Paid media in the answer-engine era involves buying visibility across AI systems that directly answer questions, moving beyond traditional bidding for clicks on a search results page. Google's AI Overviews reduced paid search click-through rates by 68 percent on queries where they appeared, according to a September 2025 study by Seer Interactive. This shift forces paid media budgets to prioritize citation share over pure click volume.
How have AI Overviews impacted paid search clicks?
AI Overviews significantly reduced paid search clicks, as demonstrated by Seer Interactive's September 2025 study. The agency analyzed 3,119 informational queries across 42 organizations, tracking 25.1 million organic impressions and 1.1 million paid impressions from June 2024 through September 2025. On queries with an AI Overview, the paid click-through rate fell by 68 percent, from 19.7 percent to 6.34 percent. Organic CTR on these same queries also dropped by 61 percent.
The decline was rapid, with Seer's data showing paid CTR collapsing from approximately 11 percent to 3 percent in July 2025 alone. Seer Interactive identified this single-month drop as one of the sharpest shifts in its 15 months of tracked data. A separate Ahrefs study, updated in December 2025 with 300,000 keywords, found AI Overviews correlated with a 58 percent lower average click-through rate for the top-ranking page, an increase from the 34.5 percent drop Ahrefs measured in April 2025.
Why are clicks declining even without AI Overviews?
Organic click-through rates decreased by 41 percent year over year, even on queries where no AI Overview appeared. Seer Interactive concluded that users are clicking less across the board, not just on AI-Overview queries. The agency suggests that ChatGPT, Perplexity, and social search are drawing query volume away from traditional search results entirely.
This trend has significant implications for paid media budgeting because it indicates a broad, structural shift. Brands cannot resolve the issue by merely avoiding AI-Overview-triggering keywords because the click decline is widespread. Search itself is fragmenting across multiple answer surfaces, and paid media strategies must now follow the query wherever it lands, not just the search engine results page.
Does an AI Overview citation improve paid performance?
Yes, being cited in an AI Overview significantly helps paid performance, creating a large performance gap. Seer Interactive found that brands cited within an AI Overview earned 35 percent more organic clicks and 91 percent more paid clicks than brands not cited, on the same query set. Citation, rather than just ranking, is now a critical variable determining whether a paid click occurs.
The mechanism for this impact is straightforward. An AI Overview provides an answer before a user reaches the results listed below it. A brand cited inside that answer maintains visibility even as overall click volume decreases. A brand not present in the citation has no presence in the answer itself, competing instead for a shrinking pool of clicks below the AI Overview, regardless of whether its listing is organic or paid.
What happened when Perplexity offered ads within AI answers?
Perplexity launched Sponsored Questions in the United States on November 12, 2024. Initial advertisers included Whole Foods Market, Indeed, Universal McCann, and PMG, as reported by TechCrunch. These ads appeared as AI-generated follow-up questions labeled "sponsored," with Perplexity's AI creating the answers rather than the brands themselves.
This advertising experiment did not scale. Perplexity stopped accepting new advertisers in October 2025. By February 2026, the company confirmed it was not pursuing further ad deals, instead pivoting to a subscription-first, ad-free model alongside Anthropic's Claude. Perplexity's head of publisher partnerships stated at Advertising Week NYC that ads "aren't currently on the roadmap" for the company's Comet browser.
This case is relevant for paid media planning because it demonstrates that emerging AI ad surfaces are not yet reliable budget lines. An ad format can launch with recognizable brand partners and still be retired within 15 months. Paid media teams that allocated spend to Perplexity's ad product in 2025 had to reallocate that spend without any advance warning from the platform's own roadmap.
How should paid media budgets adapt?
Three specific shifts in paid media budgeting are directly indicated by the available data. First, paid search budgets must incorporate a citation-share component, in addition to a keyword-bid line. Seer's data shows citation status influences click performance more than bid position. Second, funds allocated for speculative emerging AI ad surfaces, like Perplexity's now-retired product, should be treated as reversible investments, not durable channels, given the rapid withdrawal of that format.
Third, measurement practices must now track visibility and citation alongside traditional clicks. Seer Interactive's September 2025 report explicitly recommended that success metrics are shifting from clicks and traffic to visibility and share of voice. This evolution reflects the convergence of PPC, advertising, and PR. Separate budgets and KPIs no longer align with how a buyer conducts a 20-minute research session that spans paid search, an AI Overview, and a direct AI-engine query.
What does an integrated paid media and GEO budget look like?
An integrated budget begins with a citation-share audit. This audit identifies which brand-relevant queries trigger an AI Overview and whether the brand is cited within the answer. This assessment is crucial for determining if a keyword is even worth a paid bid, as Seer's data indicates that paid CTR on AI-Overview queries without a citation is near the lowest measured range.
The budget then splits into three distinct pools, rather than remaining a single allocation. A demand-capture pool continues to bid on high-intent, transactional queries where AI Overviews appear less frequently. A citation-investment pool funds the structured content, schema, and Generative Engine Optimization work necessary to earn citations on queries where an AI Overview does appear. A monitoring pool tracks citation share monthly, following the same cadence Seer Interactive uses in its recurring study, instead of conducting audits only once a year.
Have AI Overviews reduced paid search performance?
Yes, AI Overviews have reduced paid search performance. Seer Interactive's September 2025 study, covering 3,119 queries across 42 organizations, found that the paid click-through rate on AI-Overview-triggering queries fell 68 percent, from 19.7 percent to 6.34 percent, between June 2024 and September 2025.
Do brands cited in an AI Overview get more paid clicks?
Brands cited in an AI Overview receive more paid clicks. Seer Interactive's data shows these brands earned 91 percent more paid clicks than brands not cited, for the same query set. This indicates citation status is a stronger predictor of paid performance than bid position alone.
Can brands buy ads directly inside AI chat answers?
Brands cannot reliably buy ads directly inside AI chat answers as of 2026. Perplexity launched Sponsored Questions in November 2024 with brands like Whole Foods and Indeed, but stopped accepting new advertisers in October 2025. By February 2026, the company confirmed it was not pursuing further ad deals, shifting to an ad-free, subscription-first model.
What should paid media teams measure now beyond clicks?
Paid media teams should measure citation share, specifically whether their brand appears within AI Overview or AI-engine answers for priority queries, tracked monthly. Seer Interactive recommends that success metrics shift from clicks and traffic to visibility and share of voice due to declining click volume across all search results.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
