Due to being a pre-recorded podcast and the presence of two speakers, this transcript may contain errors.
No, AI is not going to replace you.
And no, someone using AI is not going to replace you either. Okay.
What will cost you your job as a Google Ads practitioner, however, is sticking to outdated tactics and refusing to at least test new automated features.
Today, I'm sharing an excerpt from an interview I recently did with Erum Shaheen on her YouTube channel. We had a great conversation about the evolving role of the media buyer. We talked audience targeting, Exact Match keywords, PMax, and more.
So tune in here and I'll check back in with you afterwards.
I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for big brands at Google and now I work for you.
This is Inside Google Ads, Episode 136: AI AI AI
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Erum: So Jyll, what is your point of view about the strategy that media buyers should adopt in the era of AI? Because we are listening and hearing so much about AI shifting. What is your take on it?
Jyll: My first take is that AI is not new in Google Ads. Smart bidding has been around for more than a decade now. It's really just the rest of the world that is coming around to AI, and people are starting to say AI can manage your ads for you, and write your ads for you, and do your job for you. And in my opinion and expertise, that is not the case.
So I think really the thing to focus on is how you can bring your unique expertise and data to AI in order to achieve the best results. For example, having full funnel conversion tracking, bringing your customer data in and using AI like a little thing on your shoulder helping you out, but not coming to the forefront trying to replace you.
Erum: We are shifting from manual work to more automated tasks. And this is something that I don't think is in the favor of the media buyer. So what do you think about it?
Jyll: I would say it’s not about manual versus automation. Automation has won. It just has.
So now it's about what are the manual controls that we need to give the automation to guide us.
In the past, you know, in 2013, when I first started using AdWords as it was called then, you picked every single keyword. There were no close variants. So a plural would be a different keyword than the non-plural version. You set a manual bid for everyone. You had to completely control what Google did with your ads on the SERP, the Search Engine Results Page, so that the thing you want to happen next, conversion, purchases, et cetera, would happen.
And now that's completely flipped. Instead, we need to give the automation the leeway to figure out what to do on that SERP. And the way we do that without it lighting all of our money on fire is by telling it what we want to happen afterwards, by feeding in the conversion data, the customer data, the right bid strategy, et cetera.
So I think this duality of manual versus automation is kind of outdated at this point right now. It's just about shifting the control we have so that we can work with the automation rather than fighting it.
If you try to fight automation, you're going to lose, right? The ship has sailed. So let's get on board, in my opinion.
Erum: Since people are shifting more toward the AI Mode, people are getting answers from Google’s default search engine page; from the AI Mode, it's more about the conversation, less than about the result that they just see. I mean, like you can say the query has been bigger now, and it has shifted from three to four words to the whole conversation and to the whole answer. How do you see what strategy media buyers should adopt in order to get favorable results for their customers or for their own business?
Jyll: My advice is to test until you can figure out how to make these AI features work for you. That's not saying everyone needs to use Performance Max and AI Max right now, but you want to figure out how to get these campaign types and features working for you. And if they're not working for you today, which to be fair for many businesses, especially smaller businesses or B2B, that doesn't work now and you need Exact Match keywords to get the results you need today. Fair, that'll still work today, but I think we all know keywords are arguably already dead, but what we have left of keywords is Exact Match, close variants and all, and it's going to be going away as much as it already has in the past.
So if that works for you, fine, do what works for you, but don't just stop there. I think it's really irresponsible as a Google Ads manager to say, well, I tried AI Max, I tried PMax, it didn't work, I'm sticking with Exact Match and I'm done now.
Okay, stick with Exact Match, but keep testing and iterating. Why didn't it work for you? And how can you try to work with the system to make it work? Do you need to leverage audiences? Do you need to leverage micro-conversions? Do you need to test different bidding? Do you need to improve your creative? Do you need to improve your landing page? You need a better offer and on and on and on and on and on.
Right. So, I would say you need to continue to test because although things like Exact Match might work today, if you use Exact Match, you are not eligible to show ads in AI Mode or AI overviews. And although that's a small portion of searches today, we know it's going to grow.
The analogy I like to give is, you're the frog sitting in the pot of water and the stove has just turned on. The water is still comfortable today. It still works, but that water is getting hotter and hotter and hotter, and at some point it will boil. So stay in the pot until it gets a little warmer. Fine. But make sure you hop out before you get boiled.
Erum: What is your opinion about the account foundation?
Jyll: Yeah, the foundation is the most important part. It's the unsexiest part. When people talk about Google Ads, they want to talk about keywords and AI Max and PMax. But the most important part and the part that my Google Ads coaching clients often struggle with the most is that foundation.
You know, if you just start building your house on a piece of land with no foundation, your house will fall down. And it's the same with your Google Ads account. And so to me, that foundation of your account has three components, two that I think are obvious and one that's maybe not as obvious.
- The first is conversion tracking. And that alone is a topic that could be a whole episode on its own, but conversion tracking, full funnel conversion tracking for e-commerce, you want a purchase, for lead generation you want at least a qualified lead, if not a full closed customer money in the bank.
- And then the second piece of your foundation is your customer data. Just uploading your customer list into Google Ads makes everything else in your account smarter. It powers Smart bidding, it powers optimized targeting. If you're in a restricted industry, fair enough, you know, but as long as you're not, upload your customer data.
- And then the third ‘C’ that I'm actually seeing more and more as a foundation of your account is your creative. It’s the thing you're actually saying to the end user, because all this conversion data and targeting and that's all behind the scenes. All the end user sees at the end of the day is your ad. And then if they click on it, your landing page. And so if that's not appealing enough to them, nothing else matters. Your creative, the words you're saying, the offer itself, is something I also consider to be the third piece of that core foundation.
