Search Spend Trends: How GenAI Is Reshaping Ad Spend

The rapid upheaval around Search — specifically with Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other generative AI platforms producing more and more zero-click results — has been obvious to users.

Now, signs are starting to show the effect on advertising spend as well.

The recently released 2025 H2 Market Report from Mediaocean found that half of the marketers surveyed are maintaining their Search spend, up from 40% in November 2023, while only 42% are planning on increasing their Search spend, down from 55% during that same time.

(Source: Mediaocean)

“Search saw the biggest drop — down 22% vs. H1 — likely tied to Gen AI’s impact on how consumers discover content and products,” the report says, which found media channels such as CTV, social platforms, and digital display/video all seeing larger percentages of spend-increases than Search over the next 6 months. (Of those, CTV is the only channel that saw an increase from previous surveys at 58%, up from 55% last year). 

Traditional media, including print, “held steady” according to the research, likely due to offering “perceived stability and proven reach amid digital complexity.”

As for the most-critical investments and capabilities, marketers proclaimed performance-driven paid media, brand advertising, and measurement and attribution capabilities as their Top 3, with Identity seeing the largest increase from previous surveys.

“Advertisers are embracing a more flexible identity strategy that accommodates various identifiers—such as first-party IDs, partner IDs, and probabilistic IDs—to ensure continuity across platforms, devices, and channels,” the report says. “The decline of cookies has further accelerated this shift … Marketers are now looking for robust alternatives to maintain effective targeting and measurement, ensuring that they can still reach and engage their audiences in a privacy-compliant manner.”