Adthena's Holiday AI Paid Search Report confirms ChatGPT ads hit 204,000 placements and Google AI Overviews now cover up to 90% of retail searches. Here is what service businesses must do before the holiday rush.
Ido Cohen · Published 2026-11-05 · Paid Advertising
Paid search is no longer one channel — it is three, and two of them barely existed eighteen months ago. Adthena's Holiday AI Paid Search Report, released November 4, 2026, documents for the first time that advertisers are simultaneously bidding inside traditional Google Search, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, and ChatGPT — and that this triple-channel reality arrives just as the most valuable shopping season of the year begins. If you run a service business and you are still treating paid search as a single Google Ads campaign, you are about to get outmaneuvered by competitors who figured this out first.
This is not a vendor talking up a trend. The data covers real auction-level behavior.
Adthena, the search intelligence platform Google designated its first Trusted Trademark Partner for paid search, analyzed paid search activity across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and traditional Google Search between June and September 2026, monitoring markets in the US, UK/EU, and Australia. Here is what the firm found:
The conclusion Adthena's own report draws: this will be the last holiday season in which Google traditional search is the default starting point for most shoppers.
Here is the thing most marketing commentary misses: AI-referred visitors are not just more numerous — they are dramatically more valuable once they arrive.
Adobe Digital Insights, drawing on more than 1 trillion visits to US retail websites and analysis of 100 million SKUs across 18 product categories, found that visitors who arrived from AI platforms generated 83% more revenue per visit than traffic from other sources in September 2026 — the largest gap Adobe has recorded all year. One year earlier, the two channels were essentially even. AI-referred visitors also converted at a 90% higher rate, spent 73% more time on site, viewed 25% more pages per visit, and added products to their carts at a 53% higher rate. Adobe forecasts that the revenue-per-visit advantage will double again during the 2026 holiday season.
Read those two data sets together and the implication is clear: AI search surfaces are not stealing low-intent clicks. They are delivering buyers who have already done serious research. Someone who asks ChatGPT "best HVAC company near me for a furnace replacement" and then clicks through to your site is not at the top of a funnel — they are close to a decision. That changes what your landing page needs to do, and it changes how much each click is worth.
Understanding this new landscape starts with knowing how each channel works differently.
The key distinction is query intent by channel. Adthena found that ChatGPT ads appeared against early-stage research queries far more than purchase-ready searches — 83% of beauty ads, 69% of travel ads, and 67% of toys and games ads showed up at the discovery stage, not the transaction stage. For service businesses, the equivalent would be queries like "do I need a permit to renovate my bathroom?" or "what does a dental implant process look like?" — people who are educating themselves before they pick up a phone.
Google AI Overviews, by contrast, appear heavily on comparison, price, and decision-stage queries. Adthena separately found that more than 60% of ad appearances inside AI Overview environments happen on 3-4 word queries — meaning the conventional "long-tail conversational search" assumption is overblown. Mid-tail terms still drive most of the action.
It is not just ad volume that is shifting. The structure of Google Search itself is changing fast in ways that directly affect service businesses.
Google moved AI Overviews for brand-related searches to the right column of results pages in early November, meaning the AI summary for queries like "[Your Business Name] reviews" or "[Your Business Name] pricing" now sits in a sidebar rather than at the top of the main column. For businesses that rely on branded search to capture warm leads, this is a layout change worth watching. PPC Land reported that media buyers are already flagging 10% to 30% of search budgets for review as a result.
Meanwhile, Google's own Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler acknowledged during Alphabet's Q3 2026 earnings call that search ad revenue growth slowed partly because user queries are migrating from traditional results to AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google is actively working to monetize those surfaces — the 175,100 AI Overview paid placements Adthena identified are the early evidence of that — but the monetization is still catching up to usage. For now, there is a window of opportunity where the AI surfaces have high engagement and comparatively low ad competition.
Most service businesses advertise on one front. Here is what a three-front approach looks like in practice.
On traditional Google Search — tighten, do not abandon:
On Google AI Overviews / AI Mode — get in through the right campaign types:
On ChatGPT — start watching, begin testing:
On your website — make it AI-readable:
Adobe found that a typical retail homepage scored only 63% for AI visibility, meaning more than a third of homepage content could not be parsed by AI systems routing shoppers to retailers. For service businesses, the equivalent failure point is a site that relies on images, PDFs, JavaScript-rendered text, or non-standard navigation to communicate your services, pricing, and credentials. AI agents cannot read what they cannot parse. A clean, text-rich, structured site — with schema markup for local business, services, reviews, and FAQs — is not an SEO nicety anymore. It is a prerequisite for appearing in AI-referred traffic at all.
