For much of the past 18 months, paid search growth has coincided with growing pressure on organic traffic.
AI Overviews and other zero-click search experiences have made organic clicks harder to capture. At the same time, advertisers have continued to increase paid media investment, reinforcing the idea that paid could absorb at least some of the demand organic search was losing.
Q1 2026 gave advertisers little reason to reconsider that assumption. Google paid search clicks increased 14% YoY, one of the strongest growth rates Tinuiti had reported in years. Digital ad spending growth also accelerated across four of the five major platforms it tracks.
Q2 looks a bit different, though.
Tinuiti’s 2026 Q2 benchmark report shows spending growth slowed across Google search, YouTube, and Instagram, although each faced stronger year-ago comparisons. Facebook, on the other hand, rebounded from a weaker Q1.
Amazon Sponsored Products moved sharply in the other direction, but Prime Day’s shift from July to June had a significant effect on that growth.
Paid media is still growing. What changed in Q2 is the pace, and some of that slowdown comes from comparing against a much stronger period last year.
That creates a different starting point for H2 planning. Advertisers that expected paid search growth to keep accelerating as organic traffic declined may need to revisit those assumptions. Q2 suggests the growth is becoming harder to sustain, even if the underlying opportunity remains.
Why Advertisers Expected Paid Growth To Continue
Advertisers had good reason to expect paid search growth to continue heading into 2026.
Organic click-through rates were already declining as AI Overviews expanded. Pew Research Center found users clicked a traditional search result on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% without one. Just 1% clicked a source cited within the summary.
Other studies found similar declines. Ahrefs estimated that AI Overviews correlated with a 58% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page in its December 2025 data.
But that data alone doesn’t establish a direct shift from organic clicks to paid search. Pew found users were more likely to end their browsing session after seeing an AI summary, suggesting some searches produced no outbound click at all.
Still, we saw paid search grew during the same period that organic activity was declining. Tinuiti’s Q4 2025 benchmark found Google paid search clicks increased 13% YoY, its strongest growth since early 2021. Search spending also increased 13%, while average CPC declined slightly.
The growth continued in Q1 2026, when Google paid search clicks increased another 14% year over year. Tinuiti also found spending growth accelerated from Q4 across four of the five major digital ad segments it tracks.
By the start of Q2, advertisers had seen several quarters of paid search growth alongside continued downward pressure on organic clicks. The difference in Q2 is the YoY baseline those growth rates are now measured against.
What Q2 Data Actually Shows
Q2 brought slower spending growth across several of the major platforms Tinuiti tracks, including Google search, YouTube, and Instagram.
The comparison period is key to understanding the true impact here. Tinuiti’s Q2 2026 Digital Ads Benchmark Report notes that several platforms were up against stronger year-ago growth rates, making another quarter of acceleration harder to achieve.
Google paid search spending increased nearly 14% year over year in Q2, while Google Shopping investment grew 18%. Average search CPC increased just 1%, so higher click volume accounted for most of the additional spending.
The 14% increase is slightly slower than the 15% growth Tinuiti reported in Q2 2025. That quarter had already marked an acceleration from 9% spending growth in Q1 2025, giving Google search a stronger baseline to compare against this year.
The pattern extended beyond just Search campaigns. YouTube spending increased 15% YoY, compared with 20% growth in Q2 2025. Instagram spending increased 17%, while Facebook rebounded from a weaker Q1 with spending up 7%.
Amazon was the clear outlier. Sponsored Products spending increased 38% YoY, well above the growth rates across Google and Meta.
That increase also came with a significant calendar change. Amazon moved Prime Day from July into June this year, shifting spending that would typically fall in Q3 into the Q2 results.
That makes Q2 a little more nuanced than the headline growth rates suggest. Google Search, YouTube, and Instagram were up against stronger growth from a year ago, while Amazon pulled Prime Day spending forward from Q3.
For PPC teams, slower growth against a tougher comparison isn’t the same as demand simply weakening. But after several quarters of strong growth, it’s worth understanding how much of the slowdown comes from the comparison and how much reflects what advertisers are doing differently now.
What Does This ‘Slowdown’ Tell Us?
Tougher comparisons explain part of the slower growth in Q2, but they don’t “explain away” the slowdown.
