Brands and agencies have raised concerns that the introduction of AI overviews on search engines will have implications for brands and will require marketers to adjust their search strategies.
The feature, rolled out in the US in May and the UK in August, leverages generative AI to scrape the web for relevant information and provide summarized responses to queries at the top of the search results page. The worry is that people can ask a question and find an answer without ever having to click on the website that originally published the information. News publishers have already been up in arms about the introduction of AI overviews and now the impact on content marketing is being felt.
HubSpot's chief executive officer, Yamini Rangan, first raised alarm bells about the potential impact of AI search in October.
She told a room full of marketers at HubSpot's Inbound conference in Boston: "Search has fundamentally changed. It used to be that your customers would answer questions and search engines would serve up blue links, and they would click on those blue links that they would get to your website. But now with AI overviews your customers are getting answers without leaving search."
It's no secret that Google wants to keep users within the search environment and clicking ads - it's how the business makes its money. In her rallying cry to marketers, Rangan added: "Search needs to be open to feed your visitors but now it is closed keeping your visitors - that is a huge change and it's only going to continue."
It's still very early days in the introduction of AI overviews, and since they aren't available on every search, brands and agencies are yet to know the potential impact. The Drum spoke to UK marketers from a range of industries, including retail, FMCG and the financial sectors, about this. The feedback was that it was too early to see an impact on traffic, but all had taken steps to understand what AI overviews might mean for their business.
One marketing director, Charlotte Ford from the home furnishings retailer Ruggable, was more forthcoming. She tells brands they are going to have to work harder to "deliver personality and engagement" to their content marketing. "Google's AI summary sucks the personality out of any writing which means that if a customer is just searching for cold hard facts, they won't bother to click through on to your site," Ford says.
Blog posts are an integral part of Ruggable's marketing strategy, helping customers with style inspiration and interior design tips and advice. While concerned about the impact of click-through rates, Ford adds: "If you opt to use blogs as a community building tool or you're in a high research category then you shouldn't see this as a threat." With these changes, Ford is now weighing up if the effort is worth the revenue reward or if blog content should be used more for SEO hygiene and be a lower lift on the editorial team.
Lucy Carter is a managing partner of the agency Iris leading the performance marketing team. She says the introduction of AI overviews has been a "huge change," however, she acknowledges that it's a typical reaction to AI that everyone gets excited and worried, but when you look closer, it's an iteration of what has already been happening. "The introduction of AI overviews is another way for Google to encourage people to stay on the search results. It is now using AI but it's an iteration of what it was already doing like featured snippets and the knowledge panel," she says.
Where this is a bit more concerning for advertisers though, Carter says, is that the "sheer real estate AI overview is taking up on the search page is a level up" from changes that have been made before.
Iris is also the search agency for the personal care conglomerate Beiersdorf which owns brands such as Nivea. Carter tells The Drum she has already been tracking and reporting to assess the impact on Beiersdorf's brands. "There are early indications that perhaps where AI overviews are listed, click-through rates might be lower but whether we can infer cause and effect, yet we aren't sure," she says. Essentially in Europe, it's too early to tell, Carter adds.
"There is definitely the potential that brands are going to miss out on traffic as a result of it," Carter says. However, there are also lots of opportunities. Her advice to brands from an SEO perspective is always to create evergreen content that answers people's queries rather than publishing generic product messages. This will become even more important for brands looking to capitalize on AI overviews. "You need to lead with what consumers are looking for not the brand we want to push," she adds.
Nivea's search strategy is to publish copy that will make an authority on skincare, so the brand is visible when people are looking for solutions and answers, for example, questions on aging, acne or dry skin. AI search overviews could really help Nivea be seen as a reputable source on all things skincare, Carter explains.
"It can be a really positive thing, and that's why we're also trying to get in early with our clients to test this, to see what it looks like, to see how we can kind of understand what their biggest opportunities are," Carter says.
Like Carter, Steven Jackson, who is content manager at the Havas-owned agency Search Laboratory, says there will be an impact on website traffic but is telling clients that there is value to appearing in AI overview boxes. "It's saying to users that Google has identified you as a trusted source of information for that query," Jackson says. Therefore, brands should think of being cited in the AI summary as upper-funnel marketing that could help with brand recognition.
There are other benefits like the AI overviews allowing for multiple companies to be listed rather than traditional search which makes it harder for websites to fight for that number one listing. Jackson adds that if a user can get information easier without trawling through a website it might even help to shorten the conversion journey.
"We do need to react to this change as it will have an impact on a lot of companies, but it's just about figuring out how you can still win in that space and there are ways and means to do that," Jackson says. He adds that perhaps marketers could change their KPIs for search, thinking less about traffic numbers and more about uplifts in brand metrics.