This post was sponsored by AdRoll. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.
Text‑heavy AI Overviews blocking your brand?
The “People Also Ask” that you could scroll through forever, effectively hiding position 1?
Knowledge panels and rich snippets hogging the view?
The majority of people who entered a search query never made it past the top of the search result page (SERP) in 2024.
For users, these updates to Google’s SERPs are technically efficient.
For you, changes like AI Overviews are another strategy to master, and at worst, a direct competitor for attention.
So how do you increase brand awareness and search presence when Google is taking away your bids for top-of-funnel (TOFU) content?
The Rise of Zero-Click: Why Rankings Don’t Equal Traffic Anymore
As search evolves, AI-powered summaries now appear in more than 13% of queries.
This resulted in nearly 60% of Google searches ending without a click last year, dramatically shrinking the traditional flow of search traffic to a website.
Not only are you fighting for space against the usual blue links, you’re now competing with AI-generated answers that package everything up before a user even considers a click.
Which means that “we made it to the top” moment doesn’t guarantee anyone actually sees your brand.
So, even if your brand earns a top ranking, it may never translate into visibility. That’s the reality of today’s zero-click environment, and it is what creates the awareness gap — a challenge that every marketer now has to solve.
What Is Zero Click?
A “zero-click” search happens when a user gets their answer directly on the search results page through featured snippets, knowledge panels, or AI-generated overviews without ever clicking through to a website.
For users, it’s fast and convenient. For brands, it means fewer chances for visitors to actually land on your site, even when you’ve earned a top ranking. Think of it as Google (and increasingly, AI) keeping people inside its own ecosystem rather than sending them out to explore yours.
This is where the awareness gap comes in.
What Is The Awareness Gap?
The awareness gap is the space in which your content is seen, but it is not tied to your brand.
Even if your brand appears in these results, you may never see the traditional signals like traffic or time on site that prove your influence. People might recognize your name or absorb part of your story, but that exposure is not reflected in your metrics.
The gap is the difference between being seen and being measured, and closing it requires a new playbook for visibility and recall.
How Zero-Click Reshapes Discovery
The zero-click trend is most disruptive at the very start of the customer journey. Your website used to be Rome; eventually, all roads led there. Now? Fewer and fewer organic roads exist. That means the earliest brand touchpoints are disappearing.
Here’s what that means for marketers today:
- Fewer chances for discovery. If users never click, they never see your story. All things that shape early perception, such as your messaging, your visuals, your value props, get skipped.
- SEO loses some steam. While organic optimization still matters for long-term discoverability (hello, LLMs absorbing and citing content), its ability to drive top-of-funnel awareness isn’t what it used to be. In a zero-click world, amazing content may rank, but still never get seen.
- Competition gets fiercer. If you’ve relied heavily on organic strategies alone, competitors who invest in paid ads are now likely to edge you out. Ads still sit above AI overviews in many results, and that’s prime real estate that’s hard to ignore.
- Research shifts elsewhere. With crowded SERPs and often confusing AI answers, users are taking their research off of traditional search platforms to other places. Social media, communities, and unowned channels are becoming important sources for educational content that feels clearer and more trustworthy.
Bottom line: the early doors to discovering your brand are closing faster than they’re opening. It takes a new mix of channels to ensure you’re still part of the conversation.
3 Steps to Reclaim Top-of-Funnel Presence
So what’s a marketer to do? Is all hope lost?
Show up where they are still landing: relevant active sites that deliver clear ad space to your target audience.
Advertising offers a direct and reliable solution to the awareness gap.
Unlike organic results, paid campaigns guarantee an immediate and prominent presence on SERPs and other digital platforms. That means eyeballs on your ads, even if a user doesn’t click on them.
Consider paid campaigns as a type of insurance policy against brand invisibility on the SERP.
Remember: early impressions = stronger recall later in the funnel. The power of showing up first cannot be overstated. Even if a user doesn’t click on your ad, the exposure to your name, logo, or key message fosters familiarity. Early recognition makes your brand more memorable when it comes time to convert.
Step 1: Implement An Awareness-Focused Advertising Strategy
If you’ve made it this far, you’re likely nodding along: zero-click is here, and advertising has to play a bigger role. But where do you start? The good news is you don’t need to overhaul everything overnight. Instead, think of paid as a strategic layer that enhances the visibility you’ve already worked hard to build organically.
