The Eight-Point Guide to Google’s Think Leads On Air 2025

Authors: Humberto Briceno, James Glew, Caitlynn Goheen, Matt Kalustian, Ann Marie Gresham

Google’s Think Leads On Air is an annual virtual event for everyone who wants to improve their paid search results to drive quality leads and deliver success. This year, the event was held September 11 and featured presentations from industry experts on the wonders of lead generation and navigating unpredictable consumer behavior in advertising.

Our Playlist: The Biggest Takeaways From Google Think Leads On Air 2025

There were a handful of valuable takeaways amid all the self-promotional fluff one would expect at a Google event. Points ranged from highlighting useful metrics around the adoption of new tools to announcements of upcoming pilots, and, of course, AI talk. 

Our team attended the event and scrutinized every point of discussion in order to bring you our who’s who and what’s what of the day. This list includes recommendations of where to go from here to help you save time and drive efficiency.

The biggest takeaways from Google Think Leads On Air 2025 were:

• Google Is No. 1 for Lead Gen
• YouTube and TikTok Go Head to Head
• The Power Pack for Lead Gen
• Demand Gen Is Ubiquitous
• AI Max Is Here
• Google Wants Data
• Perpetual Testing Is Key
• AI Does More Than Personas

1. Google Is the No. 1 Platform for Lead Gen, and Comprehensive Reach Is Why.

So, we know why you’re here. It’s the same reason we all advertise on Google, and the range of channels it has developed or acquired over the last few decades. In 2025, only Google offers unified access to search, streaming, scrolling, and shopping. It may not be an “everything app,” but it’s critical for advertisers with a focus on long-term lead generation. 

On a macro level, it’s clear that Google is at its peak today when it comes to volume and ubiquity. With over 5 trillion searches each year, the global powerhouse plays a key role in customer purchase decisions and life outside of the bottom line. 

With hundreds of digital touches in the average consumer’s day, there is a lot of room for ads. Often, the goal of advertising may seem to be to insert conversion opportunities into every part of a potential customer’s life. In a way, this assessment is not incorrect. 

The real question is how do we do that through Google? We meet customers where they are with an omnipresent approach that delivers seamless sponsored placements to users, providing content that is often just as helpful as the organic results it appears beside. Google is the only platform in 2025 where we can do this. AI Overviews don’t get us there; a multichannel approach does. 

Take a consumer who is first exposed to content on a YouTube Shorts placement, doing more research through full-length videos, seeing display ads as they go about their week, and then finally clicking on a search placement down the line, becoming a qualified lead for your business. TikTok, Bing, and other platforms may also play a role, but Google continues to be the foundation of successful lead generation strategies in 2025. From what we can see, that’s not going to change any time soon.

2. YouTube’s Still in the Running; TikTok Isn’t the Only Option for Gen Z

Although it’s only been around since September 2020, YouTube Shorts has been positioned by Google as its “Next Big Thing” on social media. Take the statistic that’s been called out in recent articles on the channel’s potential: “45% of YouTube Shorts Users Aren’t on TikTok” . 

This fact alone could suggest that YouTube Shorts is a hidden gem, with net-new traffic ripe for the picking. But it’s also important to note that this data was from a survey taken in February 2025, when TikTok was freshly back from a brief interruption in services a month prior. 

In September 2025, TikTok surpassed YouTube Shorts in monthly active users—183 million versus 164 million. While there is certainly overlap in viewers on these platforms, we suspect that there may be more than what was reported in Google’s survey. 

When we look at other platforms, the biggest difference we see is in YouTube Shorts watch rates, compared here relative to TikTok and Reels: 

Watch rates for YouTube Shorts fall below competitors across all creator sizes, and we can assume that a similar trend holds true for sponsored content on the platform. Anecdotally, we’ve seen Shorts watch rates fall to as much as 75% lower than standard YouTube placements. The silver lining? We also see much lower CPCs on mobile-first Shorts Ads.

YouTube Shorts watch rates may come in last place compared to other platforms. But the ability to leverage the breadth of Google’s data signals more than makes up for the platform’s inability to beat TikTok or Reels in a popularity contest.

As Google’s own short-form content channel, YouTube Shorts gets a lot of credibility and effectiveness by pure osmosis. With 82% of users asserting that YouTube Creators are the most trustworthy in the biz, it’s prudent to leverage the channel as a part of the path to purchase for high-value products and services. 

Google isn’t making the full pivot to only short-form content, though. In July 2025, the company discontinued YouTube Trending in order to promote more personalized Explore and Category charts. This is a positive development for advertisers, as greater personalization creates a more direct path to purchase. When customers can easily find what they’re looking for, brands have an opportunity to capture attention in the “right place at the right time.”

3. The Power Pack for Lead Gen: Meet the New Performance Max

Lead gen sales don’t usually follow an impulse decision based on seeing a viral TikTok on your FYP. Consumer behavior can be more unpredictable today than ever before. But you wouldn’t know that based on Google speaker John Nicoletti’s emphatic assertion that we are living in the “Golden Age of Search”.

