When I last wrote about Google AI Mode, my focus was on the big differentiators: conversational prompts, memory-driven personalization, and the crucial pivot from keywords to context.
As we see with the Q2 ad platform financial results below, this shift is rapidly reshaping performance advertising. While AI Mode means Google has to rethink how it makes money, it forces us advertisers to rethink something even more fundamental: our entire strategy.
In the article about AI Mode, I laid out how prompts are different from keywords, why “synthetic keywords” are really just a temporary band-aid, and how fewer clicks might just challenge the age-old cost-per-click (CPC) revenue model.
This follow-up is about what these changes truly mean for us as advertisers, and why holding onto that keyword-era mindset could cost us our competitive edge.
The Great Rewiring Of Search
The biggest shift since we first got keyword-targeted online advertising is now in full swing. People aren’t searching with those relatively concise keywords anymore, the ones we optimized for how Google used to weigh certain words in a query.
Large language models (LLMs) have pretty much removed the shackles from the search bar. Now, users can fire off prompts with hundreds of words, and add even more context.
Think about the 400,000 token context window of GPT-5, which is like tens of thousands of words. Thankfully, most people don’t need that much space to explain what they want, but they are speaking in full sentences now, stutters and all.
Google’s internal ads in AI Mode document shares that early testers of AI Mode are asking queries that are two to three times as long as traditional searches on Google.
And thanks to LLMs’ multi-modal capabilities, users are searching with images (Google reports 20 billion Lens searches per month), drawing sketches, and even sending video. They’re finding what they need in entirely new ways.
Increasingly, users aren’t just looking for a list of what might be relevant. They expect a guided answer from the AI, one that summarizes options based on their personal preferences. People are asking AI to help them decide, not just to find.
And that fundamental change in user behavior is now reshaping the very platforms where these searches happen, starting with Google.
The Impact On Google As The Main Ads Platform
All of this definitely poses a threat to Google’s primary revenue stream. But as I mentioned in a LinkedIn post, the traffic didn’t vanish; it just moved.
Users didn’t ditch Google; they simply stopped using it the way they did when keywords were king. Plus, we’re seeing new players emerge, and search itself has fragmented:
This creates a fresh challenge for us advertisers: How do we design campaigns that actually perform when intent originates in these wildly new ways?
What Q2 Earnings Reports Told Us About AI In Search
The Q2 earnings calls were packed with GenAI details. Some of the most jaw-dropping figures involved…
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