SAN FRANCISCO—Google’s advertising malaise persisted during the first quarter while the internet company also grapples with advancements in artificial intelligence technology that threaten to undercut its dominant search engine.
An unprecedented downturn in Google’s digital ad revenue—the company’s main moneymaker for more than 20 years—came into sharper focus Tuesday with the release of the January-March results for owner Alphabet Inc.
Although Alphabet’s total revenue for the period rose from a year earlier, Google’s first-quarter ad sales of $54.5 billion marked a slight decrease from a year ago. That dip followed a nearly 4 percent decline during the final three months of last year, making this the first time Google has sustained back-to-back drops in year-over-year ad revenue since becoming a publicly traded company in 2004….