How Google’s A.I. Overviews Are Rewriting the Rules of Digital Commerce
The rules of online visibility have changed. For decades, digital commerce strategy rested on a relatively stable bargain: brands optimized for ranking and bids, Google surfaced links and ads and consumers clicked through to evaluate options. That model is being rewritten with a new gatekeeper standing between brands and customers. Artificial intelligence has become an intermediary in search that increasingly answers questions, frames comparisons and influences decisions before users ever reach a brand’s site.
Google’s AI Overviews, the generative summaries that now appear at the top of many search results, are fundamentally altering how consumers discover products, compare services and make purchasing decisions. Since late 2024, Google has expanded its reach across more query types, industries and regions, signaling that generative search is moving from experiment to default behavior. Instead of presenting users with a list of links to explore, search now often begins with a synthesized answer that sets the context, priorities and perceived winners before any click occurs.
The shift is becoming commercially consequential. In recent months, advertisers and agencies have begun to observe paid placements appearing within or adjacent to AI Overviews. Beyond reshaping organic discovery, early signals show ads beginning to appear within or adjacent to these summaries, introducing a new, and largely opaque, layer of paid visibility. While such placements remain limited for now, their presence at all raises a larger issue: advertisers currently have little insight into where their ads surface within A.I.-driven results, how those placements perform or how they influence buyer intent. As a result, a growing portion of search visibility is effectively operating outside of traditional reporting frameworks.
This coincides with a broader recalibration of Google’s search experience. As regulators scrutinize Google’s market power and users increasingly expect instant, synthesized answers, Google has strong incentives to keep people on the results page longer. AI Overviews serve that goal. For brands, however, this creates a growing measurement and control gap at precisely the moment when search remains one of the most expensive and performance-critical channels in digital commerce.
A recent analysis by Adthena of more than 21 million search results suggests that this is not a gradual transition. The expansion of AI Overviews is accelerating, affecting visibility across nearly every major industry and creating what many brands are already experiencing as a measurement and control gap in search performance. With search engine results pages (SERPs) evolving in real time, brands face a narrowing window to understand where their ads and content appear, how A.I.-driven placements reshape performance and what strategic adjustments are required before competitors adapt faster.
The numbers tell a stark story
Between April and September of last year, AI Overviews expanded their footprint dramatically across the search landscape. Finance saw the fastest growth, with visibility increasing at 9.9 percent, while healthcare maintained the highest overall presence with an 8.3 percent jump. Travel rose 5.8 percent, and even traditionally slower-moving sectors such as retail and automotive still recorded steady growth of around 2 percent.
At first glance, these percentages may seem modest, but the impact is anything but. Early performance indicators suggest that paid search click-through rates could decline by eight to 12 percentage points, translating into a 20 percent to 40 percent relative drop in traffic for businesses that rely on search advertising. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a fundamental disruption to customer acquisition.
More concerning than frequency is placement. AI Overviews initially appeared on longer, informational queries—classic top-of-funnel searches. Increasingly, they are triggering on shorter, high-volume keywords associated with comparison and purchase intent. This effectively compresses the funnel, placing A.I.-generated summaries in the same high-value real estate historically occupied by paid ads.
Consider what this means in practical terms. A search for “best business accounting software,” for example, may now surface an A.I.-generated synthesis before a user encounters a single paid listing or organic result. That summary often becomes the first, and sometimes final, touchpoint influencing a decision.
How the impact differs by industry
The pattern varies significantly by industry, revealing which sectors face the most immediate pressure.
Finance leads the disruption. AI Overview visibility in financial services climbs from 11 percent on single-word searches to nearly 79 percent on longer queries. For banks, investment firms and fintech companies, this means A.I. is now mediating the majority of comparison and research queries, precisely the searches that have driven customer acquisition for years.
Healthcare remains saturated. Even short medical queries frequently trigger AI Overviews, though there’s a notable pullback on complex medical queries (down 21 percent). This suggests increased caution around sensitive health topics, creating both risk and oportunity for providers and pharmaceutical brands navigating compliance and trust.
