I think it already has them but it's much more subtle. Also useful. When I've made certain sorts of queries I've had the distinct impression that it was attempting to very gently steer the conversation with suggestions. But it was brief, still answered usefully, and didn't resist going in the direction I wanted. So a win-win tactic I guess.

For example find a beautiful landscape shot of a place that just so happens to be accessible to tourists and ask it something along the lines of identifying the location. IME it will noticably steer the conversation towards relevant commercial offerings and offer (entirely unprompted) to help plan a trip.

Or ask it about a certain category of product with some requirements and it will initially present (relevant) options that look like paid placement to my eye. But if you ask it's happy to go on to turn up lots of alternatives and enumerate tradeoffs.

Assuming I'm correct the subtlety is on par with product placement in movies. Certainly leagues better than the internet advertising we've suffered to date.

It definitely steers. For example if it suggests travel plans, the booking links it provides give Alphabet a cut.

As you say it was subtle, along the lines of "oh, if you are planning on going to the place you are researching, here are some helpful links to places you can stay". Subtle, in that it didn't get in the way of main result, so I didn't mind overly. Insidious, as I only noticed because I wondered why it was providing those particular links and looked them up. I can't see how you could ad-block them if I did object.

And worrying, because these unblockable sneaky ads are just a first foray coming from a company that prostitutes its own app store searches, by making the first and most obvious result utterly unrelated to to the search topic. Instead it's who paid them the most to be there. That behaviour is why everyone dumped Alta Vista when an alternative came along. Alternative Android app stores can't come soon enough.

They already skim off 15% of purchases which I'm sure makes their Android operation return a profit that makes other industries drool. Debasing their search to ad a tiny bit extra on top must by driven pure greed. Senseless, as I'm sure it will come back to bite them in the end.