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logo",81,36,[],{"asset":362},[363],{"type":27,"image":364,"mobileImage":370},[365],{"src":366,"alt":367,"width":368,"height":369},"https:\u002F\u002Fd191k2rrohvvg6.cloudfront.net\u002Fimages\u002FLogos\u002Flogo-google-partner.svg","Google Partner logo",87,61,[],[372,377,382],{"buttonLink":373},[374],{"ariaLabel":9,"target":9,"url":375,"text":376,"entryType":12},"https:\u002F\u002Fpixis.ai\u002Fprivacy-policy\u002F","Privacy Policy",{"buttonLink":378},[379],{"ariaLabel":9,"target":9,"url":380,"text":381,"entryType":12},"https:\u002F\u002Fpixis.ai\u002Fleapus-csr-policy\u002F","Leapus CSR Policy",{"buttonLink":383},[384],{"ariaLabel":9,"target":9,"url":385,"text":386,"entryType":12},"https:\u002F\u002Fpixis.ai\u002Ffulfillment-policy\u002F","Pixis Fulfillment Policy","Pixis",{"uri":389,"id":390,"title":391,"url":392,"postDate":393,"dateUpdated":394,"slug":395,"sectionHandle":396,"type":397,"authors":398,"seo":414,"asset":424,"categories":432,"intro":9,"contentArea":438,"articleSelect":444,"schemaOrganization":9,"schemaWebsite":9,"schemaWebpage":9,"schemaBreadcrumb":9,"schemaArticle":9,"schemaFaq":9,"schemaSoftwareApp":9,"siteName":387},"blog\u002Fai-overviews-and-paid-search-the-ctr-story-already-changed","35324","AI Overviews and Paid Search: The CTR Story Already Changed","https:\u002F\u002Fpixis.ai\u002Fblog\u002Fai-overviews-and-paid-search-the-ctr-story-already-changed\u002F","2026-07-18T00:00:00-04:00","2026-07-20T04:03:22-04:00","ai-overviews-and-paid-search-the-ctr-story-already-changed","blog","blog_Entry",[399],{"fullName":400,"asset":401,"position":409,"bio":410,"linkedIn":411,"authorPage":413},"Swetha Venkiteswaran",[402],{"type":27,"image":403,"mobileImage":408},[404],{"src":405,"alt":400,"width":406,"height":407},"https:\u002F\u002Fd191k2rrohvvg6.cloudfront.net\u002Fimages\u002FIMG_6590.jpg",3024,4032,[],"Content Manager","\u003Cp>Swetha brings a storyteller’s eye to topics that can otherwise sound like they were written inside a dashboard. With experience across writing, editing, communications, scriptwriting, and theatre facilitation, she works on making AI, GEO, brand visibility, and performance marketing clearer, warmer, and more useful for marketers. Swetha is Content Manager across Pixis and Stellar\u003C\u002Fp>",{"url":412},"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.linkedin.com\u002Fin\u002Fswetha-venkiteswaran-0b6a5411a\u002F",[],{"title":415,"description":416,"advanced":417,"keywords":420,"social":421},"AI Overviews and Paid Search: The CTR Story Already Changed | Pixis","Paid CTR on AI Overview queries rose in 2026 while clean-SERP CTR fell. Here is what the data says about citation, budget, and forecasting.",{"canonical":418,"robots":419},"",[],[],{"facebook":422,"twitter":423},{"description":416,"title":415},{"description":416,"title":415},[425],{"type":27,"image":426,"mobileImage":431},[427],{"src":428,"alt":9,"width":429,"height":430},"https:\u002F\u002Fd191k2rrohvvg6.cloudfront.net\u002Fimages\u002FIMG_2504-2.PNG",1920,1360,[],[433,436],{"title":434,"slug":435},"Marketing Strategy","marketing-strategy",{"title":23,"slug":437},"prism",[439],{"blocks":440},[441],{"type":442,"textBlock":443},"textBlock_Entry","\u003Cp>In November 2025, Seer Interactive published a finding that travelled fast: paid CTR on queries with an AI Overview had fallen 68%, from 19.70% in June 2024 to 6.34% in September 2025. Their own analyst wrote that she was not optimistic about a rebound. The study closed with a bet that paid CTR on informational queries would not improve.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Five months later, the same team \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.seerinteractive.com\u002Finsights\u002Faio-impact-on-google-ctr-2026-update\">published the follow-up\u003C\u002Fa> and marked their own prediction wrong. Paid CTR on AIO-present queries did not keep falling. It climbed, from 14.64% in January 2025 to 16.21% in February 2026. Meanwhile paid CTR on queries with no AI Overview fell from 25.98% to 21.85%.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Read those two lines together. The SERPs with an AI summary got better for paid advertisers. The clean SERPs got worse.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>That is the opposite of the story most teams are still budgeting against, and the gap between the two matters more than either number. Because the thing that actually predicts your paid performance on an AI Overview SERP is not whether the Overview is there. It is whether you are in it.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Ch2>\u003Cstrong>Key Takeaways\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fh2>\u003Cul>\u003Cli>Paid CTR on AIO-present queries rose from 14.64% to 16.21% between January 2025 and February 2026, while paid CTR on non-AIO queries fell from 25.98% to 21.85%, per \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.seerinteractive.com\u002Finsights\u002Faio-impact-on-google-ctr-2026-update\">Seer Interactive’s 5.47 million query study\u003C\u002Fa>.