AI MAX Advantage: The Fundamentals Everyone’s Forgetting

The Future of Paid Search: Why Content and SEO Will Decide Who Wins in AI Search

The future of paid search will be built on unique, relevant content. That means SEO and structured data matter more than ever.

Google’s Playbook for Relevance Still Matters

Anyone born after 1995 has no idea that Google wasn’t always the dominant search engine. Google was late to the game (the first search engine launched in 1990; Google wouldn’t be founded until 1998). But they stole market share because they had a much better product and by 2003, they became the U.S. market leader.

Unlike AOL, Yahoo, and Ask.com, Google never let short-term profits outweigh long-term dominance. Their mission, “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” always came first.

Why? Because for more than 25 years, no one has matched their search results speed or their pace of adaptation.

For example, many predicted the rise of mobile would kill Google, but the shift from PCs to mobile devices only strengthened their dominance because they rapidly innovated their core search product.

Paid Search Ads: Built on Relevance from the Start

Cool story bro, but why does this matter in 2025?

I remember managing campaigns on Microsoft Live, Yahoo Overture, and early Google AdWords (shoutout 2005). The big difference was relevance. Google’s rollout of Quality Score forced advertisers to align keywords, ad copy, and landing pages to the user’s search…All to ensure they didn’t deprecate the consumer experience.

If you weren’t relevant, you couldn’t bid. I told clients in 2006: “You can’t just bid on Britney Spears if you have no content, products, or relevance to Britney Spears.”

That same approach is what advertisers in 2025 need to pay attention to, because for the first time since 2003, Google’s market share is facing a real threat from ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI-driven platforms.

Why AI Search Is a Real Threat in 2025

Traditional search engines are losing share to AI search, and ChatGPT holds close to 80 percent of that landscape.

Google knows this. At the Chief Product Officer summit in June 2025, I sat with Google’s search leadership across Ads, Organic, and Analytics. 

Their message was clear: ads across AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini will need to be highly relevant to prompts. Just like Quality Score 20 years ago, it is all about protecting the consumer experience.

OpenAI is approaching this challenge differently. They do not have two decades of legacy search revenue to protect, but they do face enormous costs to run their models. Their balance will be harder: monetize enough prompts to cover costs, but not so aggressively that users leave. 

Google has the advantage of experience, but OpenAI has the advantage of speed. Advertisers will need to be ready for both.

Ads in AI Overviews: Early Results

Our agency has already launched AI Max campaigns for 42 clients. Here’s what we are seeing:

The performance gap is especially clear by industry.

The takeaway: strong SEO and structured content directly improve paid performance in AI Overviews.

What Advertisers Should Do Now

If history is a guide, Google and OpenAI will follow the same playbook: protect relevance at all costs. The brands who get ahead now will win.

Here’s where to focus:

Both Google and OpenAI need to keep users on-platform to monetize prompts and offset the cost of running their systems. The winners will be advertisers who make their content the most useful, structured, and relevant.

How Go Fish Helps Advertisers Win

Being a leader in SEO and GEO gives us an edge. Our proprietary tools streamline site structure changes, strengthen backlinks, and help AI Max advertisers launch with confidence.

If you want to see where your brand stands in AI Max today, and how to gain an unfair advantage in AI Overviews, reach out to our team.