What happens when your customers stop Googling and start asking an AI instead? That's not a hypothetical anymore — it's happening right now, and if you're running an online store, it's something you genuinely need to be thinking about.
This week there are three stories worth your attention. One's about a sneaky new way to see what your competitors are up to inside AI chat tools. One tackles that ongoing debate about Performance Max campaigns. And one looks at some big marketing numbers from the past month that tell us quite a lot about where things are heading. Let's dig in.
Your Competitors Might Already Be Inside ChatGPT — Here's How to Check
This one caught my eye and I think it's going to matter a lot more over the next twelve months than most people realise right now.
There's a growing conversation in the industry about how brands are starting to appear inside AI-generated answers — tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others. When someone asks "what's the best running shoe for wide feet?" or "where can I buy a gift for a 50th birthday?", the AI gives them an answer. And increasingly, that answer includes brand recommendations and links.
The question is: are your competitors already in those answers, and you're not?
Search Engine Journal has covered a practical method for checking exactly this — essentially reverse-engineering what ChatGPT is saying about your product category to see who's showing up and who isn't.
Why does this matter to you? Because the way people discover products is quietly shifting. Google is still enormous, and it's not going anywhere fast. But a meaningful slice of your potential customers — particularly younger, more tech-savvy shoppers — are starting to use AI tools as their first port of call when they're researching a purchase. If a competitor's brand is consistently recommended by ChatGPT when someone asks a question about your product category, that's visibility you're missing out on.
This is still early days. AI-powered search and recommendations are evolving rapidly and nobody has the whole picture figured out yet. But it's worth keeping tabs on. Start by simply asking ChatGPT questions your customers might ask — see who comes up, and whether your brand features at all. It's a quick temperature check, and you might be surprised by what you find.
The Performance Max Question That Won't Go Away
If you've spoken to anyone in PPC circles recently, you'll know that Performance Max — Google's automated, all-in-one campaign type — divides opinion. On one side, there are people who swear by it. On the other, people who find it frustratingly opaque.
Search Engine Journal's Ask a PPC column tackled this head-on this week, asking the question that a lot of e-commerce advertisers are wrestling with: is Performance Max actually better than running separate, more traditional campaigns?
The honest answer — and this is the industry consensus rather than any simple yes or no — is that it depends on your situation. Here's the plain-English version of what the debate actually comes down to:
Performance Max hands Google's AI a lot of control. You give it your budget, your assets (images, headlines, product feeds), and your conversion goals, and it decides where and when to show your ads across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail, and Maps. That breadth can be genuinely powerful, particularly for retailers with large product catalogues.
But the lack of transparency is a real issue. You often can't see exactly which placements are eating your budget, which search terms are triggering your ads, or why performance suddenly dips. That makes it harder to diagnose problems and make informed decisions.
Separate campaigns — standard Shopping, Search, Display — give you far more control and visibility. You can see exactly what's happening, make precise adjustments, and spot problems quickly. The trade-off is that they require more active management and expertise to get right.
The practical takeaway for you? There's no universal right answer here, but the evidence suggests that Performance Max works best when it has strong data to learn from — meaning you're already generating a decent volume of conversions. If you're a newer advertiser or working with a tighter budget, you may find that more traditional campaign structures give you better insight and control. This is genuinely something worth discussing with whoever manages your paid search, rather than just defaulting to whatever Google recommends.
Three Big Numbers That Tell You Where Marketing Is Heading
The third story this week is a roundup of notable marketing statistics from May, and a few of them are worth pausing on because they paint a picture of the direction of travel.
Without getting too deep into data for data's sake, a few themes are emerging from the numbers doing the rounds this month:
AI adoption in marketing is accelerating faster than most people predicted. The gap between early adopters and everyone else is widening. Businesses that are actively using AI tools in their marketing — whether that's for content, bidding, audience targeting, or creative testing — are pulling ahead in terms of efficiency.
Consumer behaviour online is shifting. People are spending more time researching before they buy, using more touchpoints, and being more selective. That means the old "throw money at Google Shopping and watch the sales roll in" approach is becoming less reliable on its own. You need to be visible at more stages of the buying journey.
Budget pressure is real. Marketing budgets are being scrutinised more carefully, and the businesses that are surviving that scrutiny are the ones that can demonstrate clear return on their ad spend. Vague metrics aren't cutting it anymore — it's about revenue and tangible outcomes.
None of this is shocking in isolation, but taken together, they reinforce something I find myself coming back to regularly: the businesses that treat their paid advertising as a strategic asset rather than a box-ticking exercise are the ones that tend to come out ahead.
What This All Adds Up To
There's a common thread running through all three stories this week, and it's this: the landscape is changing faster than most people realise, and staying still is no longer a neutral position.
Your competitors might already be showing up in AI-generated answers. The debate around Performance Max means there are real decisions to make about how your campaigns are structured. And the broader marketing numbers are pointing towards a world where clarity, control, and strategic thinking matter more than ever.
If any of this has raised questions about your own paid advertising setup — whether you're getting the visibility you should be, whether your campaigns are structured in a way that actually serves your business, or whether you're keeping pace with where things are heading — that's exactly the kind of conversation I'm here for.
More to come next week. Things are moving quickly right now, and there's plenty to keep an eye on.