The End of the Hyperlink Economy: What Future Awaits Online Advertising?
9 experts shared their view
For three decades, the web has been sustained by the hyperlink, that delicate blue hinge always pointing elsewhere. It was the connective tissue of discovery, the skeleton upon which the entire economy of visibility was erected. With the advent of AI Max and the insertion of Ads in AI Overviews, that very ontology begins to fracture.
For hospitality, a sector long confined to the precarious margins of the search page, this collapse is both a threat and an opening. Visibility is no longer defined by positional ranking but by the capacity to be absorbed into a machine-generated narrative. The funnel dissolves, as discovery and transaction are compressed into a single utterance inside Google's closed ecosystem.
If we are indeed entering a zero-click web, a world in which information, intention, and monetization fuse into the same breath, and where advertising is no longer adjacent to content but embedded within the answer itself, the deeper question emerges: how do you imagine the landscape of online advertising evolving over the next decade?
The end of the hyperlink economy may very well also mean the end of Google domination. Owning 92% of online searches worldwide, Google has long been in a quasi-monopoly situation, but this is shifting quickly, as people are catching on the ease of using LLM for search purposes: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Mistral, Deepseek... These are all serious contenders to Gemini, which is now integrated in Google AI Overviews (and AI mode).
And let's not forget the social media ecosystem, where more and more travelers are getting their inspiration and information, from TikTok to Instagram to Pinterest or Facebook. Sure, YouTube is a key player, and is a part of Google, but the fact remains that its dominance is under threat like never before.
How will online advertising adapt? We already saw a shift towards influencers and content creators, as a mean to reach younger audiences and social media users. We can certainly expect big AI firms (OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity) to follow suit with advertising integrations in generated results. In fact, I am surprised that has not surfaced already, but it's only a matter of time...
The Fundamentals Stay the Same
Discovery may shift from hyperlinks to AI answers, but advertising still rests on the basics: segmentation, targeting, positioning, and brand building. These don"t vanish when the funnel compresses — they adapt.
AI Sharpens Context & Timing
AI delivers scale in context and timing. Instead of broadcasting to generic segments, messaging can now be individualized in real time, embedded directly into the consumer journey.
From Static Categories to Dynamic Products
In hospitality, this goes beyond ad placement. Selling rigid "standard, deluxe, junior suite" categories is a losing game. In a zero-click world, commoditized labels fade. The opportunity is dynamic, feature-based products that flex and adapt to each traveler. Only unique, flexible offers will get matched and booked.
The Next Decade
The fundamentals remain, but the product layer transforms. Dynamic inventory — offers that bundle and adapt in real time — will be essential. AI won't just distribute; it will curate.
Advertising must evolve into adaptive storytelling, where context, timing, and product assembly align. Instead of buying space on results pages, brands will compete to be surfaced inside AI narratives. The ad and the offer will fuse, and winners will be those with strong marketing and flexible products personalized at scale.
The investment won't be any less; maybe more. The search landscape, whatever its form, will inevitably migrate back to Google, a shift that the introduction of Gemini inside the browser will only accelerate. If the OTA model is truly sidelined, Google may look to take a significant portion of that revenue stream for itself.
Advertising will retain some of its hallmarks, using a query to promote based on key travel criteria like location, type, and price. But the critical difference is that these ads will be embedded within the AI's generated response. We won't know if the results are advertising-based, as the AI will present a single, seamless narrative. This is similar to streaming TV: we were promised a cheaper alternative to cable, but now we have more ads, fragmentation, and the cost is rising.
The fundamental question of bias and trust is paramount. Since no one really knows how these AI models work, we can't trust them to give everyone a fair chance. This opacity and lack of accountability will inevitably lead to a new round of antitrust and regulation in this space. We have to keep it real; no one is doing this for the consumer's benefit.
Online advertising in the next decade will feel less like "ads we notice" and more like a subtle influence inside the decision systems we rely on. Humans may not even see most ads; instead, our AI agents will negotiate on our behalf in a quiet marketplace of offers, incentives, and contextual placements.
My prediction is that advertising will evolve into three distinct forms.
The first is pay-per-impression and pay-per-click, formats that will survive for users who still choose to navigate websites. Banners, displays, and sponsored slots will not disappear immediately, but they will increasingly feel like the background hum of an older web.