\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>Citation is the variable that matters. On informational queries, brands cited in the AI Overview averaged 15.74% paid CTR against 11.19% for uncited brands on the same SERP. That gap held every month of 2025.\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>Paid was the most predictable metric in the study. Seer’s model forecast paid CTR within 0.09 percentage points and missed organic by up to 2.6. Paid is your forecasting anchor.\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>A falling CTR is not automatically a problem. When brand-cited CTR dropped 61% in Q4 2025, clicks were flat and impressions had doubled. The denominator grew.\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>Exposure is concentrated. AI Overviews appear on 36% of informational queries, 8% of commercial, and 5% of transactional. Comparison queries trigger them 95.4% of the time.\u003C\u002Fli>\u003Cli>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fpixis.ai\u002Fproducts\u002Fpixis-visibility\u002F\">Pixis Visibility\u003C\u002Fa> tracks whether you are cited. \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fpixis.ai\u002Fproducts\u002Fprism\u002F\">Prism\u003C\u002Fa> decides what that citation is worth to your bid. On an AI Overview SERP those stopped being separate questions.\u003C\u002Fli>\u003C\u002Ful>\u003Ch2>\u003Cstrong>What the Data Actually Shows\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fh2>\u003Cp>Seer’s third study ran from January 2025 through February 2026 across 53 accounts, 5,471,127 distinct queries, 2.43 billion organic impressions, and 296.9 million paid impressions. Only queries with complete paid, organic, and SERP data in every month were included. It is the largest public dataset on this question and it \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.seerinteractive.com\u002Finsights\u002Faio-impact-on-google-ctr-september-2025-update\">supersedes their own September 2025 analysis\u003C\u002Fa>, which tracked 3,119 terms across 42 organisations.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>The September study is where the 68% collapse figure comes from, and it was accurate for its window. June 2024 to September 2025 was a genuine crash: paid CTR on AIO queries fell from 19.70% to 6.34%, with a single month in July 2025 taking it from roughly 11% to 3.26%.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>The 2026 data does not overturn that. It ends it. The compression happened, then it stopped, and on paid it reversed.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Seer is direct about what this means: whatever AI Overviews are doing to organic results, they are not doing the same thing to paid ads. Paid and organic are operating in different environments on the same SERP, and they should be planned separately.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Ch2>\u003Cstrong>Citation Is the Variable\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fh2>\u003Cp>Strip out AIO presence and look at citation status, and the picture sharpens considerably.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Full-year 2025 averages on informational queries: brands cited in the Overview earned 15.74% paid CTR. Brands not cited earned 11.19%. Same query, same Overview, four and a half percentage points apart. Seer notes the paid citation premium never disappeared in a single month of the year.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Organically the gap is wider. Cited brands averaged 2.07% CTR against 0.94% uncited, which works out to 120% more clicks per impression. Per million informational impressions: roughly 33,500 organic clicks with no AIO, 20,743 when cited inside one, 9,445 when the Overview is there and you are not.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>So a citation roughly doubles your clicks against the competitor who is not cited on the same SERP. It does not restore the pre-AIO baseline, and Seer says so plainly: cited still underperforms no-AIO by 38%. A citation is the best position available on an AI Overview SERP, not a return to 2023. That distinction is worth holding onto when someone proposes \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fpixis.ai\u002Fblog\u002Fseo-geo-and-aeo-what-they-are-how-they-differ-and-why-your-search-strategy-needs-all-three\u002F\">optimising for AI engines\u003C\u002Fa> as a traffic recovery plan.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Ch2>\u003Cstrong>The Trap: When Falling CTR Means Winning\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fh2>\u003Cp>In October 2025, brand-cited organic CTR fell 52.1% in a single month. November took another 36.8%. Aggregated, that is the 61% quarterly drop that got quoted everywhere.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Here are the underlying numbers. September 2025: 15,797,234 impressions, 398,798 clicks, 2.52% CTR. October 2025: 33,100,739 impressions, 400,271 clicks, 1.21% CTR.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Clicks went up. Impressions doubled. CTR halved because the denominator grew twice as fast as the numerator, which happens when your brand starts earning citations on queries it was not cited on before.