Here’s the first step in making that shift in a way that feels purposeful, not scattered:
Leverage common queries
Run search and display ads tied to common zero-click queries. Many of the searches most impacted by zero-click are informational: “what is,” “how to,” and “why does” questions that rarely result in clicks. Instead of letting that traffic disappear into AI overviews, run search and display campaigns against these queries. Your brand may not get the click, but it will get the visibility, ensuring you stay part of the conversation even when Google is trying to keep people on the page.
Connect with tomorrow’s customers today. AdRoll makes brand awareness ads work for you. Get started with a demo.
Use what you already know
Build awareness campaigns in categories where your brand already shows up. If you’ve earned a featured snippet or knowledge panel, don’t leave it unsupported. Pair that organic placement with a targeted ad so your brand appears twice on the same page. This kind of overlap creates a halo effect: users perceive your brand as both authoritative and unavoidable. It’s one of the fastest ways to reinforce recall.
Enhance, don’t replace SEO
Paid advertising isn’t a substitute for strong organic presence, it’s an amplifier. Use ads to reinforce your authority and extend the reach of your organic work, not cover for it. Think of the two channels as partners: SEO earns you credibility, while ads guarantee visibility. Together, they create a more holistic visibility strategy that keeps you top of mind across formats and touchpoints. And don’t forget: LLMs and AI overviews are still learning from organic signals. If your content isn’t strong, your ads won’t carry the same weight.
At the end of the day, this isn’t about abandoning what has always worked. It’s about making sure your brand shows up where discovery is actually happening, whether that’s in a blue link, a snippet, or a sponsored placement.
Step 2: Measure Zero-Click Strategies The Right Way
Here’s the tricky part: in a zero-click world, traditional metrics don’t always tell the whole story. If you’re only watching organic traffic, it may look like your efforts are failing. But the reality is that influence is happening upstream, before a user ever lands on your site.
Here’s what to measure instead:
- Branded search volume. If more people are searching for your brand name specifically, you know your awareness strategy is working. This is often the clearest leading indicator of recall.
- Visibility share. Track how often your brand appears in SERPs, featured snippets, AI overviews, and paid placements, even if it doesn’t result in a click.
- Impression lift. Ads may not drive immediate conversions, but consistent exposure increases recognition. Measuring impressions alongside recall surveys can help connect the dots.
- Engagement on unowned channels. As research moves to social and communities, track where your educational content sparks conversations and shares outside of your own site.
The key is to shift from measuring traffic to measuring presence. Visibility in high-authority spaces, whether through organic or paid efforts, is the new top-of-funnel KPI.
Step 3: Connect The C-Suite To Zero-Click Strategies
Of course, metrics only matter if your leadership team understands them. However, many executives are still trained to see organic traffic as the gold standard. So when traffic dips, even for reasons outside your control, it can look like a problem.
This is where your role as translator becomes critical. You need to reframe the conversation from clicks to visibility, from pageviews to presence. The message to the C-suite should sound less like an apology and more like a strategic shift:
- A decline in organic traffic doesn’t equal a decline in influence. Zero-click means users may never land on your site, but they’re still seeing your brand. Visibility is impact.
- Your brand may actually be showing up more often. The problem is measurement, not presence. Snippets, AI overviews, and social conversations don’t show up in traffic charts, but they absolutely shape perception.
- Advertising fills the gap. Paid campaigns guarantee your brand isn’t invisible at the exact moment prospects are forming their first impressions, making it the perfect complement to organic efforts.
The way to make this stick with leaders is through narrative. Show them that early impressions are building brand memory. Connect branded search growth to that recall. Paint the picture that what looks like “less traffic” is often “more visibility in new places.”
Executives care about competitive positioning and long-term growth, not just line graphs. So remind them: being the brand people remember when it’s time to buy is the real win. Presence is what creates that memory, and memory is what drives future pipeline.
Zero-Click Isn’t the End. It’s Your Advantage If You Move First
Zero-click isn’t the end of marketing as we know it. It’s just the latest evolution in how people discover and remember brands. The marketers who win will be the ones who adapt their strategies, blending organic authority with paid presence, reframing their KPIs, and helping their companies understand what visibility really means today.
The awareness gap is real, but it’s also an opportunity. By rethinking how you measure, how you communicate results, and how you show up at the top of the funnel, you can set your brand up to thrive in an environment where discovery no longer depends on a click.
And this is only Part 1. In Part 2, we’ll dig into the real secret weapon in a clickless world: recall. Because the brands that stay top of mind are the ones that get chosen later. Advertising’s biggest power isn’t in driving a click, it’s in building the kind of recognition that lasts.
Check back soon on the AdRoll website for Part 2: How to Build Recall in a Clickless World.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by AdRoll. Used with permission.
In-Post Images: Image by AdRoll. Used with permission.
