Advertising Inside the Answer: Preparing for ChatGPT Ads and the AI Search Ad Economy @ Technology for Marketing / eCommerce Expo London 2026

0:00All right, good to go. Everyone hears me? Perfect. Perfect. Happy to kick off the conference for you guys. Thank you for being here. Today we're going to be talking about advertising inside the answer. So, advertising and AI search going to be a jam-packed session for you guys. I have about hour presentation that we're going to do in the next 20 minutes. So, rapid fire style. If anyone needs the slides after, let me know. There's also recordings happening. I think I have I'm also recording it just in case. So, if you miss anything, just let me know. I have my contact information at the end. I'm more than happy to send you the slides. This is our agenda for today. I'll tell you a little bit about myself. We'll talk about the new SERP, how AI ads differ. We're gonna talk about measuring and then at the end I have a 12 month plan that you guys could take away with you of things you could do to start to start actually coming up in AI results. A little bit about myself. I was here last year with this exact same slide. So for those that were here last year, I've reused this before. I started my first company in 1991. I started one of the first web hosting companies. I'm sorry that was start over. That was me in 1991. I started my first company in 1997, T35 hosting.

1:23Couple years before Google in 2011, I started SmartSites, which is now the biggest private digital marketing company in the US. So I run that with my younger brother and we have actually over 400 employees at SmartSites. I have a automotive search marketing book out. It's auto ccentric but it talks about all this SEO GEO really cool stuff. Second edition is coming out in 2 3 weeks. I already wrote it so it's now I just have to wait for the publisher to publish it. But if anyone wants a copy let me know. Again it's automotive centric but all this stuff applies to every industry. So shoot me an email after more than happy to send you a copy of the updated book. Little a little bit more about SmartSites. Like I said, I co-founded with my younger brother. We're now one of the largest digital marketing companies in the US. We do a ton of this SEO GEO AI stuff. And I'm here to share the stuff we're seeing and the stuff that's going to be coming down the road for you guys very, very soon. Cool. This is the last slide about SmartSites, I promise, and then we'll jump into actual stuff. So again, a little bit more about us. We have tons of data. We do tons of this stuff. And a lot of the stuff I'm going to be sharing today with you guys comes from our data set. Very loud in

2:50Here. I guess with the headphones, you guys are okay. Everyone hears me? Perfect. Without the headphones, I don't even hear myself. Wish I could see the slides a little bit better up here. All right. Answers is the new SERP by the numbers. So, this is some of the stuff you guys have seen before, but it's important to set ourselves up before we go into the actual discussion of why AI search is important. 68% of Google search now ends without a click. I think you guys have heard that number before. It's obviously impacting everything we do in the digital industry because it's impacting how companies, products, businesses get found. Minus 58% organic CTR when AI overviews are shown. So AI overviews are rolling out more and more aggressively. The US probably more so than in the UK, but the UK is very close behind. Billion weekly ChatGPT users and obviously the takeaway here is that there's fewer clicks and people are looking for things in different ways and that's why the stuff we're going to be talking about here today both at my session and at this conference is so important for you guys because the way people are finding products finding companies is changing very rapidly. This is very this is UK specific information. So what I find interesting, I speak I speak all over the world. I speak in the US, in the UK, in Europe.

4:18The US is usually a year or two ahead of any other market with any innovation like this, Any anytime AI overviews or anything new rolls out, the US is way ahead. I found that the UK has been really close, second behind, The rest of Europe is way behind and UK has been really close. ChatGPT usage in the UK is only second to the US in terms of propensity of usage. 53% of UK adults say that they've seen AI overviews in Google. Again, the UK market is very close behind to the US in terms of AI propensity and ChatGPT ads went live in the UK in June. I don't know if you guys know this, but literally everyone here could be advertising on ChatGPT now and could be for a couple months. Again, this is way ahead of the rest of Europe and a lot of other markets. So, that gives you guys a lot of opportunities to embrace a lot of this stuff. Next slide. Search is changing. So, I personally work on automotive. So, a couple of the examples to go out the deck is going to be automotive themed, but the way people are looking for information is changing. So the way people Google to find a car in 2016 would be Toyota dealer near me, You guys have seen probably all these near me searches and all these typical traditional ways people search. It' be like two words or three words. They

