Monday Briefing: Google's AI Is Wrong Millions of Times Per Hour

Good morning, it's James here. This week brought a number that should keep every CMO up at night: the percentage of Google's AI-generated answers that cite sources which don't actually support what the AI is saying. Spoiler: it's higher than you think.

(Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)

The Lead: Google's AI Answers Have a Citation Problem

A New York Times investigation with AI startup Oumi dropped last week, and the headline number is deceptive. Google's AI Overviews are 91% accurate. Sounds great, right?

Do the math. Google processes over 5 trillion searches a year. A 9% error rate at that scale means tens of millions of wrong answers served every single hour (Search Engine Land). That's not a rounding error. That's an infrastructure problem wearing a lab coat.

But the accuracy number isn't even the real story. The investigation found that 56% of AI Overview citations are "ungrounded," meaning the sources Google links to don't actually support what the AI is telling users. That's up from 37% just five months ago. The AI is getting more accurate and less honest about where its answers come from at the same time.

Why CMOs should care: If your brand is being cited in an AI Overview, there's better than a coin flip chance the AI is saying something your content doesn't actually say. And if you've been building an SEO strategy around "getting into AI Overviews," the ground underneath that strategy is shakier than the metrics suggest. Google disputed the findings, calling the study's methodology flawed. But users don't read methodology debates. They read the answer in the blue box and move on.

The take: AI Overviews aren't going away. They now appear on roughly half of all US searches. But the CMOs who treat this as a distribution channel need to understand what they're distributing through: a system that's increasingly confident and decreasingly grounded. Monitor what AI Overviews say about your brand. Because right now, nobody else is checking.

What I'm Watching

People are pulling back from social media, and the data is getting hard to ignore.

The UK's Ofcom released new figures showing that active social media participation (posting, sharing, commenting) dropped to 49% of users, down from 61% in 2024 (The Register). Globally, daily time on social platforms has fallen nearly 10% since 2022 (Marketing Week). The decline is sharpest among teens and young adults, with CNBC documenting a growing "quiet revolution" of young people trading their feeds for lunch dates and vinyl records.

This doesn't mean social is dead. But it does mean the assumption that "everyone scrolls all day" is becoming less true every quarter. If your media plan is built on passive reach through feeds, the audience you're reaching is shrinking. The brands getting ahead of this are investing in owned channels, community, and formats that reward active participation over passive consumption.

The Reading List

• "Fandom Over Funnels: Marian Lee of Netflix on Culture-Led Brand Growth" - Netflix's CMO on why building culture beats building funnels. The bit about flexible campaign planning is worth stealing.

• "Top 5 AI Marketing Activations" - Ad Age rounds up the best AI-powered campaigns, including Google Maps' "Ask Maps" debut and AI-generated creative at Coachella.

• "YouTube Tests 90-Second Unskippable Ads on CTV" - Users reported 90-second unskippable ads on YouTube TV. YouTube called it a bug. Either way, CTV ad tolerance is being tested.

• "Publishers Apply AI to Streamline Tasks" - Digiday surveyed 40 publisher pros on where AI is actually working. Less hype, more operational reality.

Musical Chairs

Michael Kors tapped Corey Moran as CMO, effective April 6. He spent nearly a decade at Google leading its Fashion and Luxury vertical. When a legacy fashion house hires its marketing chief from a tech platform, it tells you where the growth playbook is shifting.

K18, the biotech haircare brand, brought in Kleo Mack as CMO. She previously led marketing at Glossier and Shark Beauty. Her mandate: fewer, more targeted activations over volume plays. A strategy more brands should consider.

One More Thing

There's a pattern in this week's news worth naming. Google's AI is confidently wrong. YouTube's ads are accidentally long. Social media's audience is quietly shrinking. The infrastructure we've built our marketing on is shifting, not dramatically, but persistently. The CMOs who notice the cracks early are the ones who won't be standing on them when they widen.

Have a sharp week.

-James