Introduction

Businesses are undergoing a once-in-a-lifetime transformation, driven by AI. CMOs leading the pack on AI transformation are at the center of this enterprise reinvention, becoming the go-to C-suite leader for CEOs and boards.

Leading CMOs are addressing both the possibilities of AI and the seismic shift in consumer behavior. Consumer journeys today are anything but linear. People move fluidly across searching, streaming, scrolling, and shopping -- often simultaneously. The marketing funnel that worked for decades has lost relevance.

The possibilities offered by AI are near-infinite, but practical barriers to execution can be daunting. The Think with Google team has distilled lessons from the first half of 2025, bringing key insights across the what and the how, from top CMOs, agency leaders, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and leaders within Google who are building the AI solutions of the future.

Inside, you'll find actionable insights on:

• Moving past the funnel and meeting the needs of predictably unpredictable consumers.
• Capitalizing on opportunities created by the future of advertising -- a future that is here, now.
• Closing the gap between experimentation and impact by scaling AI for media, creative, and performance.
• Tapping into culture and communities by leveraging YouTube creators as strategic partners.
• Building AI strength across data, content, and agentic capabilities, and driving performance using the Google Ads Power Pack.

The bottom line is clear: We are at a turning point. This report helps you plan with greater confidence and take action with clarity.

Chapter 1: The Predictably Unpredictable Consumer

Executive Summary

Today's consumer journeys are nonlinear, with people searching, streaming, scrolling, and shopping across devices, simultaneously. Marketers must adapt their plans accordingly.

The traditional funnel no longer reflects how consumers make decisions. Journeys are nonlinear and depend on behavior, context, and immediacy of need.

Influence over consumer decisions is a function of attention, relevance, and trust -- not just visibility or reach.

Marketers can use influence maps to meet consumers where they are and adapt their messaging based on customer persona and context at each stage of the journey.

It's important to be where your customers are: A majority of shoppers (61%) interact with 5+ touchpoints in their online purchase journeys; Google or YouTube are present in 86% of those journeys.

AI can help prioritize influence pathways to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of marketing investments.

Consumers interact with over 130 mobile touchpoints a day, plus connected TVs, laptops, smartwatches, and tablets. Consumers move seamlessly and simultaneously across these devices for searching, streaming, scrolling, and shopping (the 4S behaviors), fundamentally reshaping how they discover and engage with brands.

Farewell, funnel: A linear funnel no longer reflects consumer decision-making. Instead of predictable stages, consumers jump between behaviors, often repeating or skipping steps. Marketers need a more flexible framework that aligns with consumers' actual journeys.

Be where your customers are and adapt how you show up: The rise of the 4S behaviors unlocks new opportunities. Marketers need to be present in real time. Google or YouTube are present in 86% of online purchase journeys, higher than any other online platform.

Influence is determined by three factors:

1. The level of attention a consumer gives at any given moment.
2. The relevance of the content to the consumer's needs.
3. The consumer's degree of trust in the touchpoint or platform.

Marketers can define influence maps for key consumer segments and use them to prioritize investments across the four behavior types. Consumer research and AI can reveal which behaviors carry the greatest influence at each stage of a consumer's journey.

Diagram Description: An influence map illustrates how consumers move through Awareness, Consideration, and Action stages non-linearly. It highlights the impact of different behaviors like streaming, scrolling, searching, and shopping at various points in the journey, contrasting with a traditional linear funnel.

Examples of Influence Map Application:

• Stream: YouTube enables purchases through shoppable ads.
• Scroll: Vertical live streams on the YouTube app enable discovery, consideration, and purchase on one platform.
• Search: Google Search helps shoppers find ideas and close the deal.
• Shop: In-store browsing sparks interest, while remarketing through Google Ads seals the purchase.

Success with influence maps requires a scaled approach to AI for synthesizing complexity and maximizing marketing impact. This involves looking at processes end-to-end to identify AI's role in insights, measurement, media, or creative, then prioritizing AI pilots.

Industry Inspiration:

• Hilton: Developed an AI-powered YouTube and Search strategy to capture inspiration-led travelers, connecting in-the-moment intent with creative. Saw double-digit incremental revenue growth.
• Rare Beauty: Leaned into AI-powered ad solutions to reach Gen Z, incorporating YouTube into their Search strategy. Saw significantly higher Search volume and drove 7X return on ad spend.

Chapter 2: The Future of Advertising

Executive Summary

The future of advertising, fueled by AI, is already here. Innovations in AI-powered discovery, multimodal understanding, and agentic action allow marketers to influence consumers as they search, stream, scroll, and shop.

AI is reshaping advertising through AI-powered discovery, multimodal understanding, and agentic action.

• Discovery is evolving from information to intelligence, with AI Overviews and AI Mode in Search enabling complex, multistep interactions and driving query growth.
• Multimodal capabilities, like Google Lens and Try On, capture intent across text, image, video, voice, and real-world inputs, providing next-generation signals of intent.
• Shoppers and marketers can now leverage agentic technology, such as new checkout experiences, which autonomously complete tasks for shoppers.
• These innovations allow marketers to reach consumers with personalized, privacy-safe, and performance-driven ads that appear at the right moments without interruption.

