The traditional listing of blue hyperlinks is giving approach to a direct reply. Dutch promoting commerce physique VIA Nederland revealed findings from its Search Taskforce on 24 June 2026, laying out six structural shifts that its members imagine are rewriting the observe of search advertising – from how customers discover data to how professionals ought to measure their work.

From outcomes to solutions

The paper – revealed by VIA Verenigd In Promoting, a commerce affiliation headquartered at Wibautstraat 224 in Amsterdam – attracts on dialogue from the newest assembly of the VIA Search Taskforce. It covers six propositions that members debated to map what a shifting search panorama means for the career.

The primary and most instant shift is the transfer from a ranked listing of outcomes to a synthesised reply. Based on VIA Nederland, AI Overviews, Google’s AI Mode, and conversational assistants reminiscent of Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, and Gemini now give customers a summarised response somewhat than ten hyperlinks to select from. The consequence is a discount within the structural have to click on by to an exterior web site.

The site visitors proof for that is substantial. Ahrefs analysis revealed in February 2026 – protecting 300,000 key phrases utilizing aggregated Google Search Console knowledge – discovered that the presence of AI Overviews correlates with a 58% discount in click-through charges for the top-ranked web page. That determine had been 34.5% in April 2025. Position-one click-through rates for AI Overview queries fell from 0.073 in December 2023 to 0.016 by December 2025. The deterioration isn’t uniform throughout sectors: health and nutrition publishers saw ad-opportunity declines of between 40% and 50%, while news and politics verticals held more stable.

VIA Nederland notes the dynamic differs by place within the buy funnel. For easy informational queries, the clicking disappears; for advanced shopping for selections requiring comparability and deeper analysis, the necessity to have interaction with exterior sources persists. The sensible query isn’t whether or not customers nonetheless search however the place and the way the reply is constructed – and whether or not advertisers seem inside it.

From website positioning to GEO

The second shift runs instantly from the primary. When solutions are assembled by AI somewhat than retrieved as particular person hyperlinks, the self-discipline of optimisation shifts too. Based on VIA Nederland, alongside classical website positioning the business is now speaking more and more about GEO: Generative Engine Optimization. The objective is now not solely a excessive place within the natural outcomes however presence and quotation contained in the AI-generated reply itself.

That framing locations GEO alongside, not above, established website positioning observe. Google’s VP of Search, Brendon Kraham, published a piece in June 2026 arguing explicitly that “good SEO is good GEO,” stating that AI Mode and AI Overviews are “built directly on top of our core ranking systems” and therefore require no fundamentally different optimization discipline. Lily Ray, VP of SEO Strategy at Amsive, warned in May 2026 that aggressive GEO tactics were already being treated as spam, with Cyrus Shepard’s analysis of 54 experiments identifying search rank as the second-highest predictor of AI citation, scoring 9.4 out of 10.

Based on VIA Nederland, the content material traits that give a website one of the best likelihood of being cited in AI solutions embrace clear construction, demonstrated authority, and presence on the platforms from which language fashions draw – together with Reddit and YouTube alongside a model’s personal web site. Measureability stays a stay downside. The taskforce notes that concrete alerts are starting to emerge. Microsoft launched its AI Performance dashboard in Bing Webmaster Tools on 10 February 2026, providing publishers their first view of how typically AI techniques cite their content material throughout Microsoft Copilot and AI-generated summaries in Bing. The dashboard tracks whole citations, common cited pages per day, grounding queries, and page-level quotation exercise. On 23 March 2026, Microsoft expanded it to map grounding queries directly to specific cited pages – the most-requested enhancement after the February launch. Microsoft Clarity’s Citations feature moved to general availability on 13 May 2026, including web page quotation counts, share of authority relative to competing domains, and AI referral site visitors contained in the Readability platform.

VIA Nederland flags that GEO stays partly opaque. The sensible prescription from the taskforce is to maintain experimenting and doc every thing rigorously.

AI brokers and the popular supply

The third shift issues private AI brokers – software program techniques that search, examine, and probably transact on a person’s behalf. Based on VIA Nederland, in that state of affairs a model is now not speaking solely with a human being but additionally with that particular person’s digital assistant. Whichever model the agent treats as the popular supply – the default advice – beneficial properties a considerable structural benefit.

