The AI ROI Crisis: Why Zero-Click Search Is Pushing Advertisers to the Open Web

Paid advertising was previously a clean exchange, where you paid for intent and gained a visitor. But, these days, that’s not the case: AI-generated answers are now satisfying user intent directly on the search results page, before a single click ever happens.

With studies suggesting that nearly 60% of searches now end on the SERP itself, the engine you’ve been relying on to drive traffic is increasingly keeping users for itself. If your ad budget is funding a platform that’s turned into a walled garden, it’s worth asking what you’re really getting in return.

The Evolution of Search: From “Blue Links” to “Answer Boxes”

Not long ago, a Google search was a portal that pointed you somewhere. Type in “best running shoes for flat feet” and you’d get 10 blue links to articles, product pages, and reviews. You clicked on one, you visited a website, you maybe returned to the SERPs and clicked on another link to another website. Brands captured your attention and drove you to their sites.

That model is fast eroding. The Search Generative Experience (SGE) impact has rewritten what happens between search engines and users. What began as Google’s AI Overviews (AOI) feature — a box of synthesized answers above the organic results — has now become the default interface for hundreds of millions of queries. This is no longer in beta, but the main first-result across informational, navigational, and commercial search queries.

The intent of the user is still there, but the click is not. Users get what they need in terms of answers, comparisons, and recommendations without ever landing on your product page. Without clicking, they’re likely not converting.

This is a deliberate architectural shift, but still ultimately falls in line with what Google has always tried to do — provide answers to user questions. AI has simply made it better at doing so without sending users somewhere else. For businesses large and small that built their entire acquisition funnel on search traffic, this is a significant change.

Is Traditional PPC ROI Declining? The 50% CTR Drop Case Study

Initial thoughts around AI Overviews hurting click-through rates is now backed by hard data. The picture that’s emerging is one of a structural decline in PPC efficiency in AI-era conditions. This is not a blip on the radar; it’s a new baseline.

Across a range of industries, marketers are reporting that campaigns which previously had healthy ROAS results are now requiring significantly more budget to generate the same revenue. CAC is increasing, impression share is shrinking, and even when ads do appear, few people are scrolling beyond the AI answers to find them.

The numbers don’t lie. Research from Seer Interactive reveals that when an AI overview appears on a results page, paid click-through rate drops from around 21.27% to only 9.87%, a decline of more than 50%. That means for every 100 users who would have clicked on your ad before AI Overviews, fewer than 50 are now doing so.

Seer Interactive’s 2025 analysis also found similar results, documenting that high-funnel paid search efficiency is cratering, specifically for queries where AI answers appear. These aren’t isolated cases, but increasingly common problems impacting consumer product categories.

The concept of zero-click search in 2025 has firmly brought these problems to the forefront of marketers’ minds. When users search and get a three-paragraph AI answer that makes them stop scrolling, ad budgets absorb impressions with zero returns. This performance reality isn’t going anywhere any time soon.

The “Double Hit” to Search ROI: Rising Costs and Falling Visibility

Declining CTR is only part of the picture. What happens to the economics of ad slots when AI Overviews are taking up valuable top-of-SERP real estate?

AI Overviews now dominate this above-the-fold space. On mobile, where the majority of e-commerce searches now happen, a fullscreen AI overview can push every paid ad below the fold quite significantly. The total inventory of high-visibility ad positions has greatly contracted over the last year, but the number of advertisers competing for those positions has not.

Supply is down, but demand is steady, so what does this mean for marketers? Cost per click goes up. Advertisers fighting for the last visible placements are paying premium prices for diminished returns. What’s happening is that you’re bidding in an auction where the prize has shrunk, but the competition has become fiercer.

Meanwhile, Google Ads versus AI Overviews is becoming a tension point inside Google itself. Google has a financial incentive to keep ads valuable, but it also has a product incentive to make AI overview as useful as possible for users. For now, those two objectives are in conflict and advertisers are the ones paying for it.

