The Searches You Can't See Anymore
💪How to add authentication to your app in minutes with Clerk, The next phase of AI competition may be fought on pricing and infrastructure, and more!
Howdy Readers 🥰
In this newsletter, you’ll find:
🔎 The Searches You Can’t See Anymore
🛍️ AI Shopping Is Becoming A Three-Way Race
🏆 Ad of the Day
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🔎 The Searches You Can’t See Anymore
Every Google Ads account has a junk drawer called “Other search terms,” the catch-all bucket for queries Google won’t show you in detail. Most advertisers treat it as a reporting quirk. It’s actually a preview.
The same informational queries clogging that bucket, the how, why, and where searches, are the ones Google’s AI Mode now answers directly in the search box, before anyone clicks anything at all. Three moves fix both problems.
Seed Your Negative List Before Launch ($500 value): Before a campaign goes live, pull every informational, top-of-funnel modifier from Keyword Planner and your own searches- terms like buy, free, how, where, cheap, who, what, when, and does- and add them as broad-match negatives at the ad group level.
With AI Max pushing broad match harder than ever in 2026, the average account now wastes 20 to 40 percent of budget on queries like these. Seed the list before launch, and the “Other search terms” bucket never forms in the first place.
Force Top Position Before Google Trusts You ($500 value) If your account has no conversion history, Smart Bidding will keep you out of the top spot no matter how relevant your ad is, because Google doesn’t have enough signal to risk it yet.
The override: one campaign, one ad group, one exact-match keyword, Manual CPC, bid aggressively enough to hold position consistently. Once Google has purchase-intent data on someone, it leans on Smart Bidding by default, unless your bid forces the issue.
Fight for the Auction That’s Replacing This One ($500 value). A clean account still loses traffic to a bigger shift. AI Mode, Google’s biggest Search upgrade in decades, now sends agents to crawl and answer queries before anyone reaches a page, paid or organic. The metrics that matter are changing too:
Citations inside AI answers
Prompt coverage across decision-stage queries
Mentions in fan-out results
On June 17, Chris Long, co-founder of Nectiv, walks through the I/O 2026 changes and the workflows that get you cited in AI search, hosted by AirOps. You can secure your free spot
Clean the account, win the auction you can still win, and start building for the one that’s already replacing it.
🛍️ AI Shopping Is Becoming A Three-Way Race
Amazon, Pinterest, and OpenAI each rolled out new commerce features aimed at turning AI-driven experiences into shopping destinations. The updates make it easier for brands, creators, and retailers to connect products with consumers at the moment of intent.
The Breakdown:
AI Shopping Assistant - Amazon combined Rufus and Alexa+ into Alexa for Shopping, letting users research products, compare options, and buy through conversation. Sponsored products and conversational ads are now embedded directly into shopping interactions.
Intent-Driven Advertising - More than 300 million customers used Rufus in 2025. Amazon says nearly 20% of shoppers continue engaging with brands after sponsored prompts, helping drive a 6% increase in conversions.
Creator Commerce Expansion - Pinterest is making product monetization more seamless by connecting directly with Amazon Storefronts. Creators can now turn product recommendations into affiliate opportunities without managing separate tracking links or manual setup.
ChatGPT Product Ads - Retailers can upload product catalogs and automatically generate ads from inventory feeds. The feature helps brands scale campaigns and surface relevant products during purchase-focused ChatGPT conversations.
Instead of waiting for customers to search and browse, Amazon, Pinterest, and OpenAI are embedding products directly into AI-driven experiences where purchase intent is already being expressed.
🏆 Ad of the Day
What Works:
Outcome Translation - The ad never forces consumers to understand hormone health. It converts a complicated mechanism into simple life improvements anyone can instantly value.
Time Compression - “In 2 Weeks” reduces psychological distance to results. Consumers are more willing to try solutions when benefits feel imminent rather than someday.
Symptom Targeting - Low energy, restless nights, and mood swings are emotionally painful problems. The ad focuses on felt experiences rather than technical diagnoses.
If your product solves a complex internal problem, never lead with the mechanism. Lead with the daily frustrations consumers already feel. People buy relief from symptoms they recognize, not solutions to biological processes they don’t fully understand.
🥳Events
🔥 Why Some Pages Get Cited In AI Search While Higher Rankings Get Ignored
June 17 | 60 Minutes | Virtual Event
Google’s AI Mode is changing how buyers discover brands, and rankings alone no longer guarantee visibility. Learn the content signals AI uses to choose citations, how to identify visibility gaps before they cost pipeline, and the workflows top B2B teams are using to earn references in AI answers, with insights from Chris Long, co-founder of Nectiv.
Can’t make it live? Register anyway, you’ll get the recordings within 24hours.
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