Google - AI Chatbots, Death of Keywords & the Future of Search. Alex Storey - Media Tech Talk #037
Media Tech TalkShow Notes
Alex Storey, Senior Client Manager at Google, joins Media Tech Talk to unpack the biggest era of change in search since the search box first appeared. From starting on the AdWords billing desk 13 years ago to leading Google's advertising relationship with Canva, Alex has had a front row seat to a decade of change compressed into 12 months.In part one, Alex takes us back through the eras of Google Search: the story of the very first search ad (a live mail order lobster business in the year 2000), the shift from desktop to mobile, the rise of vertical and visual search, and the 25 billion searches now flowing through Google Lens every year. She explains how AI has quietly powered search for more than a decade, from BERT's breakthrough in understanding conversational language in 2019 to Smart Bidding's 70 million auction-time signals that turned paid search from manual day trading into a predictive engine.Then we address the elephant in the room: ChatGPT's 2022 launch and the obituaries written for search. Far from shrinking, the search pie has expanded. AI Overviews now serve 2.5 billion monthly users, AI Mode has scaled past a billion monthly active users in its first year, and Google is seeing 5 trillion searches a year, with query volume in AI Mode doubling every quarter and queries running three times longer than traditional search. Alex closes part one with a look under the hood at search fan-out, and why one conversational paragraph can now do the work of a dozen searches.Chapters:(00:00) Cold open: the search box you now talk to(01:18) Welcome Alex Storey(01:58) From Nielsen to Google's AdWords billing desk(05:13) Keeping up with a decade of change in 12 months(07:30) The lobster ad: Google's first ever search ad(09:50) Three eras of search: mobile, vertical and visual(12:10) Smart glasses, privacy and augmented reality search(14:24) BERT and the AI quietly under the hood since 2019(16:46) Smart Bidding rebuilds paid search(18:47) The ChatGPT elephant in the room(21:08) The Jevons paradox: searching more, not less(22:54) AI Mode and the rise of conversational search(24:07) Search fan-out: one query, many searches(27:25) Wrapping part one💬 Guest: Alex Storey, Senior Client Manager – Googlehttps://www.linkedin.com/in/storeyalex https://www.linkedin.com/company/google https://ads.google.com/intl/en_au/start🎧 Host:Daevid Richards – https://www.linkedin.com/in/daevidrichards/Media Tech Talk explores ad tech, digital media, AI in advertising, programmatic monetisation, audience engagement, and the technologies shaping the future of publishing.🏷️ #MediaTechTalk #Google #GoogleSearch #AIMode #AIOverviews #SearchAdvertising #AdTech #DigitalMarketing #ArtificialIntelligence #GoogleAds #SEM #MarTech #Podcast
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