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There's a moment in every major platform shift where you can either lean in or look away. Right now, that moment is paid search, and it's moving faster than most people realise. At our recent event, Jérémy, Head of Paid Search at Genie Goals, laid out exactly what's changing, what it means for your brand, and, crucially, what you should actually be doing about it.
Cast your mind back a couple of years. AI was everywhere in conversation, but concrete tools? Thin on the ground. Brands split into two camps: those desperately trying to "do AI" without quite knowing what that meant, and those quietly hoping it would all just go away. Neither approach was exactly a winner.
Fast forward to now and we're in what we call the FOMA era: Focus on Maximising Advantage. The brands winning in paid search right now are the ones treating AI not as a buzzword to chase or dodge, but as infrastructure to build on.
Here's the big one. Google has just launched its Universal Commerce Protocol, essentially the architecture that connects AI agents like Gemini and AI Mode directly to your brand's products. A customer can now research, discover, and purchase entirely within Google's ecosystem, without ever landing on your website.
ChatGPT got there first (their agentic shopping launched a few months ago), but Google's Shopify integration makes it far more accessible for most retailers. It's US-only for now, but it's coming - and when it does, your feed, your Merchant Center, and your site's AI-readiness will determine whether you show up or get left behind.
Our team is already in conversations with Google's US counterparts to get ahead of the new feed attributes and requirements. Being first to adapt isn't just a nice-to-have - in a crowded shopping environment, it's often the difference between being surfaced and being invisible.
While you're keeping an eye on what's coming, there are two things worth testing today:
Neither is a "just launch it and see" situation. The right time to test depends on where you are in your paid search journey. But if you've got solid Performance Max and search foundations in place, both are worth serious consideration.
Diversification isn't just about channels, it's also about geography. If you're already shipping internationally, you likely have more data on overseas demand than you think. Our export framework starts with the why before anything else, because brands chasing ROAS from day one in a new market rarely get what they're after.
(Ireland, by the way, is criminally underrated as a first step. Not as glamorous as the US, but a much gentler proving ground for logistics, localisation, and learning.)
Paid search in 2026 looks very different to 2024, and it'll look different again in 12 months. The brands that win won't be the ones who waited for certainty. They'll be the ones who built the right foundations while everyone else was still deciding whether to care.
Curious where your account stands? Get in touch with the team.