Google sees 5 trillion searches annually, and YouTube leads in reach and watchtime. Advertising is undergoing its biggest shift yet, driven by AI, across three key fronts:

1. AI-powered discovery: Discovery is evolving from information to intelligence as AI capabilities allow users to have complex, multistep interactions with Search.
2. Multimodal understanding: How we discover and shop is transforming, as intent can be captured across visual, voice, and real-world inputs with new AI features.
3. Agentic action: Agents will soon assist shoppers in tasks, including completing checkout on their behalf.

AI in Search: Going beyond information to intelligence

Users are asking more complex questions in natural language, searching with text, visuals, and voice. Google is shaping this evolution with AI built into its products.

AI Overviews deliver deeper context and comprehensive responses directly within Search results, driving user satisfaction and increasing query volume.

AI Mode expands AI Overviews with advanced reasoning, multimodality, and conversational follow-ups, allowing for more complex, back-and-forth interactions. Early testers ask queries two to three times longer than traditional searches.

The adoption of these new search methods opens opportunities for businesses. AI Overviews show more links to a wider range of sources, leading to higher quality clicks and longer time spent on sites.

Advertisers can benefit from expanded ads within AI Overviews and experiments in AI Mode. Ads are integrated into AI-generated responses to help people discover information more seamlessly, while being privacy-safe and performance-driven.

Multimodal understanding: Intent is no longer limited to typed queries. Google Lens has 25 billion searches a month, with one in five showing commercial intent. Circle to Search allows users to search anything on their phones with a simple gesture, increasing search initiation for younger users.

New shopping experiences combine Gemini capabilities with the Shopping Graph (over 50 billion product listings) to help users browse for inspiration, consider products, and narrow down choices. Features like virtual try-on allow users to see how apparel looks on them by uploading a photo.

Agentic action: Agentic technology anticipates needs, learns from data, and autonomously executes tasks. New agentic checkout experiences reduce buying friction and boost sales by allowing shoppers to track prices and authorize purchases automatically.

Chapter 3: Scaling Creative, Media, and Performance with AI

Executive Summary

To unlock AI's full potential, companies must build connected systems that scale across media, creative, and measurement, supported by investments in people and process. Excellence in each dimension is key.

AI is reshaping marketing, but success levels vary. Research shows that only 19% of companies are AI leaders, connecting workflows and testing AI-assisted decisions. To close the gap between experimentation and impact, brands must embed AI across four interconnected marketing functions: media and personalization, creative and content, measurement and insights, and people and process, forming an AI flywheel.

Diagram Description: The AI-powered marketing engine is depicted as a flywheel connecting four key areas: Media and Personalization, Creative and Content, Measurement and Insights, and People and Process. These components work together to drive Productivity and Insights, leading to Growth and Efficiency.

Pathways to AI Excellence:

• Media and personalization: Build and improve media plans instantly using AI-powered media engines to set budgets and optimize for audiences. Marketers report a 24% increase in efficiency from using AI tools for media and personalization.
• Creative and content: Launch relevant, personalized creative in real time with an end-to-end AI-powered creative workflow. AI adoption can increase creative asset volume by ~6X.
• Measurement and insights: Apply AI to optimize in real time, automating insights, reporting, and forecasting. Invest in modern measurement tools like marketing mix models (MMM), data-driven attribution, and incrementality testing.
• People and process: Embed AI in the organization via process, training, and skills for reimagined AI-powered operations. Build a cross-functional "magic circle" of advocates.

Diagram Description: A comparative table of measurement approaches (MMM, Incrementality, Attribution) evaluates their strengths across dimensions such as Causality, Actionability, Recency, Breadth, Ease of Implementation, and Correlation.

Industry Inspiration:

• Lululemon: Implemented AI-powered shopping campaigns with strategic bidding and personalized ads, leading to an 8% boost in return on ad spend.
• Bayer: Used AI for value-based bidding for its digestive health supplement, resulting in a 108% increase in high-value conversions.
• Hatch: Used Gemini and ImageFX for a rapid product launch, driving an 80% uplift in click-through rate and a 31% improvement in cost per purchase.
• Touchland: Leveraged Gemini and Imagen for ad creative development, reducing visual asset timeline by 90% and production costs by 70%.

People and process: CMOs are uniquely positioned to drive growth in the AI era. Scaling AI requires addressing change management, investing in AI talent, and fostering cross-functional partnerships. Only 10% of leaders effectively build cross-functional AI advocates.

Agents for AI acceleration: Powerful agentic capabilities are coming to Google Ads and Google Analytics to help with onboarding, campaign creation, reporting, and troubleshooting, enabling more confident campaign optimization. Marketing Advisor, an agent coming to Chrome, can manage complex tasks across platforms.