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Seer cannot attribute that impression surge to Google’s algorithm or to their clients’ own SEO work without account-level investigation, and they say so. But the operational lesson stands regardless: look at clicks and impressions separately before you call a CTR drop a problem. A team that reallocated budget away from those queries in October would have been retreating from a position it had just won.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Ch2>\u003Cstrong>Paid Is Now Your Forecasting Anchor\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fh2>\u003Cp>Seer built OLS regression models on twelve months of 2025 data and projected them into Q1 2026. The models estimated paid CTR on cited informational queries within 0.09 percentage points. They missed organic by 0.6 to 2.6 percentage points across every segment, and every informational and transactional organic segment beat the projection in both January and February.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Their reading of the asymmetry is worth quoting in your own planning: paid is predictable because it is structurally depressed and stable. Organic is unpredictable because it is still being shaped by forces the model cannot see.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>For budget planning, that inverts the usual hierarchy. Paid search is the channel you can forecast with confidence right now. Organic needs wider error bars and more frequent review. If you are presenting to leadership, name the asymmetry rather than smoothing over it. And if you want a cost side to plan against, our own \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fpixis.ai\u002Fblog\u002F2025-google-advertising-benchmarks-for-every-industry\u002F\">analysis of $996 million in Google Ads spend across 100 brands\u003C\u002Fa> covers CPM, CPC, and CTR by industry, which are the figures that actually compare across advertisers.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Ch2>\u003Cstrong>Your Exposure Depends on Intent\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fh2>\u003Cp>AI Overview prevalence is not uniform. Across 49,353 tracked queries: informational 36%, commercial 8%, transactional 5%. Roughly one in three informational queries shows an Overview against just under one in twenty transactional.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Within informational, the format is the strongest predictor. Comparison queries trigger an Overview 95.4% of the time. Review queries 86.3%. Question-format 85.9%. Price, cost, and buy queries 83.4%. Best-of queries 81.3%. Even single-word informational queries trigger one 27.3% of the time, across 25 million impressions, which kills the assumption that short head terms are safe.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>One finding worth watching: informational queries containing \"near me\" showed an Overview 76.9% of the time. Google appears to be layering AI Overviews on top of local SERPs.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>If your paid programme leans informational, roughly a third of your queries are in AIO territory and your citation status is doing real work on your CTR. If it leans transactional, you have meaningful protection at current levels. Google’s own documentation confirms that \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fdevelopers.google.com\u002Fsearch\u002Fdocs\u002Fappearance\u002Fai-features\">AI Overviews and AI Mode use different models and surface different links\u003C\u002Fa>, so this exposure will keep moving.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Ch2>\u003Cstrong>What to Do With This\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fh2>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Audit citation status on your paid keywords, not just your content. \u003C\u002Fstrong>The 4.5-point paid CTR gap between cited and uncited runs on the same terms you are already bidding on. \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fpixis.ai\u002Fblog\u002Fhow-to-audit-your-ai-search-visibility-in-15-minutes\u002F\">A first-pass visibility audit\u003C\u002Fa> tells you which side of that gap you are on.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Report clicks and impressions separately. \u003C\u002Fstrong>Make it a standing rule. A CTR drop with flat clicks and rising impressions is expanding visibility, not lost traffic, and the two demand opposite responses.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Forecast on paid, hedge on organic. \u003C\u002Fstrong>Paid CTR was linear and stable through 2025 and into 2026. Build your model there and treat organic as a separate conversation.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Segment by query format before you cut. \u003C\u002Fstrong>Comparison and question-format terms are at 95% and 86% AIO prevalence. Those are the pages that need \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fpixis.ai\u002Fblog\u002Fgeo-vs-seo-whats-actually-different-and-what-still-applies\u002F\">a GEO audit\u003C\u002Fa> first, and the keywords where citation status changes your paid economics most.