What happens to ad budgets in a world where the website matters less?

Are we witnessing the death of the website? According to a recent Enders Analysis report, the answer is a resounding “yes.”

The report found that half of all publishers have already seen search traffic dip, with Google’s AI Overviews impacting site visits over the past year. Consumers are getting their answers directly on the search page, no clicks needed.

And it’s not just publishers feeling the pinch. Brands are too.

Speaking with The Current, Geoff Schopp, senior director of search and social media at Butler/Till, says: “Even when your brand is mentioned in AI results, search engines like Google are more likely to link to publications and nonbranded sites that mention your brand, rather than your brand’s website itself.”

It’s a shift that’s causing marketers to rethink how media plans work in an AI-led search world.

A potential winner as the shift accelerates? Retail media’s ability to combine high-intent audiences with closed-loop measurement could be an attractive alternative for marketers in a world where website traffic can no longer be taken for granted.

AI Mode is here — now what?

The rollout of Google’s AI Mode is reshaping how people find what they need online.

Apple reportedly saw a decline in Safari searches for the first time last month, and there’s talk of it sidelining Google in favor of AI-focused search engines like Anthropic’s Claude and Perplexity.

So, what happens to the budgets that once flowed into paid search and display on publisher sites?

“The impact of declining organic search traffic won’t trigger an immediate collapse in impression scale across web publishers — it’s more a ‘on our radar’ thing that is likely to be a gradual shift,” Schopp says.

“The continued evolution of video ecosystems, particularly the transformation of TV into CTV, reminds us that while consumption habits change, opportunities for scaled, high-impact placements continue to emerge.”

Tom Mansell, VP of organic performance at Croud, doesn’t think we’ll see an immediate budget exodus from display just yet, but he does think brands are measuring the wrong things.

“Traffic is becoming a vanity metric across the board, and brands that continue to be hung up on this will suffer,” he says.

“Reach, visibility, branded search demand, sentiment, recognition and recall are all KPIs we should track to measure the effectiveness of digital marketing budgets in 2025 on the bottom line.”

Does this mean the end of search? Not quite.

Despite the noise, marketers are aligned on one point: Paid search is not going anywhere.

“With search being a direct-response tactic, it still remains a necessary and powerful element to nearly every media plan,” Schopp says. “Consumers are searching more than ever, so there is ample search volume when including TikTok, Amazon, Perplexity, Reddit and soon ChatGPT.”

What is likely to change is how search is bought. The future of search could be less about keywords and more about context, intent and authority. As Mediaplus Performance MD Stephan Kopp puts it: “It’s not about keywords anymore; it’s about intent. You have to think about where you get in touch with your people.”

Mansell adds that content quality and editorial credibility will grow in importance as AI-powered search experiences favor “human-first, experience-led information.”

“The traditional auction parameters for paid search will change to also consider the brand affinity to the conversation, topic, product which will rely on site relevance and authority,” he says.

“Buying your way to the top won’t be as easy as it has been previously.”

Could retail media win from this shift?

Some say retail media stands to gain, and it’s easy to see why. If consumers aren’t coming to brand websites, they’re often researching and buying directly on retailers’ platforms. Retail media’s high-intent environments could be well-placed to capture ad budgets that might otherwise have gone to driving brands’ website traffic.

One thing is certain — retail media appears to be “winning” with or without AI Mode’s help. A recent WARC report expects global retail media ad spend to overtake linear TV ad spend this year. In the U.S. alone, EMarketer predicts retail media will reach $166 billion in 2025 — more than triple the retail media spend in 2023.