17 Updates - Shopify AI Sales, Reddit Search Ads, AI Mode
Happy Wednesday.
- Big question of the day from my inbox: afternoon naps, yes or no? Science is split, so my 15-minute rule stays. Short naps, short emails, long coffees.
- The platforms pulled a full Freaky Friday on me this week. Reddit woke up as Google, Instagram woke up as YouTube, and X woke up as TikTok.
- Also today: AI shoppers are buying on Shopify while paid ChatGPT clicks barely earn, and Google just told us how to advertise in AI Mode.
Here is everything I am covering today.
AI MARKETING
Shopify Wins AI Traffic While Paid ChatGPT Visits Barely Earn
If you build it, they will come. Shopify built commerce into AI agents, and the shoppers came.
Paying ChatGPT to bring them, though, and most of them just come to watch. Organic AI traffic and paid AI traffic are two very different stories this week, and I have the numbers for both.
Shopify just had a quarter. Q3 revenue grew 32% on $119 billion in GMV. The AI numbers inside it are the real headline: Shopify's investor slides show AI traffic to stores up 2.6x year over year, and orders from AI searches up 3.3x. AI-referred sessions converted 64% better than organic search.
That is not a rounding error. People arriving from AI searches are buying more, not just browsing. If your store feeds, reviews and product pages are not readable by AI agents, you are invisible to the fastest-growing traffic channel in commerce.
Google gave organic search some breathing room. On desktop, Google moved AI Overviews, its AI-written answers, to the right-hand column for many brand searches. That puts traditional results back in the spotlight for brand terms, which is good news for anyone whose brand traffic was getting buried under AI summaries.
Paying for AI clicks is another story entirely. A working paper by Maximilian Kaiser and Christian Schulze compared paid ChatGPT and Google search visits across 102 advertiser sites. In US traffic, a ChatGPT ad visit brought in $0.89, against $2.45 for a search ad visit. Of the 87 advertisers buying both, 73 got zero sales from ChatGPT ads. To match search's revenue per ad dollar, a ChatGPT click would need to cost about $0.26. The largest publicly known account paid $1.72.
The data stops in August, so this is an early read. But $0.89 versus $2.45 is not a gap you can wish away with better creative.
Here is how I would play BFCM. Think twice before moving search budget into ChatGPT ads. If you test anyway, set your max CPC from your own revenue per visit, not from OpenAI's suggested $3 to $5 starting bids. And know that OpenAI's creative enhancements, which rewrite your ad for each conversation sight unseen, have been on by default since October 30, even in existing self-serve campaigns. Opt out if you want a clean read.
Either way, put your AI effort into product feeds, reviews and pages AI agents can cite. That is where the actual revenue is coming from right now.
My take: organic AI traffic is something you earn, and it is paying off on Shopify. Paid AI traffic is something you rent, and right now the rent is too high. Fund the earned side first.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Reddit and TikTok Expand Search Ads as Instagram and X Pay Creators for Video
Social media pulled a Freaky Friday this week. Reddit and TikTok woke up as Google. Instagram woke up as YouTube, and X as TikTok.
Everybody wants to be somebody else's platform. Here is what actually changed.
Reddit is testing ads in search results. Select advertisers can now run ads inside Reddit's search. Sell espresso machines? Your ad could show up for "espresso station" searches, since Reddit picks ads partly by relevance. And Reddit needs the money: Google's AI search sends it less traffic, so selling its own search inventory is the obvious move. Watch this one, because Reddit search is where purchase research already happens.
TikTok gave search ads a FOMO meter. Impression Share and Top 1 Impression Share show what percentage of eligible search impressions your ads captured, overall and in first place, and both go down to keyword level. Low share means missed demand: if you are spending your full budget, raise it; if you have money left over, check your bids. TikTok's Keyword Suggestion Tool also gained Keyword Packs, ready-made brand and category keyword lists that refresh daily. TikTok has not named markets for either, so check your account.
Instagram is paying creators for long-form video again. It is paying select creators to post to Features, its test of videos up to 90 minutes. Business Insider reports offers from $50,000 to $500,000, and Meta says it is funding some creators directly. The ghost of IGTV is hovering over this: Meta also paid creators on IGTV, its old long-form app, and began shutting it down in early 2022. Paying for long-form worked out badly the first time, and I will believe this one survives longer when I see it.
X is handing out attendance awards. Its invite-only Video Kickstart Bonus pays creators who post 15 vertical videos on 15 different days in about a month. The videos must be their own and under three minutes, but clips they already posted on TikTok, Instagram or YouTube count. Some of your creator partners could earn twice from one video, so check what your contracts allow on X before you celebrate the extra payout.
