Terry Mo, Head of Digital, OMD UAE.Some time ago, a colleague was telling me about a holiday she’d booked on a remote island in the Philippines that I’d never heard of before.
“It’s amazing! Let me show you,” she said excitedly as she pulled out her phone to search. In typical Gen Z fashion, it wasn’t Google Images she was reaching for – it was TikTok.
She’s not alone – new OMD research shows that less than half of all Gen Z searches start on Google. Social platforms and, increasingly, AI ones combine to take the majority of Gen Z’s searches. And, before we write this off as some sort of niche, this is a generation The Economist describes as “unprecedently rich”.
McKinsey reports that Gen Z are “willing to splurge” even in the absence of financial security. With 63 per cent of the Saudi population and 36 per cent of the UAE population under 30, the transition of spending power from millennials to Gen Z is well under way.
So how do we navigate this new search landscape?
First things first – we do not want to write off the role of traditional search. It still plays a vital role in consumer purchase decisions, but that is a role that’s much better established in modern media planning practices. Our focus today is evolution, and that means we need to understand the importance of social search. It’s not just about images – Google Image search does that just fine, and arguably better. In a large part, it’s the presence of influencers that makes social search so trustworthy – 69 per cent of consumers trust influencer recommendations, and 76 per cent of consumers have bought something they’ve seen on social. This access to reviews from a trusted, neutral source is the key to the success of social search.
That same access is also critical for the new kid on the block. Generative AI platforms like ChatGPT have grown significantly in traffic, with behaviour mimicking that of traditional search – research, explaining concepts, planning itineraries – GenAI search is seeing strong adoption from all generations but particularly millennials and Gen Z. More than that, 70 per cent of all consumers trust the accuracy and comprehensiveness of AI results. It’s clear that these platforms are the future of search.
Enter GEO.
GEO, or generative engine optimisation, is an emerging discipline that focuses on understanding how these GenAI platforms are trained and how we can improve our brands’ visibility in these conversations. GenAI is becoming the new normal for people and it’s reshaping the search landscape. Just consider that 45 per cent of consumers are using GenAI for information gathering and finding answers to their questions, while 54 per cent now say they dig into topics more than they used to.
The advantage that GenAI provides here is comprehensive, summarised answers but still supports for deeper explanation – if you ask about a product category, GenAI will actively give a brand recommendation and reasoning rather than just a list of options.
More importantly, trust in GenAI platforms rose from 37 per cent to 61 per cent from 2024 to 2025, highlighting the increasingly crucial role that GenAI plays in consumer decision making.
So, what can brands do with this information? You first need to understand how different GenAI platforms see your brand’s USPs. They are trained to value the same USPs as consumers, so if there’s a mismatch then there’s a creative and comms challenge to be solved.
You also need to identify how visible your brand is on GenAI platforms. They are all trained differently, so visibility on AI Overviews doesn’t equate to visibility on ChatGPT. Another key consideration is how favourably GenAI platforms view your brand. These platforms don’t learn from just official marketing material and don’t hesitate to repeat the negative opinions they picked up from Reddit.
A comprehensive audit here will help you understand where consumers can and can’t find your brand, and how you can become more visible.
Brands that understand these factors are better able to craft a more meaningful approach. In a world where consumers’ expectations of search are evolving so rapidly, a smart GEO strategy can turn GenAI platforms into your loudest advocates.
By Terry Mo, Head of Digital, OMD UAE
