Google’s head of search data science told advertisers on Oct. 28 that people now come to Google earlier in their buying journeys, asking long, detailed questions that start a long way from a purchase. That same afternoon, Alphabet’s chief business officer told Wall Street that the AI Mode queries driving that shift make Google less money than traditional searches do.

Put those two statements side by side, and you have the planning problem facing every paid search manager heading into 2027. The queries are arriving at the top of the funnel , while most Google Ads accounts are still judged at the bottom.

This column pulls the advertiser lessons out of that conversation, checks its numbers against what Google has published elsewhere, and turns it into four changes you can make in your accounts before Black Friday.

An Ads Podcast That Went Organic On Purpose

On Google’s Ads Decoded podcast , Oct.…