This publish was created in partnership with Moloco

Are Google AI overviews wreaking havoc in your model’s discovery technique? How possible is it that AI would possibly make your model’s gives out of date?

Throughout a CES 2026 ADWEEK Home session co-hosted with Moloco, Jenny Rooney, chief model and neighborhood officer at ADWEEK, sat down with Paul D’Arcy, Moloco’s CMO, to preview his agency’s AI Disruption Index and what it means for the standard advertising and marketing funnel.

Doing battle with the AI overview

“When an AI overview on Google is proven, 80% of the time, there is no such thing as a click on,” D’Arcy mentioned. “That’s a fee of behavioral change that basically is unprecedented.”

One other regarding stat? D’Arcy shared that 75% of shoppers imagine brokers and enormous language fashions (LLMs) may assist them discover higher offers than they will discover on their very own.

These findings prompted Moloco, in collaboration with BCG, to develop the AI Disruption Index, a framework that reveals how uncovered manufacturers are to AI-driven disruption in discovery and core companies. Primarily based on the energy of buyer relationships and the probability that AI may exchange or intercept key enterprise capabilities, 15 verticals had been mapped throughout 4 quadrants.

In response to D’Arcy, the “most worrisome” quadrant consists of industries with weaker buyer relationships and a better threat of AI disruption. Examples embrace journey, retail and commerce, training, and information.

Industries which have buyer relationships that aren’t as sturdy as others, however a decrease threat of AI disruption, are discovered inside the “undefended” quadrant. “Gaming is a good instance of this,” defined D’Arcy, because it’s not but being disrupted by LLMs. “Right here, the important thing methods are sometimes determining how you can construct extra loyalty and longer-term relationships.”

In the meantime, industries with sturdy buyer relationships and fewer disruption are labeled as “secured,” a minimum of for now. Monetary companies and social media sit right here as a result of they sometimes have long-term client loyalty and haven’t been as vulnerable to disruption from text-based content material, he defined.

The final quadrant, D’Arcy shared, is “contested,” and options productiveness instruments like Slack, Microsoft Workplace, and Dropbox. Right here, loyalty is excessive, however so is AI disruption threat. “These organizations are shortly changing into AI-first in a whole lot of their choices, in order that there aren’t different options to compete with them.”

Advertising and marketing maneuvers within the matrix

Manufacturers that historically relied on natural search site visitors for discovery have been hardest hit. “These companies have been feeling this ache for greater than a yr at this level,” he mentioned.

The place shoppers used to go to totally different websites, learn opinions, and take a look at purchaser’s guides, now they simply ask a single query of an LLM and get a solution. “It’s changed that total discovery course of,” D’Arcy defined. “It’s a really sturdy, disruptive product expertise that’s resulting in deeper and deeper adoption at a really fast fee.”