AI Overviews and AI Mode vs Google Search Ads: the real impact and what to do

By Miguel Maio · Published 29 September 2026

Where paid loses and where it holds

1. 1Ads get pushed below the AIO
2. 2CTR falls on queries where the AIO shows
3. 3But paid lives in transactional, where AIO is rare
4. 4Abs. Top IS can't see the AIO: don't trust it

Measure by AIO presence, not by the vanity metric.

If your business runs on Google Search Ads, the question that matters isn't "will AI Overviews kill SEO?". It's what happens to your campaigns when an AI-generated block takes over the top of the result. The honest answer, with the data that exists, is less dramatic than the panic and more serious than the relief. The direct impact is real but selective, and the underlying problem is strategic, not a CTR blip. This is the flip side of advertising inside AI search, seen from the desk of someone who already spends on search ads every day.

What actually changes in the auction

Two things at once. First: when there's an AI Overview, the text block takes the prime space and pushes everything down, ads included. The user has to pass an answer before reaching your ad. Second, and more structural: Google is placing its own ads inside the AI surfaces. At Marketing Live 2026 it announced four Gemini-built formats (Conversational Discovery Ads and Highlighted Answers in AI Mode, AI-powered Shopping Ads in Search, and a Business Agent for leads). Eligibility runs through having the AI Max for Search, AI Max for Shopping and Performance Max foundation. The ground for buying traffic is moving, not disappearing.

The impact on CTR and traffic (with data)

The best public dataset is the Seer Interactive study (January 2025 to February 2026, 53 brands, 296.9 million paid impressions). What matters for paid:

The read: the AIO's arrival nearly halved paid CTR, then it recovered - but on AIO queries CTR stays below non-AIO queries. Seer estimates a traffic drop of around 53% when the AIO is present. And there's a real premium for being cited: brands cited in the AIO hold a consistently higher paid CTR.

The detail that saves you (for now): paid lives where the AIO is rare

This is the part almost nobody says, and the one that matters most to you. In Seer's paid dataset, the AIO touched only 7% of keywords and 2.2% of paid impressions. Why so little? Because search-ad spend concentrates on transactional and commercial intent, and that's exactly where the AIO shows least. Only about 5% of transactional queries and 8% of commercial ones trigger an AIO, versus 95% of comparison and 86% of question queries. So the AIO devours informational top-of-funnel (your organic suffers more), but the bottom of funnel, where you buy clicks that convert, is still mostly ad territory. The hit is real, but selective.

The Abs. Top IS trap

Be careful which metric you trust to judge this. Average position was deprecated in 2019; what's left is Absolute Top Impression Share. And it has a blind spot: it measures your position among ads, not against the AIO. You can have stable Abs. Top IS and still lose real prominence, because the whole ad block now sits below a large AIO. If you judge the AIO's impact by Abs. Top IS, you're not measuring the AIO's impact. You have to segment performance by AIO presence - which Google Ads doesn't give you natively - using third-party SERP monitoring and intent-cluster analysis.

What about Bing/Copilot?

Worth a look, and not as a fad. Copilot has around 320 million monthly active users (Q2 FY2026, +148% in a year) and a commercially hot audience. 35% of sessions carry purchase intent, versus 22% on standard Bing search. The flip side: CTR of ads inside Copilot answers is low, 1.2% to 1.8% (up to 2.3% in electronics and fashion), as is typical of conversational surfaces. Microsoft reports 3.2% conversion on Copilot-integrated Shopping and +18% reach at no extra CPC. For a Google-dependent advertiser, Microsoft is a diversification with usually lower CPC and high intent, not the solution, but a sensible side bet. Treat Microsoft's figures as directional: many come from early access and forecasts, not independent audit.

Solutions, in order (what I'd do with a client this week)

This isn't a generic checklist; it's the sequence I'd put on the table with an advertiser who lives on search ads.

1. Measure by AIO presence, not by the vanity metric. Approximate the segmentation with SERP monitoring and query classification; cross CTR and conversion by cluster (informational/comparison vs transactional). Abs. Top IS alone misleads.

2. Shield the terms that convert. Double down on transactional and brand, where the AIO is rare and the click still pays, and watch brand defense (competitors' ads under the AIO). That's where your money works today.

3. Qualify for the AI surfaces. To surface in the new formats, Google wants the AI Max for Search, AI Max for Shopping and well-structured Performance Max foundation. Strong assets, feed and structured data decide eligibility.

4. Bid to value, not to clicks. With clicks scarcer and pricier on AIO queries, bid to value (tCPA/tROAS, conversion value) and run incrementality tests. Don't optimize to a last-click the AIO distorts. And mind Quality Score, which decides what you pay for the prominence that's left.

5. Land for the AI-referred visitor. Fewer, higher-intent clicks demand pages that answer fast, cut friction and capture first-party data - especially as native checkout starts keeping part of the journey. Tie it to AI traffic in GA4 so you're not blind to attribution.

6. Diversify the dependency. Living on Search Ads alone is concentration risk in an auction Google redesigns. Build organic GEO presence (being cited earns a CTR premium in paid too), owned channels, and test Microsoft/Copilot. It's the same lesson as platform risk.

Honest caveats

Almost all these numbers come from single-vendor studies; Seer's is the most solid, but it's 53 brands and US-centric. AIO presence rates vary widely by sample (BrightEdge puts it at ~48% of queries, others ~25%). Read the order of magnitude, not the decimal. And Google Ads doesn't segment natively by AIO presence, so any impact figure is modeled, not reported. For Portugal and the EU, AI Mode ads and native checkout lag the US, so for Portuguese advertisers this is preparation for what's coming, not today's fire. Preparing isn't slashing budget in a panic. The data even shows CTR recovery and still-small paid impressions in AIO.

Sources

• Seer Interactive - AI Overviews impact on Google CTR (2026 update)
• Demand Local - AI Overview presence and paid search CPC statistics (2026)
• Google (blog.google) - New ad formats built with Gemini (Marketing Live 2026)
• Searchlab - Microsoft Ads statistics 2026 (Copilot)

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