Google announced sweeping changes to budget allocation recommendations this week, and buried in the documentation is a number that should make every e-commerce marketer sit up straight: businesses that rely purely on paid ads are seeing 34% higher customer acquisition costs than those balancing organic and paid strategies. That single statistic might finally put to rest the endless debate about how much of your marketing budget should actually go to PPC versus SEO.
Two pieces caught my attention this week – one looking at the eternal SEO versus PPC budget battle, and another mapping out what’s coming in digital marketing over the next year. Let me walk you through what matters for your business.
The SEO and PPC Budget Question (That Everyone Gets Wrong)
Here’s the thing about the SEO versus PPC debate – most people frame it as an either/or decision. Should I invest in organic rankings or paid ads? But that’s not really how it works in the real world, is it?
The discussion around budget allocation is heating up again, and for good reason. With Google Ads costs continuing to climb in competitive sectors, and organic search becoming increasingly crowded, business owners are rightly asking where their next pound should go.
What I find interesting is how this plays out for e-commerce businesses specifically. When you’re selling products online, paid search gives you something invaluable: immediate visibility for high-intent searches. Someone searching “buy red running shoes size 10” is ready to purchase right now. That’s where your Google Shopping campaigns come in.
But here’s what the budget discussion often misses – the timeline. PPC gives you results today. Turn on a campaign, and you’re getting traffic within hours. SEO? That’s a months-long investment. For many e-commerce businesses, especially newer ones or those launching new product lines, you need both working together.
The real question isn’t “which one?” but “what mix makes sense for where my business is right now?” If you’re launching a new store, you probably need PPC heavily at first just to get customers through the door while your organic presence builds. If you’ve been trading for years with strong organic rankings, you might dial back paid spend on some products and focus it where it really counts.
What’s Actually Coming in 2026
The trends piece for 2026 touches on something I’ve been watching closely – the continued evolution of how AI is reshaping paid advertising. And I mean really reshaping it, not just the buzzword stuff.
We’re already seeing this with Performance Max campaigns in Google Ads. These AI-driven campaigns are taking more control out of advertisers’ hands and putting it into Google’s algorithms. Now, that’s not automatically a bad thing, but it does change how you need to approach your advertising strategy.
The Shift in How Campaigns Work
Here’s what this means in practical terms: the traditional model of picking specific keywords, writing individual ads, and controlling exactly when and where your ads appear is becoming less relevant. Instead, you’re giving Google your products, your budget, and your goals, and the system figures out the rest.
For e-commerce businesses, this changes your role. You’re less about micro-managing individual keywords and more about feeding the system what it needs: good product data, clear conversion tracking, and strong creative assets. Your product feed quality matters more than ever. Your images, your product titles, your descriptions – these are what Google’s AI uses to match your products to potential customers.
The Video and Visual Content Push
Another trend that’s impossible to ignore is the continued push toward video content in advertising. Google wants video assets for Shopping campaigns. They want product videos. They want lifestyle imagery beyond just white-background product shots.
This isn’t just Google being awkward – there’s a reason behind it. The way people shop online is changing. They want to see products in action, see how they look in real situations, understand what they’re actually getting. Static images only tell part of the story.
Now, I know what you’re thinking – “I don’t have the budget for professional video production for every product.” And that’s fair. But here’s the thing: Google isn’t necessarily demanding Hollywood-quality productions. Simple product demonstration videos, even shot on a decent smartphone, can make a real difference to how your ads perform.
The Privacy and Data Question
There’s another thread running through all of this that affects how we approach paid advertising going forward – the ongoing changes to how user data and tracking works.
We’ve seen cookie restrictions, iOS privacy changes, and various other limitations on how we can track and target users. This trend is continuing into 2026, and it’s changing how you need to think about your Google Ads strategy.
The practical impact? First-party data becomes more valuable. That means building your own customer lists, using customer match campaigns, and focusing on remarketing to people who’ve actually visited your site. If you’ve been putting off properly integrating your email lists with your Google Ads account, now’s the time to sort that out.
It also means conversion tracking needs to be spot-on. Google’s algorithms rely on conversion data to optimise your campaigns. If your tracking is partial or broken, the system can’t learn what’s working. For e-commerce, that means making sure every purchase, every add-to-cart, every key action is being properly recorded.
What This Means for Your Budget Decisions
Coming back to that budget question – all of these trends feed into how you should be thinking about your advertising spend.
If AI-driven campaigns are becoming the norm (and they are), then you need enough budget for these systems to actually learn and optimise. Running a Performance Max campaign on £5 a day won’t give the algorithm enough data to work with. You need sufficient spend for the system to test different approaches and find what works.
If video and rich content are becoming essential (and they are), then some of your marketing budget needs to go toward creating that content. Not necessarily loads, but enough to have decent assets to work with.
And if first-party data is increasingly important (it is), then your budget allocation needs to include the tools and systems to collect and use that data effectively.
The Practical Takeaway
Here’s what I’d be thinking about if I were running an e-commerce business right now: your paid advertising budget needs to work harder and smarter than it did even a year ago. The days of just throwing up some text ads and watching the sales roll in are long gone – if they ever really existed.
You need solid product feeds. You need proper tracking. You need decent creative assets including video where possible. You need enough budget for AI-driven campaigns to actually function. And you need all of this working together, not in isolation.
The good news? When it’s done properly, these newer campaign types can actually perform better than the old manual approaches. Google’s algorithms are good at finding customers when you give them the right inputs.
The question for 2026 isn’t really “SEO or PPC?” – it’s “how do I make sure my paid advertising budget is being used as effectively as possible in this changing landscape?” And that’s something worth getting right.