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When the Click Disappears: Ads, Costs, and How Brands Stay Visible in AI Search

AI search ads are early and limited; platforms control placement. Build AI-ready content, prep for in-chat conversions, and keep paid search sharp as the market matures.

Categorized in: AI News Marketing
Published on: Sep 20, 2025
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When the Click Disappears: Ads, Costs, and How Brands Stay Visible in AI Search

AI Search Ads: What's Real Now, What's Next, and What Marketers Should Do Today

AI is already inside your team's workflow. The missing piece is how your brand shows up inside AI itself. Ads exist in a few places, but reach and controls are thin. That means the smart move now is building an AI-ready web presence that answer engines can lift, cite, and convert from.

The state of AI search ads

  • ChatGPT: No official ads yet. Any ad-like units you've seen via browser extensions aren't from OpenAI.
  • Perplexity: Tested light placements (sponsored related questions, sidebar units) with a few brands, then pulled back. Not common right now.
  • Google: Ads can appear inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, but you can't target those surfaces directly. You buy Google Ads; Google decides placement.
  • Meta: Public signals suggest personalized ads will come to its AI experiences, timing unknown.

Bottom line: Paid media inside AI search exists, but it's early, limited, and not in your full control.

What these ads will look like

  • Lightweight sponsorships: "Related questions" modules or subtle inline units that feel native to the answer.
  • Lower-funnel placements: As platforms add memory, past chat context could inform more precise, timely offers without breaking trust.
  • End-to-end flows: Purchases inside the chat window (Perplexity has a PayPal tie-in) reduce the need for clicks entirely.

Translation for marketers: expect a mix of awareness and conversion, with fewer traditional clicks and more in-chat outcomes.

Pricing outlook

Early expert estimates suggest CPMs could mirror CTV's spread: roughly $8-$60 per thousand impressions, with rates driven by context and quality. Expect wide variance by platform and placement.

Will ads ruin the experience?

There's a tension: users want accuracy and minimal bias, while platforms need revenue. Ads will likely show up with guardrails, clear labeling, and a focus on relevance. The bigger risk is not ads themselves-it's sloppy execution that erodes trust.

AEO: Answer Engine Optimization you can implement in 90 days

These systems read, compress, and remix your content. Make your site easy to quote, easy to trust, and easy to transact.

  • Write for answers: Short paragraphs, direct language, and scannable lists. Summarize first, support second.
  • Publish "zero-click" assets: FAQs, how-tos, comparisons, checklists, and definitions in plain language.
  • Use schema markup: FAQPage, HowTo, Product, Organization, Review, and Article. Keep it clean and current.
  • Keep product data fresh: Price, availability, shipping, and returns should be machine-readable and accurate.
  • Source-of-truth pages: Canonical explainers, spec sheets, and white papers that others will cite.
  • Evidence beats hype: Include references, stats, and third-party citations where appropriate.
  • Crawl and speed basics: Solid internal linking, XML sitemaps, canonical tags, robots rules, fast pages.
  • Real authorship: Clear bylines, credentials, dates, and revision history to strengthen trust signals.
  • Consistent language: Use natural phrasing that LLMs can lift without heavy rewriting.
  • Brand mentions beyond your site: Legitimate participation in forums and Q&A can influence what models learn.

Plan for a future with fewer clicks

  • In-chat checkout: Prepare feeds, SKUs, and offers for platforms that close transactions on-platform.
  • Conversion proxies: Track coupon codes, unique landing language, and post-purchase surveys to capture "decision made in chat."
  • Share of answer: Monitor how often your brand is cited or recommended in AI summaries across priority queries.
  • Attribution guardrails: Expect more view-through and fewer clean click paths. Build mixed models, not brittle ones.

Your paid search play while AI ads mature

  • Stay the course on Search and Performance Max. You may already appear in AI Overviews through existing campaigns.
  • Tighten assets: Strong RSAs, feed hygiene, high-quality images, and clean product attributes.
  • Query discipline: Negative keywords and intent clusters matter more as surfaces expand.
  • Creative for answers: Write copy that reads well when excerpted inside summaries.

Team, process, and governance

  • Form an AEO working group: SEO, content, paid, analytics, legal.
  • Experiment weekly: Track prompts, answers, citations, and changes by platform and query theme.
  • Document outcomes: What language gets cited, what structure gets ignored, what pages drive in-chat mentions.
  • Privacy and disclosures: If you test personalization, align with policy and user expectations.

What to watch next

  • Google's expansion of AI Overviews and AI Mode placements and reporting controls.
  • Meta's rollout of ads inside Meta AI experiences.
  • Perplexity's commerce features and any renewed ad pilots.
  • OpenAI's stance on in-product ads and affiliate models.

Helpful resources

The takeaway: ad units will come, but you don't need to wait. Build content that answer engines trust, structure it so machines can quote it, and prepare for conversions that happen without a click.