Brand has never been as important as it is right now. The past decade has been fertile ground for any business wanting to stake its claim online. Smart use of organic search, performance marketing and paid social, has meant brands have been able to drive visibility, clicks and conversions cost effectively and with relative ease.
The boom in online advertising, access to mobile, new ways to pay (eg Klarna, PayPal) and improved internet connections both at home and in the wild have meant that audiences have never been as accessible and the ease at which users can pay for items or services is incredibly simple. Meanwhile, consumer confidence in shopping online has reached a pinnacle, with, at a guess, most people born after 1998 unable to imagine a world where online shopping was not part of the zeitgeist.
However, until 2024, arguably a little before, the digital landscape felt familiar and stable. Sure platforms came and went (RIP Vine) but everyone’s favourite search engines largely looked the same and to the end user, performed the same. Any PPC Manager or SEO specialist would cite a thousand small tweaks and adjustments over the years that have disrupted search, but in reality, these changes have been incremental.
Google’s announcement of AI Mode in May 2025 combined with the meteoric rise of Chat GPT [Insert your favourite LLM platform], Google Ad’s push towards Pmax powered searches and Google’s announcement of an Agent to Agent future, and we’re not just seeing an evolution, we’re part of the revolution of online search. I compare it to the shift of piston engine fighters (think Spitfire) to the Gen 1 fighter Jets of the last months of the Second World War. Overnight, with the emergence of the ME 262 or the Gloster Meteor, the world had changed. It was a case of adapt or being strategically left behind. This comparison might sound dramatic, but I can assure you, as brands and marketers, this is our jet age. And, unlike the ten-year span that shaped aviation post-war, the digital transformation ahead will likely be even faster. I dare to guess that the online search space and how we interact with the internet will be unrecognisable in five years time.
With this change afoot, marketers need to adjust strategies and maximise their spend, not just relying on the lower funnel, instead work harder on the top of funnel marketing to seed brand signals that build familiarity and confidence with potential customers or clients before they’ve even set foot in the road to purchase.
Let’s begin to explore what we’ve seen change.
Paid Channels are More Expensive than ever before
Ask any PPC specialist or even marketing manager about cost of acquisition and they’ll tell you that CPC’s (cost per click) across key sectors are rising. Simply put, more money for fewer conversions. Harking back to the 2010’s, whether you were Amazon or Katie’s independent children’s clothing store, you could compete on the PPC market. However, over time the rise of CPC’s has effectively made the marketplace a difficult arena to compete in for smaller brands with limited budgets.
Search Engine Land (1) reports that in 2025 alone CPC’s were up 12.88% YOY, whilst they did report that brands were reporting better conversions, I suspect this has come through better targeting and management of clicks to maximise budget. Extrapolate this increase over several years and simply the increased costs have made the space unaffordable for brands that only six-seven years ago could build business through PPC channels. With the implementation of ad management tools such as Pmax that rely heavily on data, the Black Lab performance marketing team estimate that a minimum budget of circa £3000 pm on media is needed to generate enough data to inform and leverage the value of the system.
It’s not just the Black Lab team and industry news outlets reporting the increases. Peer to Peer forums such as Reddit have numerous threads of performance professionals reporting the increase in costs (2).
Rising costs are only half the story. The very structure of search results pages is changing. As we’ll explore , the injection of AI Overviews is having a dramatic effect on clicks and how people search, never mind the lost ground to new search partners such a LLM and voice search.
Evolution of Organic Search
Google holds approximately 89.6% of global search (3), with almost 90% of all searches starting on Google.
We have seen the initial rollout of AI supported searches which has not just visually changed the search results pages but also how we use the search results.
AI Overviews is the most obvious change, the little box delivering key information cutting through to the crux of your search query, no longer are users having to scan through meta titles and descriptions to evaluate the best link to click, the answer is handed to them on a plate. This has given rise to the use of the term; Zero-click results. Increasingly, users don’t even leave Google to find what they need.
At Black Lab, we’re seeing this play out in our own data. Traffic to client websites is dropping, particularly for top-of-funnel queries, because users are getting their answers directly on the search results page.
Google’s method for pulling information from websites is also evolving, as the way it understands a brand is evolving. To remain relevant, SEO’s are having to adapt strategies to focus on Answer Engine Optimisation and emphasise brand; a hint of what’s to come, as highlighted in Ahrefs study ‘An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors’ (4). The brands with more mentions across the web are more likely to appear in AI overviews.
So, whilst the principles of good SEO remain unchanged, the breadth of the reach of a brand is becoming critical.
AI Mode Changes the Game for Both Paid & Organic
With Google’s Gemini AI Mode being rolled out already in the US, we are expecting a launch in the UK and Europe before the end of 2025, whilst this is something the team at Black Lab have been talking about (in its previous form SGE) for over 18 months, but even we’re astonished at the speed of the rollout.
AI Mode and other Generative search systems are fundamentally changing how users receive results. As outlined in the Ahrefs study ‘An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors’ (4), it’s expected that the search pages will gradually become one big AI Overview. Summaries not links, with brand summaries including sentiment will matter more than position. Search engines, as alluded to above, will pull from many more sources, from websites, forums, social, news and many other locations, AI will pull together a suite of answers that direct users as quickly as possible to their end goal (5).
Ads are likely to be weaved into the search results, again powered by AI, so rather than the familiar ads at the top, you’ll see ads interspersed at relevant points during the results summary.
Brand is the New Performance Lever
This neatly leads onto my hypothesis, brand is a critical lever for performance. Marketers can’t afford to think of conversion in isolation anymore. The road to conversion needs to be a coherent strategy that combines an eloquent brand story starting with awareness, advocacy, positive sentiment, reassurance and nets to capture high intent searchers.