My take: every platform is copying every other platform, which tells me search and short-to-long video are where the money is being fought over. Stop treating each platform as a fixed format and start following the behaviour instead.
GEO
AI Mode Searches Run 3x Longer - Here Is How Your Ads Can Keep Up
Your customers used to search for "running shoes." Now they describe their entire knee injury history.
Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Product Liaison, asked Shivani Mohan, who leads Google's search behaviour research, what that means for advertisers. Here is the answer.
Caveman queries are on their way out. In AI Mode, Google's chat-style search, queries run three times longer than traditional searches, and one in six uses voice, images or video. Many are questions searchers never thought to ask before. This is not a tweak, it is a new search habit, and your keyword lists were built for the old one.
The long tail converts too. Google Ads data covered in September showed one- and two-word queries falling from 42% to 24% of impressions since January 2025. Three- and four-word queries jumped from 20% to 46% of conversions. If you are still optimising for head terms only, you are optimising for yesterday's search.
More searches does not mean the first answer flopped. Google counts it as a failure when you add words to fix a bad result. The extra searches are new questions, often follow-ups: check San Francisco's weather, then ask, "What about Austin?" Remember, Google now shows ads on AI Mode follow-ups in the US. Search, Shopping and PMax campaigns qualify by default, with no separate opt-out, so review your negative keywords.
Brainstorming moved into the search bar. Shoppers now ask how to think about a whole category long before picking a product. Ginny's advice: judge search beyond the last click, and test more creative assets for that early research. The summary is the trailer, but people still want the movie: for how-tos, that means videos; before choosing between two products, it means reviews from someone in their exact situation. So know what customers say about your business online.
Make your ad the obvious next step: ads in Google's AI answers match both the query and the response, so start where that response ends. On landing pages, swap generic product blurbs and corporate copy for answers to specific pain points. Retailers, fill in Merchant Center's conversational attributes, six optional product fields built for chatty shopper questions. And cut post-click friction, since humans take the easiest path.
My take: your customers now search in full sentences. Your ads and landing pages should answer in kind, or someone else's will.
DATA STORIES
Advertisers Want New Audiences, but 70% Would Spend on the Ones They Already Have
Got an extra ad budget burning a hole in your pocket? Realize asked enterprise B2C advertisers what their main goal would be for more paid media money, and the answers came out close to a four-way tie.
New audiences barely won. Reaching new audiences took first place at 30%, but it is the only option that looks beyond the people these brands already target. Add up the other three, and 70% would spend the extra money on familiar audiences: 24% would show ads more often, 24% would test new creative or messaging, and 22% would bid more aggressively on the same audiences. Just 8 points separate first place from last, so nobody agrees on a playbook.
Existing audiences feel safe, since the data is already there and results are easy to measure. But more spend on the same people usually brings diminishing returns, and higher bids mostly raise your own costs. What can you do: if your cost per acquisition rises as frequency climbs, your core audience is saturated. Move part of the new budget into prospecting and measure it against a holdout group.
My take: spending on people who already know you feels productive until it quietly stops being profitable. The holdout test is the honest one, and most advertisers are skipping it.
QUICK UPDATES
Google Ads: Capped your brand Search budget and trusting PMax to catch the overflow? It might not. Google's help page now says it may filter out navigational or brand-specific queries so dedicated Search campaigns serve them. To keep that traffic, give brand campaigns sufficient budget and eligible ads, and consider adding search themes to PMax.
Google: Hoping AI Mode sends flight shoppers your way? Google keeps the click in the family. SE Roundtable's Barry Schwartz asked AI Mode about domestic US and international flights, and every answer linked only to Google Flights. EU regulators may have questions, since the Digital Markets Act bars big platforms from favouring their own services.
Klaviyo: Your AI agent helped close the sale, but which message got the shopper talking? Customer Agent, Klaviyo's AI that answers questions across chat, email, SMS and WhatsApp, now splits its revenue by flow, campaign and web chat conversation starter. And Composer, Klaviyo's AI marketing agent, can now edit your Shopify prices and discount codes.
Roku: Advertising on Roku? Bring your DSP. In Q3, Roku grew ad revenue 23% year over year to $727 million, and more than 80% of its in-stream video ad impressions ran programmatically. It will expand several DSP integrations, including Google's DV360, in the coming months. With Fox's takeover pending, Roku skipped the earnings call and outlook.