The Strategic Pivot: Why Advertisers Are Migrating to the Open Web

For performance marketers, the core strategic question becomes, “If Google’s AI is answering questions instead of sending users to our site, where do we go next?”

The answer for a growing number of growth-focused brands is the open web. The walled garden versus open web distinction has never been more commercially important than now. Inside walled gardens like Google Search, Meta’s feed, or Amazon’s placements, the platform has full control over the user experience, the algorithm, and now, the answer. Your brand is simply a guest and rules can change overnight.

Outside of those walls on the open web — home to news sites, lifestyle publishers, niche media, and vertical content — the dynamic is different. There’s no AI overview intercepting user attention before it reaches your ad. Users arrive at a publisher site because they chose to. They’re reading and in a discovery-focused mindset. When your ad natively appears in the content, it’s part of their total experience, rather than a distraction from it.

This is what makes the migration to an open web approach strategically compelling: It’s a channel where you can own the interaction, from impression to landing page, without an AI layer filtering your audience before they ever get to see your offer.

Beyond the SERP: Diversifying Into Publisher Ecosystems

An open web advertising strategy typically involves three channels working together — programmatic display, native advertising, and direct-to-publisher partnerships. For a small-to-medium business that’s product focused, native advertising is often the best entry point.

Native ads are designed to match the form and function of the editorial environment in which they appear. A sponsored article on a health publication, a recommended product story on a lifestyle site, or a content recommendation at the bottom of a relevant post are all contextually relevant rather than interruptions, and that’s exactly why they convert.

The publisher ecosystem marketing model also gives you something search advertising increasingly cannot: transparency and control. You know where your ad is running and you can align your message with specific content verticals. You can test ad creative without entering into a bidding war. Because users are going to a landing page, rather than competing with an AI answer block, you can shape the post-click experience in a meaningful way.

The native advertising ROI case is strengthening as search ROI weakens. Brands that diversified their acquisition mix early are now seeing their open web channels absorb volume that previously came from paid search and, typically, at lower CPAs. For merchants with around 10-20 unique products, that’s a significant advantage.

Measuring Success in the Age of AI Search

One reason brands have been slow to adapt is their focus on the wrong metrics. Search volume or paid search impressions now measure a world that isn’t the same, if it even exists at all. Gartner predicts that traditional search volume will decline by 25% in 2026 as users shift to conversational AI and direct answer interfaces.

First-party data growth, direct attribution, customer lifetime value, and blended ROAS across channels are all the new metrics that need greater attention. The emergence of agentic commerce trends adds another layer to the urgency of this recalibration. When an AI agent is doing the buying, traditional keyword targeting becomes less relevant. AI Overviews ROI is directly competing in the age of AI search, and the brands winning aren’t clinging onto search dominance. Instead, they’re building different acquisition funnels across a full digital landscape.

Key Takeaways

AI Overviews have fundamentally altered the search experience by answering user questions directly on the results page, reducing the need for users to click through to a website. For advertisers, this translates into a measurable compression of click volume, spikes in CPC for remaining inventory, and a widening gap between spend and revenue.

The strategic response here is not to abandon search entirely, but to diversify. The open web, accessed through native advertising and programmatic placements, offers a compelling alternative with engaged audiences, brand-controlled experiences, and first-party data that search increasingly cannot provide.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Are AI Overviews reducing PPC clicks?

Yes, evidence from multiple studies has found that when an AI overview appears on a results page, paid click-through rates can fall by more than 50%.

Will traditional search volume continue to drop?

The signs are there — Gartner predicts a 25% decrease in traditional search engine volume throughout 2026 as users move to answer-first interfaces like AI chat tools.

What is the “open web” in advertising?

The open web is a universe of independent publishers and digital media sites that exist outside of closed platforms like Google or Meta. Advertisers use native and programmatic ads here to reach users in environments where the brand controls the landing experience.