蘑菇AV

While Google faces mounting pressure from Bing鈥檚 ChatGPT integration and other generative AI (genAI) search platforms, degradation of its own search results, including those shown in its AI Overviews, could be exacerbating migration away from Google.

This is the Q1 2025 installment of our quarterly 鈥淎d Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

GenAI search is gaining traction, but not all consumers are seeking out the conversational experiences that will eventually disrupt the search ad market.

The news: AI-assisted content now dominates Google鈥檚 top search results, but pure AI rarely ranks No. 1, according to an Ahrefs analysis of 600,000 pages across 100,000 keywords. It found that most top-ranking content includes some AI input, but only 13.5% was purely human-written. Key takeaway: Google doesn鈥檛 care who wrote the content, only whether it鈥檚 of good quality. Marketers should use AI to move faster but rely on human oversight to ensure clarity, credibility, and connection. Optimizing content for authenticity, brand voice, and user engagement鈥攁s well as generative engine optimization (GEO)鈥攃ould lead to higher rankings.

Tariffs threaten to reduce US digital ad spending growth this year. This series explains the effects tariffs will have on ad spending in search, social, CTV, and retail media鈥攁nd which parts of each might fare best and worst.

The news: Jasper鈥檚 suite of AI-powered marketing agents are purpose-built to automate core marketing functions. These agents, which start at $49 per user per month, work inside Jasper Canvas, a new intelligent workspace designed to streamline planning, collaboration, content creation, and execution. Our take: Marketers must assess their current pain points. If content quality is inconsistent, execution is slow, or tools don鈥檛 talk to each other, an agentic platform like Jasper could drive sharper outcomes. As with most new tools, running pilot programs and benchmarks for speed and brand consistency against your current stack will help determine value and ROI.

The news: New data from Digital Content Next revealed that Google AI Overviews lead to as much as a 25% decrease in publisher referral traffic, reinforcing brands鈥� and publishers鈥� ongoing concerns over the tech鈥檚 adverse impact on content effectiveness. Our take: AI Overviews will continue usurping referral traffic from publishers, meaning that the brands who last will be those who adapt to the change rather than fight it. Brands must optimize for AI visibility, not just search rankings.

The news: Small and medium-sized business (SMB) owners are preparing for a recession鈥攁nd marketing is first on the chopping block, per a report from Clarify Capital. 28% of SMB owners say cutting marketing or ad spending is the first action they鈥檒l take in the event of a recession鈥攈igher than any other category. Our take: Preparing for a recession is a necessity for SMBs that will be hit the hardest, but for those that deem reduced marketing budgets as a core strategy, it鈥檚 critical to take an approach that will save costs without sacrificing reach.

Social search is gaining ground. Roughly two-thirds of US consumers search on at least one social platform in ways that can influence every part of the consumer journey.

The news: The connected TV (CTV) market is in flux as retail giants Amazon and Walmart escalate their fight for dominance鈥攕taking claims not just on content or devices, but on the operating systems themselves. Our take: Amazon and Walmart are racing to close the gap between attention and action. Controlling TV hardware and CTV operating systems while linking them to first-party retail data helps build seamless, closed-loop ad ecosystems where viewers can become buyers in a click. To stay competitive, marketers must optimize for closed-loop attribution, prioritize retail media integrations, and treat smart TVs as both screen and storefront as retail media and CTV ad spending surge.

US digital ad spending growth will dip below 10% YoY in 2025, but retail media, social networks, and CTV will still perform above the overall average.

This is the first installment of our annual 鈥淐anada Ad Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

The net neutrality reversal makes deep pockets more important than relevance, threatening SMBs and reshaping the battle for online visibility.

A possible partnership would bring AI-native search to millions, challenge Google鈥檚 dominance, and push Samsung ahead in the on-device AI race.

Last week鈥檚 announcements by Google to expand its AI search experiences came with big changes for advertisers. Google will offer more ads in AI Overviews and is also testing ads in its fully chat-based AI Mode.

This is the first installment of our biannual 鈥淯K Ad Spending Benchmarks鈥� series, which helps ad buyers and sellers calibrate their spending and revenue mix against the market.

GenAI is taking the search market by storm, but market dynamics will stay largely the same this year.