Whilst this is technically not a new concept, just look at some landmark businesses such as CocaCola or the much-vaunted Dollar Shave Club from their epic launch video. Both focused on every stage of the funnel and told compelling stories that resonated with consumers. But too many brands, large and small, have grown reliant on chasing quick sales through pure conversion tactics alone.Things have gone full circle; to thrive in the new era of online search, brands need to refocus on brand-building as the bedrock of digital strategy.
Brands that manage to coherently evolve their digital approach will benefit from lower CPC’s through better quality scores and customer trust, they’ll appear more on AI Overviews due to the volume of mentions, perceived authority and search volume and thus they’ll get more clicks due to brand recognition.
KPI’s for brands will be branded search volume, mentions on other media platforms or outlets, sentiment and volume of reviews on platforms such as Trust Pilot and the consistency of activity across a variety of channels.
Ultimately in my mind, there’s nothing revolutionary needed. Just a focus on multiple touch points, consistently.
How to Shift Your Strategy
The technology driving Gemini AI Mode is mind blowing and incredibly powerful, the strategies brands need to employ to maximise their presence isn’t mind numbingly complex or difficult. If anything they’re an extension of what brands already do, however, the operative word is coherence.
Bringing together and investing in slightly different areas will allow brands to succeed in a space that is changing. It’s also important to remember that many brands won’t adapt quickly to this new world. This sluggish behaviour presents an opportunity to incumbents and challengers to steal a march on previously dominant brands.
Here are my four suggested steps that brands can take to safeguard and capitalise on being the first to move:
1. Reinvest in brand-building
Content is king, not generic content but content that is created to support the brand and customers. By carefully analysing search behaviour brands can create a portfolio of content that supports customers at all stages of their buying journey thus positioning the brand as a knowledgeable and supportive one. On owned platforms this thought leadership is a great starting point, yet it can build out into PR, developing a presence on third party sites.
Additionally, this quality content will be useful and will gradually be filtered onto forums and discussion boards due to the quality thus further strengthening the brand in the eyes of our digital masters. Digital storytelling, combined with valuable functional content will work to connect potential customers to brands developing buy-in to the story that threads through a brands DNA – see this recent ad by Reef Knots as a great example of this. As this becomes more critical, it’s my prediction that we’ll see drop ship brands fade somewhat as customers, as much as search engines, begin looking for brands they trust, recognise and can buy into.
2 Improve brand presence across channels
We are just at the precipice of change when it comes to Google’s shift towards AI driven answers and entity-based searches. Brands need to win their seat in the AI search results by having a presence across the wider web.
- Encourage reviews on platforms like Google, Trustpilot, and sector-specific directories. Recent, positive reviews don’t just build trust with individual shoppers, they’re a flag of credibility to search engines.
- Use structured data (schema markup) to help Google understand your business, offerings, and reputation. This increases your eligibility for featured snippets and AI-generated summaries.
- Earn mentions and citations following on from the reference to PR in the section above, appearing on third-party sites will become critical (think of it as the new backlink gold rush, just more detailed and genuine). Press coverage, blog features, directories, and mentions on forums such as Reddit will all work to reinforce the brand.
- Have a consistent profile on all channels, on platforms like Google Business Profile, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn (just a few examples), ensure that your content is tailored to suit the platform but the messaging aligns and a consistent story is told.
Brand is no longer just the ‘fluffy’ stuff that looks pretty or sounds good, it’s elemental in how potential customers will discover you, understand your offering and importantly, how you surface on the next generation of search.
3. Align SEO with brand
It’s time to move away from the age-old strategy of targeting keywords and looking at their rankings. With AI Mode brands need to create content and present a picture that allows search engines to recognise and understand what they do as well as developing trust.
Look at your business as an entity, one built up of people, history, products, locations, services, by developing an SEO strategy that begins to look holistically at the organisation, search engines will begin to associate brand name, services/ products and individuals with specific topics. Remaining consistent with this content across all touch-points will also help paint a more comprehensive picture.
The way content is structured also matters; FAQs, bulleted lists, clear headings (think structured HTML titles; H1, H2, H3) built around copy designed to answer specific questions asked by potential customers or clients will clearly present the brand to the search engines.
These explicit questions with direct answers are a simple yet effective way to begin the process of being understood as a trusted entity and therefore becoming included in AI Overviews and Gemini Search mode.
4. Track brand visibility metrics
As Zero-click searches become more mainstream, brand is now the master KPI. Tracking how often your brand is being surfaced and cited as well as directly searched will be the critical metrics to understanding how your digital marketing is performing. Utilising this metric, you will see the effectiveness of the upper funnel activity as well as the intent driven campaigns which will be reflected in traffic and ultimately sales/ conversions.
A New World
We’re only at the beginning with AI mode, but now is the time to start adapting. Brands like yours won’t be reacting to these changes in real-time which presents you with the opportunity to take the lead.
The reliance on paid media, especially PPC, needs to pivot with time and budgets moved to build brand through a blend of paid and organic content situated in a range of locations, this strategy fuses paid, brand and SEO to ensure that a brand is understood by search engines and users alike.
Because in this new world, brand isn’t just important.
It’s everything.
Sources
- 1. https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-costs-rise-again-but-conversions-improve-report-455663?utm_source=chatgpt.com
- 2. https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-search/
- 3.https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/1jdcecr/anyone_else_seeing_a_dramatic_increase_in_cpc_feb/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
- 4. https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share?
- 5. https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-brand-correlation/
