It’s one year since Google started showing ads in its now-familiar AI Overviews. They’ve now added them to AI Mode, a newer option that handles more complex queries. AI Mode will also offer a bespoke shopping experience, with agentic AI to track price and purchase when it fits your budget.

Jamie from our Department of the Obvious was thrilled to hear that in-store kiosks for food orders are perceived as less “friendly” than human shop assistants, according to an Intouch Insight study. Jamie nevertheless offered some anecdotal evidence that he has met some unfriendly human staff in his time. He also noted the less obvious finding of higher levels of consumer satisfaction with non-human AI-powered drive-thrus and advance mobile ordering.

Composable CDP Hightouch is introducing same-session personalization, providing the ability to combine warehouse data and real-time signals during real-time interactions. It requires caching audience data outside of the data warehouse, bending the company’s “no copy” rule. This blog post explains how they do it.