5:43Would go into Google and look for something really they would like point out like lawyer near me, plumber near me like they would selfidentify what they need and that's it, the way people are searching and not just on ChatGPT but on Google now as well is it's becoming a lot more conversational people are having conversations with Google with AI search with ChatGPT to find the product they're not just going on there and saying I want I don't know I don't know backpacks blue backpack near me right people are actually going on even Google on traditional search and saying which backpack is good for a 15.6 in laptop for me to travel with. Right there. Everything is becoming a lot more conversational and that really affects the way we as advertisers need to think about it. All right. This is a good slide for pictures. So, there's a lot of information on here. Again, I'll give you guys this deck after if you'd like. I could give you the video of this recording if the video works out. But this is this is the slide to really take a picture of, and I'll walk you through this slide right now. So this is the what I would call AI search advertising landscape. So this is specifically for advertising, If you wanted to advertise in AI search, these are your options as of I think this deck is literally as of like a

7:05Week ago, So I'll take you from the top. Google AI overview. So Google AI overviews have been live for actually two years now. At least in the US they've been they're in almost all the English markets. They are embedded. So, Google AI overview advertising is the ads are embedded within the answers. So, this is not available in the UK yet. But from what I understand, it's going to be it was supposed to be by the shopping season this year, but it's been delayed a little bit. So, this is coming really soon. We've been piloting this in the US for jeez at least this year. There's still it's still I would say a work in progress from advertising perspective but for you guys for those who are UK centric just know that's literally around the corner and that's going to be probably your biggest advertising mediums in AI results Google AI mode. So AI mode itself is live ads are not yet. That's also something coming soon. On the next slide again I'll show you an example of how it looks like to advertise in AI overviews in AI results. Microsoft Copilot ads have actually been live in the UK. We have our partner here for Microsoft that's speaking I think at three o'clock later today. Ellie they Microsoft's doing a lot of really cool things with AI. They were obviously at the forefront with the ChatGPT partnership. But you could and

8:30Could have been already for a long time advertising in Copilot. So having ads and AI results through Microsoft and again really big opportunity that you guys could do here in the UK that most markets at the US cannot do yet. ChatGPT lives also ChatGPT ads also went live a couple months ago again in the US. We've been piloting it since I think February or March. In the UK it just went live. I know there's always a lot of questions about it. So, if you have questions, hold them till the end for the Q&A. We'll go through them. But, we've been doing a lot of ChatGPT ads. I'm more than happy to discuss how it's going. But, at the very least, I want you guys to know that you're actually able to do it. The self-s SERP platform is up. You could literally go in and start doing ChatGPT ads today if you wanted to. And then you have Amazon Perplexity. They're I would say coming soon. Perplexity had ads and then they took ads away. I think they're going to bring them back. Now, that's more acceptable. But this is the landscape of how you could advertise in AI results September 2026. And again a lot of things are about to come out to UK market. A lot of things just came out to UK market. And again, you guys are going to be way ahead of the rest of Europe. So this is going to be really important stuff to capitalize on finding people in different ways that your competitors might not be doing. This is what it looks like for Google AI overviews and Google AI mode.

9:59In the US this is already common to see in the UK it's coming really soon. So I just want you guys to see what it actually look like. So literally when someone goes on and I know it's small on this screen it's even smaller. But when someone goes on Google and searches for a product or asks for a bad product or what I think the it's really washed out but I think it's the example up there if I remember from memory is a pet carrier. So someone looked up a pet carrier. So it shows the shopping feed and then AI through AI ads the it shows a sponsored result showing you the products. So again, it pulls your ads into the conversation and there's a lot of complexity that goes into this. You don't target based on keywords with any of this stuff. It's all based on conversations. But this is something that is going to become really common in the UK. When I'm here next year, one year from now, this is going to be really, really common. And everyone here is going to be used to seeing ads in AI overviews and literally having conversations with Google and part of the result seeing an ad in it. ChatGPT ads. This is now live in the UK. As far as I'm aware, the uptake rate has been really low in the UK. For whatever reason, the US market was a lot more receptive to this product. Having piloted,

