Phillip Thune, CEO of Adthena, discusses how AI is creating new competition for Google and driving a massive increase in search queries.
Drawing on a recent study by Adthena on AI Overviews, he illustrates how their prevalence varies by query and industry, offering a new strategic playbook for marketers.
In a recent episode of the Paid Search NYC podcast, Matt Shenton sat down with Adthena CEO Phillip Thune to discuss the evolving search landscape and the disruptive rise of AI. Phillip, a veteran of the paid search world since its pre-Google days, offered a fascinating perspective on the current state of search and what brands need to know to adapt.
Phillip’s journey in paid search began in the early days of the internet boom, well before Google became the dominant force. He was part of a company doing pay-per-click ads back when GoTo.com were the industry leaders. This experience has given him a unique perspective on the constant evolution of search and the challenges of competing in a Google-dominated world.
Phillip reflects on how the industry has changed, noting that while search has always been in flux, the current pace of change is unlike anything he’s seen before. The massive ecosystem of brands and practitioners obsessed with Google means there are now far more people paying attention, but the speed of innovation is breathtaking.
Five, ten, or twenty years ago, I never would have believed that material changes in this industry would happen almost every week.
According to Phillip, the single biggest change in the last 18 months has been the rise of AI. For the first time in two decades, Google has serious competition in the form of AI models like ChatGPT. This has led to a significant shift in user behavior.
While Google’s share of search queries might be decreasing, the overall volume of queries across all platforms is rapidly increasing. People are now asking a lot more questions, and AI is playing a growing role in how those questions are answered. Phillip points to Google’s own data, which showed a jump from 1.5 billion to 2 billion people using AI Overviews in just a single quarter. This influx of new search activity is translating directly to Google’s bottom line. In Q2, Google’s paid clicks grew by 4%, while its revenue grew by over 10%. This disparity highlights Google’s ability to “churn out more paid advertising every quarter,” reinforcing its success in monetizing the new search landscape, likely through a combination of increased ad relevance and rising CPCs.
For the first time in 20 years, Google has real competition. The rise of AI is driving a rapid increase in total search queries, giving users far more things to ask and new places to find answers.
To help brands navigate this new landscape, Adthena conducted a comprehensive study analyzing 10 million search results (SERPs) across 450,000 keywords. The study focused on the prevalence of AI Overviews (AIOs), the large, AI-generated text boxes that appear at the top of search results.
The findings were revealing. AIOs are most common on long-tail, multi-word queries. This suggests that Google is using AI to answer more complex, informational questions where a user is likely still in the research phase. The study also found a significant difference in AIO prevalence across industries. For example, a long-tail search in healthcare was far more likely to trigger an AIO than a similar search in travel or retail, which tend to be more commercial. The study also found that AIOs almost never appear for brand queries in most categories, reinforcing the idea that Google is trying to serve different types of user intent.
Phillip dives into this nuance, suggesting that for short, highly commercial queries, Google is less likely to show an AIO because the user’s intent is clear: they want to buy something. However, for longer, more complex queries, the user is likely “top of the funnel” and looking for information, making an AIO a more suitable result. This is a subtle but important distinction for marketers.
The search landscape is in the midst of its most dramatic transformation since the advent of Google. As Phillip’s insights and Adthena’s study reveal, AI Overviews are not just a new feature but a fundamental shift in how information is discovered and consumed. The key takeaway for brands is that the old playbook for search is no longer sufficient. Marketers must move beyond a one-size-fits-all approach and start thinking strategically about user intent. By understanding which queries trigger AIOs and which ones don’t, brands can better allocate resources, protect their brand queries, and adapt their strategies to thrive in this new era of AI-driven search.
In part 2, we’ll continue our discussion on the Adthena study and unpack what its findings on CPC, CTR, and brand vs. non-brand queries mean for paid search practitioners. We’ll also explore Phillip’s outlook on the future of search and how AI will continue to shape it.
