AI Overviews Are Gutting Google Clicks. Move Budget to Meta
AI Overviews are quietly draining the clicks you used to count on. On queries where Google now shows an AI Overview, organic click-through has been cut by nearly two thirds, because the answer sits on the results page and the user never leaves it. Paid search did not fill the gap cheaply either: Google Search CPMs are running anywhere from $90 to 60 on commercial terms. Set that against the fact that 82% of ecommerce operators say rising CPMs are their biggest worry going into the back half of 2026, and you have the real story behind the budget shift happening right now.
What is actually happening
Two pressures are arriving at once. AI Overviews absorb the informational and comparison searches that used to feed the top of your funnel, so the free traffic dries up. The remaining high intent queries get more crowded on the paid side, which pushes Search CPMs higher. Meanwhile Meta CPMs are up year over year too, landing around
The clearest signal is in the spend mix. One DTC retailer cited this quarter moved its Google share of ad spend from 42% down to 29% while Meta climbed from 48% to 67%, and total spend actually fell 47% while revenue held. That is not a brand abandoning Google. It is a brand moving discovery dollars to the cheaper, higher signal channel and keeping only what Google still does well.
What to do with it
Do not blanket cut Google. Branded search and bottom of funnel shopping still convert at a cost you cannot replicate elsewhere, and AI Overviews appear less on transactional queries. The dollars worth moving are the prospecting and discovery dollars that AI Overviews just made inefficient. Those belong on Meta now, where the Andromeda engine reads your creative to find buyers instead of relying on the interest stacks that no longer move performance.
The catch is that the move only pays off if your Meta side is built to absorb it. Shifting budget into thin creative and a messy conversion signal just means you pay rising Meta CPMs without the efficiency. Andromeda rewards creative volume and clean data: a steady flow of distinct hooks, a simple campaign structure, and Pixel plus Conversions API both firing with strong event match quality.
Should you move ad budget from Google to Meta in June 2026?
Start with evidence, not vibes. Pull Search Console and find the queries where impressions held but clicks collapsed. Those are your AI Overview casualties, and that lost reach is what you are trying to rebuild on Meta. Then test a 10% to 20% reallocation rather than a wholesale swing, and judge it on blended MER or new customer CAC, not last click inside each platform. If the blended number improves while revenue holds, widen the shift. If it does not, your Meta creative or tracking is the bottleneck, not the channel.
This is exactly the kind of reallocation that breaks when you run it by hand. Run1Ads.ai runs Meta ad accounts end to end, strategy through creative, launch, and daily optimization, with vertical tuned models for E-commerce, Amazon sellers, and Hotels, and more verticals launching soon. So when you pull prospecting budget off an AI Overview battered Google, the Meta side is already producing the creative volume and clean conversion signal Andromeda needs to turn that budget into orders. It replaces the agency layer for founders and operators who do not want to hire a media buyer just to chase a channel shift. That is the whole point: the budget moves, and something competent is already there to catch it.
The takeaway: AI Overviews are not killing your demand, they are relocating it, and the operators winning in 2026 are the ones moving discovery budget to Meta before their competitors finish the math.