Even though we may not feel like 2025 is the quarter-century “golden age” of anything, it’s true that as advertisers, we have more data to work with now than at any other time in our lives. But honestly, that’s kind of obvious. We see platforms grow, compete, consolidate, and grow again. Today, that growth is often tied to the “AI” buzzword. 

We’ll get to the utility of AI later, but many people forget that the building blocks for Google’s latest toys (AI Max, looking at you) exist in other channels. Performance Max and Demand Gen are essential to driving quality lead volume at scale.

Google’s Lead Generation Power Packs

• For Greater Control: AI Max for Search and Demand Gen (YouTube and Shorts)
• For Greater Reach: AI Max for Search, Demand Gen (YouTube and Shorts), and PMax

Not including PMax in the power pack for controlled lead generation seems like a concession to those who’ve seen the channel fail to deliver quality leads in the past. With spammy leads and clicks from channels like Display or Maps, Performance Max had been something of a black box without channel-level visibility. 

But all that has changed with the new Channel Performance feature in Google Ads Platform. Now, we can see what channels our Performance Max placements are showing on—from Gmail to Google Search—and track impressions, spend, clicks, and even conversions all the way down the funnel. 

“The channel performance feature is a total game-changer, allowing us to monitor channel-level performance and conduct tests on channel-level controls. This means we can implement and iterate on successes across fully transparent Performance Max campaigns, proactively adjusting based on how the algorithm optimizes delivery. “ – James Glew, Paid Search Analyst

We’ve been leveraging this reporting feature across all verticals. Here are some of our observations: 

• Policy issues impact different channels selectively, and not every campaign will be distributed evenly across the board.
• The Discover Channel is the first to go when targets like CPA and ROAS are made more stringent.
• View through conversions on Maps can inflate reported performance.
• Search and YouTube tend to be the channels more frequently prioritized by Performance Max campaign mechanics in lead gen campaigns.

Of course—as Google loves to caveat with—results will vary.

4. Demand Gen Is Ubiquitous in 2025

Above all, the campaign type that got the most shoutouts over the course of the day was Demand Gen. Specifically, the one-two punch of YouTube and YouTube Shorts. This is actually a testament to Google’s transparency. One of the key differences between Demand Gen and Performance Max is the ability to select which channels ads will show on in Demand Gen campaigns. 

With the goal of eliminating spammy clicks and low-quality leads, it makes sense that a few channels will end up on the chopping block. But all of Google’s highlights were limited to AI’s power in search efforts and the trust consumers have in Google’s owned video channels. 

“I would’ve liked to see creative solutions to the problems lead gen advertisers face with the limited utility of Display, Gmail, and Maps ads when it comes to our unique business objectives. These channels exist, so instead of just dumping them and talking about how great video ads are, I’d love for Google to focus on improvements made for lead generation efforts on channels beyond the basics in 2026.” – James Glew, Paid Search Analyst

Both the power pack for control and the power pack for reach featured Demand Gen at their core. No one’s going to argue with recommendations to show video ads. Smart bidding was also heavily recommended. All the same, no one is going to argue with recommendations to turn on smart bidding. And when it comes to using customized lead forms to minimize spam leads, I’m sure no one in the room had a dissenting opinion. 

The 2025 Power Packs continue to be the foundation for successful lead generation strategies. AI Max may be a new addition, but we don’t expect its presence to be fleeting as Google continues to roll out AI-powered tools every year.

5. AI Max for Search Is Not Ready for the Spotlight (But It’s Getting There).

The biggest problem with AI Max for Search is a lack of transparency. What little visibility is offered through reporting is not at an appropriate level for the mass rollout of a brand-new tool:

• Google’s AI Max for Search option shows no insight into how often ads are showing in AI Overviews. 
• There’s no way to see what your ads look like when they appear in AI Mode, if they ever do. 
• Until September 2025, there was no way to control the headlines being generated en masse by the still-learning machine.

This isn’t an argument against AI Max; it’s just the reality. Turning on AI Max is not going to be the sole factor in driving 27% more conversions. At best, it’s just delivering the same performance as before but under a new name. At worst, it’s opening up your efforts to irrelevant traffic and presenting consumers with unintelligible, sloppy headlines. 

We’ve seen AI Max struggle to deliver copy that matches user intent. More often than not, headlines are less complex than manually generated copy, and we see instances of headline repetition that are not present in standard campaigns. An AI-generated headline like “Learn More | Learn More | Learn More” may pique interest due to its sheer ridiculousness, but it’s certainly not what we were promised. 

But, there is a slim chance that your AI campaign will pull off its mission with sublime efficiency. AI Max campaigns allow us to work placements more naturally into day-to-day searches. We can tackle no-intent searches—like “why is there low water pressure in my sink?”— by showing ads for an expert alongside Google’s AI-generated tips for would-be at-home plumbers. A clickable headline tailored to fit seamlessly alongside helpful content is only possible through AI Max’s ability to turn search signals and complex queries into custom headlines. Manual copy just can’t accomplish this at scale. 

