The Future of Search Media as AI Continues to Shift the Landscape into 2025

Over the last 18 months, I have spent a considerable amount of time speaking to clients about AI and its transformative impact on search media and the broader digital advertising landscape. As the major players in the AI landscape race to monetize their models in various ways one consistent truth has emerged: AI is highly effective in advertising. Other monetization avenues will require more time, as both users and platforms adapt to evolving technologies and behaviors.

In 2024, every major digital publisher and platform made some form of entry into the AI arena. Below, I’ve outlined key observations on these entrants and shared insights into the trends we anticipate shaping 2025.

Zoom In: Search Generative AI

• February 2024
  • Microsoft integrates OpenAI’s GPT-4 into Bing, enhancing search with conversational AI capabilities.
• March 2024
  • Google starts testing AI Overviews from SGE in the main Google search interface.
• April 2024
  • Meta unveils a new search generative AI model, leveraging advancements in multimodal learning to improve search results for text, image, and video content.
• June 2024
  • Amazon updates Alexa’s search capabilities with a new generative AI model that improves voice search accuracy and contextual understanding, making it easier for users to find relevant information.
  • Apple announces a new AI-powered search engine for its devices, emphasizing privacy and personalization, designed to provide responses without storing personal data.
• July 2024
  • DuckDuckGo releases a new generative AI feature aimed at enhancing search results while maintaining its commitment to user privacy and data protection.
  • Amazon releases AI chatbot “Rufus” for U.S. customers.
• September 2024
  • Amazon announces a new agent-based chatbot, “Amelia,” for sellers on its platform.
• October 2024
  • OpenAI’s search engine (SearchGPT) goes live in ChatGPT, rolling out across paid users first.
• November 2024
  • Perplexity.AI announces video ads and sponsored questions. I’m proud to say that I brokered a pilot deal with Perplexity on behalf of one of my clients and was able to successfully onboard Perplexity as an advertising partner for WPP.
  • Google releases new research and data about AI Overviews, with 100 million users touched by AIO monthly.
• Next?
  • AI Ethical Guidelines: Google, Microsoft, and Apple have launched a joint initiative to establish ethical guidelines for generative AI in search, focusing on transparency, fairness, and user privacy. Progress has been gradual, as expected. However, Apple appear to be making incremental progress.
  • Monetization of Conversational AI via Ads: As stated previously, Digital Advertising is the key area that AI companies can point to as an example of AI adding value. Consequently, we are seeing a variety of new Ad placements in new locations on a across platforms and partners including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Perplexity, etc. This evolution is prompting advertisers to incorporate new ad formats, such as display and video, into strategies that leverage AI, further powering generative AI experiences.
  • These systems rely on proper classification of the assets to ensure they are properly classified by the system and seamlessly delivered to the end user. For advertisers, this requires investing time in implementing proper backend schema and optimizing digital assets for ingestion into AI systems by adhering to fundamental SEO principles.
  • Within the current agency structure, how do we define “ownership” of new tactics that merge search and display? This question involves balancing considerations such as the conversion journey (funnel stage), budget allocation (search vs. display), and KPI performance.
  • Multi-Surface Content in AI: Multimodal search is rapidly expanding, incorporating image, voice, and conversational inputs through tools like Google Lens and Circle to Search, Amazon Lex, and Microsoft’s Bot Framework. To stay competitive, it’s essential to create clear content that directly addresses common user questions about Dell products and services while structuring data effectively to support multimodal search. This includes adhering to SEO best practices to optimize site content for both traditional and emerging search platforms, optimizing product images for visual search, and leveraging semantic keyword mining through query reports to align with user intent across diverse search methods.
  • AI Agents and the Future of Digital Commerce: Recommendation systems and product finders, which represent early forms of AI-driven agents, are continuing to evolve. Key players in this space include Amazon’s Rufus, Microsoft’s PC Finder, and Google’s Dialogflow. While we haven’t implemented strategies specifically tailored to these agent-based tools, our existing content applications could support Dell’s integration into third-party agent systems. Moving forward, aligning products and solutions on the site with the specific needs of consumers will be critical. Additionally, exploring the potential of agentic search in combination with inventory management presents an opportunity to enhance both the user experience and operational efficiency.