How AI Overviews and SERP changes are reshaping paid search strategy.

The internet is a shopping centre.

The search engine is the building itself; a liminal space, designed to direct you from one store to another. The hallways should be intuitive to navigate and pleasant to look at, just as your browser should possess both good UX and UI. Websites are the various stalls and stores; each uniquely tailored to provide a specific experience, each containing experts to answer any questions the customer might have about their services. The role of the shopping centre and its staff is to direct the customer to the best store as quickly as efficiently as possible; that is to say, the less time spent in the shopping centre rather than the stores, the better.

The same philosophy used to apply to the search engine. Historically, spending a significant amount of time on your browser without visiting a site signalled that the user was not navigating it correctly. This was demonstrative of a poor web browser, and poor web browsers are unlikely to retain a strong user base.

But we now live in the world of AI Overviews, deftly plucking the baton from the hands of featured snippets to continue its race across Google. Instead of prompting users to explore a range of sites, they are instead attempting to provide a full experience in-browser.

Through AI, browsers are taking the control away from the website. Browsers no longer need websites specifically tailored to customer queries when they possess a LLM which can adapt to any query (those LLMs fed by the plethora of tailored content, of course).

So what does this mean for PPC? Many of the results are obvious. As users are finding answers to their questions without having to visit a website, there has been a significant increase in no-click searches. Users enter and leave their session without ever visiting a website, and what was historically considered a sign of failure for a browser is now demonstrative of a successful AI Overview. 

Such searches lead to a decrease in the number of clicks, reducing supply and increasing demand for those remaining. As a PPC Marketer, my own accounts have seen a 15% increase in average CPC over the previous five years, whilst Adthena’s assessment of how click-through-rate can drop by 8-12 percentage points when an AI overview appears alongside (and in almost all cases, above) paid ads aligns perfectly with my experience. The knock-on effect to campaign performance can be damning. High impressions and low clicks result in abysmal CTR, giving the impression that campaigns are failing to find the right audience. In reality, that audience simply does not need the website in the same way it used to.

AI Overview’s takeover of the search space is impressive, with McKinsey reporting that “about 50 percent of Google searches already have AI summaries, a figure expected to rise to more than 75 percent by 2028, according to trend analysis.” However, it seems that Google may have bigger plans than McKinsey reckoned. On May 19th 2026, they announced that its iconic search bar would be “completely reimagined with AI” as an appreciation that the user’s curiosity doesn’t always fit into keywords.” This is clearly the next step in Google’s quest toward “A

gentic Commerce”, where an AI agent can fulfil some or all of a transaction on behalf of users. keeping the entire customer journey within their platform and removing the need for websites and keywords.

As a PPC Marketer whose life revolves almost entirely around keywords, the SERP, and site experience, this is quite the bold claim. Despite all of the changes we have seen over the past twenty-five years, the flow of the user journey has remained consistent. Search bar, to SERP, to website. This is the flow both to which marketers and users have become accustomed.

In contrast, this new search page will be powered entirely by the Gemini 3.5 model, replacing our familiar SERP with an entirely generated experience. How Google Ads and its existing infrastructure will integrate into this new feature is currently unclear, but as a daily user of the Google Ads interface there have been no visible changes in how campaigns are structured and managed.

This announcement takes the AI-first strategy Google has been pushing over the past months and renders it to its logical conclusion. Despite complaints of AI Overview taking attention and traffic away from paid listings, we remained comfortable in the knowledge that they would still exist. This, it seems, may have been taken for granted.

We do not live in a world where Google will abandon the monetisation of paid listings, they will only evolve to fit into this new ecosystem. We are moving far beyond a world of ‘search without website’, instead moving to a ‘search without search’ landscape.

• Early Adoption

Browsers have been reliant on advertising as a consistent form of revenue for a significant length of time, and they will not be pivoting from this method any time soon. Although the methods of bidding will change, we’re on the lookout for how this new status quo will manifest.

• First Party Data

AI-focused data can be questionable at the best of times, and targeting purely via audience signals provides much less control than traditional methods. 2026 is the year of first-party data, and we’ll be utilising our own data to outperform the competition.

• Holistic Goals

Although users are allowing AI to make more and more of their decisions for them, they are still active in the process. Focusing on KPIs such as visibility or brand awareness will remain relevant in influencing decision making, and we’re expanding our viewport to appreciate the role of the entire marketing funnel.

• Explore Other Platforms

Although Google boasts a high uptake of its AI Search, not all users are happy with this change. NPR’s All Things Considered takes note of users’ opinions of the AI Overview, noting their frustration at the lack of “ways to get rid of it.” Users can appreciate human-generated content, and other providers such as Bing are sticking to the traditional methods. My B2B clients are especially concerned with having more control over their search experience, and whether we see a change in these users’ behaviour will greatly influence our investment in other channels.

• Become The Best Result

LLMs still need to derive their information from somewhere, and this data comes from websites that users engage with and consider reliable. Possessing a site with a strong ranking and reliable content increases the likelihood of being recommended by LLMs, both with and without paid placements.

This state of the internet is still in flux, and the next few years will dictate the new age of user experience. Until then, be on the lookout for new danger and opportunities, as you never know where they will appear.