Marketers Reevaluate Paid Search Ad Spend as Google Antitrust Trial Concludes

The impact of the Google antitrust case on paid search advertising is currently unclear. However, marketers and agency executives anticipate that regardless of the case's outcome, the future of search will become more fragmented. Brands will need to adapt to shifting consumer search trends, which may involve becoming experts in platforms outside of Google, such as TikTok, Reddit, and Snapchat, as younger consumers increasingly use these platforms for search.

Marketers are paying more attention to their paid search efforts in 2023 for several reasons:

• Some clients have experienced a decline in organic search traffic, potentially due to changes in search behavior and the rise of generative AI, leading them to invest more in paid advertising to compensate for those declines.
• There is a bigger push into e-commerce efforts, with marketers looking to drive consumers to their own sites more than ever, thus investing more in paid search to drive traffic and navigate challenges.
• The investment in paid search varies by client and agency, but there has been a general increase in spending and consideration of test budgets across various non-Google platforms.

Agency executives are recommending clients diversify their ad spending in search by:

• Elevating test budgets for search to explore various advertising platforms.
• Trying out platforms that may have underperformed in the past but have since made improvements and shown promising results, such as Microsoft's Bing.
• Viewing search less as a platform-specific media channel and more as a consumer behavior function that brands need to follow and adapt to across different platforms.
• Testing out search budgets on platforms like TikTok and Reddit, despite TikTok's uncertain future, due to the growth of search on these platforms.

TikTok's future is significant for the search industry because younger generations are increasingly using platforms like TikTok for search, moving away from traditional search engines like Google. This shift indicates that there may be new pathways through which people seek information, and marketers need to be aware of these changes. The uncertainty surrounding TikTok's future adds to the murkiness of the search landscape, raising questions about whether Google can maintain its relevance and trust or if people will find better alternatives as Google continues to monetize the search process.