, which was the strongest growth that they've had in advertising outside of Q1.

[00:10:58] Marcus Johnson: That's the strongest growth they've had in, [00:11:00] like, four years, I think since the Q1 of 2022. So that, that was a very strong, uh, bump for Q2. So yeah, in comparison, maybe the 10.6 doesn't look quite as good. Um, but still dou- still double digits. Um, Cindy, what's one of your big questions?

[00:11:15] Cindy Liu: So I'm coming into this podcast, I, I feel like as an outsider a bit, you know, I don't [00:11:20] cover Google in my day-to-day as a retail analyst.

[00:11:22] Cindy Liu: So I guess one of the main things I've been interested in is how the consumer shopping experience has changed with AI, um, and then also, you know, what that means for Google. And so when I was listening to their earnings call, you know, I was particularly interested if they had anything to say about Adjunctive [00:11:40] Commerce and the Universal Cart, which, um, they just launched in October.

[00:11:45] Cindy Liu: Mm-hmm. The idea with the Universal Cart is that it makes shopping easier for consumers, so they can, like, discover products and compare options, also track prices. I think one key feature of it is that, um, consumers can [00:12:00] build into a single cart, um, items from multiple stores. I th- so I think that's one interesting feature.

[00:12:07] Cindy Liu: But I guess what struck me about the earnings call was that they acknowledged that, I guess, search query has grown at the highest rate in five years, but at the same time, search revenue growth has decelerated. So it's [00:12:20] almost as if how are they continuing to monetize these more complex questions and generate as much value from these, like, shopping experiences?

[00:12:30] Cindy Liu: So my big question is, you know, can Google turn these AI-powered shopping experiences like Universal Cart into a more meaningful commerce business? And how [00:12:40] does that look into, like, as well new ad opportunities? I mean, for me, I think, you know, obviously, with the Universal Cart, it's not necessarily making money through the cart itself.

[00:12:50] Cindy Liu: I don't even think they're, you know, they're not charging transaction fees, but it's about how are they making this product more useful across its advertising business. [00:13:00] Mm-hmm. Um, and so I think three interesting opportunities would be, you know, using, um, shopping intent signals across their products, so, you know, when consumers are saving products, comparing prices, et cetera, Google You know, they're gaining additional insights from these [00:13:20] consumers, and these signals can, can improve the ad experiences over time in search and AI mode.

[00:13:24] Cindy Liu: And then also, maybe they will end up, you know, opening up ad formats within the cart itself. You know, that- Mm-hmm ... that is also an, an area. You know, if a, a consumer is shopping and saving a pair of [00:13:40] sneakers, they might see a relevant sponsored post, you know, when they revisit their cart li- at a later time.

[00:13:46] Cindy Liu: And then again, I think with the shopping journey, it's becoming so fluid where if a shopping journey begins in search and continues in Gemini and then ends up in Universal Cart, you know, it gives advertisers more opportunity to connect with [00:14:00] consumers. So I think that the point we had mentioned earlier about there's, like, just more inventory or more areas where they, where advertisers can reach consumers.

[00:14:09] Cindy Liu: Mm-hmm. I think these are just all areas that Google can explore when it comes to, like, AI shopping, and I guess fundamentally is how is this going to boost their [00:14:20] advertising spend over time.

[00:14:21] Nate Elliott: I love the idea of, of using the Universal Cart as an advertising surface. I'm sure that they will do that. I, I also strongly suspect they'll do it very slowly, as they have tended to do with introducing ads to other surfaces.

[00:14:33] Nate Elliott: But my overwhelming feeling is this has gotta be mostly a data play, right? I mean, in this year they've also launched the Universal [00:14:40] Commerce Protocol, for which they're also not charging a transaction fee- Yeah, no ... if I'm not mistaken, or a percentage. And so, you know, if you're launching all of this infrastructure to help enable shopping, and you're not charging percentages or fees, then the value you're getting has to be data from, from where I'm sitting.

