Google Ads: 5 new features that are changing SEO
Do you think that the latest developments in Google Ads have nothing to do with SEO? For years, we imagined SERPs as a two-lane road: paid ads on one side and organic results on the other. Today, this road increasingly resembles a crowded square, where boundaries are blurred and all content coexists and intertwines.
Ignoring what is happening in the world of Google Ads no longer means just missing out on opportunities, but also risking falling behind in organic search. Artificial intelligence is reshaping the way Google interprets messages, formats, and strategies, creating connections that directly affect SEO.
Here are the five most relevant new features of Google Ads that are already having a concrete impact on SEO, content marketing, and visibility, with valuable insights for your non-paid channel strategy as well.
SERP no longer runs at two speeds
To understand the importance of these new features, we must first take a step back and look at the context. Perhaps it goes without saying that the Google results page is no longer a simple list of links: today, it has become an interface of answers, a dynamic mosaic where organic results, AI Overviews, video carousels, “People Also Ask” boxes, Google Images results, and, of course, increasingly advanced and integrated advertising formats coexist and compete for the same attention.
If users have long had difficulty clearly distinguishing between organic and paid results, now they may not even care: what matters is the set of answers that Google offers them to satisfy their information needs, and the ability to obtain information quickly and usefully.
The battle is no longer just for “position 1,” but for the most relevant and compelling visibility within the available space. This is why the strategies and creativity that Google itself promotes and rewards in the world of Ads become an incredibly accurate barometer of the trends that will also influence the organic world. Analyzing Google Ads means, in fact, spying on the future of SEO.
- Generative AI in ad creation
Google’s generative models (Gemini family) have become a permanent part of the Google Ads workflow and are fully integrated into the campaign creation workflow. These are no longer just “suggestions” or writing aids: they can propose variations of titles, descriptions, images, and even short videos (with technologies such as Imagen 2), with a level of automation that transforms the way advertisers work.
The advertiser provides the concept, target audience, and objectives, and the platform generates a complete package of creative content to test, optimized based on the analysis of billions of performance data points.
For those involved in SEO and content, these outputs are a goldmine of insights.
The ads generated by Google’s AI are not “creative” in the artistic sense, but they are machines of textual and psychological effectiveness. The persuasive levers of copy, the benefits, and the CTAs that AI chooses to use are a powerful signal of what, according to Google, works to capture the attention and persuade your audience. By analyzing your competitors’ ads (for example, with SEOZoom’s new Ads analysis feature), you can discover winning angles and messages to test in your organic titles (title tags), meta descriptions, and H1s of your articles. You are, in fact, leveraging Google’s multi-million dollar tests to optimize your organic communication.
- Performance Max towards total automation
Performance Max (PMax) campaigns have become the center of gravity of the Ads ecosystem and have evolved further in recent months, taking automation to a new level. The main new features include even deeper integration with YouTube Shorts and the creation by AI of “predictive audiences,” i.e., groups of users who, according to Google, are more likely to convert in the future, even if they have never interacted with the brand. Although the platform remains largely a “black box,” new reports on the performance of individual creative assets (images, text, videos) offer valuable insights.
PMax operates across the entire Google inventory (Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail), competing for user attention on every channel. Studying the assets that perform best in your competitors’ PMax campaigns tells you what type of content and format resonates most with your audience across different channels. If you find that a certain type of image or headline “wins” on Discover via PMax, you have a key strategic insight to guide your content marketing strategy on that channel, creating organic content that is more likely to succeed.
- Post-cookie: first-party data and Privacy Sandbox
2025 is the first year we’re operating in a world almost completely free of third-party cookies on Chrome. Google Ads has completed its transition, now basing its targeting and measurement capabilities on two pillars: first-party data that advertisers upload to the platform (with the necessary consent) and aggregated, anonymous signals from the Privacy Sandbox. Retargeting as we knew it is dead.
For SEO, this implies a leap in value. Every user who arrives on your site via Google Search and decides to subscribe to your newsletter, download an e-book, or create an account is giving you invaluable first-party data. This data becomes the most effective fuel for paid campaigns, allowing the Ads team to create lookalike audiences and cultivate relationships with the most loyal users.
The collaboration between SEO and PPC teams thus becomes a strategic lever: SEO is no longer just an acquisition channel, but the engine that fuels the data capital that strengthens the entire marketing mix and contributes concretely to the survival of the business.
- Ads integrated into AI Overview and AI Mode
After a long testing phase, Google has begun to integrate ads into its AI-based search experiences in a stable and increasingly frequent manner. This occurs primarily in two ways: “Sponsored” slots appear directly within the AI Overview summary response, or they are inserted into the AI Mode conversation flow as sponsored suggestions or responses.
This is the definitive, and at times frightening, fusion of organic and paid. It means that even if your content is so authoritative that it is used as a source to generate an AI Overview, you may find yourself competing with a sponsored link positioned right within the same response. This makes it absolutely essential for SEO practitioners to monitor the landscape of ads that are triggered by their strategic keywords. Ignoring what competitors are doing on Ads means having a partial view of the SERP and risking losing visibility even when you are technically well positioned.
- The rise of visual and immersive formats
Competition from TikTok and Instagram has prompted Google to develop richer and more interactive advertising formats: over the course of the year, we have seen the increasing adoption of AR (Augmented Reality) “Try-On” ads for the beauty and fashion sectors, vertical video ads optimized for YouTube Shorts, and “Product Spotlight” ads that display carousels of high-quality images and videos directly in SERPs.
This trend is definitive confirmation that the battle for attention in SERPs is increasingly being fought on a visual level. For an SEO and content strategist, this means that creating high-quality visual assets (professional images, short videos, 3D product renderings) is no longer a secondary activity. These assets are not just for embellishing blog content or product pages, but become the fundamental basis for the most effective ad campaigns. Having a unified visual content strategy that consistently serves both organic and paid needs is a huge competitive advantage.
From SEO to Search Everywhere Optimization: no longer a choice, but a necessity
The five developments we have analyzed are not simply technical updates to an advertising platform: they are signs of a profound and irreversible change in the way Google interprets search and presents information.
Generative AI, PMax’s powerful automation, the centrality of first-party data, the integration of ads into AI, and the predominance of visual formats all tell us the same thing: the silos between SEO, content, and paid advertising have collapsed.
Emerging in this new landscape requires a change in mindset, what we at SEOZoom call Search Everywhere Optimization. It means thinking about visibility holistically, covering every channel and every format in which our users might search for us, because users themselves no longer distinguish between one channel and another: they just look for the best answer, in the quickest and most convincing way possible. Monitoring this complex ecosystem, where organic and paid intertwine in ever-new ways, is the real strategic challenge for anyone who wants to be visible online, today and tomorrow. And to tackle it, you need an integrated vision and tools that offer a unified perspective.
