Google is evolving its search and YouTube platforms
Google is doing what good technology companies do, it’s adapting fast. If you’re still thinking of Search as a typed query into a text box, you’re not looking far enough ahead. Behavior is shifting. People are using voice, images, and mixed inputs to find answers. Southeast Asia, in particular, is moving quickly on this. Gen Z users are leading the adoption curve.
Visual input technologies like Google Lens are already handling over 100 billion searches a year. The important part? One in five of these carry commercial intent. That’s not just casual browsing, it’s active consumer interest. That number matters for any business trying to stay relevant in the online customer journey. And Gen Z, who are increasingly driving discovery behavior in this region, are using newer AI-powered tools like Circle to Search. More than 10% of their searches now begin through this method.
The result is clear: search behaviors are more dynamic and happening earlier in the customer journey. This is opening local and regional opportunities for advertisers who are able to meet users before they know what they’re looking for, creating new conversion points long before traditional search even begins. It’s a space where AI, speed, and interface design are determining who gets noticed and who fades into the background.
For decision-makers, this isn’t just a feature update, it’s a map of where things are going. If your company is operating in this region, or looking to enter it, your digital strategy needs to align with how people across these massive markets are discovering information, using photos of a product, speaking their questions aloud, and skipping straight past the search box entirely. And it’s happening across mobile devices with a velocity you can’t ignore.
Bottom line: markets like Southeast Asia aren’t just catching up, they’re setting the pace. If you’re running a growth-focused company, you want to be where early adoption happens, because that’s where the feedback and opportunity flow. Google’s multimodal evolution isn’t optional background noise. It’s a signal.
YouTube remains the most-watched video platform in Southeast Asia
YouTube isn’t losing ground, it’s gaining it. In Southeast Asia, the platform continues to pull in more viewers across every generation. It’s not just holding attention, it’s converting that attention into measurable business outcomes. And that combination, high engagement and performance, is why it remains essential for any serious brand operating in this region.
The data supports this. YouTube ads deliver strong ROI, 4.1 times more than traditional TV in Indonesia, 2.3 times more in Thailand, and 2.9 times more in Vietnam. These are fundamental shifts in where ad money works harder. If your company is still distributing significant spend across formats that aren’t scaling with consumer habits, you’re subsidizing inefficiency.
At the core of YouTube’s impact is user trust in its creators. Independent surveys show that people in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines trust YouTube personalities more than creators on other platforms. That trust isn’t abstract, it leads to stronger engagement and higher conversion rates. It gives brands a path to audiences that are already paying attention and are more likely to take action.
For executives, the play here is straightforward. When you can identify a platform that drives both behavior and ROI, you invest accordingly. YouTube isn’t only a video platform; it’s a performance engine that understands regional nuances and adapts faster than slower, legacy ad models.
If it’s not already central to your brand-building and demand-generation strategy in Southeast Asia, you’re leaving growth on the table. And if it is, these numbers are your validation to double down.
Google has introduced a range of AI-powered ad tools
Google is applying AI the right way, practical use cases, measurable results, less noise. The latest updates to Google Ads are focused on cutting manual work and driving real outcomes. This matters because marketing teams everywhere are under pressure to do more with less. The tools aren’t just smarter, they remove unnecessary steps and let marketers focus on what actually scales performance.
Asset Studio uses generative AI to create multiple versions of ad visuals and video content. This makes creative testing faster and more flexible across local markets. Then there’s AI Max for Search, which pulls in Google’s Gemini models to generate headlines and match ads to searches without relying on long keyword lists. That means campaigns can respond faster to real-time demand signals, and performance backs it up. Shopee tested it in Southeast Asia for five weeks and saw a 2x lift in conversions and a 49% gain in ROI.
It’s not just the big platforms seeing results. Maxis, a major telco in Malaysia, used AI Max to find new postpaid customers. The tool picked up on overlooked long-tail and multilingual queries, like Chinese-language searches, that manual keyword strategies missed. According to Aileen Soo, Head of Discovery at Maxis, the company matched, sometimes beat, its standard click-through rates with far less manual setup. In short: smarter targeting, less human overhead.
Google’s also rolling out AI Mode in Search, which understands longer, more complex queries with follow-ups. It’s conversational and pulls from multimodal inputs, voice, text, images. Ad testing for this mode will start in the U.S., but expect global rollout afterwards. On YouTube, the new Creator Partnerships Hub gives brands a direct line to collaborate with creators by category, trend, or audience insights, already live in Singapore and Indonesia.
What’s clear is Google isn’t offering minor improvements, it’s redesigning how marketers operate. The automation baked into these tools, from asset generation to reporting suggestions, turns day-to-day processes into fully AI-assisted workflows. For the C-suite, this equates to faster decision-making, cleaner strategies, and results you can monitor in real time.
If your teams are still optimizing ads manually, they’re burning hours that could be spent on strategy. The opportunity here isn’t just efficiency, it’s performance. AI is doing more than writing headlines. It’s reading the signals and moving the needle. If you’re aiming for profitable scale, this ecosystem is already ahead of the curve.
Key executive takeaways
- Google adapts to shifting search habits in Southeast Asia: Leaders should prioritize multimodal ad strategies, voice, visual, and hybrid, especially as Gen Z drives the shift toward AI-powered discovery tools like Lens and Circle to Search.
- YouTube dominates viewership and ROI for brands: Executives should channel more spend into YouTube as it outperforms both TV and other social platforms in ROI, leveraging creator trust and cross-generational engagement in core Southeast Asian markets.
- AI tools slash manual work and lift campaign performance: Marketers should adopt Google’s AI-powered ad tools like AI Max and Asset Studio to scale creative output, target multilingual users, and double conversion efficiency with less hands-on effort.
