Vendor reportCassandra, 2025

Performance Max ROI varied less than Search Non-Brand and Display ROI, at a 4.64x median

Channel validation

Reader Note:: ROI here is incremental revenue per $1 of ad spend, estimated by Cassandra’s marketing mix models (MMM). Cassandra sells MMM software, and these figures are usually lower than the ROAS shown in Google Ads. The 95% confidence interval around the median is [3.11–6.41] for Performance Max, [2.29–9.89] for Search Non-Brand and [0.67–8.2] for Display. The PMax figure is based on 48 models and $66M in spend from 2023–2025. A confidence interval shows how certain the median is, not the full range of advertiser results. The report also notes that advertisers usually can’t see how PMax splits budget between search, shopping, display and YouTube.
Evidence:: Modelled / projected
Vendor interest:: High — This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
Sample:: 253 revenue-outcome marketing mix models from 59 unique advertisers, covering $383M in media spend; data spans 2023-2025. Each record is one channel from one model run.

Good for

Planning with a rough expectation, and sanity-checking your own assumptions.

Not for

Reporting as what happened. This is what a model expects, not what anyone counted.
This comes from a company with a commercial interest in this market, so it is not a neutral source.
Nobody counted this directly — it's a calculation. The publisher worked it out itself, or took the ad platform's word for what its ads achieved.
This is an aggregated or average number that covers very different cases. Real results in a particular segment may differ.
The source says how much it looked at, but not how any of it was chosen.

4.4x

How much better an AI search visitor converts compared to an organic search visitor, on average

of Google searches that showed an AI summary ended with a click on a link inside that summary (US, March 2025)

20% of Gen Z and 17% of Millennials discover new brands through influencer endorsements, vs 12% of Gen X and 5% of Boomers

Share of each generation who discover new brands via influencer endorsements
Generation	Share who discover brands through influencers (%)
Gen Z	20%
Millennials	17%
Gen X	12%
Baby Boomers	5%

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Our Substack turns the data behind these cards into full breakdowns: what changed, why, and what to do about it.

Fixing your influencer marketing campaign: How to get into the top 10% of advertisers

11.4%

of shopper sessions in the US involved an AI tool as of June 2026, up 2.3 percentage points from a year earlier

is the short-term ROI index for influencer campaigns in the UK, right on the market average with 4.5% of short-term sales (excluding campaigns that produced no result)

21–26%

of consumers in the US, UK, and Germany report using AI tools to research products online, per Statista's 2026 Global Survey (Jul 2025–Jun 2026).

Performance Max ROI varied less than Search Non-Brand and Display ROI, at a 4.64x median

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