By Lindsey Wilkes
The Stakes for Marketers
For most retailers, the holiday season isn’t just another sales cycle; it’s the make-or-break moment that determines whether the year ends in the black. Paid search has long been the workhorse of holiday marketing, and for retailers, it delivered nearly 30% of e-commerce revenue in 2024. PPC campaigns have been so effective that this year, brands will spend between $77 billion and $87 billion in the US alone over the next three months.
Destinations face a similar crunch. Airports, DMOs, hotels, and attractions all rely on paid search to capture travelers seeking last-minute deals, festive experiences, or getaways they can give as gifts. For DMOs, holiday PPC campaigns offer an opportunity to position the city or region as an integral part of the holiday experience itself. That urgency shows up in the numbers: Q4 spend climbs year over year, bidding gets more competitive, and search ads now take a larger share of travel’s holiday budget than display or programmatic. Search works because it meets travelers at their highest-intent moment, right when decisions are being made.
But the rules have changed. Bidding the highest on keywords no longer guarantees visibility. AI-powered formats now sit at the center of Google’s search experience, reshaping how shoppers discover products and how retailers compete for attention.
As a result, success this holiday season will depend on how well retailers adapt their PPC strategies to this new AI-driven environment.
What’s Changed In Search
Google’s AI Overviews are reshaping the search results page. Increasingly, shoppers see answers assembled by AI at the top, with fewer traditional organic listings and standard ads displayed below.
Consumers don’t get to choose when this happens. They just see fewer clickable options and more instant answers. And the shift is already here: Bain & Company research shows that 80% of consumers rely on these “zero-click” results at least 40% of the time. As shoppers acclimate to this behavior, the space for retailers to capture attention keeps shrinking.
The implication for retailers is enormous. Depending on your industry, your ads may not be seen at all if you don’t include AI-driven formats, such as Performance Max (PMAX), AI Max, or Demand Gen, in your PPC mix. As we’ll see below, search is now prioritizing intent-based, AI-optimized places that can reach shoppers before they even type a query. Relying solely on traditional SERP ads may mean you’re too late.
How AI Formats Work
In general, the AI formats don’t solely react to search queries. They pull signals from across Google’s entire ecosystem, including Search, Shopping, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, and the Display Network, to predict what people want and when.
Rather than rewarding the retailer or travel brand that bids the highest, Google assembles ads on the fly using three main inputs:
- Search themes are lists of broad words or phrases that provide a signal to Google's AI about what your customers are searching for.
- Audience signals, which are inputs you give Google’s machine learning to help it identify your most likely customers. They can include information about your current customers, their interests, detailed demographics, and custom audience segments.
- Creative assets, including copy, images, videos, and CTAs that Google assembles into ads on the fly. With PMAX, you don’t hand over finished ads; you provide the building blocks. Every element must work as an “answer” in a zero-click environment, and assets should be designed as kits (i.e., cohesive and on-brand no matter how the system combines them).
For holiday retail and DMO marketing, old-style keyword campaigns may not be enough to get your message visibility. Success now depends on supplying the right signals and assets so your campaigns can stay visible when consumers are actively shopping. That also means thinking ahead: creative fatigue is real, and the algorithms require a constant supply of fresh creative assets to maintain steady engagement throughout the season.
This is a good time for the reminder that AI-driven campaigns need a learning period to stabilize, and pulling the plug too soon can mean missing the real lift once the system hits its stride.
Balancing SEO and PPC in the AI Era
Search isn’t about choosing between organic and paid. Both matter, especially during the holidays when every click is more complicated to win. SEO builds credibility and reveals what shoppers are planning for, such as gift ideas, travel guides, and early research that begins weeks before Black Friday. PPC is what captures those same shoppers when they are ready to act, whether that means completing a purchase or booking a trip.
The two work best together. SEO reveals the questions and themes your audience cares about, and PPC uses that knowledge to shape signals and capture demand in real time. In turn, PPC performance data reveals which messages are actually converting, providing valuable insights that can be fed back into SEO. Treated as a single system rather than separate efforts, SEO and PPC help you get noticed early and turn that attention into results when it matters most.
The New Imperative This Holiday Season
This holiday season will reward adaptability, not tradition. The old playbook of simply bidding high on keywords no longer guarantees visibility. For many brands and DMOs, AI-powered PPC has become the price of entry, while SEO remains the foundation for credibility and long-term discovery.
The marketers who succeed will be the ones who align both, coordinating SEO and AI-driven PPC into a unified strategy. Those who do will capture not just clicks, but visibility, conversions, and growth when it matters most. If your PPC appears stagnant and is not obtaining the nurturing and updates the platform require, reach out to our team for an audit.