[00:14:59] Marcus Johnson: Nate, you got one [00:15:00] more for us.

[00:15:00] Nate Elliott: Yeah. I, uh, I'll go back to AI because I am an AI-focused analyst. And, and my, uh, other big question for Google is how are they thinking about their different AI tools? And the use cases they think people might use them for. You know, we're at this really odd point where they have three different AI [00:15:20] products with more than a billion monthly users.

[00:15:22] Nate Elliott: AI Overviews are seen by more than two and a half billion people every month. AI Mode crossed the one billion monthly user threshold earlier this summer, and Gemini, their flagship AI, uh, tool, passed the number, I think, in August of this year. Those are three distinct experiences, although there is some [00:15:40] interplay between AI Overviews and AI Mode, and I just...

[00:15:43] Nate Elliott: I, I have to wonder. Th- this is the only AI-focused company, the only big AI-focused company, that has multiple distinct surfaces and platforms that they're offering to consumers, and all of them have gotten past this billion user threshold. Mm-hmm. Are they thinking [00:16:00] of Gemini as, as something that, that people just won't be using for search-type purposes at some point?

[00:16:06] Nate Elliott: I mean, we, we know that OpenAI says, uh, somewhere in the neighborhood of half of all the prompts that go into ChatGPT are searching for some kind of information, either seeking or looking for practical guidance. That's about half of all the prompts they receive. You [00:16:20] know, that's the model that we assume a lot of consumer and business sort of dual-focused chatbots have.

[00:16:27] Nate Elliott: But is Google thinking that AI Mode is the consumer-focused chatbot and Gemini will become the business one? Are they thinking that AI Mode is the search-focused chatbot and Gemini [00:16:40] becomes, even for consumers, not a search-focused tool, but more of a doing tool, more of a, an agentic tool? I'm really curious just how they're planning these products, because they have so many products in this space, and I'd love to see more clarity from them, again, both because I'm an analyst and I'm curious how they're thinking about it, but also I think it would be useful for users and the market to [00:17:00] have some more clarity on- Mm-hmm

[00:17:01] Nate Elliott: on sort of how they're tuning these products and, and what they're intended to be used for.

[00:17:06] Cindy Liu: I guess the interesting thing is that you can actually use both for search or for, like, day-to-day, yeah, agentic capabilities or Um, work-related tasks.

[00:17:16] Nate Elliott: One of the things I th- I think we're gonna see in the next year or two [00:17:20] is a greater stratification of different tools for different purposes.

[00:17:25] Nate Elliott: I, I don't know that Anthropic, in the long run, is gonna keep paying any attention at all to consumers. I mean, they, they already don't even run a tracking survey on satisfaction of consumers, only enterprises and what they call prosumers, is, is my understanding. [00:17:40] Uh, I don't know that ChatGPT continues to be a single tool focusing on both consumers and enterprises in the long run, and you're starting to see OpenAI peel out distinct forms of ChatGPT for enterprises as, as we get to the point where compute continues to become more expensive and tokens continue to grow more [00:18:00] expensive.

[00:18:00] Nate Elliott: I... You know, we're already seeing Google, for instance, saying that free users of Gemini are getting not just the flash version of the model, but the flash lite version of the model. There are these increasing distinctions in terms of which tools are for which users and which purposes, and I, I have to imagine Google's thinking about their [00:18:20] AI product set through that lens.

[00:18:22] Nate Elliott: And I... If Sundar was sitting here today, I would ask him how they're thinking about it and how, how they see people using each of these tools in the next year or two.

[00:18:30] Cindy Liu: But it's interesting 'cause I think in a previous episode, maybe it was you and me talking about how there's different names for all these different products.

[00:18:39] Cindy Liu: You know, when are they [00:18:40] gonna- You know, consult, no, I mean, like, or make it more, um-

[00:18:44] Nate Elliott: And they're gonna rationalize the branding.