If you're not selling something that people want to buy, they're not going to buy it, no matter how good your conversion data is. And two good examples of this, I've had two clients recently at opposite ends of the spectrum.
One Google Ads coaching client came to me. He runs an agency and was really struggling with a client. And I can't reveal the industry because it's so super niche, but essentially it was a B2B product that he was trying to sell B2C because the client wanted him to.
There was just no demand for this product B2C. Nobody wanted it. And so no matter what he did, it wasn't working. He came to me and I was like, look. We looked at a lot of different factors to determine this, you know, website conversion rate, and search terms. And I explained that people don't want to buy this. No matter what you do, you can't force people to buy something they don't need.
Then at the other end of the spectrum, I have a newer Google Ads coaching client. He invented this new product in the pet space and it was selling so well. And at first he was just doing Search and I said, you know, you should really start Shopping ads. And he's like, “I don't know.” I was like, just run Shopping, please. And he's been running Shopping, I think not even for two months now, and he's already selling three of these products a day at double the ROAS he needs. It's doing so, so, so well. And he thinks I'm a genius. And I say to him, every call we have, I'm like, I know you think I'm great, but you're the genius who invented this product that people really want. I'm just helping you show it to people, but your product is the thing doing it.
And I think not enough media buyers have the humility to know when their great results are often due to their client, but also when their terrible results can also sometimes be due to the client. So it really does need to be a partnership.
Erum: Yeah. And what is your opinion about audience targeting?
Jyll: I mean, I wrote a wholebook about audience targeting. It's a best seller on Amazon!
One type of audience that I think is really underutilized, especially in Demand Gen is the custom segment. And this is something really unique to Google Ads. I mean, you can do it in Microsoft, but you can't do this in TikTok ads or Instagram ads or anything else. It's taking what people searched for and turning that into an audience.
So let's say you're in some kind of B2B niche where search CPCs are $60. Not unusual, right? You can take all those best search terms that are really expensive in Search and then build a custom segment, which is an audience of people who have searched for that. And then show those exact same people ads, but just in a different moment, not at the moment of search where CPCs may be $1, instead of $60.
And so in a Demand Gen campaign, this is called a custom segment. In a Video campaign, it has a different name. It's called a custom search term, but it's the same thing. And then of course, in PMax where you have signals only, you could use these as search themes. But if you do this in Demand Gen and you have optimized targeting turned off, then this is true audience targeting. And I still think it's one of the most underrated tactics as a complement to search strategies.
Erum: So what do you see? I mean what changes would you expect in future? Because every year Google surprises us with more updates and more updates.
Jyll: I think it's really interesting to observe what's been happening with Performance Max, because Performance Max was announced in 2021, came out in 2022, and was initially totally a black box, very close to what you're describing. Just give us your landing page and your budget and we'll figure it out. And over the ensuing years, Google has totally backtracked.
Last year, at Google Marketing Live, they gave us essentially full transparency into PMax, search terms, asset reporting, and audience reporting, and on and on and on. And then now they're starting to give us more controls, which I know it's unpopular to say, but I don't want it. We can now exclude Search Partners and Display from Performance Max campaigns. I'd seen people talking about it, but I've seen it myself in an account now. And although I generally hate Display and hate Search Partners, I just think the whole vision of PMax, which is what you described, right? Just give us your budget landing page and let us figure it out. That has gone away. Google's really backed off of that, which I find interesting.
You know, keywords as we know them are already dead. Will we still be able to use keywords, Exact Match with variants, and all that in the future? I don't think so. I think that is going away. I think we are going to just have AI Max, Demand Gen, PMax. But the role of the media buyer in that environment, I actually think, is becoming more important than ever. Because when there are fewer direct controls, it actually makes it a lot harder. If Google Ads is working well with all this automation, then great, but often what happens in the early days of this AI is that it's not working well.
And then you have way fewer levers to try to fix that. And so for me personally, with my coaching and courses, my business is booming more than ever with all this increased AI and that's good for me. But unfortunately, I actually think it just makes Google Ads a lot harder to manage, not easier. And I think that's what a lot of people are getting wrong about AI. They think it makes Google Ads a lot easier when in fact it makes it more complex and you actually need more expertise to continue to scale Google Ads.
Erum: The necessity of a human is becoming very crucial because we as humans decide the foundation and define the foundation part of the marketing channel, like Google Ads. So I think by the passage of time, it has become crucial for a human to see where everything is going and how to control these things.
Jyll: And I think the key I'll add to that, because I agree, is when things are going well, fine. But the moment something is not working well, that's where the human is really needed because if AI could fix that, it would fix that and things would just work well on their own.
And so that's the key. I know—it's actually the largest companies I work with, the ones who spend millions and millions a year on ads, that have the easiest time because they really can just provide their budget and their conversion tracking and be off. And they don't—they have whole teams—but like that could work in that scenario.
It's the smaller advertisers, the more complex advertisers, the sensitive categories, the B2B, the ones who struggle, those are the ones where the human touch is needed more than ever because if AI could do it, it would, but it can't. And so here we are.
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I hope you enjoyed that conversation today.
You can find the full thing on Erum's YouTube channel. I've included the link in the episode description.
Fear not, next week I've got a brand new episode for you about one of the most commonly asked questions I've been getting recently. You won't want to miss it.
I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time inside Google Ads.
