MicroVee: AI Is Eating Google Search: What Every Business Should Do Next | GaryVee Bloomberg Interview

0:00Hey, everyone. Today's episode of the Gary V Audio Experience is a segment from Gary Vee's recent appearance on Bloomberg's The Close, where he discusses the future of marketing in the age of AI. This conversation dives into what this tech could mean for brands, how AI is changing SEO forever, and what businesses need to do to stay ahead. If you're running ads, building a brand, or trying to capture attention in 2025, this one's a must listen. Let's get right into it. Here now to discuss marketing and advertising in the age of AI is Gary Vaynerchuk. He is CEO of VaynerMedia, the influencer, the original influencer that so many of us know.

0:33Gary, Always a pleasure. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me, ladies. What does the rise of AI search providers and their possible replacement of Google in iPhones and iPads really mean for brands? I mean, how would you begin to think about advising companies on how to navigate that? Not only have I begun to think about it, we're actively talking to most of our Fortune 500 companies who rely, overly rely on Google AdWords as a driver. Now, Google AdWords, you know, is intent-based marketing. It's not like you become aware of something and now you want to buy it. You're typing something into a search engine.

1:07I've always argued that it's more sales than it even is marketing. But there are a lot of companies watching right now in the Fortune 5000 set that are in big trouble. A huge percentage of their business comes from search. They've got their CAC and LTV numbers down, customer acquisition cost, lifetime value. and we are in the early stages of the search engine looking like the yellow pages and it's real right so what replaces that and what's the business op well what replaces it listen google inc alphabet is trying to do that with their perplexity but like what there's no scenario where google can control as much of the ai chat search ecosystem like they have on search what replaces it is probably a conglomerate whether it's open ai whether it's meta, whether it's TikTok, whether it's Google or Apple, it's probably going to be fragmented.

1:55Even if Google crushes it with perplexity, they're not going to be able to have the same stance. And so what does it mean? It means that a lot of people that have been really lazy and overpaying for their brand value on search need to understand that they're in trouble and need to start to create demand and other variables, plus start to learn how to win the SEO game in the AI game. AI optimization is about to be a whole new game. We're looking at a lot of startups in my fund and with agencies of like, what happens when you go to open AI right now and say, I want to buy wine? Well, I want you to buy winetext.com because that's my dad's business.

2:30How do I get the search engines in this? How do we get the new AI, these chatbots to actually answer that? So how do you optimize for AI versus optimize for search engines? AI is still taking from the web. But if you look like AI, all the different AI agents are taking from different places. Reddit seems to be quite strong. Other platforms are getting justified. When I look at the search, if I'm looking for wine terms, food and wine, kudos to food and wine out there, they're getting scraped. So the landscape is changing. And it always changes. But we are, this is a very big, no matter how much this great program covers it, no matter how many people like me talk about it, collectively everybody's underestimating how big of a shift is coming.

3:16Okay, so I'm a company. Yep. How do I then use you guys to help me figure this out? Like, what's your pitch? I mean, you know, we as a market, you know, Vayner's a unique company. We're an entrepreneurial-driven company that I'm building for myself to build a private equity firm on top of. So my pitch is pretty easy. I'm like, hey, I'm incentivized for this stuff to work because my economics are not actually in being a service provider for you. I actually want to do what you're doing for a living, ultimately, and I'm refining my machine while I have clients. that tends to work because it becomes true.

3:47You can measure it. We have a 15-year track record of being a leader in what's emerging in marketing, right? When I was yelling that social media is going to be important as the original influencer, people poofed at that. They're like, no, it's commercials. It's search. So our pitch has been sold through. People know that we're more advanced than the holding company agency ecosystem. I think what's more important, I don't worry about our pitch because we have unlimited business development, I'm worried about executing. And so what we're spending our time on is actually being practitioners and in the trenches of being best in class in social or AI.

4:23So let's talk about execution because there's a big thing with live social shopping and that's huge in parts of Asia, China in particular. Not so much here. What do you think is the reason behind that? Is it just a matter of we're kind of behind and it takes the right product and the right person to make it all blow up? Yep. That's it. That's it. Zucks. was Mark Zuckerberg. Oh, Zucks. I don't refer to him as Zuck. What is that? I think Meta's been slow to it. They're such a leader, right? TikTok's forcing the issue. TikTok shop is a monster. There's a startup called Whatnot that you might be familiar with that is a leader as an independent.

5:01I think eBay, I'm sensing, is starting to get its act together a little bit. Shopify, you know, could get in that game. Google, YouTube. YouTube is crushing with TV and proper YouTube, but YouTube live shopping. The QMICification of social media is here. It's here. Meaning, you're absolutely right. When I was talking about this a year ago, I wasn't predicting anything. This has happened in China for a decade. The apps are adapting to that model. It will work. It's human behavior. It's a massive space and a huge opportunity. Thank you so much everybody for listening to another episode of the Gary Vee Audio Experience.

5:37Be sure to tune in Monday for another incredible episode. We will see you soon. you