Koah Insights: How GenAI Is Changing Digital Advertising
Kane Russell
Chief Revenue Officer
At Koah, we’re building the “AdSense for GenAI” — a monetization layer that lets AI apps integrate contextual, native ad formats (think text, links, carousels), without compromising user experience.
As pioneers in this space, we believe progress comes from continuous experimentation and open sharing of what works and what doesn’t. In this insights roundup, we’re sharing key findings drawn from our latest experiments and research.
GenAI Expands the Funnel
Context Beats Placement: Organic First, Then Paid
Optimizing the Post-Click Experience Matters
#1: GenAI Expands the Funnel
Google = Transactional
When you think about Google Search Engine Marketing (SEM), ads render according to specific user requests, e.g. “buy running shoes,” “find cheap flights,” and “best credit cards.” Like a butler fulfilling whims on-demand, SEM helps marketers cover specific, transactional points in users’ purchasing journeys.
GenAI = Exploratory
GenAI ads, on the other hand, offer opportunities for marketers to expand funnel coverage significantly. Across millions of AI queries, users engage through the entire purchasing funnel — often in the same session. GenAI users explore, compare, and figure out what they want all in the same channel.
Here’s a favorite real world example: “How the f*ck do I pay for law school?” The query’s emotional notes, and implied trusted advisor relationship, demonstrate user intent far outside of what Google has provided for marketers.
Consider:
After analyzing 22M+ queries, 90% show top or mid funnel user intent. Users lean on GenAI to collect information and understand options.
Ads speaking to top funnel pain points show a 2-4X higher clickthrough rate compared to traditional marketing channels.
Why this matters
GenAI is part search, part YouTube — combining intent + exploration in the same channel.
With Koah, advertisers can reach users earlier in their journey, tapping into emotional and contextual moments even as they're still shaping what they want.
#2: Context Beats Placement: Organic First, Then Paid
Google search prioritizes paid content. SEM ads are the first thing you see in search engine results pages, followed by organic SEO links. For the longest time, Google and other search engines have tried to monetize intent by displaying paid ads first.
Interestingly, GenAI behaves differently. Because users engage with GenAI in a completely new way, not just searching but exploring - the location of high-performing paid placement changes.
By displaying GenAI ads after the organic chatbot response, performance improves dramatically.
Suffix ads drive 2× higher click-through rates compared to other placements.
Why this matters
GenAI reshapes how marketers can target user intent. By launching ads speaking to conversational, emotional, and exploratory queries, there’s more demand in play.
Koah partners with publishers and advertisers to create the highest quality monetization possible. Get in touch with us.
#3: Optimizing the Post-Click Experience Matters
After analyzing millions of GenAI queries across the globe, we were surprised to see a large distribution of queries on mobile devices — opening up a key optimization step for marketers.
GenAI isn’t data light, at least not yet, so making sure that the post-click landing page is streamlined for cellular data connections can drastically improve user experience. Save the rich media landing page for desktop-focused campaigns.
Why this matters
Fast-loading, lightweight landing pages drive higher conversion rates, improve click-through-rate, and help campaigns capitalize on the real-time nature of GenAI.
Wrapping Up
GenAI is changing digital advertising — shifting it from keyword-based targeting to contextual, conversational engagement.
At Koah, we’re learning from millions of queries, ad impressions, and experiments, to better understand what drives performance in this new era — and we’re committed to sharing insights that help advertisers, publishers, and users get more value from GenAI.
About Us
Read more about Koah: TechCrunch: Launch Announcement
📩 Contact us: hello@koahlabs.com
