AI's influence on the online marketing market is multifaceted, affecting all players—from the platforms themselves to the clients who use AI in their strategy implementation and interaction with ad platforms.
In this article, we will focus on Google Ads and explore how marketers can face upcoming challenges. Marketers aren't the only ones with challenges; even the tech giant Google is grappling with the existential risks posed by the rise of chat bots.
1. Chat Bots and the End of Traditional Search
While user familiarity with chat bots isn't yet at a point to signal the end of search as the primary funnel for online commerce, a significant shift is on the horizon. Chat bots have already surpassed Wikipedia for general information, and while communication with them may not entirely replace old ways of thinking, the impact of AI in terms of quality and volume is comparable to the transition from the Gutenberg era to the internet. Users are discovering the usefulness and capacity of bots daily. AI's progress and multimodal capabilities are driving multiple waves of increased interaction, impacting different user segments based on their openness to new tools.
For Google Ads, the main concern is the risk that people will no longer use search engines and instead interact directly with bots, often through voice. The only question is when this will happen.
The model proposed by AI bots isn't new; Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant have been on the market for a long time but with limited utility. What's new is the exponential increase in the quality and quantity of information, along with the bots' improved ability to understand context, tailor responses to user needs, and interact with websites. It’s not just a continuation of the same battle; the major change is the decrease in costs and entry barriers for countless new players.
Sponsored links have already found their place in bot responses, especially for providers with existing ad platforms. This is a delicate process, similar to how ads were first integrated into search results. The new challenge for marketers is to capitalize on this channel by shifting their strategy from merely highlighting a product to building a narrative around it. In the search era, a good title, image, and price were enough to sell. In the age of chat bots, products with complete and detailed descriptions that contain useful, interesting information will sell better. The most honest and comprehensive descriptions will outperform the most professional marketing slogans, as they will help the AI select the product for a specific answer. A product with a complete and well-crafted manual that explains its function in detail will be as valuable as a professional video presentation or an expensive TV commercial. The key to success for marketers in the 2025 chat bot era is to provide the most detailed and original product information. High-quality, original content will be easily recognized by AI and used, with the reward being a product recommendation. Of course, a perfect connection between the product feed and ad platforms is still mandatory, though sites can be scanned for content. Merchant Center feeds remain the simplest and most essential solution for integrating offers into Google Ads, with differentiation coming from the quality and quantity of information provided.
2. Align with Solid Principles and Proven Solutions
Change in online marketing is constant, but AI is a true disruptor that may change the industry more than the shift from SEO to Ads. The emergence of a new marketing channel through chat bots is just one part of this transformation. While adapting to new developments, marketers must also reinforce old methods and tools that have been successful. It's important to recognize that AI makes older tools more effective, and what has worked so far will work even better moving forward, even as search's market share decreases. Adapting to what's new is a constant challenge for all players, while enhancing proven tools with new AI capabilities can give you an immense competitive advantage.
On the other hand, any major change brings risks, and what worked in the past may become obsolete. To correctly evaluate any tool or strategy, accurate result attribution and measurement are more critical than ever. Based on these measurements, you keep what works and eliminate underperforming strategies. This principle is universally valid but especially important in times of rapid change that no one is 100% prepared for.
3. Content Generation
One of the most straightforward use-cases for new AI tools is content generation. Google Ads has already enhanced its features for creating new content from existing assets and from content on your site. From automatically generating titles and descriptions to adapting uploaded videos for different dimensions, automatic ad creation is already a prominent feature in Google Ads. Dynamic ads with Google-generated descriptions based on content and searches have been around for a long time, but for English, Google is now offering tools for creating headlines and descriptions with AI assistance. On Merchant Center, Google provides tools for processing images using AI. The final step might simply be a checkbox giving Google permission to improve, generate, and create any asset for the most efficient promotion of your products.
Beyond Google Ads, marketers can use tools to improve descriptions, complete data, and check for missing details. The possibilities are limited only by imagination and the ability to integrate with various AI tools that can automatically analyze and process massive numbers of products—an effort that would be prohibitively expensive if done manually. Finally, it's important to remember that the message, slogan, and emotion still matter, and AI can be a huge help here. A good copywriter who uses AI can be much more creative and faster at developing high-performing marketing copy.
4. Focus on Audiences
Although GDPR has tried to curb tracking, AI will allow platforms to offer increasingly effective targeting—not just by segments but also in a personalized, real-time manner. This advanced targeting is useless, however, if the marketer doesn't provide dedicated content and products for each segment. Targeting impacts all levels of the funnel. At the bottom, where the user has already decided on a product and is just looking for an offer, Google Ads can handle the targeting alone. But at higher levels, marketers must match the platforms' increased segmentation capabilities by providing separate messages and products for each segment.
As I've said, AI has a multi-level impact. When discussing the funnel, AI helps separate it into more distinct segments and efficiently identifies target audiences for each level. The only condition for success is the marketer's collaboration to provide messages and products that are as dedicated as possible to both the funnel segment and the client segment. A superior level of campaign organization goes beyond a dedicated offer to establishing a suitable target ROI for each micro-segment.
Despite the growth of these segmentation capabilities, we must remember a fundamental principle of any information system—GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). Since the audience identification mechanisms are available to all market players, the difference will come from each marketer's individual contribution, using their own data to improve and optimize these mechanisms. Customer lists are one example of how marketers can immensely help platforms identify their target audience. Segmenting these lists by product categories further enhances the possibilities for effective targeting and, consequently, a better ROI.
Conclusions
2025 will be a revolutionary year, and recent developments are just a teaser for what's to come. The leveling of the playing field and the reshaping of rankings through advanced open-source solutions will impact not only the chip industry but all industries where ROI is a major factor.
As a leader in the use of artificial intelligence, Google Ads already offers a decisive competitive advantage to proactive players who follow its new features. Looking at what’s happening in the broader AI landscape provides marketers with new opportunities to use advanced tools that can not only optimize marketing performance but also significantly help the website itself by improving content, finding bottlenecks in the growth rate of key metrics, and breaking old paradigms like consolidation or competitive advantage. The new AI tools will allow for rapid growth and complete shifts in rankings, lowering the entry costs for new players in markets previously considered difficult or even impenetrable. Online marketing is just one field ready to embrace AI's progress, but synchronizing marketing with business strategy will be the new challenge from now on.