Today, the Internet suffers from a certain disaffection. Nothing drastic, of course, but it is sufficiently rare and structuring to be analyzed. More than 60% of brands in the United States are seeing a drop in consumption and transformation (according to the Contentsquare 2024 Digital Experience Benchmark Report). Among the many explanations, that of a laborious or even irritating internet experience should be considered. The excess of links, interactions and fragmented information, once synonymous with freedom and diversity, puts off younger generations who seek simpler and more fluid experiences. Visibly less amazed than their elders by the monopolistic giant Google, they favor TikTok and Instagram for their information searches, specialized sites or applications (food, films, music, events, etc.) in which their peers express themselves and inspire their confidence, within which the algorithms and their underlying data attempt to predict their expectations, in simple and engaging, personalized formats. Prabhakar Raghavan, vice president of Google, confirms this trend: “Nearly 40% of young people look for places to have lunch on TikTok or Instagram, rather than on Google. »
At the same time, and this is where the egg… or the chicken comes in, generative AI, even more magical than the Internet appeared to us at its birth, is exploding in use. It is sometimes difficult to determine whether it is the innovation that creates new expectations or whether it is our expectations that stimulate the emergence of this innovation.
With AI, the search for information is transformed
The usual curves for the adoption of innovations are then shaken up like never before. ChatGPT reached its first million users in 5 days while Netflix took 3.5 years. Thanks to its recent developments, and although it is not positioned as a search engine, Chat GPT provides concise and rapid responses, without drowning users under a multitude of links. Players like Microsoft with Copilot accessible from Bing, its search engine, or even Google with its new Gemini AI model, are investing massively in these new Search experiences.
While the giants work with strength, the new, agile kids innovate quickly and are in no way hampered by their size, their conscience or the weight of the past. This is the case of Perplexity which launched a generative AI search engine, offering an experience of rare simplicity and remarkable transparency. These tools, while disrupting the traditional research model, raise new questions: will the simplicity of generative AI distance us from multi-sourced information and thereby our capacity for analysis? Which among the giants or the new entrants will gain consumer and market adoption? Either way, the way we search for information is profoundly changing. With generative AI, it becomes more synthetic, simple, fast and vertical.
This change in behavior, although it mainly affects young people, executives and wealthy people, heralds a profound change in the fundamental economic models of the Internet and the entire media market. Currently, search results from paid search (SEA) and organic and free search (SEO) generate the majority of the sites’ audience. Google, which largely dominates this market, alone generates between 60% and 80% of total website traffic through SEO, with a clear domination of organic traffic compared to paid traffic.
But for how much longer?
Perplexity cites its few sources but has not yet developed an economic model. Chat GPT does not spontaneously and systematically cite its sources (but does so willingly when asked). What will others suggest? Many hypotheses and opportunities are currently being tested regarding the economic model. The offer will be structured, as always. It could be a video or text block in “position 0”, “sponsored responses” or even relevant product placements, but whatever the case, the preferential position will, by definition, be rare, because the virtue of the generative AI model in search is precisely not to result in a plethora of links.
At this moment in the history of the Internet, it is tempting to look forward to the future and see a big leap into the void. Exciting, unsettling, and whatever it is, uncertain. There is little way to go to see the possible end of a monopoly, that of Google, or of the duopoly it forms with Meta, as the latter, at the same time, is strongly threatened by TikTok.
Yesterday’s champions, perceived as punk within our economy, have undoubtedly become today’s new old guys.