The taskforce describes this as transferring towards a “winner takes all” dynamic. If an assistant routinely proposes one provider or supply, visibility turns into extra binary than advertisers have been accustomed to. VIA Nederland characterises this as nonetheless largely forward-looking, with open questions round knowledge, integrations, and belief. The sign for practitioners now’s to put money into robust, dependable model presence and in knowledge sources that brokers will be capable to use.

That framing connects to a sample the promoting know-how business has moved towards quickly in 2026. The Trade Desk launched its first in-platform AI agent, Koa Agents, in April 2026. Amazon’s Ads Agent has accepted natural language campaign management commands – including ROAS-based pause instructions – since November 2025. The preference-source query VIA Nederland raises sits one step upstream from marketing campaign automation: it issues which manufacturers brokers are skilled, through internet content material and product knowledge, to deal with as authoritative.

HubSpot data published in June 2026 found that AI search had become the single strongest predictor of purchase intent among B2B buyers, surpassing product demos, review sites, and sales calls in a survey of more than 3,000 decision-makers. The stakes of being the popular supply are subsequently not theoretical.

Automation: adapt or fall behind

The fourth proposition in VIA Nederland’s doc is essentially the most operationally instant. Automation is now not a function of paid search’s future – it’s its current. Based on VIA Nederland, Efficiency Max, Broad Match, and AI Max imply search engines like google and yahoo are taking on an growing share of focusing on, bidding, and inventive selections. Scale and effectivity are the beneficial properties; direct management and transparency over what is occurring contained in the system are the prices.

The taskforce’s collective place is pragmatic: stopping automation isn’t a sensible choice, however trusting it blindly isn’t both. Based on VIA Nederland, the worth lies in steering – by offering the fitting enter, clear objectives, high-quality feeds, and first-party knowledge, practitioners give the techniques the very best route. Understanding the underlying logic produces higher outcomes than delegating every thing.

Google declared AI Max out of beta on 15 April 2026, announcing simultaneously that Dynamic Search Ads would be automatically upgraded to AI Max starting September 2026 – one of the crucial structurally important adjustments to Google’s search promoting infrastructure in years. The timeline was later revised: on 11 June 2026, Google delayed the DSA-to-AI Max automatic migration to February 2027 in response to advertiser feedback, while confirming that campaigns using Automatically Created Assets and campaign-level Broad Match would still be auto-upgraded in September 2026. A voluntary improve instrument stays obtainable to advertisers wishing to handle the transition on their very own schedule.

At Google Marketing Live 2026 on 20 May, Google’s VP of Ads and Commerce Vidhya Srinivasan confirmed that appearing in new AI Search ad formats – including Conversational Discovery ads and Highlighted Answers – requires AI Max for Search or Performance Max with text customisation. The sensible implication, as VIA Nederland’s framing captures, is that advertisers who need entry to AI Mode and AI Overviews stock should function contained in the automated framework. The diploma to which that automation will be steered – by damaging key phrases, textual content pointers, model controls, and AI Temporary inputs – is the place practitioner experience now resides.

Google launched a branded search toggle inside AI Max in June 2026, giving advertisers the flexibility to limit AI Max campaigns to unbranded queries solely – addressing a priority that prospecting campaigns routing branded site visitors would distort efficiency knowledge in each instructions.

New KPIs and billing fashions

The fifth proposition follows logically from the previous adjustments. If clicks are saying much less in regards to the worth an interplay delivers, then measurement and billing fashions should adapt too. Based on VIA Nederland, alongside acquainted metrics reminiscent of ROAS and CPA, the business is wanting extra emphatically at what occurs after the clicking: precise worth, margin, and buyer lifetime worth. The taskforce additionally highlighted a shift away from pure CPC pondering towards value- or outcome-based fashions – typically described as CPS, value per sale – and towards hybrid approaches.

This isn’t a indifferent theoretical debate. NP Digital research published in May 2026 found that original research generates AI citations in 82% of cases – the highest of any content format – while comparison content scored 76%, both performing substantially better than formats AI can produce from its own training data. The argument that follows is sensible: if the metric is AI quotation somewhat than natural place, then content material funding must be evaluated in opposition to that consequence, not in opposition to web page impressions or bounce charges.

