Google’s AI Overviews (AIO) have transformed the SERP from a list of links into an answer engine. We are now operating in a zero-click era, where over 60% of searches end without a website visit.
This has led to erasure of the research phase of the consumer journey: Instead, consumers are presented with pre-evaluated competitors that may usurp consideration of your brand completely if it doesn’t feature on the AI ‘shortlist’. However, Google suppresses AIO for brand searches, recognising it as an intent to purchase over a research exercise. To win in the AIO landscape, brands need to drive demand before customers turn to the search bar.
Programmatic advertising prioritising brand-led activations can move the discovery phase from the search results to the open web. A strategy that increases branded searches will see lower PPC costs, more direct traffic and fewer leads lost to competitors.
The end of ‘transactional search’
It’s hard to remember a time before AI Overviews (AIOs) were beamed down into our Google search results in Summer 2024. Prior to this, to find the information we wanted, we had to trawl through search results, clicking links and reviewing the information ourselves! The shock, the horror.
Over the two preceding decades, consumers leveraged search results using simple, keyword-based ‘transactional’ search terms. Using this approach, the request for new shoes was searched for with truncated phrases like ‘best women’s trainers’.
Google acted as a web index; functionally trawling, ranking and displaying relevant paid and organic search results ready for perusal by the searcher. Typically, the first three search results would capture the majority of engagement, but the layout encouraged exploration with users moving beyond the fold to discover new and niche brands.
Today, that research task is frequently done for us. With the advent of widespread AI Overviews, we can hugely simplify our search experience and generate faster and more evaluative results by pivoting from ‘transactional’ search terms to ‘conversational’ search behaviours. Before AIOs, a search for ‘best women’s trainers’ would return us a number of blog articles and shopping sites to trawl through manually; now the AIO can immediately present a response, taking into account price, fit, and reviews, to name a few. And the more information we give to these engines, the more nuanced and detailed the response we get back.
The aggregation of information performed by AIOs in response to conversational search behaviour means that now over 60% of searches result in zero clicks.
The model is so good at providing answers that the majority of people look no further in their quest for information. For the searcher, this is great. But for brands, this poses some huge challenges.
We are now facing the erasure of the traditional research phase of the consumer journey. The discovery that historically involved an average of two minutes spent evaluating a brand’s proposition via their website has been reduced to just a few seconds of scanning an AI-generated summary.
This isn’t just a loss of time; brand identity is being compressed and diluted. When a third party is aggregating and evaluating results, brands lose the ability to demonstrate their unique value proposition and story.
The zero-click shift is causing traffic to collapse, with some brands reporting a two-thirds reduction in organic traffic. Fewer users landing on the site results in fragmentation of the customer journey, as key touchpoints for future connection, such as newsletter signups, account creations, and first-party data collection, are erased alongside traffic. Without this data, personalised onsite experiences and remarketing capabilities are severely compromised.
This new landscape is particularly unforgiving to brands operating in saturated markets or those with small, niche propositions. AIOs prioritise consensus, authority and trustworthiness, so smaller brands run a higher risk of being excluded from the model’s shortlist. Unlike a human searcher, an AIO has no existing brand preference; it acts as an emotionally impartial aggregator that may inadvertently introduce new competitors into the conversation.
Finally, AIOs are physically dominant. Our screen sizes are limited, and the AIO occupies a large amount of real estate on the search results page, even in its collapsed form. This pushes paid and organic links below the fold, further reducing the likelihood for brands to capture this engagement.
This fundamental change in results curation occurs because Google recognises when a consumer is in research mode, and it is trying to aid them in their journey. This is the danger zone for brands, as it poses the highest risk of falling into the zero-click trap. In the same way that Google concludes a generic, transactional search indicates a consumer is in research mode, a branded search signals intent, and an end to the discovery phase.
AIOs are typically suppressed in response to branded searches in order not to obstruct the onward purchase journey. Therefore, the new strategic objective is to ensure the consumer moves their journey to the search engine with a specific brand already in mind. The brand decision must move upstream: Influencing the consumer before they commit to making a search to ensure they are searching for a name, not a category.
