This week, our Head of Investment Jon Morgenstern and EVP of Media Benjamin Allison discussed The Chat Effect, a live deep dive on how advanced conversational AI is increasingly disrupting the fundamental architecture that, for over two decades, has underpinned user search behavior on the internet. This consumer shift in-kind is creating new, novel priorities within both traditional SEO & SEM practices that marketers must understand and begin adapting to sooner vs. later as we close out the back half of 2025.
No differently than the years-long window of “Digital Transformation” marketers have been living through, this emergent “AI Transformation” era we expect will also take several years to manifest to its full potential. That said, there are multiple concrete steps brands can and should be taking today to gain an early foothold and advantage in the current AI search landscape, which Jon, Ben and Avery focus primarily on in the stream.
You can catch the full event video recording on VaynerMedia’s LinkedIn & YouTube channels, or keep scrolling for the tl;dr. Be sure to download the full report presentation that was highlighted during the live-stream as well, as it goes into even more depth on the core topics discussed and more, and was designed with pragmatism for brand marketing leaders in mind.
AI Search Continues to Scale & Grow Share
Platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini are enhancing and evolving the search experience as we know it, moving from more front-and-center clickable links and last-click attribution to synthesized contextual answers, accelerating the rise of zero-click search consumption and other novel measurement challenges for a historically web traffic-centric (and dependent) ecosystem, pushing legacy metrics like CTR towards obsolescence while augmenting the importance of experimenting with new AI-forward metrics such as Share of Model among others.
In 2025, we estimate that AI search already accounts for roughly 7.6% of global queries. By 2027, we expect that to more than triple. Among others, a core question is the speed and magnitude by which Google disrupts itself, and proliferates its balance of AI Overviews within traditional search vs. AI Mode vs. other Gemini-powered features and interfaces to come.
This shift is impacting everything from how websites are crawled/indexed to how and where ads are served to how success is measured. Zero-click behavior is rising, organic search traffic is declining, and visibility is being redefined, with different query categories being asymmetrically disrupted now vs. tomorrow, and an ever-growing critical need to orient around traffic value over volume.
Winning in the New World of Search
We believe we’re in a fourth era of digital disruption, after the rise of the web, search, and social; the era of AI-powered search, discovery and agentic automation. Brands should be preparing and understanding the substantial magnitude of disruption that’s already begun to play out, and act with agility and urgency, starting by starting.
Here’s how we’re advising partners to adapt:
1. Make your content LLM-friendly.
AI doesn’t just crawl websites; it reads, quotes, and summarizes. Brands should optimize for scannability and structure across websites, social posts, video captions, and FAQ pages.
2. Get your product data optimized & in the right feeds.
Integrate with nascent ChatGPT Shopping offering and join Perplexity’s Merchant Program. Visibility in AI commerce starts with showing up, and the rules of the game are still new. Ensure metadata attributes and richness of descriptions + other core fields are strong, accurate & as near-real-time as possible.
3. Start testing AI-powered ads.
Google’s opened up ad placements within AIO & AI Mode for specific campaign types and Copilot (Microsoft) is also exploring new ad formats/placements. Ads can serve within AIO & AI Mode user experiences as of May of this year, with specific criteria required within certain campaign types (i.e. broad match keyword type only, AI-powered campaign objectives, etc.) that should be internalized by performance teams and explored accordingly (trust, but verify mentality).
4. Evolve how you measure success.
Organic search referral volume is generally down, a trend which we expect to continue across more and more sectors at growing significance. Impressions, “share of model,” and prompt visibility are what will matter incrementally more, including tracking over time across prompts and attributing post-view impact as best as current/future systems will allow (a whole separate discussion and tool set to discuss).
TL;DR: Start Now
AI search isn’t coming. It’s here. And the brands that are already experimenting, across content, media, and measurement, are going to be the ones who win the next wave of discovery.
Curious for more?
We barely scratched the surface here. For the full download on how AI is rewriting the rules of search, grab the full report. Hear Jon and Ben break it all down, live, on YouTube.
And if staying ahead of the industry curve is your thing (it should be), hit follow on LinkedIn. We’re sharing insights, trends, and bold takes weekly. You’ll want in.
