AI Overviews are reshaping Google Shopping so impressions fall while click rate rises, making dashboards look healthy as volume erodes. Australian advertisers should watch absolute volume, not comforting ratios.
The Take: AI Overviews are quietly reshaping Google Shopping, and the numbers on your dashboard are moving in a way that looks like good news. Impressions are down while click rate is up, so the averages look healthier even as the volume that pays your invoices shrinks. Read the trend, not the ratio.
The math: Between mid 2025 and mid 2026, median Shopping ad impressions fell from roughly 1.85 million to about 1.4 million while median click through rate rose from 1.20% to nearly 1.55%, Search Engine Roundtable reported. Fewer people see the ad. More of those who do see it click. The blended rate ends up flattering a shrinking base, which is how a metric can improve while the business behind it gets smaller.
Where median Google Shopping ad impressions landed by mid 2026, down from about 1.85 million a year earlier
The scale: Ad positions also vanish a meaningful share of the time an AI Overview appears, and mobile impressions for top ads have fallen with them. The buyer who used to scan a page of results is increasingly handed one synthesised answer, and your product is not always in it. The shelf is getting shorter and the fight for a spot on it is getting harder.
The upshot: Google still runs the large majority of search in Australia, and search carries the biggest slice of a local advertising market worth billions of dollars a year. That dominance is exactly why the shift matters here rather than somewhere far away. When the shape of the results page changes, Australian advertisers do not get to opt out of the consequences.
For Australian operators: Watch absolute impression and conversion volume, not just click rate and return on ad spend, because ratios can rise while the business shrinks. Expect Shopping reach to keep eroding where AI Overviews appear and spread your demand capture across more than one channel. Make sure your product feed and your brand are the ones the AI is pulling into its answer, because being the cited option is the new shelf position. Report volume trends to your team, not comforting averages.