Retail sees A.I. dominating product discovery. Retail AI Overviews peak at 84 percent on nine to 10-word searches, shifting advantage towards brands that publish detailed, educational content rather than those relying primarily on ad spend.
Travel faces a planning-stage takeover. AI Overviews rose 5.8 percent across mid-length queries, such as season travel planning, where paid listings once captured high-intent traffic. Airlines, hotels and booking platforms are competing with A.I. summaries that shape itineraries before users click.
What this means for the bottom line
The financial implications extend well beyond simple traffic loss. Businesses are facing a threefold challenge:
- Rising acquisition costs. As click-through rates decline, the cost per acquisition for paid search campaigns increases. Marketing budgets that once delivered predictable returns are now generating fewer conversions at higher costs.
- Diminished message control. AI Overviews synthesize information from multiple sources, often without clear attribution. Brand positioning gets filtered through A.I.’s interpretation, which may miss nuances, emotional cues or unique value propositions that create differentiation from competitors.
- Competitive displacement. The brands gaining visibility in AI Overviews aren’t necessarily those with the largest ad budgets. They’re the ones providing comprehensive, information-rich content that A.I. systems favor. This levels the playing field in some ways, but it also means established market leaders can lose ground to better-optimized competitors.
Still, disruption creates opportunities for businesses willing to adapt quickly. For example, in industries like gaming and automotive, long tail informational queries, search terms that include specific words that reflect higher purchase intent with four or more words, often show paid ads securing strong placement above AI Overviews. These mid- and upper-funnel moments remain underexploited by many other competitors.
What business leaders can do now
Mitigating the impact of AI Overviews on their search campaigns and overarching business visibility requires structural changes.
Map A.I. exposure precisely. You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Identify exactly which search terms trigger AI Overviews, how frequently they appear, and on which devices. Industry benchmarks won’t help here, the impact varies widely depending on specific keywords, customer journey and device mix.
Rebuild content by authority, not promotion. The brands winning visibility in AI Overviews aren’t outspending competitors, they’re out-educating them. AI systems reward comprehensive, comparison-rich content that genuinely answers customer questions. Content strategies must shift from promotional messaging to authoritative resources. Think less about what you want to say and more about what your customers need to know.
Differentiate ads where A.I. cannot. Generic ad copy fades next to A.I. summaries. Ads need to offer something AI Overviews cannot: immediate value through deals, guarantees and limited-time offers. Take a contextual approach and layer in human elements such as real customer stories, accessible experts or personalized services, that build the trust A.I. summaries inherently lack.
Segment by device. Mobile and desktop search show dramatically different AI Overview patterns. Mobile screens give less real estate and higher AI Overview saturation. Test device-specific campaigns with tailored creative, adjusted bids and potentially different keyword strategies for mobile versus desktop traffic.
Build a testing culture, not a one-time fix. Google keeps adjusting when and where AI Overviews appear. The businesses that win will be those that monitor changes weekly and adjust tactics monthly. Set up dashboards, establish review cadences and empower teams to shift budget toward what’s working without waiting for quarterly planning cycles.
Play the long game. A.I.-mediated search is the new foundation of digital discovery. The companies that thrive will treat this as an opportunity to own their customer relationships rather than rent attention through intermediaries. Invest in owned assets: authoritative content, direct customer channels and brand strength that transcends any single platform’s algorithm.
Fundamentally, the search landscape has already changed. The strategic question is no longer whether to adapt, but how quickly organizations can adapt to a model where discovery, comparison and intent are mediated by machines. The companies that recognize it as a strategic imperative will find opportunities their competitors miss. They’ll move quickly, testing and learning rather than waiting for perfect information. They’ll diversify their approach, optimizing paid search performance while simultaneously investing in owned assets like comprehensive content, direct customer relationships and brand strength. And they’ll view AI Overviews not as an obstacle to overcome but as a new dimension of the search landscape to master, requiring evolved paid search strategies that work with A.I. rather than against it.
The top spot on Google’s search results page still matters. But now, earning it requires a completely different playbook. The businesses that recognize this shift early, invest in visibility they can measure and build authority that A.I. systems reward, will be better positioned to compete as generative search becomes the default interface for digital commerce.