11:28So we piloted starting February. And I and I apologize it's a little washed out washed out up there. Having piloted ChatGPT ads for over six months now, I'll tell you there's a lot of kinks with it that's are still being worked out. When it rolled out, a lot of people in the US at least jumped on it thinking they're going to have a first mover advantage and I'm going to be on ChatGPT ads going to be so great and it just was the results were not there. The cost per click it rolled out as a CPM product and when you were when we were when we were translated to a cost per click model it was like hundreds of dollars per click so it was the results were still not really there it's getting better the targeting is getting better it's still a work in progress product but just so it is live for you guys you could be doing it the big advantage with ads in ChatGPT is that as opposed to Google where you're used to having multiple advertisers in multiple positions, When you go and search something on Google, you're going to get like three ads, four ads, depending where you're suh searching for, you could get shopping ads and then search ads and then a map ad. ChatGPT, you only get one advertiser per result. That's one of the benefits of it. On the negatives is it still doesn't well as a performance marketing tool is still not really quite there. If you

12:56Try to put it apples to apples to other channels and try to figure out your cost per lead cost per lead is going to be really high. So it's still a lot of the values on the branding top of mind awareness that stuff. So it's still not for if you're really performance marketing focused or cost per lead focus. It's still not there. But it's getting a lot better and definitely something that opens up a different way to be discovered. Next, next. There it goes. This is the Microsoft Copilot stuff I mentioned before. So, Microsoft Copilot is really has been the first mover in this space, especially for the UK market. They were ahead of everyone else. Microsoft and again, they're going to be here. I don't think at this stage. I think it's a different stage, but at 3 p.m. Our colleagues from Microsoft u are going to be here talking about agentic shopping and going from this slide and making into an entire presentation. So I do recommend you guys attend that as well. Microsoft has introduced a lot of advertising opportunities in AI results that don't exist in other platforms. So they've really been innovating in the space. It's not as big a volume play as ChatGPT or Google, but the they are offering a lot of creative ways to advertise and I think it's super relevant for everyone in this room.

14:21How ads inside the answers differ. So this is going to be get your cameras ready. This is going to be another good picture slide. I think I have a couple more good picture slides. So this compares a different advertising, this if I had to group all the type of advertising that you guys are doing up it would be search ads and social ads probably be the biggest chunk for most of you guys and now the ads and AI search I think is the is the new frontier right this is a good thing to take I know a lot of you already took the picture but this is a good thing to take a picture of and then reference later and again I'll give you guys the deck later so you could you could have all this is a good cheat sheet to compare the advertising platforms. A lot of this stuff is really self-explanatory, but it's a good way for you to reference back how it differs, So, search ads are triggered by keyword. You literally bid on a keyword. Social ads are audiences as you guys know. And then, ChatGPT and AI search is all conversational context. So, for those that have not done ChatGPT ads or any AI ads, you're not bidding on any AI key any keywords with it. You're not bidding on any audiences. You're really bidding on topics and conversations. And some other things to keep in mind, the creative is different, the targeting control is very different. ChatGPT in the US at least, one of the biggest challenges for us with small businesses have been the

15:49Targeting. So for a long time and they're in the process of changing it, but they haven't yet. But, in the US, we could either target a state or a DMA. So for a small business, it doesn't make sense for them to target just the New York City metro or the entire state of New York, If they're like a small business or a car dealership, it's just not effective strategy for them to target the entire state of New York. So targeting is still a work in progress. But it is getting better and this is again a good way to compare the different platforms. Early adopters of what's working and what's not. This is a our ChatGPT I would say cheat sheet but this is a Chad GBT summary of what we're seeing and what the industry is seeing and e-commerce it's been very effective and that's why that's why this is the session I'm presenting for you guys today. Advertising and AI results has been the most effective in e-commerce out of all the industries. So it has been very effective in e-commerce. It's driving a lot of customer discovery which is really big. So if you think about Google, a lot of the a lot of the business Google and search engines bring you is fulfilling demand, It's demand capture. So you're sell I don't know you sell backpacks for laptops,