Chapter 4: Creators as Strategic Partners

Executive Summary

Creators are pivotal strategic partners for marketers, enabling authentic connections through culture and communities. Understanding their role is crucial.

Culture and community are critical for authentic consumer connection, and creators are at the center of shaping culture and building active fandoms.

YouTube and its creators are pioneering the new TV, moving across formats with ease – from long-form entertainment to live events, short-form video, and podcasts.

Creators are core to shopping, acting as storytellers and trusted sales drivers. 81% of U.S. viewers agree that content from YouTube creators helps them research and discover products, surpassing other social media platforms.

Brands that leverage creators as strategic partners tap into their strength across culture, communities, and video.

As people search, stream, scroll, and shop simultaneously, brands can forge deeper, more authentic connections by tapping into the cultural zeitgeist and communities. Creators are experts in video, a crucial medium across the 4S behaviors.

Creators are reimagining the industry, building state-of-the-art studios. For example, French creator Inoxtag filmed his Mount Everest climb, creating a feature-length documentary, "Kaizen," which premiered in cinemas and drew 17 million views on YouTube in under 48 hours.

People watch over 1 billion hours of YouTube daily on their TV screens. Creators shape culture and build powerful communities, rivaling traditional productions in audience impact.

YouTube creators are pioneering the new TV, offering content unconstrained by format. Over 1 billion people watch podcasts on YouTube each month.

Creator communities run deep, fostering loyalty and trust. 81% of U.S. viewers find YouTube creator content helpful for product research and discovery, outperforming other social media platforms. YouTube drives higher long-term ROAS than TV, online video, and paid social.

Creator fandoms shape culture. Glitch's animated series "The Amazing Digital Circus" pilot garnered over 300 million views, with fan response generating an astounding 25 billion views for songs, memes, and spinoff content.

Creators are core to shopping: Getting noticed is harder than ever. Consumers are inundated with options. Moving shoppers from discovery to decision requires trust and genuine connection. YouTube excels in engagement and creator trust, with YouTube ads on connected TV driving over 1 billion conversions in the past 12 months. 82% of viewers believe YouTube has the most trusted creators.

Creators help shoppers cut through choices, reduce research time, and boost confidence. They act as storytellers and sales drivers, inspiring action in native, relevant formats across Shorts, livestreams, and long-form content.

Industry Inspiration:

• Urban Decay: Partnered with beauty creators for product application videos, yielding a 278% surge in search lift for its iconic eye shadow palette relaunch.
• Samsung: Partnered with MrBeast for the Galaxy S24 launch, generating 25 million impressions and a 6% lift in brand searches.
• Uber: Teamed with creator Pantons Squad for its Teen Accounts product, achieving significant brand lift and a 110% lift in "uber teens" searches.
• Volvo: Partnered with pianist Chloe Flower to remix EV sounds into compositions, delivering a YouTube ad experience with a 44% view-through rate, 24% above the auto industry benchmark.

Chapter 5: Your Action Plan: Future-Ready, Now

Executive Summary

This summer marks a crucial moment for marketers to become future-ready by strategically building AI strength. The updated Google Ads AI Essentials 2.0 framework provides a clear guide across three core areas.

• AI Data Strength: Connect first-party data to unlock new signals for performance and measure incrementality with experiments across campaign types.
• AI Content Strength: Create user-focused content for paid media, generate high-quality creative assets, and access format controls in Video view campaigns.
• AI Performance Strength: Harness AI performance strength through the Power Pack, Google's next generation of AI-powered campaign solutions, built for the new era of Search and multimodal experiences.

Holiday and annual planning are around the corner. Align your team, sharpen your strategy, and get ready to scale. What you do in the coming weeks will shape how you show up in the coming months.

Meet the Google Ads AI Essentials 2.0:

The AI Essentials 2.0 framework is an updated guide to putting next-gen Google AI to work, with new areas reflecting recent advancements.

• AI Data Strength: Connect first-party data (website, CRM) to unlock new signals. Measure incrementality with experiments across campaign types, with lower budget requirements and improved methodology. Optimize budget with Meridian and Budgeting Tool in Google Analytics.
• AI Content Strength: Create original, user-focused content for paid media and leverage Creator Partnerships. Succeed with SEO by crafting helpful content and building quality with AI. Generate high-quality creative assets through Asset Studio and explore image-to-video capabilities. Access format controls in Video view campaigns and maximize reach of non-skippable ads with Video reach campaigns.
• AI Performance Strength: The Power Pack: This suite includes Performance Max (offering more visibility and control, search terms reporting, channel performance reporting, diagnostics), AI Max for Search campaigns (driving performance on new queries, expanding reach to AI surfaces), and Demand Gen (creating and capturing demand across Google's visual surfaces).

Agentic capabilities are coming to Google Ads and Analytics to support, optimize, and advise, helping with tasks across the web. Marketing Advisor can manage complex tasks, offer recommendations, and execute with permission.

Call to Action: Ready to boost your team's success? Sign up for Accelerate with Google at g.co/business/accelerate for product announcements, events, certifications, and recommendations.