How AI Is Changing Search Intent (And What It Means for Paid Media)

Search Didn’t Disappear. Intent Moved.

For years, search was where buyer intent revealed itself.
If someone was researching a problem, comparing solutions, or getting close to a decision, you could see it in keywords, queries, and search traffic. Paid media and SEO were built around that assumption.

That assumption is no longer fully true.

Today, a growing share of early-stage and mid-funnel research happens inside AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok. Buyers ask questions, compare options, and shortlist solutions without ever touching Google at the start of their journey. By the time they do reach the open web, much of the intent that search used to capture is already gone.

This doesn’t mean search is broken.
It means intent has moved upstream.

What’s changed for paid media teams

When intent lived in search, paid media could rely on keywords, retargeting pools, and site visits to identify high-value users. Now, many of those users:

Start their research inside an LLM
Click one or two links to validate information
Skip broad browsing entirely
Enter consideration already informed

From the ad platform’s point of view, these users appear “late” or indistinguishable from lower-intent traffic. The result is higher CPCs, less predictable performance, and audiences that feel thinner than they used to.

The problem isn’t demand.
The problem is visibility.

Intent still exists, it’s just harder to see

Buyers haven’t stopped researching. They’ve simply changed where they do it.

Inside AI tools, people ask questions they never would have typed into a search bar:

“What’s the best way to solve X?”
“Which vendors actually do Y?”
“How do companies handle Z at scale?”

Those questions reveal strong commercial intent, but they’re invisible to traditional search and retargeting models.

Why this matters now

Paid media strategies are still optimized around signals that are arriving later and later in the journey. That gap creates a window where competitors can influence decisions before ads ever appear.

The teams that win next won’t be the ones bidding harder on shrinking signals. They’ll be the ones who adapt to where intent now forms and find ways to act on it earlier.

Where PromptID fits

PromptID is built specifically for this shift.

Instead of trying to recover intent through SEO or content, PromptID focuses on paid media. It identifies when buyers leave AI tools, understands what they researched, and groups them into high-intent audiences that can be activated across programmatic, paid social, and search retargeting.

In other words, PromptID helps paid media teams: