As consumers shift the way they seek out information on the web thanks to AI, marketers and media agencies are beginning to rethink the role paid search plays in their media plans. With that rethinking, they’re monitoring a small set of dashboard indicators for signs that ad performance is slipping, or that their competitors are getting ahead. It’s not always a high-resolution picture.
Most marketers’ experience suggests that web traffic is likely to be down this year — but that conversion rates from web visitors that actually buy something (or take another action, such as signing up to a newsletter) are holding up. AI search visitors themselves convert at 4.4 times the rate of average organic search visitors, according to Semrush.
That’s led marketers to commission agencies like Havas, Dentsu and Kepler to overhaul their organic search approach – 57% of marketers have altered their search strategies since AI Overviews launched in 2024, per a survey by agency NP Digital – while leaving the paid media portion of their search strategy untouched. That status quo won’t hold for long.
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