By Brendon Kraham, vice president, search and commerce global ads solutions, Google
AI has begun to transform the way people seek and engage with information online. But that doesn’t mean you need to rework your entire search advertising strategy today.
The most significant opportunities for immediate growth and long-term resilience are not mutually exclusive. By integrating AI-powered tools into your current campaigns and workflows, you can unlock capabilities to grow ROI. This is achieved by using existing assets to scale creative development, uncover new high-value audiences based on winning segments, and refine bidding strategies.
This approach allows you to effectively navigate this transformational period by building on past successes. A pragmatic way to make sure your marketing foundation evolves with today’s technology, while unlocking hidden value at the same time. To that end, we’ve outlined four key strategic shifts that can redefine your marketing performance using cutting-edge technology.
Shift 1: Rethink search’s role in the customer journey
For too long, Google Search has been thought of as a lower funnel tool in the customer journey. It’s time to rethink that assumption. We see over 5 trillion searches on Google annually.1 In reality, only a fraction of those are people visiting Google to specifically make a purchase. The truth is, your customers rarely engage with a channel in isolation, but rather in a fluid, blended journey. New research from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) reveals that the “4S behaviors” — streaming, scrolling, searching, and shopping — have fundamentally reshaped how people discover and engage with brands. By re-examining your assumptions, you can think of Search not just as a tool for capturing existing demand, but as a discovery engine powered by AI, video, image, and touch.
The rise of multi-modal queries, particularly the combination of Lens or Circle to Search with AI Overviews, shows this evolution. AI Overviews are now driving over 10% more queries globally for the types of queries that show them.2 This signals that Search is no longer just for capturing existing demand — it’s also a discovery engine that helps people ask longer questions, dive deeper into complex subjects, and uncover new perspectives and products.
Shift 2: Prepare your search campaigns for AI-powered surfaces
Given the fundamental shifts in consumer behavior and the evolving nature of search, your bidding and creative strategy must be agile enough to adapt to an AI-powered world. The most effective way to build for AI is with AI itself, which is precisely why we introduced AI Max for Search earlier this year. With a single click, Google AI expands the reach of your current campaigns, and enhances your creative to ensure your ads are performing at their best across new surfaces like AI Overviews and eventually AI Mode (currently being tested), without compromising existing performance.
Since launch, we’ve seen impressive performance gains for clients using AI Max. Search campaigns are now typically seeing 14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA/ROAS.3 This is a direct result of AI-powered creative automation and an improved understanding of audience intent.
Shift 3: Use bidding as a growth catalyst, not cost control
For years, bidding has been seen as a way to control costs and manage budgets. But what if you saw it as a powerful engine for growth? By leveraging automated bidding strategies powered by Google AI, you can empower your campaigns to find new customer segments and conversion opportunities that would otherwise be missed.
Features like Smart Bidding Exploration, for example, allows advertisers to discover new, valuable conversion opportunities by introducing flexible Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) targets. This lets Google’s AI bid more expansively on a broader range of search queries, with campaigns seeing, on average, an 18% increase in unique search query categories with conversions and a 19% increase in conversions.4
Shift 4: Expand your reach without compromising safety and performance
The most impactful growth comes from deepening your presence where customers feel comfortable. By using tools like the Search Partner Network, you can connect with a wider, high-quality audience on sites they already use. Recent improvements in safety, suitability, and transparency make the Search Partner Network an excellent opportunity for expansion. It lets advertisers scale campaigns to a diverse network of quality third-party inventory, including premium placements like YouTube, which can deliver conversions per dollar comparable to Google Search.
In addition to the extended reach, new reporting capabilities now provide full transparency into where ads appear across the Search Partner Network. Full placement reporting allows advertisers to access impression data at the site level for all Search, Shopping, Performance Max and App campaigns, unlocking detailed insights and unprecedented visibility to enhance their understanding and confidence.
Ultimately, these strategic shifts help you to step into the future of marketing today. Enabling you to optimize for short-term gains while also building a more intelligent, resilient operation that’s ready for what’s next. This strategy for innovation offers an immediately achievable path, leveraging advanced Google AI to deliver results now and in the future. It embodies a vision where sustained growth and long-term objectives are intrinsically linked.
Learn more about AI Max.
This post was created by Google Ads with Insider Studios.
1. Google Internal Data, January 2025
2. Google Internal Data, Global, March 11, 2025 to April 11, 2025
3. Methodology: Internal Data from September 2024 to end of April 2025. Percent increase is measured by an experiment that compares two cohorts over time — one that is shown AI Overviews and one that is not. The numbers shown compare query volumes between the two cohorts, for the subset of queries that would show AI Overviews.
4. Google internal data, 2025; based on campaigns with more than 70% of conversions or conversion value from exact or phrase match keywords for non-Retail advertisers.