Over the last year, I’ve spent a lot of time talking to growth leaders who feel the pressure of AI disruption every single day. One consistent theme stands out: AI isn’t just altering how we work. It’s fundamentally changing consumer behavior. 

Case in point: 80% of Google searches now end without a single click when AI overviews are present.¹ And to put a finer point on it: nearly half of people are willing to do product research with AI.²  Numbers like those reframe what we even mean by "the funnel." If half of consumers are comfortable researching products with AI, and four in five Google searches end before anyone clicks, the top of the funnel isn't a place we recognize anymore.

Earlier this year we conducted extensive research with BCG and found that channel mix is a huge indicator of how exposed different industries are to AI disruption. The reality is not all channels are equal in this new world. Some channels are quietly eroding, and others are not only holding their share of attention, but growing. That uneven picture is what gives advertisers real room to maneuver.

Disrupted supply, stable supply, and the cost of staying put

‍Based on our analysis with BCG, global digital ad spend can be divided into two general camps:

• Disrupted Supply (35% of spend): Channels vulnerable to AI changes, including traditional Search, Display, and Affiliate marketing.³
• Stable Supply (65% of spend): Channels anchored in deep user engagement including social, In-App Ecosystems, and Connected TV³

Looking at disrupted channels, AI is coming for the Mount Rushmore of marketing, the very channels many of us built our careers on. Cost-per-click in paid search is up 10% to 25%⁴ across many verticals as inventory tightens and competition stiffens. Meanwhile, affiliate revenues are down 7% year-over-year⁵ as LLMs increasingly answer user queries directly and bypass traditional referral links entirely.

Talking to growth leaders, I hear a version of the same thing again and again. Performance hasn't fallen off a cliff. It's just consistently harder to make the math work than it was a year ago. There’s a future where these legacy digital channels may evolve to meet the moment, but today? Relying on the media mixes of the past comes with what we can think of as a status quo tax. It doesn’t show up as a single line item. It shows up in efficiency that erodes, in CAC that creeps up, in the slow disappearance of brand visibility at the moment a customer is ready to decide.

Diagnosing where you actually stand is the first step, and it's simpler than it sounds. Two numbers tell you most of what you need to know.

1. What share of your traffic is organic direct? The cross-industry average is 51%,³ and you want to be higher. 
2. What share of your spend sits in disrupted channels? The average is 34%,³ and you want to be lower. 

Knowing exactly where you sit will give you a clear view of where you might be losing ground to disruption.

The channels that are holding, and why

‍Here's the part of the conversation I find more energizing. Not every channel is eroding. Some are holding their ground. A few are growing. So once you understand your visibility risk, the second step for the marketers who are moving decisively is to build an undeniable business case for investing in channels that inherently thrive in a post-AI world.

Mobile apps are one of them. Users spend less than six seconds of every mobile minute inside a browser. The other 54 seconds happen inside apps.⁶ And year over year, in-app purchases for consumer apps grew 21%.⁷ People aren't just spending their time in apps. They're spending their money there. 

The performance picture is even clearer. Marketers who diversified beyond Google and Meta into the independent app ecosystem saw up to 116% higher Day 30 ROAS than teams who kept spend concentrated in the walled gardens.⁸ That diversification is the advantage. The independent app ecosystem spans the millions of apps that sit outside Google and Meta, and for many consumer brands, it's also the part of the mobile mix that's been least explored.

CTV is the other channel I’ve been digging into, for many of the same reasons. CTV shares the same DNA as mobile when it comes to capturing deep attention and driving performance. Nearly a third of viewers have shopped for products directly via on-screen QR codes or links.⁹ And from what we're seeing inside our own data, two-thirds of Moloco CTV-driven installs happen within six hours of someone seeing an ad.¹⁰ CTV is a huge opportunity to reach your key audiences where they’re engaging the most.

Treat your channel mix as a strategic advantage

The status quo tax compounds quietly, but the opportunity it points to is the same shape as the disruption itself. The channels that hold attention now are more likely to continue to hold it as AI reshapes what comes next.  

So the work in front of growth leaders right now is to understand: Where are you overextended? And where are you underleveraged? There are millions of  apps in the Apple and Google Play stores. The vast independent app ecosystem becomes a real growth channel for consumer brands when AI is doing the work of finding and re-engaging the right users at the right moments. This is where attention lives. And it's still wide open.

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Sources
1. Similarweb, “Zero-Click Searches and How They Impact Traffic,” May 2025.
2. Attest, “2025 Consumer Adoption of AI Report,” July 2025, n=5,000 adults in US, UK, Canada, and Australia surveyed on the Attest platform.
3. Moloco and Boston Consulting Group (BCG), AI Disruption Index, 2026. Proprietary joint survey of 283 marketing decision-makers (VP- and C-level) across 15 industry verticals and 5 global regions, representing companies with annual revenues ranging from $50M to $10B+.
4. WordStream/LocaliQ’s 2025 benchmark, based on 16,446 U.S. search-ad campaigns from April 2024 to March 2025, found median CPC up 12.88% YoY overall, with CPC increasing across 87% of industries.
5. Partnerize, U.S. Retail Affiliate Marketing Sales Index, updated through February 28, 2026.
6. SensorTower, ‘State of Mobile 2026’, 477 billion hours spent globally in mobile browsers out of a total of 5.3 trillion.
7. SensorTower, ‘State of Mobile 2026’ 2025 YOY Growth of IAP and Subscription Revenue for Applications (Non-Games).
8. Singular analysis of D30 ROAS across 1,000 apps representing $5bn of media spend. Consumer apps (Non-Gaming) that spent 70%+ of budgets on Meta & Google vs. Consumer apps who spent <70% on Meta & Google.
9. eMarketer, Second-Screen Behavior Will Define CTV Strategy in 2026.
10. Moloco internal data. Analysis of 26 advertisers running both Moloco Performance CTV and Moloco mobile UA campaigns simultaneously in the US. Analysis period: January 5–18, 2026. Sample: 350,000+ total CTV installs. Non-LAT devices only. Metric: proportion of CTV-attributed installs occurring within 6 hours of ad impression, weighted average by install volume across all 26 advertisers.

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