B2B PR Agency Thought Leadership – the AI race to create search 2.0

Written by Simpatico PR

Posted on 2024-07-24

Simpatico PR’s B2B PR agency thought-leadership series Ahead of the Curve offers a brief digest of some of the newest thinking in marketing, technology and creativity that our team is working with on behalf of our clients. We’ve recently been looking at the big changes AI could bring to the way we search and how that enormous industry operates.

What will happen as Google is forced to radically change its market-beating algorithm, which last year was worth a staggering $240bn accounting for around 39% of digital marketing budgets, by increasingly effective generative AI technologies?

Will Google’s search service continue to be market beating in an AI world?

Given the importance of Google in our everyday lives and the sheer size of it as a corporation, these are huge questions. We’ve be wrestling with them in our discussions with clients about the future of search and more particularly how generative AI will likely transform it beyond all recognition.

We are in fact in the midst of a search revolution. If the Google we’re all used to is search 1.0, we’ve already entered a new epoch – search 2.0 – which you and I and everybody who searches is shaping.

Think about how you searched for things yesterday. Google probably presented you with the usual mix of sponsored and organic results. But more likely than not, you aren’t just using Google or other conventional search engines like Bing or even DuckDuckGo.

If you use Amazon or other more specialists retail platforms, you may well have used them to find and compare products or to seek inspiration almost as much as actual shopping. By 2027 retail media is expected to be the fastest growing area of search by advertising spend.

We use social media in the same way. Instagram and TikTok have become a shop window of product and other information as has YouTube. And more recently we’ve been asking ChatGPT and others for answers to what are in effect search questions.

Google’s share of non-retail search is plateauing.

But it’s overall share of search advertising including retail is in decline (slightly).

We are in an era of multiplatform and multi-modal i.e. text, audio and visual search.

But this distribution of how we search is a minor tweak compared to what’s coming. Search 3.0 driven by AI will be truly revolutionary and will become a profound challenge to the tech giant establishment. If they don’t get it right, they could lose market share badly.

From search 1.0 to AI powered search 2.0

Here’s why.

Search 1.0 and 2.0 answers our queries by listing a series of site links or ad links that best fit what it assesses we are looking for. It doesn’t solve our problem for us but enables us (in theory) to find information we want quickly.

An entire industry – Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has grown up to support the ranking or visibility of organisation’s websites or products and promotions. This may be threatened or at the very least forced to adapt.

From attention economy to solutions

But AI search will not just help us choose the best source of information. It will offer the best course of action based on that information. And the information generated will be far closer to our needs and interest based on AI behavioural analysis.

We’re already seeing generative AI-powered search being offered alongside conventional search as the market tests the new technology and feels its way towards commercialisation models.

Microsoft was first to market integrating ChatGPT into Bing as Copilot “Your everyday AI companion”. But this has not proved to be a breakthrough in terms of winning search market share – so far.

Google meanwhile, is testing out a mixed experience called AI Overviews a replacement or evolution of its Search Labs experiment Search Generative Experience.

One commercial model might be subscription-based.

A subscription-based AI Google search? 

It would be the first time Google has charged users for its service and would mark a fundamental change in its business model which would require a multi-year transition from the two-tier organic and sponsored options we’re used to. We’d likely see a triple track approach with AI as a premium alternative. Perhaps we’ll see a premium subscription option, a free to use option and maybe sponsored AI search results.

If there is a stumbling block it is consumer trust. False moves as we’ve seen in recent months with generative AI systems delivering ridiculous outcomes could be permanently damaging especially in a reinvigorated fight for market share.

Marketers and agencies must keep up with AI search

Amid the race to establish a new AI model for search, how will this work out for organisations used to communicating through websites? How will they transition from an attention economy to a solutions-based one?

This will surely require brands to have a deeper knowledge of how their products and services fit the needs of each specific consumer. They will need to understand their consumers better – what is happening to them that hour, day, tomorrow, next week; what they might need or want how that might pan out over the coming year.

This suggests organisations’ first party data will become even more important and so will the emerging retail data eco-system. If brands don’t have 1PD at sufficient scale that will end up relying on what Google knows.

But of course, all of this need for data will come under the scrutiny of US and EU regulators.

As an important aside, AI search requires vastly more energy compared to search 1.0 – how this problem will be tackled in the context of climate change is not at all clear.

Meanwhile all the generative AI players are using the web to train their AIs. They are in a race to create the most user friendly and effective service to solve problems. And this requires not just sucking up generic information, but higher value content that can provide more insightful answers to questions. Google’s $60m deal with Reddit announced earlier this year is a case in point. And, a range of publishers are doing similar deals or seeking financial redress – for example Mumsnet.

However, further down the line, publishers and brands that do not enable Google’s and other platforms’ learning AIs might find themselves penalised or frozen out of a rapidly changing eco-system.

It won’t just be conventional search engines using AI to facilitate search 2.0. Retail and social search will too. Advertisers that invest heavily in paid search and SEO will need to watch, learn and play ball with all the AI-powered search platforms.

Can we control our AI search solutions?

Looking further into the future, it is inevitable AI search will become far more integrated into our lives. We could become dependent on AI even more so than we are currently addicted to the smart phone apps which speed up our lives and enhance our knowledge.

To what extent should we allow AI search and other learning technologies to shape or control our lives?

The future of search poses philosophical as well as commercial questions.

Simpatico PR is a B2B PR Agency specialising in thought-leadership for innovative businesses.