For years, paid search has been one of digital advertising’s most dependable performance channels — built around capturing intent at the moment people are ready to act.
But as AI reshapes how consumers discover, compare and choose products online, the mechanics behind search are becoming far less straightforward.
Here, Alina Pruteanu, Digital Development Director at The Grove Media, explores why advertisers may need to rethink not just search strategy, but the role paid search plays within the wider media ecosystem.
Much of the conversation around AI and search has focused on what happens to organic visibility. The shift from SEO to GEO, the rise of AI summaries, and the growth of zero-click behaviour have all prompted understandable concern about how brands get discovered.
But for advertisers, another question remains largely unanswered: what happens to paid search when search itself changes?
Search isn’t disappearing, it’s evolving
Today, both of these things are true: search is stable and rapidly changing. Around 80% of searches still happen on traditional search engines, with AI tools accounting for only a small but growing share of activity. And Google still dominates globally, with around 89.85% market share worldwide and over five trillion searches per year.
But search is rapidly fragmenting and search behaviours are changing significantly. AI summaries increasingly answer questions directly, and search is becoming more conversational and contextual as people turn to AI assistants, social platforms, and retail marketplaces.
Visual and voice inputs are expanding how queries are made, with 35% of queries now voice-led. And results pages are blending information, recommendations and commerce.
Paid search is already more automated and less linear
While the current pace of change has been accelerated by generative AI and large language models, the shift in search has been underway for some time. Over the past couple of years we’ve been getting used to AI powered search, automation, broad match targeting and campaign types like Performance Max.
We’ve also seen the gradual shift away from traditional search where users browse results, visit multiple sites, compare options and return later to purchase. Now, AI-powered search allows users to ask broader questions, receive synthesised answers and compare options within the interface.
Increasingly, AI-powered search – particularly on social platforms – is already anticipating your preferences and is serving your ideas before you even search.
All of this is compressing the funnel. The rise of zero-click behaviour is well and truly here. Studies show over 58–60% of Google searches already end without a click.
Rethinking the role of paid search
As search behaviour changes, so too does the role paid search plays within the wider media system. Historically, paid search has been one of the most efficient ways to capture existing demand. That role remains important, but it is becoming less self-sufficient.
If more discovery, comparison and evaluation happens within AI-generated summaries and across social platforms, then by the time a user reaches a traditional search interaction, their preferences may already be shaped.
In the world of AI discovery, paid search becomes less about creating demand, and more about capturing demand that may have already been influenced elsewhere. As such, the performance of paid search becomes increasingly dependent on those upstream influences.
Brand advertising and broader media create future demand; search captures existing demand. Rather than competing priorities, these become interdependent.
Brand as a performance multiplier in search
As AI systems aggregate information, the differences between products and services become easier to compare and less distinctive. In that context, brand plays a more important role focused on recognition, trust and familiarity.
This is reinforced by search behaviour: 15% of Google searches are completely new queries each day, highlighting the need for brands to be discoverable and recognisable in unfamiliar contexts. Organic and paid interactions are increasingly shaped by prior exposure and familiarity
This has several implications for paid search: branded queries become more valuable, known brands are more likely to be selected, and conversion rates may increasingly depend on prior exposure rather than in-the-moment persuasion.
Paid search becomes more distributed
As discovery fragments across platforms, paid search is likely to follow. This does not mean a sudden shift away from Google. Its scale, infrastructure and entrenched behaviour mean it will remain central as the platform shifts more to AI Mode.
But it does mean that what has historically been thought of as paid search will no longer be concentrated in one platform. Instead, it’s set to be more evenly distributed across multiple environments and integrated into different types of user interaction. Search advertising becomes less of a channel, and more of a layer across the digital ecosystem.
As paid search shifts to being more distributed, working in ever greater combination with brand advertising, it presents the market with new measurement challenges. With more searches ending without clicks and more influence occurring earlier in the journey, traditional metrics like click-through rate and cost per click capture a smaller part of the overall picture.
Search and performance measurement will need to have a broader view of how demand is being generated, how brand is influencing choice, and how different channels interact across the journey.
What brands should be preparing for
While the exact future of paid search formats remains uncertain, the direction of change is becoming clearer. The action brands should be taking are more in the form of preparations, but there are some things that can be started right now:
Now: Invest in tools that monitor AI visibility and brand perception
Start tracking how large language models and AI search platforms surface, describe and recommend your brand. Understanding how your brand appears within AI-generated answers will become an increasingly important layer of search and media insight.
Now: Start to test search strategies around AI-drive discovery
Paid media will increasingly influence how advertisers appear within AI-generated search answers. Advertisers should test how brand visibility in AI search is influenced by paid media. Start by auditing where your brand currently appears within AI-generated search responses and identify which media are most consistently associated with visibility.
Prepare for a more fragmented search landscape
Search behaviour will continue to spread across multiple platforms and environments, even as traditional search engines still dominate the majority of activity
Prepare for a rebalancing between demand creation and demand capture
Search will remain critical for capturing intent, but may rely more heavily on upstream investment in awareness and consideration
Prepare for greater dependence on brand and authority
Recognition, trust and consistency will play a larger role in determining which brands are chosen in compressed, AI-mediated journeys
Prepare for more fluid definitions of search
Search will increasingly exist across different formats and interfaces, rather than being confined to a single platform or experience
Prepare for change in formats and execution
The mechanics of how ads appear and perform will continue to evolve, requiring flexibility rather than rigid optimisation around current formats
Search will remain a central part of how people find and choose products and services. But the way that search works – and the role that paid search plays within it – is changing.
The question for advertisers is no longer just how to win against the competition with paid search. It’s how to remain visible, relevant and chosen in a world where the path on which paid search appears is becoming less linear, less predictable, and increasingly shaped by AI.
This article originally appeared in Mediashotz link below
