Google has introduced an ad unit for AdSense which uses artificial intelligence to make placement and monetisation decisions on behalf of publishers that don’t have the time or resources to manage their own ads.

With AdSense Auto Ads, Google’s machine learning tech analyses a publisher’s pages, finds potential ad placements for them, and only shows new ads when it believes they are likely to perform well and offer a good user experience. The unit is activated with just a single piece of code from the publisher on all its pages, and a publisher can choose to have different formats on different pages via a new Advanced URL settings feature.

In addition, Auto Ads takes into account existing Google ads on pages so, if the publisher does not wish to remove them, the technology will work around that.

The ad unit includes anchor and vignette ads, as well as test and display, in-feed, matched content, and more. Those using page-level ads are automatically migrated over to Auto Ads without having to add any code to their pages again.