If you use Google"s Assistant - the voice technology that"s behind the company"s Home device and is installed on Android phones running 6.0 or better - you may have found an advertisement in your morning summary. According to some Reddit users (via The Verge), after saying "OK, Google, good morning", they got an ad for Beauty and the Beast, which opens in theaters today.
We tested it out, and sure enough, the ad plays, although it"s still not clear if it"s playing for everyone, or if it"s specific to certain regions. In our testing, the morning summary stated the weather, followed by, "By the way, Beauty and The Beast opens in theaters today. In this version, Belle is the inventor..." Naturally, it"s all read in the Assistant"s voice.
To be fair, advertising has always been Google"s primary source of revenue, so perhaps we shouldn"t be surprised at all by this. We"ve reached out to Google to find out if the company will be continuing to offer ads through its Assistant platform moving forward, and we"ll let you know if and when we hear anything.
It seems likely that for now, the firm is simply testing the waters to see how users react to a native ad here and there, and will likely move forward depending on the results.