I am with Peter. The road bike lives on the trainer. The gravel bike goes everywhere I want to go with semi-slick 40 WTB’s and nice carbon wheels. And I don’t panic at crumbling road surfaces the way I used to.
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Aerodynamics of the frame itself doesn’t matter as much as aerodynamics of the rider. A gravel bike will have significantly more stack, and it’ll be a significant aero drag in terms of rider position. Wether it matters to you or not is a different question
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My suggestion is to get out and test ride as many different bikes as possible - and I do mean different - including outliers in the various categories. You should be able to eliminate some almost immediately, and will be able to hone in on what sorts of things suit you. As others have suggested, “gravel” includes everything from aero race bikes to wide bar, slack geometry MTB-ish things, so it’s a pretty vague category, much more so than road.
A: Because bike brands really want you to buy a road bike too - that’s why.
(The nuance is, it doesn’t matter until it does - when does it? When you’re trying to pay your bills keeping up to the 98th percentile or better. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter unless you want/need it to matter. Bikes are wheels and tires, more than anything, and you can put the same road ones on your gravel frame* as a road frame - just not the other way around. From there, if you’ve got the right size for you, there should be enough adjustability to get the same, or very similar position. The rest is fluff until it matters.)
*assuming we’re not talking two frames on the opposite ends of the outlier geo spectrum.
If you’re ditching the road bike, then aim for a racy gravel bike. If you’re ditching your MTB, get an adventure gravel bike.
I bought a crux 2 years ago, set it up with two wheelsets (47mm gravel on one and 32mm GP 5000 on the other). I haven’t touched my road bike since.
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I use my gravelbike as my winterroadbike, I have a different wheelset with 32mm tires and I also put on mudguards, so it’s perfect for me. It does depend on the gearing, for me the GRX 2x12 di2 is perfect for this, 48x31 crankset and 11-36 cassette is fast enough on the road but I can also get up on most climbs.
But I also have a lightweight roadbike (Aethos) for when it’s better weather then I transform my winterbike back to gravel, the Aethos does feel better on long and steep climbs.
My mate who now lives in Switzerland uses his Crux more than his Tarmac even on the road his rides are mostly uphill or downhill without much flatness in between, therfor he has a 38 crankset and 10-44 cassette, works great for him, but he also has 2 wheelsets so he can change easily, that is something I would recommend.
If I could only pick 1 bike it would be the lightest gravelbike I could find with 2 wheelsets.
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I agonised for a long time whether to get a Fairlight Secan (gravel) or Strael (road) - in the end I went for the gravel frame and I’m delighted I did.
The gravel bike really comes into its own as a fun machine when you take random paths you never take on a road bike. Originally I thought I’d use a carbon wheel set with 35mm slicks on the road and 45mm gravel tyres for more adventurous stuff. Wrong! I did a ride on the road with the 45’s inflated a bit more than for gravel and it was insanely comfortable and barely slower than a road setup - tyres are conti TerraSpeed 45mm. With one of those mini electric pumps I’m even considering changing tire pressure between the mostly tarmac escape from the city and the off road countryside section - it’s a win win win
Going forward I’ll be putting my gravel tires on my fast carbon gravel wheels and just having a blast. In winter the gravel bike will get mudguards and be a fantastic all weather bike on/off road with its comfort and tire clearance
My main road bike is a lovely steel Pinarello that I lovingly restored : it’s racier, a bit faster, lighter and looks cool, but I’m now only reaching for it on days where I really fancy a road ride/it’s a group ride.
Enjoy your cycling 
I see some demo bikes in your future. Have fun!
I’m currently using my gravel bike mainly for road whilst traveling in Europe. I have 45mm Panaracer semi slick Gravelking tires on which work great on the road and not too bad on light gravel/cobbles.
I thought all was good until I hit the crazy winding descents in Northern Italy, I found the position on my gravel bike was not up to the position I have on my road bike. I had a shorter, more upright position on the gravel bike as recommended to me, I found it didn’t work for me when descending. I needed the more stretched out position of my road bike where I was further behind the bottom bracket. I was too far forward when in the drops and the steep, switchbacks on the road I was encountering didn’t feel good.
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Most of my riding is on a combination of surfaces: pavement, dirt, gravel multi-use trails and some single track. My Giant Revolt is my “go-to” bike. From my experience the biggest limiter is gearing. My Revolt has the OEM 2x Shimano GRX drivetrain. The broad range makes it well suited to off pavement routes. On a solo paved ride it is fine but in a road group it doesn’t take long for me to be dropped.
The other big variable is tires. I had been using the Maxxis Reaver but found the smooth tread and small shoulder blocks made gravel descents sketchy and I’d spin on loose ramps. I’m trying the Pirelli Cinturato M. In the photos the tread seems to aggressive for the road. However, the the center bead is such that it is excellent on the road. Recommend it.
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The geo is one thing but for me being able to ride a 2x setup on the road is important. I am pretty “rpm sensitive” so I like the closer spacing. That being said-if I had just one bike it would be my gen 4 Crux that I have set up 2x.
