Pre-AI, we used to spend upwards of $60K a year on Google Ads to keep our inbound pipeline running.
In the post-AI world, that spend dropped to $0. Not because Google Search suddenly stopped working, but because our segment (low-code platforms) was one of those that AI was going to disrupt significantly. We had to rethink and adapt our offering to the AI world before doubling down on marketing.
Now that we’ve repositioned and adapted our product, our marketing team has started experimenting with OpenAI as a channel, but we haven’t switched Google Ads back on.
There’s also something I find interesting about this shift. Google Ads always felt a bit like a mafia tax. When we stopped paying, our organic traffic seemed to take a disproportionate hit too. We could never quite figure out why. Maybe it was coincidence, maybe something else, but it left us questioning how independent organic search traffic really was from paid search.
In the post-AI world, that spend dropped to $0. Not because Google Search suddenly stopped working, but because our segment (low-code platforms) was one of those that AI was going to disrupt significantly. We had to rethink and adapt our offering to the AI world before doubling down on marketing.
Now that we’ve repositioned and adapted our product, our marketing team has started experimenting with OpenAI as a channel, but we haven’t switched Google Ads back on.
There’s also something I find interesting about this shift. Google Ads always felt a bit like a mafia tax. When we stopped paying, our organic traffic seemed to take a disproportionate hit too. We could never quite figure out why. Maybe it was coincidence, maybe something else, but it left us questioning how independent organic search traffic really was from paid search.