Katie Bunting, Digital Account Director
Google isn’t going anywhere. But it’s no longer where decisions begin.
As a millennial – I’ve grown up Googling things, but over the last couple of years, my search behaviour has gradually split in two. Google still handles transactional searches such as directions or flight times. TikTok has become my go-to for discovery – where to eat, the best skincare products, whether something is worth buying. This change in behaviour wasn’t a conscious decision to change. It just happened.
Turns out I’m not alone – and it’s not just a Gen Z thing. Adobe’s 2026 research actually found that millennials outpace Gen Z when it comes to preferring TikTok over Google. The behaviour is widespread too: Ofcom found 43% of UK consumers search on social daily, with 41% going social-first for information. Daily TikTok searches are up around 40% year on year, driven by a desire to get answers from real people.
Traditional search is transactional. Social search is exploratory. “Best moisturiser for oily skin” on Google returns affiliate listings. The same search on TikTok returns a dermatologist breaking down ingredients, an honest six-month skin transformation, a brand answering questions in the comments. The content is richer, trust is stronger, and that’s where decisions are forming. Google’s global search share has slipped below 90% for the first time in nearly a decade – and industry projections suggest the shift toward voice and social search will only accelerate through to 2030.
Social advertising makes up just 28% of UK digital ad spend – yet nearly half of all consumers are already using social to discover products, and 71% of social buyers make impulse purchases. The attention is there. The money hasn’t caught up. Paid social closes that gap, putting the right content in front of the right people at exactly the moment they’re ready to act.
Discovery content earns attention rather than demanding it. A creator’s honest, unpolished review will outperform a brand ad in a search context almost every time. TikTok’s Creator Advantage report found that brands working with creators see up to 70% higher CTR and 159% higher engagement than traditional ads, and Bazaarvoice’s 2025 Shopper Preference Report shows that 30% of UK shoppers have bought something following a creator recommendation. That’s active trust converting to purchase. Paid social is what scales it.
Organic content builds credibility, but it’s unpredictable. Paid social puts the right content in front of the right people at the right moment – hashtag targeting and creator interaction data are often enough to place a brand alongside what its audience is already watching, turning discovery into intent, at scale.
The release of TikTok’s Search Ads product lets brands reach users mid-search – combining discovery with intent a way that didn’t exist until recently. We’ve already rolled this out at RoM across education and finance clients with strong early results and will be expanding to other sectors in the coming months.
Social search isn’t levelling off. The platforms are investing heavily in it, the habit is spreading across age groups, and as AI-generated content floods traditional search results, the authenticity of social search becomes more valuable by contrast – not less.
The brands that get ahead won’t necessarily be the biggest spenders. They’ll be the ones who recognised that intent had moved and built a strategy around where discovery actually happens now.
The search bar moved. The media plan should too.
