Increasing Gemini app usage is said to be Google’s “biggest focus” in 2025, with the company recently buying podcast ads to drive downloads.
Over the past week or so, people have noticed “Google Gemini” ads in some of the podcasts they listen to. In my case, both shows happen to cover Apple.
These ads are solely focused on Gemini Live and showcasing what it can do. One of the better ad reads involved sample conversations between the podcast host and Gemini Live. “A tool to complement and enhance human creativity” is the tagline for “Google Gemini,” with “Google” appearing in front of “Gemini.” The show notes link takes people to gemini.google.com.
According to that report last year, CEO Sundar Pichai said “Scaling Gemini on the consumer side will be our biggest focus next year.” Specifically, Google wants Gemini to be the next first-party app to reach 500 million monthly users. The company already has 15 such applications at that milestone, with seven of them having 2 billion users.
Google advertising on Apple podcasts is interesting, and follows the launch of the Gemini iPhone app in November. This replaces the ability to access Gemini in the Google Search app, with Live getting its iOS debut at that time. It currently has a 4.8 score out of 141,800 ratings and is #4 in the Productivity category.
Earlier this week, Gemini for iOS got a homescreen redesign and now automatically opens the keyboard upon launch for immediate prompting. Since November, Google has been heavily advertising it in the iOS App Store. Meanwhile, Gemini is rumored to soon be available via Apple Intelligence, with that serving as another opportunity to drive downloads.
Be sure to comment below on what podcasts you’ve had Gemini ads play in
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