Google in the AI Mode era: the update that changes ads after 25 years

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On 19 May 2026, at Google I/O, Elizabeth Reid, VP of Search at Google, described the announcement as the biggest update to the search bar in 25 years. (1) This is not a rhetorical flourish: the structure of the SERP, the way people search and the way ads are shown are all changing in a substantial way. In the meantime, AI Mode has already surpassed one billion monthly users, with queries doubling every quarter since launch. (1) Those who do not know yet will find out the hard way in a few months, looking at their reports.

If you manage advertising campaigns or work on driving traffic to a website, you will already have noticed something is off in the past few months. Impressions stay stable, clicks drop, cost per acquisition rises. Your account looks fine on paper, but the results tell a different story.

The problem is not the account. It is what is happening one floor up. The music is changing tempo, and to keep up, you have to be there and listen.

The new search nobody saw coming

The first mistake people make when confronted with these announcements is reading them as product updates. They are not. They are a paradigm shift in how Google decides who appears and who does not, and above all how ads are built and shown.

Let us start with what has concretely changed.

The search bar has been completely redesigned. It now expands dynamically as you type, accepts multimodal input (text, images, files, video, open Chrome tabs) and offers AI-generated suggestions that go well beyond classic autocomplete. (1) In plain terms: people no longer type two keywords. They write paragraphs. And the system has been built to receive them.

Gemini 3.5 Flash has become the default model for AI Mode globally. (1) Faster, better at multi-step reasoning, better at evaluating the quality and context of content. In plain terms, with a model like this, content written purely to please the algorithm holds up less and less.

Information Agents work in the background, around the clock. (1) A user describes what they are looking for, the agent monitors the web autonomously and alerts them when it finds something relevant. This means the "search moment" is no longer a single click: it is a continuous process. And whoever consumes your site could increasingly often be an automated agent, not a person.

Personal Intelligence has arrived in nearly 200 countries and 98 languages, for free. (1) AI Mode can now connect the user's Gmail, Google Photos and soon Google Calendar. Two people searching for the same thing in the same city can receive different results based on their personal context. Uniform keyword targeting becomes progressively less relevant.

The most common mistake being made right now is continuing to optimise for traditional search, waiting for "the market to return to normal." This is the normal now, and going back does not seem like an option at this point, given the scale of investment. (7)

The numbers that explain why the strategy needs to change

Looking at the data helps understand how real the problem is, and how quickly it is growing.

In 2024, nearly 60% of Google searches in the EU ended without any click to an external site. (5) More than one in two searches resolved inside Google, without the user ever reaching your page.

The situation worsens when AI Mode enters the picture. Recent data indicates that 93% of AI Mode sessions generate no clicks to external sites. (10) It is not a channel for driving organic traffic in the traditional sense, not anymore. Ads, on the other hand, still appear.

On the organic side, the collapse in click-through rates is already documented. On queries where AI features appear, the CTR of the first organic result has dropped from 27% to below 11%, using Germany as the reference market. (8) Anyone measuring only impressions and not clicks sees accounts that appear to be performing well, but is collecting less and less.

There is one data point that goes in the opposite direction, and it is worth keeping in mind. Brands cited inside AI Overviews record 91% more paid clicks than brands that do not appear in the response. (9) Being cited matters. It is not just a question of organic traffic: it is a credibility effect that transfers to campaigns as well.

AI Overviews now appear in 14% of purchase queries in the US, 20% in the UK and 19% in Australia, according to Adthena. (4) The growth from 2.1% in November 2025 to 14% in April 2026, which we had already analysed just a couple of days ago (6), has not slowed down.

What to do now, in order of priority

Restructuring the entire budget tomorrow morning is not the answer. What matters is understanding which part of the system has already changed, and starting to move accordingly.

