If your growth model still depends on paying for search, you’ll soon be out of luck, a strong brand is needed to navigate industry changes.
There will be plenty of hip thrusts and pyrotechnics as the semifinals of the Eurovision Song Contest get underway in Vienna on Tuesday night. But this year a controversy around Israel’s participation in the campy celebration of music has the potential to overshadow the annual show of Schengen-area unity. As contestants were getting ready for the first round of competition, an unsettled scandal from last year resurfaced, creating a new cycle of headlines and another round of controversy.
In May 2025, Austrian singer JJ won Eurovision. Israel’s contestant, Yuval Raphael, came in second. But there was a major discrepancy between the official juries’ votes, which put Raphael in 14th place, and the results of the fan vote, which she won. This disparity led several members of the European Broadcasting Union, which operates the contest, to call for an audit and transparency with the data. (The director of the song contest told the BBC that “an independent compliance monitor reviews both jury and public vote data to ensure we have a valid result.”) Others floated theories that Israel had inappropriately influenced the results by boosting its contestant, but in a secret ballot, members of the EBU voted to enact rule changes, a result that permitted Israel to continue competing.
On Monday, The New York Times published an investigation revealing the extent of the Israeli government’s efforts to ensure the country remained in the competition as the war in Gaza became a subject of international controversy. Senior Israeli diplomats reportedly contacted officials and members of the EBU directly to make their case, one part of a broader effort to help Israel’s chances. The paper also alleges that a campaign boosting the country’s competitor might have been enough to change the outcome of last year’s contest.
According to records from the Israeli Government Advertising Agency, per the Times, the government of Israel spent at least $800,000 on ads to promote its Eurovision contestant in 2024. The Times says that an even larger campaign took place in 2025, though the outlet also reports that it did not find evidence of bot voting or other covert tactics having been used to directly manipulate the vote.
Israel has competed in Eurovision since 1973 and also hosted the competition in 2019, following its win in 2018. Doron Medalie, an Israeli songwriter who previously wrote for the country’s Eurovision acts, told the Times that the government has been running media campaigns to support its competitors since at least 2018. “Everybody is jealous and triggered because Israel is achieving great results,” he told the Times. Medalie denied that the government did anything inappropriate. (The Israeli government did not respond to the Times’ requests for comment.)
There have been some heated moments at Eurovision over the last decade, mostly related to pro-Palestinian sentiment appearing on air during the contest. In 2019, Iceland was fined after the members of its competing act held up scarves featuring the Palestinian flag on air. But generally, Eurovision has proceeded apace—until this year. After the 2025 voting controversy and amid the war in Gaza, Iceland, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Slovenia announced that they would not participate in 2026’s Eurovision as long as Israel remained in the competition.
Spain’s decision to bow out was particularly notable; that country was one of the big five that provided the most financial support to Eurovision, alongside the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy, and thus was automatically advanced to the finals. Its historically high status at Eurovision made the nation’s choice especially pointed.
The discontent is also playing out on the ground in this year’s host city. According to the AP, several pro-Palestinian demonstrations are planned for Vienna, and additional forces have been deployed from Germany to help with crowd control. It’s unclear if the tension will also make it inside the arena. This year’s contestant from Israel, Noam Bettan, will be taking the stage about halfway through the night on Tuesday, after Estonia’s entrant, Vanilla Ninja. Will he be glad he has extra experience performing to a booing crowd?
These figures may reflect the extremes. But independently, several CMOs confirmed to me that their search traffic is down sharply — and maintaining it now costs significantly more than it did two years ago.
Google is becoming the destination
As ChatGPT, Perplexity and the like are eating into search, Google is doing everything it can to keep users inside its own interface.
With AI Overviews, the platform is moving from a traffic distributor to an active intermediary that captures attention, shapes decisions, and monetises both.
Brands are no longer just competing with other brands. They are competing with the interface itself.
For two decades, marketers treated Google like a demand vending machine: insert budget, select keywords, receive customers. We built an entire profession around tweaking websites and keywords, so that brands show on Google page one.
In a world where you can’t reliably pay platforms to send customers your way, a strong brand will remain the best insurance policy.
Search marketing worked because of an implicit agreement: Google passes people on.
That agreement has now been cancelled – and it’s just a preview of what comes next.
Increasingly, AI agents can make purchasing decisions on behalf of humans. The platforms will no longer just be intermediaries. They could turn into buyers.
Marketers are again flocking to optimise for this. Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) trainings are full. Sure, GEO is a no-regret move. But growth from such optimising still rests on one assumption, that in the future, platforms will still send customers your way.
They might do, but equally, they might not.
Brands and relationships
As optimising auctions becomes harder, strong brands and direct customer relationships will decide the winners.
People search “Porsche”, not “fast car”. “Swiffer”, not “disposable duster”. “PlayStation”, not “computer game”. If customers look for your brand instead of the category, you have already won half the battle.
Where does the AI learn what the customer prefers? From the human’s past behaviour. If your brand is already preferred, the machine learns that preference and acts on it. If your brand is unknown, the machine sorts by price and availability. You become a commodity by default.
For years, marketers have shifted budgets away from brand building into so called “performance marketing”. It was easier to do that traditional campaigning, as it was quick and promised easy returns.
Many of us have pointed out that imbalance. Now the bill arrives.
Strong brands survive platform shifts; weak brands probably won’t.
In a world where you can’t reliably pay platforms to send customers your way, a strong brand will remain the best insurance policy.
A good image and salience aren’t enough. Strong brands build preference — the third step in the funnel after awareness and consideration. Preference is what makes someone ask for you by name, before they even check out alternatives. You can’t buy that. You can’t GEO-optimise your way to it. Building preference requires the full 4Ps marketing toolkit — as well as insight, creativity, and consistency.
There’s another path to thrive outside the platforms and that’s direct customer relationships. Not attribution models, not dashboards — actual connections. Be that email lists, loyalty programs, apps, user groups, subscriptions. Every direct relationship you own has compounding value.
From L’Oréal to Air France to Adobe, brands worldwide have made the shift to direct relationships. It won’t work for all categories. B2B or service brands will, admittedly, find this easier.
And building customer relationships is much more work than paying a platform to send people to you. You have to earn the opt-in. But the return is a feedback loop and an audience no platform can take away.
A refocus on brands and relationships doesn’t mean abandoning Google. To the contrary. To build brand preference and relationships, marketers must deploy the most effective channels — online and offline — including social, AI agents, YouTube, TV, and more.
For strong brands, the switch will be easier. For weaker ones, it means surviving the search drop while building brand strength and relationships simultaneously. It’s harder. But it’s the only switch worth making.
Because the click is fading.
Strong brands and customer connections scale, they always have.