By Frank Pagano
Is search dead? Nope.
Then, is Google going to die soon? Nope, again.
Is AI the key for success of any individual and business in the future? Yes.
So, how will our world look like?
AI will change the way we search for information, insight, suggestions and, even, love. The most powerful driver of commerce today is being taken by storm by Artificial Intelligence, Agents, World Models and Embodied Intelligence. This is relevant not only for marketeers, but for whoever wants to do business and trade information in the near and far future. This may even bring good news for small and medium enterprises, trapped under the weight of big advertisers’ budgets and the monarchy of Google Chrome (and of the Alphabet empire). We need to understand a bit more.
This is why we talk to Austin Holmes, President of Publicity for Good and Signal Raptor, and a veteran of marketing and communication. This is our exchange.
How is traditional search changing with the advent of AI, how much in terms of costs and when? Will cost per click go down, for example, because AI has no business model for now. Or, will we live in a less concentrated market than today’s Search market, dominated by Google?
Traditional search isn’t disappearing, but it is losing market share. At the same time, AI is making it easier to optimize for search because it can tell businesses exactly what actions are most relevant to improve performance. From a labor perspective, that lowers the human cost significantly. However, search is still competitive, and because the market share is shrinking while competition remains high, costs will likely increase over time. Paid search still operates on an auction-based system, so businesses that aren’t efficient will eventually get priced out. There’s still a profitability ceiling, though, so it’s unlikely to become completely unattainable. Cost per click can go down if businesses improve their ad copy and creatives using AI tools. But competition for attention is increasing because there’s simply more content being produced. Businesses that adapt and use AI effectively can lower costs and improve efficiency. Those that continue doing things the old way will likely see costs rise. The market will probably become even more competitive moving forward because the number of businesses continues to grow. While Google is losing market share, it’s not happening as quickly as many predicted. Eventually, one company may emerge as dominant again, and Google could still be that company, especially considering how successfully they expanded with YouTube. What changes is likely the format of search itself. As technology evolves beyond phones and current interfaces, the next cycle of adaptation will begin. Every major tech shift creates new competition, and Google is in the middle of that fight right now. Companies like Claude appear to be gaining an edge, but the long-term winner is still unclear. Big firms will always have an advantage, as they produce more text and touchpoints, which is what the digital sphere lives on today.
I don’t see why AI should be better for SME? How, and at what price?
The idea that only large corporations win in digital marketing has already started to break down. Smaller businesses are consistently gaining market share in many industries. A good example is the brewing industry. Years ago, a few large breweries dominated the market. As regulations and technology changed, smaller breweries began taking more market share every year. The same dynamic is happening with small businesses and AI. Content creation is now dramatically easier. Businesses no longer need expensive studios or large production teams to create high-performing content. Smartphones changed that first, and now generative AI is accelerating it even further. AI tools are quickly reaching a level where they can outperform traditional human production workflows in many marketing scenarios. Split testing, optimization, and creative iteration, things that previously required major agencies and large budgets, are becoming accessible to smaller businesses if they build the right workflows. Today, a small business can automate large portions of its marketing pipeline and achieve performance levels that previously required enterprise-level infrastructure. The cost barrier is already relatively low. In many cases, businesses can access powerful AI-driven systems for only a few hundred dollars per month unless they are operating at massive creative scale.
So, what is the future of storytelling?
People will always want authentic stories. Content labeled “based on a true story” consistently performs well because audiences naturally connect with authenticity. What’s changing is how stories are produced. AI-generated production will likely become common, even for stories rooted in real events. A film could be entirely AI-generated while still telling a meaningful and authentic story. That shift will impact the entire content production industry. The storytelling itself won’t disappear, but the process of creating it will change dramatically. The bigger transformation may come when storytelling becomes personalized for the individual viewer. The technology already exists to generate stories, plots, and visual content dynamically based on prompts. Right now, limitations are mostly tied to hardware, energy usage, and scale. Eventually, viewers may simply tell an AI system what kind of movie they want to watch, and the system will generate it instantly. Someone could request something like “Mission Impossible 25,” and the AI would create a completely new version tailored to that request. As computing infrastructure improves over the next 5 to 10 years, personalized AI-generated entertainment could become widely accessible through subscription platforms. That future raises interesting cultural questions. Shared cultural experiences may become less common because everyone will be consuming personalized stories instead of watching the same shows or movies together. Large-scale shared entertainment moments, where huge audiences experience the same story at the same time, may gradually disappear, and it’s unclear what that means for culture long-term.
Google may lose its crown, and search and marketing, plus story-telling, may become easier and less costly for the small and the bif enterprises. Creativity and discontinuity, or surprise, imbued with authenticity, will be immensely rewarded. AI is just superpowers at the service of creative, authentic and entertaining minds. The prompts, questions and lateral ninjas will win the war, in a search and digital space that will become hopefully less concentrated and less costly. Competition will be fierce. For those who have a light heart, toughen up. For the brave spirits, time to show up.
