Beyond the Click: Why AI Overviews Demand a New Marketing Playbook
Fall is football season and America’s game (apologies to baseball fans everywhere!) — from Friday Night Lights on high school fields to the NFL on Sundays — has one thing in common: passing plays that thrill fans and win games.
Of course, football was played in the U.S. for more than 50 years before the forward pass became legal in 1906. In its earliest years, the sport was a brute-force, ground-and-pound battle where teams fought for every yard.
Then came the forward pass — and it changed everything. Suddenly, offenses could stretch the field, score faster, and transform strategy overnight. It forced defenses to adapt, coaches to rethink their playbooks, and fans to see the game in a whole new way.
Now, if you Google “When was the forward pass invented?” you can become an instant “expert” without a single click. Thanks to Google’s AI Overviews, you’ll learn enough from the AI summary itself to win a bar bet — or write the opening for this blog!
Search marketing is having its own forward pass moment as Google’s AI Overviews are rewriting the digital playbook, transforming how users find information, and forcing brands to rethink how they measure success in pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.
For years, search marketing was a ground game — grinding out progress through keywords, clicks, landing pages, and conversions. But with AI Overviews, the field has opened up. Success is no longer measured by click-through rate alone. In today’s zero-click environment, brand visibility, positioning, and message clarity are becoming the new metrics that matter.
The Forward Pass Effect: How AI Overviews Changed the Field for Marketers
When the forward pass entered football, it didn’t just add a new play — it rewrote the strategy. Teams that embraced it gained a massive edge, while those clinging to the old ground game were left behind.
AI Overviews are having that same disruptive effect on digital marketing.
“Google’s introduction of AI Overviews is radically reshaping the search landscape. For advertisers, the shift has serious implications: less visibility, fewer clicks, and more uncertainty,” wrote PPC search experts in Search Engine Land in June 2025. “Their position on the page makes them powerful, but also disruptive. Ads and organic listings are often pushed below the fold, forcing advertisers to rethink how they maintain brand visibility.”
In other words, the field has opened up, shifting how audiences discover, absorb, and act on information. The traditional PPC model – built on a linear model of impressions to clicks to conversions – no longer captures the full picture.
- Game has moved upfield: Google’s AI Overviews now answer many queries directly on the search results page, summarizing insights from multiple sites. That means fewer users are clicking through — but they’re still seeing and learning from what’s displayed.
- Clicks are being sacked: PPC Land published an article in July 2025 that showed that users who encountered AI summaries clicked on traditional search result links in only 8 percent of visits compared to 15 percent for searches without AI summaries. And one in four users ended their browsing entirely after visiting a search page with an AI-generated summary.
- Old stats don’t tell the entire story: For decades, PPC marketers have relied on metrics like CTR to gauge performance. It made sense when every search required a “handoff” — the user had to click to get to your site. But in today’s AI-driven search landscape, a click isn’t always the win. Your brand can shape perception and drive awareness without ever getting the click. The impression itself— the brand name, message, or product mentioned is visible within that AI summary — can move a potential customer closer to conversion before they ever visit your website.
- Scoring in a Zero-Click Contest: Instead of optimizing every campaign for clicks, you focus on presence— ensuring your brand is part of the AI Overview conversation, positioned as a credible source, and reinforced through smart ad messaging. That means:
-
- Auditing which of your keywords and campaigns are triggering AI Overviews
- Crafting ad copy that stands out within (and alongside) AI summaries
- Measuring impact through brand lift, view-throughs, and assisted conversions, not just clicks
- Viewing PPC as one piece of a broader offensive scheme that blends paid, organic, and AI visibility
Rewriting the Playbook: From Clicks to Influence
Change doesn't happen overnight. When the forward pass became legal in 1906, most teams stuck with their ground game for years before embracing the new strategy. But the teams that adapted early gained a decisive advantage.
We're at that same crossroads in digital marketing today. AI Overviews aren't just a new "feature" — they're a full redefinition of how audiences engage with information.
To stay competitive, marketers must rewrite their playbook. Instead of focusing solely on CTR and similar metrics, marketers need to track:
- Share of AI Visibility: How often is your brand or product referenced, displayed, or aligned with an AI Overview?
- Brand Recall and Message Retention: Whether your message resonates even without a click-through.
- Assisted and View-Through Conversions: How many customers convert later after encountering your brand within the AI ecosystem?
- Content Citations in AI Results: Your presence as a “trusted source” within generative summaries.
Executing this new game plan in a zero-click era will require:
- Identify where AI Overviews are active in your industry and how they affect your keyword visibility. Some sectors (health, finance, education) are more impacted than others.
- Expand reporting dashboards to show brand exposure within AI Overviews, not just traffic.
- Use Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)to align content with how AI systems summarize information, increasing the likelihood of citation.
- Write PPC ads that deliver your value proposition at a glance. If users don’t click, your message should still make an impression.
The future of PPC isn’t about who gets the most clicks — it’s about who gets remembered. Cross-channel strategy is more important than ever with brand content, video, and social media reinforcing your presence across every touchpoint.
Marketing teams that focus on influence, credibility, and conversion impact across the full digital field will position themselves for success.
Building a PPC Strategy for the AI Era
AI Overviews have changed the game. Success now means controlling the narrative inside the AI answer, not just winning the click beneath it.
That requires understanding how generative search surfaces your brand, ensuring your message aligns with what users see first, and designing campaigns that drive results even when users never leave the search page.
The marketers who win in this era won't be chasing yesterday's metrics—they'll be shaping how customers think long before a click ever happens.
At adWhite, we help clients navigate this shift. We reengineer digital strategies for AI-driven search—optimizing PPC campaigns, refining messaging for maximum impact within AI summaries, aligning content for Answer Engine Optimization, and measuring what actually drives business results.
If your current dashboards can't tell you whether your brand is showing up in AI Overviews or how those impressions affect conversions downstream, let's talk. The playbook has changed. Your strategy should, too.
