Ozone’s data, drawn from roughly 20 billion impressions, shows in numbers that as the chat window opens a new ad surface, the old one — open-web publishing — is contracting: publisher ad supply fell year over year in Q2 2026 by 32-37% in the U.S. and 39-41% in the U.K. The chain is simple: zero-click search and AI Overviews answer the query on the results page, the user never reaches the source, pageviews drop, ad demand evaporates. Ozone COO Danny Spears ties this to platforms intervening in the journey and serving content in place.
The second layer sits inside the numbers: as inventory collapsed, June eCPMs rose (UK ~30%, US ~7%) — contracting supply inflated the unit price for a while — yet combined programmatic spend still fell 30.6% in the first half. A higher price off scarcer inventory is not health; it’s the shadow of contraction. This is the invoice for the board’s AI Mode and AI Overviews cards: the same zero-click experience that carries advertising into the chat on one side cuts the open web’s ad revenue at its source on the other.