Here is the honest assessment: service businesses have a short window to move before this three-channel landscape normalizes and CPCs on AI surfaces spike.
Right now, Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT ads are carrying high engagement but relatively modest competition. The advertiser base on ChatGPT grew 6x in two months — but it started from near zero, so "6x" still means early market. When the next wave of advertisers floods in after the holiday season proves out the channel's ROI, that window closes.
The Adobe data drives this home from the demand side. AI-referred visitors converting at 90% better rates and generating 83% more revenue per visit means that every sophisticated advertiser is going to want that traffic. When enough of them compete for it, the economics shift. The business owner who runs their first ChatGPT ad campaign in March 2027 is going to pay a lot more than the one who runs it in November 2026.
This is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to act in the next 10 days before the holiday peak locks in ad strategies and budgets at competitors.
Here is your 5-day action list:
1. Today: Run your top 10 service category search terms on ChatGPT and Google. Note whether an AI Overview appears, whether a competitor's ad appears inside it, and whether your brand appears at all. This is your baseline.
2. Day 2: Pull your Google Ads impression share report segmented by campaign type. If Performance Max is running, check whether your brand terms are getting filtered out. Fix any gaps before Black Friday traffic peaks.
3. Day 3: Audit your website's AI readiness. Check that your services, pricing, locations, credentials, and reviews are in crawlable text — not just images or dynamic JavaScript. Add or update LocalBusiness and Service schema markup if it is missing.
4. Day 4: Review your ad copy for the three distinct query stages: discovery (ChatGPT), comparison/decision (AI Overviews), and high-intent/transactional (traditional search). Make sure each stage has copy written for it, not just repurposed variations of the same message.
5. Day 5: Apply to or investigate the ChatGPT ad program for your market. If you are US-based, it is live. Talk to your paid search agency or platform rep about eligibility and what campaign structure maps to ChatGPT placements.
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What is the Adthena Holiday AI Paid Search Report and why should I care about it?
Adthena is a search intelligence company that monitors millions of real ad auctions across Google Search, Google AI Overviews, and ChatGPT. Its Holiday AI Paid Search Report, released November 4, 2026, is the first major data-backed analysis of how paid search now operates across all three surfaces simultaneously. For service business owners, it documents where your ad dollars and your competitors' ad dollars are actually going heading into the highest-spend period of the year.
Do I need a separate budget for ChatGPT ads versus Google ads?
Yes, for now. ChatGPT advertising runs through a separate program and is not the same as your existing Google Ads account. Google AI Overviews, on the other hand, do not require a separate campaign — your existing Search, Shopping, or Performance Max campaigns become eligible automatically when they meet Google's format requirements. The practical implication is that you need two conversations: one with your Google Ads manager about AI Overview eligibility, and a separate one about whether you qualify for and want to pursue ChatGPT ad placement.
Google AI Overviews are appearing on up to 90% of searches — does that mean organic SEO is irrelevant?
No, but its role has changed. Adthena's data shows Google's AI Overviews cite google.com itself more than any retailer — in UK multi-category retail, google.com captured 23% of AI Overview citations in late October. That means ranking in Google's own surfaces (Maps, GMB, local pack, Google's own content) matters more than ever for service businesses. Traditional "blue link" organic SEO still matters for the remaining non-AI Overview results and for providing the source material AI systems cite, but the page-one click dynamic is different when an AI answer sits above everything else.
My business is local — plumbing, dental, HVAC. Are AI search ads relevant to me or just for national brands?
The Adthena report focuses on retail categories, but the underlying mechanics apply directly to local service businesses. ChatGPT users asking "best dentist in [city]" or "emergency plumber near me" are exactly the high-intent, high-consideration buyers the data describes. The discovery-stage nature of ChatGPT queries — where 69% of travel ads appeared on research rather than transaction queries — mirrors how homeowners research contractors or how patients choose specialists. Local service businesses may actually benefit more than commodity retailers because a single acquired customer is worth far more per transaction.
Should I panic about the Google AI Overview budget scrutiny Digiday reported?
No, but you should audit. The Digiday report noted media buyers are putting 10% to 30% of search budgets under scrutiny because AI surfaces are reshaping how clicks happen. That is a reasonable response to uncertainty, not a signal to cut spend. The right move is to segment your reporting to understand what share of your conversions is now coming through AI Overview placements versus traditional results, then allocate based on where your cost-per-acquisition is actually landing — not based on a blanket reallocation driven by industry anxiety.
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