5 brands driving growth on the AI Search frontier

For years, Search marketing was a game of manual precision: bidding on the right words to find the right person. But how people search has shifted toward multimodal discovery and conversational, compound questions. For marketers, this means the manual keyword approach has become a bottleneck to growth.

AI Max is unlocking billions of net new searches that these advertisers weren’t reaching before,¹ dynamically creating the right ad for the right consumer at the right moment. Across industries, brands are seeing results. Advertisers that adopt AI Max for Search campaigns are seeing 27% more conversions at a similar CPA or ROAS compared to campaigns that mostly use exact and phrase match keywords.²

Here are five brands leading with AI-powered ads to make the most of Search in the AI era.

Capturing complex queries with simpler campaigns

Lufthansa Group, a leading European airline group, knows that intent can shift dramatically depending on destination, time of year, and trip length. This complexity is reflected in both traveler intent and campaign structure.

Working with Publicis Media, Lufthansa Group adopted AI Max to simplify campaign operations for its airline Lufthansa (LH). Rather than manually setting up thousands of ads for every possible route or scenario, the Group focused on enabling AI to adapt to how people search and plan their trips. This allowed Lufthansa (LH) to capture longer, more specific queries such as “three-day weekend getaway Amsterdam with flights,” while serving relevant ads aligned with those long-tail queries.

The results were significant. Lufthansa Group streamlined the number of destination campaigns for Lufthansa (LH) by 66% while delivering a 24% lift in return on ad spend (ROAS) at a lower cost-per-click.

Finding just the right customer with intelligent Search

For Etsy, the bespoke, handmade, and vintage nature of its inventory is what makes the marketplace special. But the unique nature of Etsy’s inventory also presents a challenge when trying to scale its Search campaigns. This is where AI’s semantic understanding allows Etsy to decipher complex Search intent and connect customers to its unique inventory in ways keyword matching never could. AI drives not only discovery but also makes Etsy’s Search advertising far more effective.

Using AI Max to supercharge its targeting and creative, and using flexible budgeting, Etsy can capture demand in real time. During the 2025 holiday shopping season, Etsy was able to drive a 36% year-over-year increase in gross merchandise sales, partially attributed to AI Max, with unbranded Search ads while maintaining strict ROI targets. Crucially, the synergy between its durable measurement and AI Max supported a 21% surge in new buyer acquisition. Etsy has now scaled this agile, AI-led approach across its global portfolio to maximize search spend through demand-led growth.

Understanding and responding to user intent

L’Oreal’s marketing team has consistently been on the frontier of innovation. For their SkinCeuticals brand, L’Oréal wanted to see how AI could match complex user intent to particular deep-link locations, like specific serum pages, to improve relevance. The objective was to use the full AI Max feature set to increase efficiency compared to their well-optimized but “traditional” keyword strategy for a generic campaign.

Their testing surpassed expectations. AI Max drove a 126% higher ROAS and a 33% increase in conversion rates, proving AI Max’s ability to identify high-value, complex queries that traditional keywords missed. “AI Max didn’t just fit into our setup; it elevated it,” says Nadine Sommerfeld, media director at L’Oréal. “Automated solutions are now essential for unlocking the next layer of efficiency.”

Shifting from ‘brand defense’ to ‘unbranded discovery’

For legacy brands with massive recall, the challenge is shifting from “brand defense” to “unbranded discovery.” This was the case for Ikea U.S., which put AI Max to work to better connect with people searching for home inspiration.

Using all three levers of AI Max — search-term matching, text customization, and final URL expansion — Ikea took a full-funnel approach to bridge the gap between online inspiration and in-store foot traffic. The result was a 127% increase in physical store visits, a 65% lift in generic (unbranded) clicks, and a 28% boost in incremental ROAS.

Teaching an old dog new Search tricks

As a brand built on precision-focused pet nutrition, Royal Canin creates formulas for specific needs like breed, age, and health. Its marketing must be equally precise, meeting pet owners during their critical moments of need.

Royal Canin used AI Max to drive more conversions without inflating cost per acquisition (CPA). The team leveraged search-term matching to capture and convert highly specific, long-tail queries from concerned pet owners that were previously unreachable, including queries like “how many times a day to feed a puppy.”

Text customization then allowed the brand to tailor ad copy to precisely answer these queries in the moment. The results were transformative. While maintaining the same level of spend, AI Max drove a 263% surge in conversions while reducing CPA by 73%.

From execution to orchestration: The new steering controls

The mandate for marketing leaders in the AI era is to shift from execution to orchestration. Search allows people to do incredible new things and AI-powered ads are the only way to keep up with human curiosity. AI helps marketers better match their ads with consumer intent earlier in the journey, connecting with potential customers from discovery to decision. In a world where anyone can ask Search anything, sometimes the best answer is your ad.