Should You Still Invest in Google Ads as AI Changes Search?
It's a fair question. People are using ChatGPT or another LLM to research products. Google is answering more questions directly in search results. AI Overviews can summarize an answer without the person ever clicking a website. So, do businesses still need to invest in Google Ads? Yes. AI is absorbing the early research stage of the buyer journey, not the moment someone decides to act. Google Ads still capture that moment, the search that happens once a person already knows roughly what they want and is comparing specific options. That distinction, between researching and buying, is the whole answer. The rest is the “why” and the “how.” Researching Intent vs. Buying Intent: The Distinction That Matters Now Think about how you use search compared to a few years ago. I used to Google almost everything. Now, if I'm trying to understand a complicated topic, compare a few ideas, or figure out what I should even be asking, I'm probably starting with ChatGPT or Claude. I'm not alone. Some of the searches businesses used to rely on for traffic are shifting there too. Someone looking for a basic definition may never click through to a website. AI can answer that on its own. But researching and buying aren't the same thing. At some point, the person researching a problem has to find the company, product, or service they're actually going to use. Researching Intent The searcher is still learning, comparing categories, or figuring out what to even ask. Example: “what is account-based marketing.” Buying Intent The searcher already knows what they want and is comparing specific providers. Example: “ABM agency” or “best ABM agencies for SaaS.” Intent Type Example Search Where AI Shows Up Where Google Ads Shows Up Researching “what is account based marketing” Often fully answered by AI, no click needed Rarely converts, low commercial value Buying “best ABM agencies for SaaS” AI may shortlist options High-intent moment, Google Ads’ strongest zone AI can easily answer the first kind of search. It can't replace the second kind, because at that point the person is choosing between real options, and that's exactly where Google Ads have always been strongest. Google Ads Capture Demand. They Don't Create It. This is something I think gets lost in paid search conversations. Google Search Ads are really good at capturing existing demand. Someone has a problem. They know enough about that problem to search for a solution. Your ad shows up at that exact moment. But if nobody is searching for what you sell, adding more keywords and increasing the budget isn't going to magically create demand. I've seen businesses try to force Google Ads to work for products or services people don't know exist yet. The campaigns struggle, and eventually the conclusion is that “Google Ads don't work.” Sometimes that's not the problem. Sometimes the business is trying to capture demand that doesn't exist yet. That's where other channels matter. Paid social, video, content, events, and PR can introduce the problem or solution before someone ever opens Google. The job of Google Ads is to be there once that awareness turns into intent. Branded Search May Matter More, Not Less This is the part I keep coming back to. More research is moving into ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Gemini, etc. People may do less of their early research on traditional search engines. But what happens after the research? In my experience, this is often where branded search comes in. A buyer used to search ten different questions and visit ten different websites. Now they might ask an AI tool to help narrow down their options, then go to Google and search the names of the two or three companies they want to look at further. That makes a deliberate branded search strategy more important, not less, as AI reshapes how people research. Someone might already know your brand from Claude, a podcast, LinkedIn, or a recommendation. Their Google search isn't necessarily the start of their journey. It might be one of the last steps. I push back on one common claim: “We rank number one organically for our brand, so we don't need to run branded ads.” Maybe. But I want to look at the actual search results first. Are competitors bidding on your name? Are third-party review sites showing up? Is a large AI Overview, shopping block, or local pack pushing your organic listing down the page? The search results page isn't ten blue links anymore, and owning more of it can matter, especially when the person searching already knows who you are. SEO, GEO, and Paid Search Aren't Separate Islands Marketing teams love putting channels into boxes. SEO owns organic search. Paid media owns Google Ads. Someone else is suddenly responsible for GEO. What GEO Actually Means GEO, or generative engine optimization, is about making it easy for AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and AI Overviews to understand and surface your brand in generated answers. That's not how people actually research, though. A buyer might discover a company in ChatGPT. Then they see the brand again on LinkedIn. They Google the company name, click a paid ad, and leave. Three days later they come back through an organic search. They finally convert through direct traffic. Which channel gets credit? Wrong question. The better question is whether the company was visible throughout the process. Google Ads don't directly make a company more likely to get cited by an LLM (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc) or show up in an AI-generated answer. But paid search still supports the bigger visibility picture. It helps capture demand created elsewhere. It gives you faster feedback on the words buyers actually use. And it shows you which problems and solutions drive action, not just traffic. That information should get shared across paid search, SEO, content, and GEO. The channels are different. The person researching doesn't care. When Google Ads Aren't the Answer I love Google Ads. I also don't think every business should run them. If there's little to no search volume for your product or service, search ads may not be the best place to start. Say your sales cycle is long and your conversion tracking stops at a form fill. You might end up optimizing for leads that never become customers. If your landing page doesn't clearly explain what you do, more traffic won't fix that. And if you can't connect marketing activity to actual business outcomes, spending more won't help. You'll just spend more without knowing what's working. Google Ads work best when there's existing intent to capture and the infrastructure to measure what happens after the click. Without those two things, the answer isn't always “spend more.” Sometimes the answer is to fix the foundation first. So, Should You Still Invest in Google Ads? Yes, but be more deliberate about why. Google doesn't own the entire research journey anymore. The value of Google Ads is that search still captures moments of intent. AI may help someone understand their problem and build a shortlist. But when that person searches for a solution, compares providers, or types a brand name into Google, there's a reason behind it, and that's the moment Google Ads can still be incredibly valuable. If you're not sure where your brand actually shows up right now, across paid, organic, and AI-generated answers, that's worth a real look before you touch the budget. See Where Your Brand Shows Up in Search Get a free look at your brand's visibility across paid search, organic results, and AI answers like ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews, before you decide where to shift budget. Frequently Asked Questions Is Google Ads still worth it if people are using AI to research? Yes, for the buying stage. ChatGPT and AI Overviews are absorbing early, informational research queries, but Google Ads capture the later moment when someone already knows what they want and is comparing specific options, which is where paid search has always performed best.. What is GEO in marketing? GEO stands for generative engine optimization. It's the practice of structuring content so AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews can understand it and surface it in generated answers, similar in spirit to SEO but built around how AI systems extract and cite information rather than how they rank pages. What is the difference between AEO and SEO? SEO, or search engine optimization, focuses on ranking web pages in traditional search results like Google's blue links. AEO, or answer engine optimization, focuses on getting content selected as the direct answer in featured snippets, voice search, and AI-generated responses. SEO is about visibility on a results page, while AEO is about being the answer itself, and both rely on similarly clear, well-structured, and specific content. Should branded search campaigns be cut if a company already ranks first organically? Not automatically. Ranking first organically doesn't account for competitor bidding on your brand name, review sites appearing above your listing, or AI Overviews and shopping blocks pushing your organic result further down the page. Check the actual search results page before dropping branded ad spend. Do Google Ads help a brand get cited by AI tools like ChatGPT? Not directly. Google Ads don't influence whether an AI system cites or surfaces a brand in a generated answer. What paid search does provide is faster data on the exact language buyers use and which offers drive action, information that can inform SEO and GEO efforts even though the channels themselves work independently. What's the difference between researching intent and buying intent in search? Researching intent is a searcher still learning about a topic or category, for example “what is account based marketing.” Buying intent is a searcher who already knows what they want and is comparing specific providers, for example “best ABM agencies for SaaS.” AI tools increasingly answer researching-intent queries directly, while buying-intent queries remain where Google Ads perform best.
