Zero-click search adoption has critically affected web traffic from search engines to publishers in the year since Google first introduced its Overviews and AI Mode features.
In 2026, advertisers may very well respond by cutting their display investments with publishers on the open web by 30% in favor of CTV and paid social, per analysis by Forrester. The research outfit predicts that, as the addressable audiences reachable via publishers shrink, brands will look to find them elsewhere.
“We expect that fewer consumers will be landing on the web pages where most of that display inventory has historically existed, and so there will just be fewer monetizable audiences there to begin with,” said Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf, ad-tech analyst at Forrester.
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