New data from Omeda suggests that AI-powered email summaries are hollowing out engagement, with emails getting ‘opened’ more often but clicked on less.
Omeda’s Email Engagement Report analysed 2.03 billion emails sent through its platform in Q2 2025. Total open rates climbed to 45.61% (from 43% in Q1), and unique open rates — which count just one open per recipient — also rose from 29.34% to 32.32%.
But click rates slipped in the same period. The total click rate dipped from 1.8% to 1.74%, while unique click-through fell from 4.35% to 3.93%.
Omeda’s report suggests that Google’s Gemini summaries could be responsible. Whilst it can’t be confirmed, the timing would certainly make sense. In late May, Google rolled out Gemini summaries on Gmail. Then, a few days later, Yahoo Mail also introduced an AI-powered feature that summarises unread emails.
If these tools are auto-opening messages to scan and summarise them, they’d naturally inflate open rates. What’s more concerning is the people who would have clicked but felt no need after reading the AI summaries.
It’s a pattern we’ve already seen in search, where Google’s AI Overviews have been credited with cratering click-throughs.
One strategy for publishers impacted by search disruption has been to focus on inbox-directed engagement — namely, newsletters. But Omeda’s data shows even this channel is feeling the squeeze.
- Newsletter click rates fell from 4.01% to 3.43%.
- Newsletter click-through rates dropped from 7.68% to 6.78%.
- Promotional/marketing emails showed a similar pattern: higher opens, lower clicks. The total click rate slid to 1.26% from 1.39%, and the unique click rate to 1.02% from 1.11%.
If AI summaries really are cutting into engagement, then marketers may be in for a bruising quarter ahead. Only the last third of Q2 was impacted by the AI roll-outs and the pace of change isn’t slowing.
At SXSW London in June, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis revealed his team’s intention to build ‘next-generation email’ that would filter, organise, and even reply in your tone of voice, adding that he’d ‘pay thousands of dollars per month to get rid of’ traditional email.
Google has also made unsubscribing easier with its new ‘Manage subscriptions’ Gmail feature, which went live in early July. That could put upward pressure on unsubscribe rates, which dipped slightly to 0.141% in Q2.
Meanwhile, in the report Omeda unveiled a new, tighter click-bot detection. Using the advanced suppression, it found that 81% of newsletter clicks are bots — an increase of 15% from the old filter. That makes the real impact of AI summaries even harder to pin down, and casts more doubt on inbox strategies as a silver bullet.