by Sophie Strong, Managing Partner, & Sarah Nugent, Managing Director of PHD UK
Once upon a time, search was simple. A neat box, blinking cursor, and a question waiting to be answered. But today, that tidy little box has exploded into a sprawling universe of voice commands, visual cues, AI-powered assistants and algorithms that know what you want before you do. Search isn’t just “search” anymore; it’s a battleground for attention, a labyrinth of discovery, and a playground of innovation. From TikTok hacks to ChatGPT prompts, the ways we seek – and find – information are multiplying faster than we can type “How do I stay relevant?”. Welcome to the new era: search is getting bigger, more fragmented and infinitely more complex.
It’s critical that agencies and clients are ready. Whilst (for now) Google currently hold c.82% market share worldwide on desktop and a staggering 95% on mobile (Statista), we see the future looking slightly different. Even if your search set-up is reflective of what you require today, it won’t be ready for tomorrow.
So, what are the rules we need to abide by to navigate these changes in the landscape?
Paid and organic search must be connected to unlock efficiencies for your brand
Changing consumer behaviour is creating new ways to search, encouraging new product development and a requirement for greater connectivity.
These changes are being driven largely by artificial intelligence and conversational search (AI Overviews spring to mind).
Google will prioritise automated products for a personalised user experience (examples include modern search and PMAX). As such, paid search costs could inflate as demand for the channel increases and inventory is constrained and ‘premium-ised’.
Less search opportunities could ultimately create greater inflation. As such, we need to look at how we can leverage the strength of both paid and organic search to create shared learnings and avoid duplication or cannibalisation.
At Omnicom Media Group, we have developed our OMG Search Toolkit, designed to automate the rules between paid and organic, and competitor bidding, to ensure our clients’ search approach is future-fit, connected and efficient.
Embrace Gen AI to stay future-fit in an ever-evolving landscape
Generative AI is becoming more and more prominent. It is expected that the Generative AI market will reach $15.7 Trillion by 2030. (Source: enterpriseappstoday.com).
Most pressing for search is the introduction of AI Overviews (AIO). AI Overviews generate an overview of the topic a user searches and display links to learn more.
Whilst today AIO have relatively low impact, their prominence will grow. Currently AIO tend to appear mostly for question-based, long-tail queries. However, we expect their learning capabilities to evolve, increasing the volume of different query types.
Our global teams have been testing this feature in the US for an automotive brand and have found that AI-generated answers have been focused on informational, navigational and transactional terms.
It’s not just AIO we need to be thinking about. Gen AI agents will disrupt how we utilise search even further. From Gemini to Perplexity, expect to see Gen AI agents take us from a space of knowledge-based outcomes, to more outcomes-based. A recent McKinsey review even went as far as to state that AI agents could become as commonplace as chatbots are today. The impact of AI agents to the user, possibly an easier experience as AI agents navigate the complexity of multiple query returns to find the answer. The impact to the advertiser, possibly fewer ‘human-based’ impressions to play with.
These early indications show that we need a strategy that encompasses relevance over rank, query-dependent measures, user interaction data, content diversity, and dynamic and context-aware responses to navigate this evolving space. We call this generative optimisation.
Expand into social search to unlock potential incremental performance gains
Platforms like YouTube, META and TikTok are creating new search habits, particularly amongst the GenZ community. A recent IAB study highlighted the significance of this change amongst 15–24-year-olds, citing 67% of this audience use Instagram to search, 62% use TikTok, with 61% using Google.
As the search landscape becomes more fragmented there is more platform choice than ever before. Particularly in social. But what do we mean by ‘social search’?
We’d describe it as consumers increasingly using social platforms, not just for browsing, entertainment and connectivity functions – but increasingly using them for purchase-focused search behaviours.
Social platform capabilities have evolved, so too has consumer behaviour in these environments. A key driving force for social search is the rise in social commerce, as it allows for greater product discovery and product insight. The UK is one of the most advanced European markets in this space and is expected to grow by 26.6% annually for social commerce adoption by the end of this year (2024.) (Source: Sprout Social).
Social platforms are leaning into the space of becoming digital storefronts, allowing brands to display and sell products on the platform. They have also developed features that enable brand connections with consumers, including product reviews and customer support.
Brands need to lean into the world of social commerce, developing digital storefronts and jumping onto the latest social innovations with a clear testing plan that ensures their search strategy captures these latest innovations in new channels.
Why is this important? Because brands tapping into these trends and taking advantage of social search and the commerce opportunities within the platform have seen ROI increases of up to x5 in some instances.
Reach active shoppers with commerce search to avoid competitor leakage
There are other platforms that offer access to a sizeable audience who are actively researching, and more importantly, specifically searching for products. Cue eCommerce platforms. Specifically, Amazon which boasts impressive stats inclusive of; 86% of UK consumers having shopped at Amazon, and a whopping 70% shopping at least once a month on the platform. These platforms are critical to show up in if your brand is present, because if you aren’t, someone else is likely to be, which will eat into your profit.
To succeed in this space there are certain rules that need to be followed.
- Understand the Amazon ecosystem. This means getting to grips with the ecosystem, the dynamics of the auction and how to measure effectively.
- Leverage the main forms of ad formats, inclusive of sponsored products, sponsored brands and sponsored display. Having a full spread to maximise visibility.
- Ensure that best practice is followed. This means having a correct structure, so segment portfolios and campaigns in an organised and effective manner.
- Highlight the tentpole moments for your brands, with a clear action plan to take advantage of increased demand. Think Prime Day, Black Friday but also Back to School and Easter.
- Most importantly, ensure you are continually testing and learning with a defined testing roadmap that ladders back to your broader holistic search agenda.
The Ecommerce space will continue to evolve, as with everything in the digital landscape. Expect to see more of an emphasis on the role of upper funnel, enhanced bidding solutions, and AI creative in this space in the future.
Armed with the fact that search as we know it is becoming more complicated, it is imperative that brands look beyond traditional search environments and the rules that have always worked to date.
Testing plans need to include connected search solutions, more generative ready optimisation and more social and commerce search exploration. No longer can our search just be connected, it needs to be holistic, to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right message to the right audience – only then will we truly have taken advantage of this new landscape and its potential.