[00:18:45] Cindy Liu: Yeah, rationalize

[00:18:45] Nate Elliott: the branding. I, I complain about that all the time.

[00:18:47] Cindy Liu: But the thing is, maybe they m-

[00:18:48] Nate Elliott: Yeah ...

[00:18:48] Cindy Liu: but maybe they want to keep them separate for this very purpose. Um,

[00:18:51] Nate Elliott: it- at this point, it seems like they- Yeah

[00:18:53] Nate Elliott: that's the intention. But, but it's- Yeah ... also worth noting that NotebookLM is now, I think, GeminiLM or Gemini [00:19:00] Notebook. They branded it Gemini, right? And that's not a consumer search tool that they branded as Gemini. It does feel like they're dedicated to keeping both of these naming conventions, and that they seem to be tuning one set of products more towards just a search replacement behavior, and the other towards a more in-depth AI [00:19:20] interaction, agentic type of behavior.

[00:19:23] Marcus Johnson: Cindy, you got one more for us.

[00:19:24] Cindy Liu: My other question is about privacy, I guess. So recently Google updated its privacy policy that allows, um, data from Gmail, Google Drive, and Photos to potentially inform, um, [00:19:40] personalized advertising through applications that uses AI features. It is an opt-in, so consumers do have to opt in to this.

[00:19:46] Cindy Liu: Um, but I think it's an interesting development because I think it highlights sort of a tension in any AI strategy is like how do you make AI more personal and useful to a consumer without alienating [00:20:00] them and crossing the line with pri- privacy, right? I think with Google, the more valuable these products become, the more valuable they become for advertising.

[00:20:10] Cindy Liu: So is there a line that shouldn't be crossed? Um, and I think, yeah, there's lots of questions around does this comply with privacy regulations, whether [00:20:20] consumers actually are comfortable with, like, this way to use their data, um, and then also, like, just how much advertising value could Google actually unlock.

[00:20:30] Cindy Liu: Myself, personally, you know, as a user of these products, I s- don't connect my Gmail or calendar to AI. You know, that's, that's something, like, I'm not comfortable [00:20:40] doing yet, but I know the value that I could derive from it.

[00:20:43] Marcus Johnson: Nate, do you have any thoughts on this one before we get to the last one?

[00:20:45] Nate Elliott: Yeah, just to point out, Cindy, you said it's op- it's opt-in, but, but I, I...

[00:20:49] Nate Elliott: if I'm not mistaken, it's buried in the opt-in for- Yes, it is ... personal intelligence, so- Yes,

[00:20:53] Cindy Liu: it is opt-in ...

[00:20:53] Nate Elliott: people, people don't have to raise their hand and go, "Oh, yes, please use my data for advertising." They simply have to say, "Oh, [00:21:00] yes, I'd like you to use my data to make my AI smarter." Oh, yeah, so that's unclear.

[00:21:04] Nate Elliott: And if you opt in to that, they use it for advertising. So they're gonna get a lot of opt-ins from people who don't know they're opting in.

[00:21:10] Cindy Liu: It is unclear, like, perhaps, like, the way that they are going to use the data, though.

[00:21:14] Nate Elliott: I know you guys read all 400,000 words- ... of the agreements- I know. Oh, yeah- ... you sign twice a day [00:21:20] online

[00:21:20] Nate Elliott: the agreements.

[00:21:22] Marcus Johnson: I don't read my Slack messages from Luigi. I don't have time for that. That's right, Luigi, on production, you heard me. Uh, sorry, Marisa, you got one more for us.

[00:21:29] Marisa Jones: My last question for them is when is Google going to introduce ads in Gemini? I think that's an inevitable. It's something that they were previously like, "No," now they're kind of like, "It [00:21:40] could happen."

[00:21:40] Marisa Jones: And we saw OpenAI do the same thing. They denied that they would ever bring ads to it, but the cost of running this, they had to monetize via ads. I think that question was really sparked by them noting in their earnings release that Gemini app now has over one billion users. So my question is why aren't they monetizing that user base to the point where they could be?

