Interest in advertising inside assistant interfaces has moved faster than the evidence supporting most of what is being sold. If your brand is being approached about it, a handful of direct questions will separate a considered offering from a repackaged one.
Ask what is confirmed and what is anticipated
A credible partner can draw a clean line between the two, and will volunteer where that line sits. Vagueness on this point is usually deliberate.
Ask what they would decline to do
Specialists have boundaries and can name them without hesitation. A partner whose answer is that they can do all of it is describing capacity, not expertise.
Ask how outcomes will be described
Guarantees about assistant responses are not deliverable. Ask what will be observed, how it will be reported, and what an unfavourable finding would look like when it arrives.
Ask what happens if the channel changes shape
This surface will keep moving. The question is whether the work being proposed retains value under a different set of mechanics, or whether it depends on today's assumptions holding.
We are comfortable being held to the same list. If our answers are not useful, a brand is better served knowing that early.