How AI will change SEM in 2025 and beyond !

Key Points

- Research suggests AI will enhance search engine marketing (SEM) in 2025 by improving personalization and automation.  

- It seems likely that AI will shift consumer search behaviour toward chatbots and voice assistants, impacting traditional SEM strategies.  

- The evidence leans toward increased competition from AI-powered search tools, potentially disrupting market shares.

Let me start with a small anecdote - Recently I saw an image of a News cameraman, bound on a news chopper covering a Breaking News. Both the pilot & camera man risking their lives along with a million-dollar machine to get us the live updates from the ground as they unfold. Today it is done by a few hundred-dollar drone, controlled remotely, sitting miles away. While technology saved lives & money, both Pilot & cameraman lost their job!

As we step into age of AI revolution, there are disruptions undergoing all around status quo is changing, leadership is challenged. No matter where you are in the world, what you do, you will not remain untouched by this revolution. In this series of AIs impact on Digital marketing let us get on journey and analyse how AI will impact Marketing, more particularly different facets of Digital marketing.

In this first episode let me try to touch upon how AI will impact Search engine marketing, so hop on.

1. More personalization

With the amount of data we generate through our searches, consumption of social media content, location sharing etc. AI models will be able to generate highly accurate, real time intent based models of users which when fed onto the bidding platforms or integrated with DMPs & DSPs will make digital campaigns more effective.

Imagine it’s not just about the keyword of loan or credit card you are searching for that would matter, but also about your age, your location, latest iPhone ad you interacted with which will help marketers & system to show you most relevant message for the product that you intend to take.

2. Real time campaign management

Gone are the days of manual bid adjustment, we have long migrated to fully automated performance driven campaigns. With more data points getting generated & smarter systems to compute them than ever before, bid will get adjusted real time across various parameters.

Sounds there will be tough time for campaign managers ahead, remember the example of pilot at beginning of this article.

3. Shift in Search Behaviour

Our go to tools will change, search is shifting from Google to other AI tools like Chat GPT or Grok. Keyboard is getting replaced by voice button for input. This means marketers will need to optimize for conversational queries, which might reduce reliance on traditional search engines. It's an unexpected detail that voice search could become as common as typing, requiring new strategies.

Does this mean that we are staring at the death of Keyword targeting, where it is not just about the exact search but the intent behind that search.

Conclusion  

In 2025, AI's impact on search engine marketing is profound, offering enhanced personalization, automation, and new engagement opportunities while presenting challenges in competition, privacy, and strategy adaptation. Its complete impact will unfold as we progress into the future.