Some of the conditions that helped paid search grow over the past year are now part of the baseline. Amazon, for example, withdrew from most U.S. Google Shopping auctions in July 2025, opening more Shopping inventory to other retailers.
That created an opportunity for competitors that remained in the auction. By Q2 2026, Tinuiti reported Amazon’s Shopping impression share was still at 0% against the median retailer.
Retailers are likely continuing to benefit from Amazon’s absence. What changes over time is how much additional growth that absence can create once advertisers have already captured more of the available traffic.
The same principle applies more broadly to paid search. Advertisers increased investment while organic traffic became less predictable, and many entered 2026 with a larger paid presence than they had a year earlier.
Those shifts can continue supporting paid media without producing the same YoY growth rates.
For H2 planning, that makes the source of growth more important than the platform average. Advertisers need to know where additional, incremental volume can come from in their own accounts rather than assuming the conditions that supported last year’s growth will produce another year at the same pace.
Amazon’s Prime Day Calendar Move Changes The Comparison
Amazon’s 38% Sponsored Products growth looks a bit different once Prime Day is removed from the comparison.
Tinuiti found Sponsored Products spending would have increased 23% year over year without the Prime Day dates in either year. That’s still substantial growth, but well below the 38% reported for the full quarter.
The difference comes down to timing. Amazon moved Prime Day from July into June this year, pulling one of its largest shopping events into Q2. The shift gave Q2 an additional spending period that fell in Q3 last year.
That calendar effect will undoubtedly flip in the next quarter. Q3 2026 will be measured against a Q3 2025 that included Prime Day, creating a tougher YoY comparison for Amazon advertising.
That’s going to be important to remember when the Q3 benchmarks arrive. A lower growth rate could reflect the missing Prime Day spending rather than a meaningful change in advertiser demand.
What This Changes For H2 Planning
For PPC teams, the Q2 data is a good reason to separate platform growth from the opportunity available when looking at individual accounts.
Industry benchmarks can show where advertisers are increasing spend, but they can’t tell you whether another incremental dollar of budget will produce profitable growth for your business. That depends on what room is still available within the account.
H2 planning should start there.
Look at metrics like:
- Impression share.
- Conversion volume.
- Marginal cost-per-acquisition or return on ad spend.
- Search query coverage.
- Auction insights.
- Any performance changes as budgets fluctuate.
For lead generation advertisers, that also means looking beyond conversion volume to lead quality and downstream business outcomes.
The source of additional volume matters, too. More available clicks may justify higher investment when conversion quality and marginal returns hold. If growth requires moving into lower-intent queries, weaker audiences, or less efficient inventory, a growing platform doesn’t make that expansion more profitable; it will likely just showcase in top-line revenue.
The same applies to forecasts. Promotional timing, competitor changes, product launches, and prior-year budget decisions can all influence year-over-year performance. Those factors should be accounted for before using an industry growth rate as the basis for an H2 budget increase.
Paid search can continue growing even as the market-level growth rate slows. The opportunity will vary more by advertiser, depending on where additional profitable demand is still available.
For PPC marketers, that puts more weight on account-level evidence heading into H2. Platform spending growth can provide context, but it shouldn’t become the growth target.
The Next Few Quarters Will Tell Us More
Q2 gives advertisers a reason to reconsider the growth rates of the past year, but it’s still too early to know whether the slowdown extends beyond tougher comparisons.
The next few quarters should help answer that.
Amazon will face a very different comparison in Q3, when its 2026 results are measured against a quarter that included Prime Day last year. Google Shopping will also begin comparing against the period after Amazon withdrew from most U.S. auctions in July 2025.
By Q4, Google paid search will face another strong comparison, as noted in the comparisons earlier in this article.
If paid search continues growing at similar rates against those higher baselines, the Q2 slowdown will look more like a comparison issue. If growth continues moderating across multiple quarters, advertisers may have more reason to reconsider how much market-level expansion they build into 2027 forecasts.
For now, Q2 is a reminder that a slower growth rate needs context before it becomes an instant trend that marketers are too quick to react to.
More Resources:
- Google Search Revenue Growth Eases After A Year Of Acceleration
- Google’s Q2: Precise Revenue Figures, Click Claims You Can’t Check
- Search Ad Growth Slows As Social & Video Gain Faster
Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock
