Every year, Google Marketing Live gives a read on where the platform is headed. This year the theme was clear: Google is rebuilding search around AI and paid visibility. We’re still working through what all of it means, but here’s what stood out to us and how we’re thinking about it.

Search is shifting from links to answers

The “ten blue links” are fading. Google is swapping the familiar list of results for AI-mediated experiences, where people ask conversational questions and get a synthesized answer back. AI Mode now has more than a billion monthly users, and ads will be woven right into those responses instead of sitting below organic links.

That seems to change where purchase intent lives. Shopping and Search are merging into what Google calls agentic commerce, where AI helps research and compare products on a shopper’s behalf. The brands cited inside those answers tend to land in the consideration set, and the ones that aren’t can fall out of it. In short, paid visibility looks like it’s moving upstream, earlier in the decision journey than most of us are used to buying.

What it means for paid media

Google’s new ad formats are built for this post-link world. Conversational Discovery ads, Highlighted Answers, and Shopping ads in AI Mode are how you show up when there’s no list to rank in, and they seem to call for different creative: answer-focused and educational rather than promotional.

Google is also pushing automation hard, positioning Performance Max and AI Max as the on-ramp to these placements. The pitch is roughly 14% more conversions on average, climbing to 27% for campaigns still leaning on exact and phrase match. Independent analysis of 250-plus campaigns found a median lift closer to 13%, with CPA rising about 16% and results swinging from big gains to real losses. Automation can do a lot, but in our experience it works best with clean accounts and strong conversion data behind it. It’s not a “set it and forget it” button.

On the creative side, AI Brief and Asset Studio let you generate and test concepts on demand. Handy tools, with the usual caveat: vague inputs produce vague ads, so the brief is where the real work happens.

A healthy dose of skepticism

Search results haven’t gone anywhere. Google has just made them a little harder to earn organically and a little more necessary to buy. Free listings now sit behind a “See more” button while paid placements stay in view, which can mean paying more per user to hold the visibility you used to get for free. That’s a real trade-off worth keeping an eye on.

Google also leaned into YouTube as a discovery channel on par with Search. YouTube reaches 84% of US adults, and more than nine in ten of those under 50, making Shorts and creator content a legitimate place where younger shoppers find products.

The real story for brands

This isn’t really about AI getting smarter. It’s more about Google restructuring search to prioritize AI results and paid visibility. None of this means you have to overhaul everything overnight. It mostly feels like a good moment to experiment: test the new formats where they make sense, keep investing in creative quality, and pair automation with a human eye. The brands leaning in early get to learn while the field is still wide open.

We’re still figuring plenty of this out ourselves, and honestly that’s the fun part. If you’d like a thinking partner as you sort through what it means for your brand, reach out to Hagan. We’d love to compare notes and help you find your footing in this new AI-driven landscape.