Is search advertising still your best growth investment as AI reshapes discovery?

Search remained the largest ad channel in 2025, but growth slowed as advertisers shifted spend to newer formats driven by changing user behavior.

What Happened

U.S. search advertising generated $114.2 billion in 2025, maintaining its position as the largest digital ad channel with 38.8% market share. However, growth decelerated to 11% from 15.9% in 2024, according to the IAB/PwC Internet Advertising Revenue Report. Meanwhile, digital video surged 25.4% to $78 billion, social climbed 32.6% to $117.7 billion, and programmatic rose 20.5% to $162.4 billion as buyers shifted discovery patterns toward video content and social platforms.

Why This Matters for B2B Marketing Leaders

Your search campaigns still deliver the most reliable scale, but they're no longer your fastest growth engine. The 4.9 percentage point growth deceleration signals buyers increasingly discover solutions through video content, social platforms, and recommendation algorithms rather than traditional keyword searches. For B2B marketers in competitive verticals like HR Tech and FinTech, this means your search budgets face intensifying competition while newer channels offer better growth potential but require different measurement frameworks.

The Starr Conspiracy's Take

This data confirms what we've observed across B2B clients: search remains essential for capturing existing demand, but growth-focused marketers must diversify into video and social to reach buyers earlier in their journey. The challenge isn't abandoning search but building your demand generation strategy to balance proven performance with emerging opportunities. Smart B2B teams are testing programmatic buying while maintaining search as their demand capture foundation. The 84.1% market concentration among top platforms also means negotiating power is shifting toward publishers, making performance measurement and budget allocation more important than ever.

What to Watch Next

Monitor how search features like Google's SGE and ChatGPT SearchGPT affect your keyword performance in Q2 2026. The continued growth acceleration through Q4 2025 suggests this trend will intensify, making early investment in video and social formats increasingly important for maintaining competitive positioning.

Related Questions

How should B2B marketers rebalance search and video budgets?

Start with a 70/30 search-to-video split for established campaigns, then test incrementally. Video works best for awareness and consideration stages, while search captures bottom-funnel intent. Monitor cost-per-acquisition trends across both channels to adjust allocation.

What makes programmatic advertising effective for B2B campaigns?

Programmatic's 20.5% growth stems from audience targeting and real-time adjustments. B2B marketers benefit from account-based targeting capabilities and cross-platform reach that manual buying can't match at scale.

Why is market concentration increasing among digital ad platforms?

The top 10 companies now control 84.1% of revenue because they have superior first-party data, targeting capabilities, and measurement tools. This concentration gives them pricing power but also creates dependency risks for advertisers who need diversified media strategies.