The Real Threat Isn’t Keyword Bidding. It’s AI Search.Brands grew on digital advertising platforms. Let’s admit it!

The recent ruling against Google on keyword advertising has set a strong precedent in trademark interpretation and could influence similar debates in the EU and the US. But it also rests on a dangerous misreading of how advertising, and indeed the digital economy itself, has actually been working. The Indian Digital Industry cannot stay away from this conversation. 

By ASHOK MAHAPATRA – A seasoned Martech and Digital Growth Strategist with over two decades of experience across digital advertising, performance marketing, brand discovery, and platform ecosystems. He has worked closely with brands and businesses on customer acquisition, digital transformation, search strategy, and emerging AI-led discovery trends.

Let me start with something that struck me with the entire advertising model which has been prevailing till now: ‘Advertising has historically been controlled by the platforms and networks that own audience attention. This is not a Silicon Valley invention but the oldest commercial arrangement in the media Industry.

When sports channels and OTTs sell a prime-time slot during the IPL, they need not ask Pepsi’s permission before placing a Coca-Cola ad in the adjacent break. When Jio Ads places a competitor’s banner on your JioCinema dashboard, there is no conversation about trademark confusion. When Amazon’s sponsored listings put a private-label product directly below the brand you typed into the search bar, nobody files a suit. When Zepto, Blinkit or Swiggy place a rival’s quick-commerce offer above your preferred brand on their app paid placement, nobody calls that infringement. It is due to the network’s newer products, and the startup culture has thrived by opening windows  to dream and become brands.

The network sets the rules, monetises on inventory and runs the entire ecosystem, which requires huge resources. Today’s LLMs are burning resources and giving easy and optimised information to users because of the robust and exhaustive infrastructure, which is a financially draining exercise. The recent ruling in Hindware Ltd v. Google LLC, however well-intentioned, can risk disrupting vital parts of this entire advertising ecosystem and might also impact future startup ideas and D2C newbies.

India’s digital advertising market did not build itself. It was built on infrastructure, the search engines, social media and IOS /Android’s smartphone ecosystem  where India does search, shop and entertain generating huge amounts of data. This infrastructure has played a major role in the growth of many brands. One can’t ringfence the benefit of a platform and then sue the platform for the mechanism that created it.

A Generic Keyword cannot be a Trademark Asset.

Here is the part that needs better understanding : when a consumer types a Keyword into Google, they are interacting with a search engine, not walking into a showroom. The search bar is a discovery tool, not a brand promise. The keyword as a query is, at the moment of typing, a generic signal of intent to find me something in this category. Trademark protection applies to brand identity as a whole, not merely to a keyword signal entered into a search bar.

Consider the logical extension. If Google cannot auction a keyword, can it auction product specific keyword, service specific keywords ? Where does the protected perimeter end? And if any brand gets protected, which of the 12 lakh+ active trademarks in India’s registry today should Google pre-screen before running its auction? Who decides when a new brand crosses the threshold of protection? The Registry of Trademarks processes thousands of new applications every month. Are we seriously suggesting that Google must maintain a live, auditable, adjudicated database of every active trademark in India including contested ones  before any keyword auction can run? If that’s the case then the platform will have its discretionary authority to allow or restrict a brand from even being listed in the searches as its a private player.

“If your brand is so weak that a competitor’s Google Ad above your organic result costs you the customer, that is a brand-building problem, not a platform problem.”

— Ashok Mahapatra

Indian Consumers Are Not That Ignorant. The Data Proves It.

The average attention span online is now under 8 seconds. Bounce rates across Indian e-commerce and product discovery pages have climbed sharply as consumers have become more sophisticated, more decisive, and more brand-loyal. A consumer who typed “Iphone” into a search bar because they want Iphone Mobile will scroll past a Samsung ad. The same consumer who is genuinely in discovery mode who hasn’t decided  is exactly the consumer every brand should want competitors to reach, because that is how markets work.

Nobody confuses LG with Samsung. Nobody confuses Zerodha with Groww just because Groww’s ad appeared above an organic Zerodha link. The conversion rate optimisation data that every serious performance marketer looks at tells the real story that is click-through rate on a competitor’s branded keyword campaign is typically lower, bounce rate is higher, and conversion rate is worse because intent-mismatched traffic self-selects out. The market corrects itself. The consumer corrects it. And moreover the revenue on ads spent drastically decreases.

