Case Study: Q2 Search Cost Inflation Under AI Answers

As a journalist who still marks up media plans by hand, I keep returning to one point — 2% click growth against 17% spend growth is the new normal risk.

I am less interested in keynote poetry than in the levers a brand can actually toggle before Friday’s budget meeting.

1. Write the hypothesis first
2. Capture baselines before launch
3. Separate correlation from causality

If you only remember one habit from this piece, make it this: screenshot the served creative, not just the uploaded master. What ran is the truth; what you approved in the deck is often a polite fiction.

Source: Skai. Numbers and product claims above come from that reporting; interpretation is mine.