As AI instruments like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews preserve customers on their platforms—and away from publishers—it’s chopping into the open-web advert stock that demand-side platforms equivalent to The Commerce Desk and Viant depend on.
In July, CNN’s web site site visitors fell about 30% from a yr earlier, whereas Enterprise Insider and HuffPost noticed drops nearer to 40%, in accordance with Similarweb. In the meantime, A Pew Analysis Heart survey of 900 U.S. Google customers discovered AI Overviews appeared in 18% of roughly 69,000 searches. When an AI abstract appeared, customers clicked hyperlinks simply 8% of the time, about half of what number of they clicked on searches with out AI Overviews.
Whereas the shift is hitting publishers exhausting, it’s additionally squeezing the programmatic platforms that gasoline the digital advert financial system, analysts and business executives instructed ADWEEK.
Victor Amin, senior director of knowledge science at The Commerce Desk, stated AI search is altering how folks devour content material. “Earlier than, an individual would go to the web site and browse. Now LLMs collate data, make suggestions, and customers typically by no means click on via,” he stated.
Based on Viant’s chief advertising and marketing officer Jon Schulz, conventional DSPs that depend on show and on-line video advert items are significantly uncovered to the adjustments being introduced by AI search. “The discount in search referral site visitors is lowering web site advert alternatives in a measurable manner,” he stated.
Traders are noticing. Commerce Desk shares, as an example, fell almost 40% final week after its Q2 earnings report, as analysts cited slowing development, mounting competitors from Amazon, and AI-driven adjustments in internet site visitors.
Amid the strain, The Commerce Desk pointed to what it describes as a curated listing of premium stock: its Sellers and Publishers 500+ characteristic. “These, I believe, are going to see probably the most resilience” as a result of they’ve higher-quality stock, Amin stated, although its unclear precisely what share of this stock is premium.
A New Playbook
As AI search upends the digital advert ecosystem, entrepreneurs are additionally discovering previous playbooks much less dependable.
“Anybody counting on conventional search knowledge to know person habits, phase audiences, and goal adverts is having to recalibrate,” stated Matt Prohaska, CEO of Prohaska Consulting. He cited a lead-generation firm that had used the identical DSP for eight years however can now not predict lead quantity with previous accuracy, as search queries and associated behaviors turn into much less clear and frequent.
“The entire ecosystem is being upended, and conventional DSPs want to regulate,” Prohaska stated.
If premium provide retains shrinking, high advertisers might bid up what’s left—sending CPMs greater, stated Jeremy Goldman, senior director at eMarketer.
To hedge towards that, some DSPs are shifting towards channels much less depending on open-web site visitors, significantly related TV. Omnichannel video advert spending, together with CTV, grew 34% yr over yr, in accordance with eMarketer.
For its half, Viant is doubling down on CTV, audio, and digital out-of-home, whereas constructing direct provide paths to safe premium stock. Within the first half of 2025, 45% of whole advert spend on Viant’s platform was in CTV, Schulz stated. The Commerce Desk additionally reported greater use of CTV in Q2.
As Ana Milicevic, co-founder of programmatic consultancy Sparrow Advisors, places it: “The underlying subject is, will we as an business and traders have religion that the open internet is robust sufficient by itself, versus full walled gardens?”