17:19People go and search backpacks for laptops. You're fulfilling the demand that's there. With AI search ChatGPT a lot of it is discovery and people are discovering things they don't necessarily think or know they need so they will go on and say I'm going on this backpacking trip in Europe and I have a back I have a laptop where can I put it right they're literally discovering your product so it's a lot of demand generation versus demand capture so a lot of the traffic that is driving is net new business and on the flip side On the wasting side, a lot of a lot of what the industry sees is that the cost per clicks are still high. Cost per conversions are still really high. When you're com when you get down to comparing apples to apples, the cost per lead, cost per conversion, cost per sale is still really high. So, it's still it's still work in progress. But for many especially those segmenting demand capture versus demand generation the results have been good and again e-commerce has been the most successful industry for me. All right I have two three minutes for you guys and then we're going to do Q&A measuring within a SERP. So that's funny. So I had I actually had AI help me put this deck together and it I said put in quotes throughout the deck and actually it

18:43Quoted me. It quoted something I wrote in the book that I mentioned that's coming out in a couple weeks for this slide. So, I've never I've never read off a quote of myself in my own deck before, but there's a there's a quote for me. You can't rank in AI search, There's a lot of this spammy scammy stuff going around and my clients forward me a lot of it where people are "We'll get you number one on ChatGPT," There's no such thing. There's no number one on ChatGPT. So just something to be aware that it's a lot different than traditional search. If you search the same thing a 100 times, you're going to get different answers 100% of the time. So measurement becomes really different. You're really measuring your brand exposure. And then in e-commerce, I would literally bring it back to I would literally bring it back to the apples to apples to all your other channels. You want to try to get it back to a cost per lead. Yes. Measuring how often you're showing up in brand recommendations and things like that is super important. Share of voice is important, but at the end of the day for e-commerce at least I would try to make it apples to apples cost per lead. This is also an interesting find. Again, this will apply to you guys more and more so as AI overviews rolls out more and more in the UK market. But measuring all of our all of our GA4 properties, we found that AI overview clicks are not being attributed as organic or anything else in Google Analytics. So clicks you're right now getting from AI overviews and we saw in

20:15The UK AI overviews are showing a lot now. You can't advertise in them, but they're are showing a ton. Clicks from that are not being counted. They're being misattributed to direct. So there's a lot of there's a lot of things to keep in mind. Measurement framework. I talked about this. This is you could take a picture really quick. We're running out of time, so I'll skip ahead, but take a picture. This is the measurement stuff I was talking about. You really want to judge AI placements the same way you do everything else. It's very hard to do that. Sometimes people get carried away. We're "Oh, I'm showing up at ChatGPT. I don't care what my cost per lead is." At the end of the day, the success of the platform should be measured the same way as all the other platforms. 12-month plan for you guys. There's two slides and then hopefully we'll have a couple minutes for Q&A. Another good another good picture slide. So, as I was putting this deck together, I was what can I give these guys to take home with them? What plan can I give them or what they could be implementing? So, this touches on a lot of different things and we have very little time. So, I'll go I'll go rapid fire through this organic, which is GEO now generative engine optimization. I have 60 pages on this in the new book. Again, if you want it, just email me after. I'll send you the copy of me book. This is going to become more and more important along with advertising in AI results. You want to be coming up organically in AI results. This is becoming a I don't want to say its own industry but a

21:36Subset of SEO. It's all AEO I like GEO answers engine optimization and generative engine optimization. But this is huge something to focus on. Google Microsoft ChatGPT will all need different plans for you guys. A lot of this is rolling out literally in the next couple months. Advertising and AI overviews is going to roll out on Microsoft and ChatGPT. You guys could have already advertised. So this is the road map for you guys. Closing thoughts and then hopefully a couple minutes for Q&A. This is a recap of the entire deck. Everyone actually has been very attentive here. So I think you guys you guys already got this, but if you want to take a picture, you could take a picture of this as well. Fewer clicks, higher intent. So people are clicking they're researching more clicking less. So the typical journey has changed. People are going to AI search to ChatGPT to research to have conversations and then at the end when they're ready to make their selection their purchase decision finding a business they're going to Google or wherever they are and then they're doing that click. So there's a lot less clicks but the clicks are really a lot more valuable because when they're ready to make that decision they're really purchase intent-minded ads inside the answers alive. So in the US it's been live all year pretty much. In the UK everything's rolling out now. So super relevant for everyone here in this room to be on top of this stuff because this will be really important for you guys in the next couple months. Measure visibility and on