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It’s a bit like why can’t I ride gravel tires on the road. The answer is you can. You can do whatever you want to. Three things that make me lean more towards a road bike are head angle, fork trail and chainstay length. Your actual bike fit is going to be pretty close if you get one of the new racier aero gravel bikes. Maybe s 10mm shorter stem. I personally don’t like more than 60 trail or a head angle slacker than 72 and chain stays at 425+ feel slow on the road. I’m sure you would get used to it and ride it happily if it was your only bike. Test a bunch and ideally back to back so you can actually tell the difference
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Just adding to the anecdata at this point, but I ride a 2022 Giant Revolt Advanced, 45mm front/40mm rear with decent tread, Zipp 303s (not xplr), 11sp Shimano GRX mechanical group with 50/34 Ultegra up front and 11-34 cassette. My rides are 60/40 dirt/paved and generally solo. I’ve been riding one kind of bike or another almost daily for 25 years now. The Revolt seems very adequate, if not excellent, for the riding I do, and feels plenty fast on pavement with my setup. Since I’m not riding hard with people on pure road bikes, I don’t have any issues with the performance of the gravel bike on the road. I rode all the dirt roads on my 25mm tire road bike that I now ride on the gravel bike, and the big difference for me is that I was always relieved to get back on pavement with the road bike, but I don’t have that feeling of wanting to get back to the dirt on my gravel bike. Both surfaces feel great. Add to that the experience of being more likely to explore new stuff on the gravel bike than the road bike, I’d say advantage gravel bike for me.
I think many people realized that a wider tire really was a good thing. And to get that you really had no choice but gravel frames. I think mfgs are kinda figuring out that many people want 30-40mm tires on closer to traditional road geometry. As someone stated, I find true gravel wheelbase to be a bit of a couch. However, I do ride gravel as part of my road rides, want wider tires without the couch feeling for most of my ride. I ride a 50-52cm frame and like something like 1000-1020mm wheelbase. And I can’t have pro stack height, drop is too much for me. And I like 2x. So I just look for those key things.
Push come to shove, I’d go more gravel than more road at this point in my riding style or program. My Crit days are long gone…as are my xc MTB days..
If the new Giant Revolt Advanced SL was compatible with 2x I’d seriously consider it as an (all-)road solution, since the geometry is pretty well spot on, for me. Supposedly it’s 1x only, but there are things that look suspiciously like FD hanger attachment points and a Di2 exit wire plug near the lower bottle cage mount, so I’m curious to actually see one. I’m not a fan of 1x for road riding as the gaps between gears are IME too big, and the range with XPLR 13 is pointless (on the road), while off-road it’s difficult to get low enough gears for my local terrain; YMMV.
Just adding to the anecdata at this point, but I ride a 2022 Giant Revolt Advanced, 45mm front/40mm rear with decent tread, Zipp 303s (not xplr), 11sp Shimano GRX mechanical group with 50/34 Ultegra up front and 11-34 cassette. My rides are 60/40 dirt/paved and generally solo.
Although my comments have generally been pro the idea that a gravel bike can also be a road bike, your gearing here highlights why for some one bike to cover both is definitely not a viable option. Sorry but I’ll just repeat the caveat I posted further up.
If your gravel riding is basically road riding on gravel, then great, road gearing works for both. Being in the Scottish Borders, my gravel riding is very much not that.
My road bike has slightly lower gearing than yours (47/32 with 11-36), but my gravel bike has significantly lower gearing (36t with 10-50). There is absolutely no way I could ride road, or close to road gear ranges on what counts as gravel round here.
I did a lot of road riding on my gravel bike (Avona Callis) in spring. I did not even change the tires (Hutchinson Caracal Race). It really was just a minor compromise, and almost all of it was in the tires, at least if looking at the numbers. Switching to my road bike, the ride feel changes, it is a bit more reactive and therefore I would call it more fun, but just in terms of performance, there is not much in it.
Obviously there are gravel bikes that are much further from a road bike (longer trail, more upright fit, less aerodynamic shaping, mullet gearing etc.), where compromises are bigger. But I think there are many gravel bikes on the market that can easily be used as road bikes.
Do Giant actually say anywhere that the new Revolt is 1x only? I know all the stock builds come with 1x, but none of the information I can find actually explicitly states 1x only, and agree it certainly looks like the frame is set up to accept a front derailleur.
(As an aside, I do wish Giant, and indeed many other brands, made this sort of information publicly available. Kudos to brands that already do).
I don’t know if Giant have said anything. Google searches have returned contradictory answers, depending on the actual wording used. Once the bikes (and framesets) actually get out there we’ll be able to find out.
At least they’re better than Factor, who tell you almost nothing about frame geometry.
Kiwi Pro Gravel racer Matt Wilson recently raced Unbound on a Scott Addict gravel, and a week later raced the same bike with 32mm slicks in a one of the US’s biggest criteriums and won!
Elite criteriums are also being raced on gravel bikes in the UK too.
Says it all for me.