Google Local Pack Ads Showing Up Way More Often – Search Engine Roundtable

Google seems to be showing more and more ads in the local pack, aka Local Pack Ads. Just a couple of months ago, Google had ads on the local pack for less than 3% of tracked keywords; now it’s up to about 22% of tracked keywords.
This was data posted by Joy Hawkins on X she got from Places Scout. Joy wrote, “Just had Places Scout re-run the data to see how this looks in January so far (we’re tracking across 1200 mobile ranking reports). The increase isn’t slowing down yet.”
Here is the chart – it is wild to see:

What are local pack ads? Here is an example Joy posted, the sponsored listing at the top of the local pack in Google Search:

Are you noticing more ads in the local pack? I mean, this seems like an extreme change.
Forum discussion at X.
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