The Buy Button Inside The Assistant
Every model of digital advertising rests on the same assumption: that search is a place people leave. A buy button inside the assistant removes the exit, and a great deal is attached to that exit.
Google is piloting exactly this in India, with Flipkart listings carrying a purchase option that opens a branded checkout inside Gemini rather than sending the shopper to a website.
What The Handover Was Worth
The click out was never just traffic. It was the moment ownership transferred, and with it the cookie, the session, the remarketing pool and the last-click credit that every performance budget is justified against. All of that lives on the destination side.
Remove the handover and the destination gets an order without getting the relationship. That is a better deal than losing the sale and a worse one than owning the customer, which is a trade most brands have never had to price.
A sale that completes inside somebody else's answer is revenue you keep and a customer you rent.
Who Gets The Buy Button
Not everyone, which is the most revealing detail. Rival retailers appear in the same listings without the option to buy. That makes this a negotiated distribution arrangement wearing the clothes of a product feature, and the negotiation is the story.
What To Watch
Whether participation stays selective once the festive period ends, and what it does to paid search economics in a market where the participating retailer is among the largest advertisers. Google posts product news on its own blog, and on this it is saying very little.
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