If we are genuinely worried about consumer confusion and traffic diversion from brands, the conversation should not be about competitor keyword bidding. It should be about something far larger and far more structurally disruptive and it’s already happening.

The Real Threat Is Not keyword bidding, It’s AI(AEO/GEO)

While brand owners and courts are fighting over who gets to appear in the second paid slot on a Google search ranking, the entire system itself is being quietly disrupted with the advent of AI. Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is the defining strategic shift in digital discovery right now, and it makes the keyword-advertising debate look dated. From discovery to engagement AI is being rapidly implemented across all levels to understand and optimise the user experience.

AI-powered answer engines Google’s own AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini  are increasingly giving consumers a synthesised answer to their query without tasking them with a single clickable ad or multiple choices to further research on. Today, AI referral traffic to websites is growing rapidly and discovery is happening inside the AI interface, invisible to brand attribution and invisible to trademark enforcement. Today if a consumer asks ChatGPT “best sanitaryware brand in India under ₹5,000,” the model can cite any brand that fits its algorithms. The recent ruling addresses a problem that is already being made redundant by a much bigger structural shift.

AEO is already handling an estimated 30–40% of informational search queries globally. Studies project a 25% drop in organic search traffic by 2026. At HubSpot, AEO-sourced traffic converted 3x better than traditional search clicks. The battle for brand discovery is moving off the SERP entirely and no trademark ruling addresses that.

Google Built the Road. Brands Grew on the Road. Own That.

I want to say this plainly, because I’ve spent over two decades working in the Digital marketing ecosystem and realised the brands that are loudest in celebrating this ruling grew exponentially on Google’s infrastructure. Their customer acquisition, their brand recall, their category leadership a meaningful part of it was built through Google Search, Google Ads, Google Maps, and Android’s distribution. That is not a knock on them. It is a fact.The keyword auction is not a bug in Google’s advertising system. It is the feature that funds the free search that powered your brand discovery for two decades. India’s 900 million internet users didn’t get free, high-quality search from the goodness of anyone’s heart. They got it because Google invested billions in the advertising business globally and that business’s core mechanic is keyword auctions. As a performance marketer, I’ve watched brands pay to defend their own branded keywords because a competitor was parked above them in paid results. It’s inefficient. It’s annoying. But the solution is better brand building, smarter bidding strategy, and a stronger value proposition as in the end consumers are increasingly sophisticated and difficult to mislead through clickbait tactics alone.

India’s digital economy is on a trajectory to be one of the world’s largest market of 900 million plus internet users, $22 billion in online advertising by 2034, and a startup ecosystem that has minted over 100 unicorns. Every single one of those unicorns used Google’s infrastructure at some point in their growth story.

The platforms are not perfect. Google has its own accountability challenges from dominance in search to data privacy to the antitrust questions being examined across multiple jurisdictions. Those are legitimate conversations worth having. But the recent ruling will make things more complicated for advertisers as now the platform will work on making its policies more stringent for advertisers. There has been a recent change in the policy on Google Advertising where in almost every aspect including the AI based placements are advertisers liabilities and this will get complicated from here on.

India’s digital economy deserves stronger consumer protection, smarter regulatory thinking, and a competitive advertising ecosystem that continues to encourage innovation. The challenge is not simply about keyword bidding anymore. The next battle for visibility, trust, and brand discovery will increasingly be shaped by AI-driven answer engines and platform-controlled discovery systems. As regulators, platforms, and brands navigate this transition, the focus should remain on balancing consumer clarity, fair competition, innovation, and the long-term sustainability of India’s rapidly expanding digital ecosystem.

DISCLAIMER

This article represents the personal views of the author in their capacity as a digital marketing practitioner and ecosystem commentator. It does not constitute legal advice, nor does it represent any affiliated organisation. Statistics cited are sourced from WPP Media TYNY 2026, Research and Markets Q1 2026, IMARC Group, Conductor AEO Benchmarks 2025, and Jacklimebear AEO Stats 2026. The author has no financial interest in any entity mentioned.