First: check whether your campaigns are already ready for the new formats. Google announced at Google Marketing Live 2026 four new native ad formats for AI Mode:

• Conversational Discovery Ads (the ad responds to the user's specific question, with creative generated by Gemini in real time);

• Highlighted Answers (sponsored ads inserted into AI Mode recommendation lists);

• AI-powered Shopping Ads and Business Agent for Leads. (2, 3)

To be eligible for these formats, you need active campaigns in Performance Max or AI Max. (11) Those who are not using them yet are, in practice, already excluded from these placements.

Second: stop optimising only for the click. The new goal is not to be the result that gets clicked, it is to be the source cited by the AI. This means structuring site content to answer specific conversational questions, not just to rank on short keywords. Queries in AI Mode are on average two to three times longer than traditional searches: your content needs to be able to answer them. (1)

Third: treat product feeds and landing pages as raw material for building ads. With the new formats, Gemini reads your landing page or feed and generates the creative in real time, tailored to the user's specific intent. If your copy is generic, built only for traditional search, or not specific enough, the system has less to work with. As we have already written on this blog, optimising a feed only for paid campaigns does not produce the same results as optimising it to appear organically in AI searches. (6)

Fourth: prepare your content for Information Agents. If an AI agent is monitoring the web on behalf of a user interested in what you offer, the information on your site needs to be updated, structured and machine-readable. You need to explain clearly what you do, who you do it for, in what context and how the contact or purchase process works. This is not a luxury, it is the precondition for existing in this scenario.

It is hard, and we know it

Staying on top of everything that changes in this industry is one of the most frustrating parts of working in digital. Every three months the rules shift, and anyone who does not keep up risks investing in a strategy the system is already dismantling.

But there is a flip side. Whoever keeps up while others wait gains positions that are then difficult to recover. Not because they did something extraordinary, but simply because they were there when it mattered. The moment when AI Mode was still an unsaturated space is now, not six months from now.

Here at Duobu, we keep studying these changes because we have no choice, even though honestly we would rather keep up with what Hello Kitty is up to. Probably less stressful. But if you need to understand where to start, whether with campaigns or with content, there is a link below for a conversation. It is not a funnel, it is genuinely just a low-pressure chat. There is already enough AI handling the rest.

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1. Google Blog (2026) - A new era for AI Search https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/search-io-2026/

2. Search Engine Land (2026) - Google tests new conversational ad formats in AI Mode and Search https://searchengineland.com/google-tests-new-conversational-ad-formats-in-ai-mode-and-search-478115

3. Search Engine Journal (2026) - Google Introduces New Ad Formats In AI Mode https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-introduces-new-ad-formats-in-ai-mode/575354/

4. Adthena (2026) - Google I/O 2026: What Marketing Leaders Need to Know https://www.adthena.com/resources/blog/google-io-what-marketing-leaders-need-to-know/

5. Sparktoro (2024) - Zero-Click Search Study: For every 1,000 EU Google Searches, only 374 clicks go to the Open Web. In the US, it's 360. https://sparktoro.com/blog/2024-zero-click-search-study-for-every-1000-us-google-searches-only-374-clicks-go-to-the-open-web-in-the-eu-its-360/

6. Duobu (2026) - How to sell your products on ChatGPT in 2026 https://duobu.eu/en/sell-on-chatgpt-ecommerce-2026

7. Duobu (2026) - AI is "for entertainment only": the Microsoft disclaimer worth billions https://duobu.eu/en/ai-microsoft-copilot-entertainment

8. Sistrix (2026) - AI Overviews in Germany: How Much Click-Through Rates Are Really Dropping https://www.sistrix.com/blog/ai-overviews-in-germany/#CTR-at-position-1-from-27-to-11

9. Seer interactive (2025) - AIO Impact on Google CTR: September 2025 Update https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/aio-impact-on-google-ctr-september-2025-update#:~:text=Is%20the%20Original%20Hypothesis%20True%3F

10. Semrush (2025) - Google AI Mode's Early Adoption and SEO Impact https://www.semrush.com/blog/google-ai-mode-seo-impact/

11. Brainlabs (2026) - Google Marketing Live 2026: AI is the new interface https://www.brainlabsdigital.com/google-marketing-live-2026-brainlabs-review/

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