VIA Nederland’s conclusion is that companies ought to steer towards the worth that issues to them, not simply towards quantity on the prime of the funnel. Higher knowledge connections are required, as is the willingness to look past customary reporting outputs. Mediaocean’s 2026 H2 Market Report published in June 2026 found that AI-powered automation and cross-channel orchestration entered the top five capability priorities for the first time in that survey’s history, with knowledge gaps, lack of integration with current stacks, and unclear ROI named as the primary boundaries to scaling. The VIA Nederland place – that steering requires higher knowledge connections – maps instantly onto that analysis.

The brand new search marketer

The sixth and last shift is the broadest. The entire previous adjustments collectively are reshaping the skilled function of the search marketer. Based on VIA Nederland, the place a specialist might beforehand sit deep inside a single self-discipline, the present setting asks for a broader profile: what the taskforce calls a “T-shaped” marketer. Somebody who understands the know-how however is equally at dwelling with knowledge, content material, and technique. Within the phrases used on the assembly – as quoted in VIA Nederland’s doc – the search marketer is changing into ” deal extra generalist.”

The framing is constructive somewhat than alarming. As execution automates additional, the taskforce argues, the worth of the human practitioner shifts towards route: setting the fitting objectives, feeding the fitting inputs into the techniques, decoding the outputs, and connecting the entire to broader advertising and enterprise aims. From adjusting levers to offering route.

That shift within the nature of the function echoes a wider remark from Google’s personal advertising keynote in Could 2026. Within the phrases of Google’s Track – cited in PPC Land’s protection of that occasion – “When the technical facet turns into simpler for everybody, your true edge comes again to what solely you’ll be able to present: your technique.”

4 takeaways from the taskforce

VIA Nederland closes its doc with 4 factors the taskforce drew from the dialogue, offered not as prescriptions however as shared orientations:

Agility issues. The velocity of improvement means flexibility has grow to be knowledgeable ability in its personal proper, not a background situation. Keep testing. A lot continues to be not measurable; experimenting and documenting make the distinction between practitioners who perceive what’s altering and people who are guessing. Assume broadly. Knowledge, content material, and technique belong within the search marketer’s area as absolutely because the technical platform instruments. Share information. The collective learns sooner than people working alone – which is, in keeping with VIA Nederland, exactly what the Taskforce exists to allow.

The doc positions search not as shrinking however as altering type. The interface is shifting towards solutions, the optimisation self-discipline towards GEO, execution towards automation, and the skilled function towards route. IAB Europe’s Chief Economist Daniel Knapp, presenting at Cannes Lions 2026, offered a compatible macro reading: that AI systems are reducing the number of options shown to consumers while making those options more relevant, making it structurally more consequential which brands appear in any given answer.

Timeline

Abstract

Who: VIA Nederland (VIA Verenigd In Promoting), the Dutch promoting commerce affiliation primarily based in Amsterdam, revealed findings from its Search Taskforce.

What: A doc summarising six structural shifts in search advertising – the rise of AI-generated solutions over ranked hyperlinks; the shift from website positioning to GEO as an optimisation self-discipline; the emergence of AI brokers and the preferred-source dynamic; the consolidation of paid search automation by Efficiency Max and AI Max; the necessity for brand spanking new KPIs tied to margin and lifelong worth somewhat than click on quantity; and the broadening of the search marketer’s function towards a T-shaped generalist profile.

When: Printed on 24 June 2026, drawing on dialogue from the newest assembly of the VIA Search Taskforce.

The place: The doc was revealed by VIA Nederland, headquartered at Wibautstraat 224, 1097 DN Amsterdam. The adjustments it describes have an effect on search advertising observe throughout platforms obtainable globally, together with Google Search, Microsoft Bing, and AI assistants reminiscent of Copilot, ChatGPT, and Gemini.

Why: Search isn’t shrinking however altering type. The interface is transferring towards AI-generated solutions, the optimisation self-discipline towards citation-based GEO, execution towards automated marketing campaign sorts that soak up human management, and the function of the practitioner towards technique and route somewhat than lever-adjustment. The taskforce concluded that flexibility, testing, broader pondering, and shared studying are actually the defining skilled qualities.


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