“The real promise of AI Max is context—placing adaptable, intent-aware headlines beside helpful content and meeting users before they realize they are shopping.”

– Humberto Briceno, Paid Search Analyst

6. Google Wants Data. Feed the Beast To Win.

The realities of good versus bad lead quality is what sets lead gen apart from other objectives. From impression to click to conversion, campaigns can appear to perform exceptionally. But if the conversions result in low-quality leads, those efficiencies are meaningless. Unlike how it is applied in user-facing AI Max campaigns and Gen AI, Google’s AI has been quietly working behind the scenes to take these lead quality signals and put them to use for years. 

With consumer privacy a primary concern of the industry, features that facilitate thoughtful and considered data management are essential to avoid losing information that has fueled highly efficient campaigns. 

Google Tag Gateway allows your tagging setup to capture data that would be otherwise lost due to browser settings under normal configuration. Advertisers that enable Google Tag Gateway see 11% more signals after enabling. With data, a “more is more” approach is key. 

When leveraging smart-bidding strategies like target Cost per Conversion (tCPA) and target Return on Ad Spend (tROAS), campaigns build off of three data sources available to Google:

1. Google’s data allows us to take the world and shrink it to a more manageable cohort of relevant potential customers based on demographics, geographics, and granular user behavior details that only Google can offer.
2. This online data, by way of campaign performance, optimizes our efforts so they continue to iterate on successes and learn from missed opportunities to convert. 
3. We can use offline data from CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems to further optimize our campaigns and go from “click to lead” to “click to high-quality lead.” For lead gen advertisers, this offline data is the most critical piece of the digital marketing puzzle.

These levels of data provide Google’s AI with a three-dimensional view of your consumer base. It allows the AI to predict consumer value, understand the entire consumer journey, and most importantly, find new pockets of demand. The simple shift from 2D to 3D through the additional layer of data accompanied a 19% boost in first-time applications for Paylocity. We’ve seen similar results, as well. Maximizing the number of signals our campaigns work with is best practice across every vertical. 

“As AI-powered products like the Power Pack continue to evolve, the need for robust offline first-party data is more important than ever. This is the missing puzzle piece for many advertisers that can make a significant difference in the AI-powered optimization of Google Ads campaigns.” – Ann Marie Gresham, PPC Specialist

Our recommendation is the same as Google’s: Add as much rich data as you can to your campaigns, and update it as frequently as possible. 

7. Perpetual Testing Is Key, and Results in Google Analytics Are the Best Way To Measure Impact.

The only way to iterate on past success is to continuously test and implement new strategies. This allows us to hone our campaigns and drive efficient lead generation year after year. The unpredictability of the modern consumer makes this even more important. As one speaker put it, the best advertisers “prioritize testing, stay scrappy, [always] looking for an edge and dreaming big.” 

Leveraging as many signals as possible is key to lead gen success. This expands beyond Google ads to other platforms, too. MMMs (Marketing Mix Modeling tools) help advertisers bridge the gap from Google to Meta and everywhere in between.

• Reports on Google Analytics allow us to measure the results of texts in order to make high-impact adjustments to campaigns.
• New lead acquisition and lead disqualification reports measure the volume of good-quality versus bad-quality leads.
• New audience template features let us act on these insights. We can use the most qualified leads to nurture future opportunities or leverage disqualified lead data to further narrow traffic and exclude potentially poor-quality leads. 
• Journey-aware bidding, the newest pilot mentioned at Think Leads On Air 2025, didn’t get a solid description, but it seems exciting and will be part of our own strategic test implementations for lead generation clients. 

8. AI Can Do More Than Just Audience Personas

Audience personas have always been a part of lead generation. Near the end of the session, Google presented the use of Gemini to create personas and visualize elements of the lead gen process. It may be fun to engage with Gemini and ask questions like “If you were a millennial B2B buyer in tech, would you rather fill out a form or talk to a rep”—but A/B testing can accomplish the same thing. 

Google knows this, too. This was one of the few sessions of the day that felt more like filler than anything else, and didn’t come with any success stories or flashy metrics. 

AI is more than just a fun toy for generating audience personas or a sounding board to bounce ideas off of. In our industry, AI promises reduced time spent on low-impact tasks, more signals for campaigns to leverage, and an improved user experience for potential customers seeing out ads. It is also already powering a lot of campaigns behind the scenes, from categorizing a user’s behavior to running the algorithms powering keyword match types. (Read more about how AI powers Google.)

But AI only delivers on its promise when it is powered by strong data. With consumers hitting more than 130 digital touchpoints a day, AI has the information it needs to simplify decisions, surface the right content, and uncover new demand. However, it needs accurate CRM and offline inputs to make Google’s performance gains real. 

AI can be a great driver, but it still needs a great navigator to get there. We are the navigators to get it there. 
Want to see how our PPC team can deliver for you and your clients? We’d be happy to dig in and discuss strategies. Reach out to us using our contact form, or connect with us on LinkedIn.