Omnicom Media kicks off CES with a Google search partnership that drills deeper into intent

As it has in the past, Omnicom started out its efforts to reengineer its approach to search based on research from Joanna O’Connell, chief intelligence officer at Omnicom Media, that dives into the future of influence — search being just one way to influence consumer purchase habits.

“What we were trying to get at is, what influences people, and then what is a brand supposed to do about it with that new information?” explained O’Connell. “With all that new information, the kind of classic information asymmetry between sellers and, in this case, the brands and buyers (which is consumers), is gone… How do you get to machines so that the human that are using those machines (as in, generative AI), are positively influenced?”

Working off this premise, Omnicom created what it’s calling the “consumer prompt insights tool,” an agentic solution which leverages a variety of search signals that gives its clients a clearer understanding and way to use the deeper knowledge that search today can provide consumers. For example, one used to search for vacuum cleaners — today you ask, what’s the best wet vac for cleaning up sandy wet spots (you know, for the marine biologist or surfer in your family).

“That is a higher intent signal of what people are asking. So we now have much higher intent than we had at just at keywords,” said Megan Pagliuca, chief product officer at Omnicom Media North America. It’s about getting to “what people are asking, understanding their intent, and then changing content in a variety of ways to enable that, which then also kind of feeds back to that loop of Gemini and AI overviews where they’re asking questions.”

It’s the latest output from the Future of Search partnership between Omnicom Media and Google, picking up on a tool, the next generation search agent, launched at CES 2025. 

Clients appreciate the ability to dig deeper into consumer intent in order to fine-tune their search efforts. The agent “has cut our competitive analysis cycle from weeks to days. In an industry where a new model launch or competitor incentive can shift search dynamics overnight, we need real-time category intelligence, not monthly reports,” said Jillian Davis, director of marketing technology, at Cox Automotive (which owns Autotrader and Kelly Blue Book). “The platform gives us visibility into what automotive shoppers are actually searching for — not just our brand terms, but the entire consideration set. We’re using those insights to inform everything from paid search strategy to content planning to retail partnerships.”

It’s important that the insights gleaned from this agent expand beyond just search teams, especially since the purchase funnel is so completely upended. “As we start to aggregate these data sources, which today are separate, and use the agent that we’re building to combine it, our teams will start to be able to see demand trends,” added Michael Sondak, svp of search at Omnicom Media North America. By way of examples, he cited “pockets of new prompts and queries to perhaps go build net new content to go answer, or different ways that we may want to structure ads or keywords, and also site content.”

Google is providing Omnicom Media more direct access to its data from Google Insights, Keyword Planner and Search Console, as well as Gemini, all of which is agent-readable, said Dru Sil, executive director of product strategy for Omnicom’s Omni platform. “The output could be everything from categorization of these queries and keywords into different groups, whether that’s industry vertical intent all the way through to actually developing the campaign content,” said Sil. 

So how might this affect client media spend? Pagliuca sees an impact far beyond search. “We’ve been saying things like, influencer needs to be a larger share” of budget, she said. “We’re also saying a change for brands is focusing on ensuring that the content you have is discoverable within the large LLMs.”