The second is pay-per-mention, the true battleground of tomorrow. In this model, brands no longer fight for a slot around the answer but for the privilege of being inscribed within the answer itself.
The third is post-metasearch advertising, where metasearch does not die but fades from sight, reduced to a silent backbone that supplies ARI directly to conversational models. Discovery and conversion do not unfold sequentially here, they collapse into a single act.
And then comes the fourth layer: self-generating campaigns, designed and optimized by AI engines themselves. From AI Max to Meta, the gameplay will change. It will be better for users and hotels, more transparent and immediate, though perhaps worse for those who once built campaigns manually. But perhaps that is how it should be.
This is not the end of advertising, but its logical evolution. And it might be a lot of fun...
The collapse of the hyperlink economy signals a profound shift for marketing in the hospitality and tourism industries, adding yet another layer to the ever-evolving marketing landscape. For decades, hotels and restaurants have fought for visibility through search rankings and referral traffic, despite fragile link-based systems often limiting their effectiveness. Now, with AI-driven overviews, which compress comprehensive summaries of search, discovery, and booking information into a single answer, the rules of online advertising are being rewritten.
The new competition is not about winning clicks, but about earning representation in AI-generated responses. That means structured data, brand clarity, and trustworthy content will matter more than keyword bidding or banner placement. Optimization for machine readability will become increasingly critical. Moving forward, success in online advertising will hinge on partnerships with platforms, consistent and authentic brand storytelling, and the ability to navigate algorithms that mediate guest relationships.
Today 58.5% of US Google searches end without any clicks i.e. these are the so called zero click searches, where the user is satisfied by the information provided by Gemini AI on the first page of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).
So why is Google allowing for zero-clicks in the SERPs? On one hand, it is in line with Google's core mission to provide ultra-fast and relevant answers to any query. On the other, this is Google's reply to the fierce competition by AI Search and answer engines like ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, etc., which deliver information in the form of relevant zero-click answers and summaries.
What does it mean for hotel marketing? If there are no clicks, Google Ads become FREE MARKETING for the hotel since Google charges CPC (cost per click) only if someone clicks on your sponsored listing (Google Ads).
The moral of the story? Launch Google Ads a) focused on your branded keyword terms, with the goal of owning 100% SOV (Share of Voice), and b) focused on your main feeder markets that bring 80% of your business (The Pareto Principle). Due to the zero-click searches, the above will be very inexpensive, indeed!
I think we're going to see AI platforms emerge as the new marketplaces, as these players look to monetize the answers themselves rather than the clicks around them. In this environment, the future will belong to the companies, brands, and hotels that understand how to surface the most complete and relevant data sets to these large language models.
Whereas previously the path to purchase involved multiple clicks, website visits, and countless micro-moments, consumers are now compressing that journey into a single interface—asking their questions, weighing their options, and completing their transactions all within the AI. That shift doesn't just rewire performance media; it reshapes the entire competitive landscape, demanding that hospitality brands think less about chasing clicks and more about becoming the trusted, data-rich answers inside these emerging ecosystems.
In a zero-click world, advertising doesn’t vanish; it dissolves into the answer. Instead of a banner or link, the offer itself is seamlessly integrated with rates, perks, policies, and loyalty benefits already calculated and disclosed within the response.
The underlying economic engine hasn’t really changed in two decades; digital advertising has largely run on auctions; with search since 2002; and programmatic since 2009, even as formats and targeting evolved. Models now optimize for verifiable facts and promises you’ll keep, not clever words.
For hospitality, the job shifts from winning top search positions to being selected by providing trustworthy, answer-ready data (live inventory, prices, cancellation rules, accessibility, verified photos). Opening offers and policy APIs enable agents to place holds, confirm late checkout, or personalize perks. Loyalty programs should be machine-readable, with guardrails in place to prevent bots from over-negotiating.
At Oracle, our intention is to help brands connect their trusted enterprise data to AI models. With OPERA and Simphony serving as sources of truth, we enable secure, governed data feeds and action APIs through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Supported by identity, provenance, and observability controls, we can track revenue to answers given, moving from attention buying to offering selectable, proven facts.
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