It's inevitable. google's always been building toward this - they want the search results page to feel like a curated experience, not an auction block. same thing happened on Amazon when they rolled out dynamic bidding and "rule-based" optimisation... everyone panicked until they realised the volume was better even if CPCs spiked.
the real friction with AI Mode - and why sentiment is mixed - comes down to the same black-box trust gap we see in marketplace algorithms. advertisers will tolerate subpar efficiency as long as they can point to a reason for it. the moment you remove the levers, you remove the justification. that's what makes people nervous, not the performance itself.
if AI Mode inventory starts eating organic real estate the way Product Targeting ads did on Amazon, adoption will be a foregone conclusion. The bigger conversation that nobody wants to have is whether Google will ever give us enough query-level transparency to feel confident scaling into it. History says no, but history also said we'd never spend 30% of revenue on PPC. we adapt