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Run the CPA maths on high-funnel paid honestly. \u003C\u002Fstrong>Seer’s September study raised this and their 2026 update softened it rather than withdrawing it. Paid held up on informational terms, but it held up at a persistently low level. Your CPC has not changed. Your efficiency has.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Treat citation and bid as one decision. \u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fpixis.ai\u002Fproducts\u002Fpixis-visibility\u002F\">Visibility\u003C\u002Fa> runs 12 sessions per prompt across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude to show where you are cited and where you are not. \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fpixis.ai\u002Fproducts\u002Fprism\u002F\">Prism\u003C\u002Fa> takes that into bid and budget. The citation is upstream of the click, and until recently those were two teams with two dashboards.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Ch2>\u003Cstrong>What This Data Cannot Tell You\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fh2>\u003Cp>Seer is careful, and the caveats belong here rather than in a footnote.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>No causation. Higher-authority brands are also more likely to be cited, so the citation premium may reflect brand strength rather than the citation itself. Seer cannot separate those with this dataset and does not claim to.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>AIO status is a static label from the most recent SERP snapshot, applied retrospectively across all months. Real-time tracking is not possible.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>The informational uncited aggregate of 0.94% is materially shaped by one account representing 47% of that segment’s impressions at 0.20% CTR. Excluding it, the figure is roughly 1.61%.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>And two months of recovery is two months. Seer explicitly declines to call it a recovery, describing it as a levelling off and warning against forecasting on a January and February bounce.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>One more piece of context the CTR conversation usually skips. Pew Research \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.pewresearch.org\u002Fshort-reads\u002F2025\u002F07\u002F22\u002Fgoogle-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results\u002F\">tracked 68,879 real Google searches\u003C\u002Fa> in March 2025 and found users clicked the links inside an AI summary just 1% of the time, with sessions ending outright on 26% of summary pages against 16% without. Citation is placement at the moment of decision. It is not a traffic channel, and the paid CTR premium is the clearest evidence we have that it is worth something anyway.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Ch2>\u003Cstrong>Frequently Asked Questions\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fh2>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Are AI Overviews reducing paid search CTR?\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>They did, then they stopped. Paid CTR on AIO queries fell 68% between June 2024 and September 2025, then rose from 14.64% to 16.21% between January 2025 and February 2026 while \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fwww.seerinteractive.com\u002Finsights\u002Faio-impact-on-google-ctr-2026-update\">non-AIO paid CTR fell\u003C\u002Fa> from 25.98% to 21.85%. The gap between AIO and clean SERPs is closing from both directions.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Does being cited in an AI Overview improve paid performance?\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>The correlation is strong and persistent. Cited brands averaged 15.74% paid CTR on informational queries against 11.19% uncited, and the gap held every month of 2025. Causation is unproven, since authoritative brands are also likelier to be cited.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Should I pull budget from AI Overview queries?\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Check your citation status first. Cited and uncited are two different economics on the same keyword. And check whether a CTR decline came with an impression increase, because that is expanding visibility rather than lost traffic.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Which queries are most exposed?\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Informational, at 36% AIO prevalence against 8% commercial and 5% transactional. By format: comparison queries at 95.4%, review at 86.3%, question-format at 85.9%.\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>What should I forecast on?\u003C\u002Fstrong>\u003C\u002Fp>\u003Cp>Paid. Seer’s model hit paid CTR within 0.09 percentage points and missed organic by up to 2.6. That asymmetry is itself the planning insight, and it is worth naming explicitly when \u003Ca href=\"https:\u002F\u002Fpixis.ai\u002Fblog\u002Fseo-geo-and-aeo-what-they-are-how-they-differ-and-why-your-search-strategy-needs-all-three\u002F\">search performance reporting\u003C\u002Fa> goes to leadership.\u003C\u002Fp>",[],1784615548941]