23:04Rank. You we also want to measure like I was saying cost per lead. You want to get down as far to bottom line as you can and be comparative with other channels. Budget like R&D. All of this is experimental. I always recommend businesses spend 10% of their marketing budgets experimenting with something. I would call all this experimental, but it's definitely worth experimenting with. And early movers win with some exceptions. Early movers with ChatGPT in the US didn't really win, but if done correctly and measured correctly, there's a big advantage all of you guys have in this room being exposed to all of this today and having it come in next 6 to 12 months. That's all I have. That's my LinkedIn. If you scan the QR code. My email address again, if you want a copy of the new book, let me know. Send me an email. I think we could open a Q&A. I don't know how many. I think we have a couple minutes. I don't know who's counting the minutes, but, we have a question. Does anyone have a microphone to microphone's coming? How are you? Good. How are you? Thank you. Speak close to our microphone.

24:36So what is your experience? One month. Yeah, good question. I think next six to 12 months I think I think AI search going to become a lot more important. I think discovery is changing. I think that's the biggest thing, at the end of the day as advertisers and you having an advertising agency your job is to find consumers where they are and show them a relevant ad for your client where they're looking for it. So I think discoverability is changing. I think for a long time and by the way the everything the last 25 years has all been changed but the last like two years it's just been like a rapid change. So, just to I know we don't have a lot of time, but I'll walk you through the last 20 years, 15 years ago, you come home, you're I don't know your pipe's leaking in the basement, You' probably call your friend or relative, you call a uncle "Do you recommend a plumber for me?" 10 years ago, you come home, it's leaking, you take out in the US at least, the yellow pages, everyone had a big book of all the business phone numbers and it was alphabetical. So, all the businesses started naming themselves with the letter A. So if you notice there's a lot more businesses the letter A is used is to be at the start of the

26:03Yellow pages. And then in the I don't know last 10 years the age of mobile people will take out their cell phone and look for a plumber near me. Now I don't a lot of people will open ChatGPT and like search how do I fix this or do I even need a plumber? They won't they won't go and search plumber near me. They'll go like this specific pipe and this part of my basement labeled this is leaking. So as a plumber you have to rethink of how you're advertising. Sure, plumber near me is still important. Sure, 80% of the people are still searching that way, but a lot more people are now searching in different ways. Consumer behavior searches are changing. I think all of this is changing rapidly, very, very rapidly. So, I don't want to make any forecast just because how rapidly it's changing. But the one takeaway I'll give all of you guys, whether you're an advertising agency or brand, is you want to be where consumers are looking for you and you want to get discovered in new and different ways. So that's the takeaway of all of this. Good question. What more questions? I don't know if we have time though. So the question was that it's very expensive to advertise and AI as search. I think it will it

27:33Will settle down, but I think there's still ways to make it work. It's still ways to make it work. I think I think with the correct attribution models, I think I think it could be profitable. You just you want to make sure you're attributing everything correctly. Not only the last click that they search on ChatGPT and click the ad and made the sale right now but the other clicks it influences for days weeks to come when someone goes online and searches what's the best backpack company and it recommends you and they didn't make a purchase that day and then they search you later and make a purchase that also has to be attributed so I think I think with a very comprehensive attribution model I think ROI could be there but it's also very easy to lose a lot of money and not make money right it's certainly it's never been easier to lose a lot of money on advertising. I think that's the big takeaway I'll have for you guys. As a business, as a brand, as a marketing agency, it's never been easier to set something wrong on Google ads or ChatGPT ads or something and lose a lot of money very quickly. So, it's just and it's tough. You have to stay on top of all the all the stuff that's changing, all the new targeting,

28:55All the new settings. I know Google's been rapid fire. They're in like rapid fire mode, like throwing things out before they're ready and autoimplementing things for people. Like it's if you're not careful, for sure, it's never been easier to lose money. But I think there are opportunities to make money especially in e-commerce and AI search. Cool. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks Alex. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Go ahead. Thank you so much. I'm particularly interested in about trust because I've seen from your presentation and also in others as well around how trust having ads in these in AI is do you think that's going to change or what would you suggest to businesses to people then don't see it and think oh that's not oh man very good question let's move over just so the next people could start,