Future-Proof Your Brand Discovery: Why Smart Marketers Are Expanding Beyond Search Ads

For the last two decades, search has been the internet’s monetization backbone. By monetizing intent, Google built one of the most powerful ad ecosystems in history, and millions of businesses grew right alongside it. 

But that model is being rewritten. 

The New Search Reality

With the rise of large language models (LLMs), search behaviors are drastically changing. Instead of sifting through pages of search results, users can simply ask for something specific on AI assistants like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, and Copilot, and get a personalized answer in seconds. 

Younger audiences, in particular, are increasingly turning to LLMs for product research, with data showing that ⅓ of Gen Z and ¼ of millennials trust AI product recommendations (even more than human ones). 

As a result:

• Over 60% of searches now produce zero clicks.
• The top organic result’s click-through rate (CTR) has declined by more than 34%. 
• 65% of marketers say it’s getting harder to get noticed in search results due to AI search experiences like Google AI Overview and ChatGPT, according to early findings from tvScientific’s 2026 State of Performance TV Report. 

And with more than 1 billion people already using AI chat tools every week, this is happening at a massive scale. 

For marketers, this shift signals a new era of discovery. The traditional marketing playbook no longer works, as the channels that once delivered consistent performance are now losing effectiveness. Brand visibility now depends on creating demand before the query even happens. To win, brands need to meet audiences where exploration now begins — in conversations, recommendations, and context-driven experiences. 

That’s where Performance TV and AI-powered marketing strategies come in.

Performance TV as Your Marketing Foundation

Performance TV combines the power of TV advertising with the precision of digital marketing, enabling brands to easily launch Connected TV and linear TV ad campaigns, optimize them with AI technology, and measure true business outcomes in real time.

As digital behaviors fragment, Performance TV brings three key advantages that make it the new foundation for performance marketing:

• Reliability in uncertainty: Viewers still gather around premium content on the biggest screen in the home, and they do so with intent and attention. That makes Performance TV a stable foundation in a chaotic discovery landscape. While algorithms and AI interfaces shift daily, people will always watch TV. And advertisers can count on that consistency.
• Premium storytelling: Unlike search (which captures people when they already know what they want), Performance TV creates demand by planting the seed earlier through emotion, visuals, and narrative. With memorable storytelling, TV ads inspire viewers today, and influence purchase decisions tomorrow. 
• Clarity and control: While AI-driven search results are increasingly opaque, Performance TV gives marketers full transparency and outcome-level accountability. You know who you’re reaching, where your ads run, and how each impression performs. That control is invaluable in an era when discovery is increasingly happening behind closed algorithms.

AI as Your Performance TV Amplifier

Performance TV sets the stage for performance, but AI ensures that performance scales — transforming TV into a self-optimizing channel:

• Intelligent targeting: AI-driven audience modeling goes beyond demographics or static interest categories. It analyzes behavioral, contextual, and outcome data to identify the audiences most likely to convert, then automatically allocates spend to those segments.
• Creative acceleration: AI-powered creative testing identifies top-performing messages, visuals, and formats in real time, accelerating learning cycles and maximizing every dollar spent.
• Precision measurement: By stitching together multi-channel data, AI connects TV ad exposure to downstream actions like site visits, purchases, or app installs. Platforms like tvScientific make this seamless by integrating Performance TV data directly into performance ecosystems like affiliate and ecommerce channels. That’s how LG was able to validate CTV results within its affiliate program and sustain an 1100% revenue increase year over year.

When AI and Performance TV work together, the result is exponential. AI brings precision to TV’s scale, and Performance TV provides the rich, immersive context that makes AI’s optimizations more effective. As a result, campaigns continuously learn, improve, and deliver measurable growth. Marketers gain both creative agility and performance certainty — the perfect balance for the next era of advertising.

The Cross-Channel Lift

Performance TV creates demand that ripples across every digital channel. When viewers see your brand on the biggest screen in the home, it sparks measurable downstream activity, from site visits and app installs, to branded searches and higher conversion intent.

For example, one jewelry brand ran a Performance TV campaign via tvScientific and saw the following results immediately after their ads aired:

• A 600% spike in Google search-referred traffic
• A 255% increase in direct website visits (consumers typing in the URL directly)
• A decrease in Facebook engagement (not a loss of interest, but a sign that audiences were shifting from passive scrolling to active searching)

This illustrates how Performance TV acts as a demand generator and search amplifier. Exposure on TV drives intent, inspiring viewers to take action across channels long after the ad ends. And because tvScientific provides clear attribution down to the conversion level, those same high-intent audiences can be easily identified and retargeted across search, social, or display — keeping your brand top-of-mind and accelerating the path to purchase. 

Performance TV also fuels a social engagement boost over time. Once viewers engage with your brand through search or your website, they’re more likely to interact again on social media by sharing experiences, leaving comments, or joining the conversation. 

It all adds up to what we call the “rising tide effect.” When high-quality Performance TV campaigns establish awareness and trust, every other channel performs better. Paid search becomes more efficient, retargeting becomes more precise, and social engagement becomes more authentic — creating a performance lift across your entire marketing ecosystem.

From Search Dependence to Discovery Resilience

The old marketing model was built around capturing intent. The next era will be about creating it.

As AI reshapes discovery, marketers can no longer rely on being found. They have to make audiences curious before the query ever happens. That’s why Performance TV, powered by AI, is emerging as the next great demand engine.

Search built the last generation of performance marketing. Performance TV will build the next.

But rather than abandoning search altogether, the smartest marketers are rebalancing. They’re investing in channels that future-proof discovery, using AI to connect storytelling, targeting, and measurement into a single, outcome-driven system.

Want to see the impact of CTV on your brand? Let’s prove it together. Book a demo to see how tvScientific can help.