[00:21:59] Nate Elliott: And they did [00:22:00] say, I think back in April, they said- Yes ... we're actively looking at ads in Gemini, so- Yeah ... I'm, I'm still expecting to see those. And Cindy, I think our forecast, the assumption we baked in, is that they'll introduce ads, what, at the end of this year or early next year?

[00:22:12] Cindy Liu: I- don't quote me on that.

[00:22:15] Cindy Liu: All right.

[00:22:15] Nate Elliott: But yes,

[00:22:15] Cindy Liu: sometime.

[00:22:16] Nate Elliott: So it's, it is interesting, though. I, I noticed that [00:22:20] when Philipp Schindler was talking about the expansion of ads in AI mode, he made a really pointed remark about how they are being deliberate in their expansion of advertising inside AI. They're prioritizing user experience, and they're only pushing the ad formats out globally now in AI mode because they have [00:22:40] found that those ads deliver positive ROI.

[00:22:42] Nate Elliott: And that, alongside Sundar in the press release using annual run rate as a metric for the first time I've ever noticed, tells me that they're intentionally jabbing at OpenAI and Anthropic, uh, who very liberally and perhaps misleadingly use annual [00:23:00] run rate in all of their statements about growth and revenue.

[00:23:02] Nate Elliott: But also, uh, jabbing specifically at OpenAI because they announced an ads trial at the start of the year, never did any trying in their trial. They just picked one ad format and one ad placement and just started pushing it out globally as fast and as hard as they could with no testing, no proven [00:23:20] ROI, no advertiser case studies.

[00:23:21] Nate Elliott: I mean, they just started sprinting with it, and I think Google's working very hard to take the opposite approach from what I can tell.

[00:23:29] Marcus Johnson: It's a company that's making so much money, but they still need to put ads where they can because they s- need even more money. Uh, Alphabet reporting negative free cash flow of 9 billion versus analyst [00:23:40] expectations that it would come close to, to breaking even.

[00:23:42] Marcus Johnson: They burned s- 6 billion, uh, last quarter. It's the first time it went into the negative in 22 years as a public company. All right, gang, let's pick a top three big questions for Google at the moment. Cindy, you're up.

[00:23:55] Cindy Liu: I'm gonna pick Marisa's question. So how [00:24:00] advertising will fund its AI ambitions.

[00:24:02] Marcus Johnson: Very nice. Marisa?

[00:24:03] Marisa Jones: I'm gonna pick Nate's, uh, I believe second question, how the different tools are, what different use cases they're meant to serve.

[00:24:10] Marcus Johnson: Yeah. Very nice. And Nate?

[00:24:12] Nate Elliott: If I can't pick all of them, with apologies to Cindy and Marisa's excellent questions that I also want the answers to, I wanna know when they're [00:24:20] gonna give us data on AI search versus traditional search separately.

[00:24:23] Nate Elliott: It's such an important question.

[00:24:25] Marcus Johnson: Very nice. Um, well, that's all we got time for for this episode. Uh, thank you so much to my guests. Uh, thank you first to Marisa.

[00:24:31] Marisa Jones: Thank you for having me.

[00:24:33] Marcus Johnson: To Cindy.

[00:24:33] Marisa Jones: Thank you, Marcus.

[00:24:34] Marcus Johnson: And to Nate.

[00:24:35] Nate Elliott: Thanks, fella.

[00:24:36] Marcus Johnson: Thanks to the production crew, Luigi and Mike. Thanks to everyone for listening in to Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast made possible by AI Digital.

[00:24:42] Marcus Johnson: On Wednesday, Suzy will be speaking with Land O'Lakes, so tune in to that one. Uh, Thursday, Nate will be hosting a conversation with StackAdapt and OpenAI, and on Friday, uh, I'll be back talking about the big three questions surrounding [00:25:00] Meta.