Pivoting from generic search to branded search is the antidote to the traffic dilution triggered by zero-click searches
By ensuring an audience arrives at the search engine ready to search for a brand by name, we remove the noise of competitor introductions and mitigate against traffic lost to AIO summaries. To achieve this, demand must be built rather than solely captured; it’s imperative that the brand be positioned earlier and more saliently within the consumer journey.
The brand needs to be positioned in environments that create the essential mental availability necessary to recall a brand when the time is right. To ensure that this leads to a branded search, the brand’s advertising needs to position it as the solution to a specific problem, one that competitors simply cannot replicate.
High-impact, lean-back formats like Connected TV (CTV), audio and DOOH (digital out of home) are integral players. They provide the canvas to tell the brand story and educate the audience, anchoring the brand and message in the consumer’s mind. Providing explicit directions for the action the audience needs to take within the call to action – ‘Search for [Brand]’ – primes them to perform a branded search over a generic one. Shifting from the long-term goal of the campaign – ‘Buy Now’ – to a short-term, achievable action capitalises on the brand-led influence the advertising has just created, when it is most salient.
The research phase often starts much earlier on the open web, presenting an opportunity to reach audiences while they are consuming relevant content, long before they turn to the search engine. This is where native display advertising can become a bridge between the content a consumer is choosing to engage with and your educational, relevant, yet brand-owned content. Positioning the brand as the to answer consumer questions before they reach for Google moves the consumer out of the discovery phase before they need to make any search at all.
Branded search lift, therefore, becomes the primary indicator of success in mitigating traffic loss.
Shifting priority to brand salience requires a reassessment of KPIs; success is no longer dictated solely by ad engagement, it must pivot to search behaviours. And these typically awareness-driving Programmatic formats become key strategic responders in the zero-click landscape.
Programmatic-led demand generation has implications for the entire search ecosystem. As AIOs are increasingly triggered in response to generic, non-branded search terms, the cost of competing for those diminishing clicks will naturally increase. By shifting traffic toward branded search terms, Programmatic activity generates a higher volume of efficient, qualified clicks, working to lower the blended CPA across the holistic search landscape. The result is a more resilient PPC strategy where the brand is less vulnerable to the rising CPCs of generic category terms.
Simultaneously, a surge in brand-specific search terms sends a strong authority signal to search engines. As the algorithms register an increase in searches of the brand name, it recategorises the brand to have more authority, trustworthiness and reliability. This can improve organic rankings and increase the likelihood of the brand being cited as a trusted source within the AIOs themselves.
Programmatic activations alongside SEO and PPC begin to act as a unified engine, which can work together to reclaim traffic loss. Consumers who have been exposed to a Programmatic brand activation are three times more likely to click on that brand’s search result, even if it does not occupy the top results position. Recollection is key when consumers are presented with multiple competitors as part of the AIO summary; by using Programmatic to prime new audiences, PPC and SEO are able to operate with maximum efficiency.
By prioritising brand salience through Programmatic-led demand generation, we can successfully redirect the brand choice upstream. Through leveraging high-impact formats and native content to prime the consumer’s journey, we are ensuring that every impression serves a strategic purpose: ensuring that your brand’s name is front of mind when consumers move to the search engine. This proactive pivot ensures that the consumer bypasses the danger zone of AIOs and zero-click summaries, reclaiming control of the customer journey for your brand.
How to take action now
If you are seeing a decline in organic traffic or rising costs for your generic search terms, it is time to pivot your strategy from demand capture to demand generation. At Impression, we recommend you:
- Understand your generic-to-brand ratio by introducing a search data audit. You are aiming for a month-on-month increase in branded search volume to reduce the risk of traffic loss to zero-click searches.
- Evaluate your creative messaging to ensure it is directing consumers to perform branded searches, and not category-level consideration. Prioritise lean-back environments like CTV, audio and DOOH to drive attention and create the mental availability necessary for brand recollection.
- Implement a search lift study on your Programmatic campaign to look beyond in-platform metrics and understand whether your current strategy is driving search intent.
- Position native ads to answer common questions, negating the need for consumers to turn to search engines and risk AIO brand dilution.
- Unify your Programmatic and Search approach to ensure you are reaching and converting the same audience.
