Have you noticed a drop in your Google Ads results lately? You're not alone.
Google's AI overview system is destroying the performance of once successful campaigns.
Ads have less visibility as they are no longer appearing above the fold. Google's AI overview now takes the top spot for most searches, which pushes ads and organic listings out of sight.
The number of zero-click searches has risen dramatically. If AI gives a user a complete answer, there isn't really any incentive for them to dig deeper and click on an ad, so there is less traffic available.
The drop in visibility and increase in zero-click searches lead to lower click-through rates. Seer Interactive ran a study where they looked at paid search CTR's when AI overview was present vs when it wasn't and saw that CTR was 61.95% lower when AI overview was present (Jan 2025).
The Google Ads world is changing rapidly, but there are plenty of ways you can use the new system to your advantage. Here's how you can adapt your PPC strategy.
AI overviews take up a lot of space on the screen, so when someone scrolls beyond them, it's more important than ever that all of your ad extensions set up well.
It helps your ad to stand out, it pushes your competitors further off the screen, and it gives you an opportunity to provide extra conversion paths for users.
Tailor your sitelinks, structured snippets, callouts and price extensions to each campaign or ad group to maximise user relevance and effectiveness.
Just because exact match search campaigns always worked for you in the past, doesn't mean they will work now.
Test out new campaign types like Performance Max and Demand Gen, or try out the new AI Max setting on search campaigns. The landscape has changed so much recently that even if these campaign types didn't work for you in the past, you should be testing them again.
There is less traffic out there, so you have to make the traffic you do get count. Make sure you're giving every user an incredible experience in terms of UX and loading speed.
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Written by Christian Donovan, Director of Performance Marketing at 3B1.