In the last 2 years, the way in which we rely on automation within PPC accounts has soared. We’ve seen the rise (and sometimes fall) of Dynamic Search Ads, Responsive Text Ads, Smart Bidding to name only a few. Google has even built in the default setting on new Ads accounts of auto-generating ad copy, pushing live without even notifying you.
If we start piecing that all together, we can set up an ads account where Google scrapes our website for keywords, auto-applies ad copy messaging and calculates optimal bids based on your account targets. So it does leave me to wonder, are Google trying to purposely out us PPC Managers? Are we limiting their revenue streams on advertising spend by hampering cost per click limits or are they genuinely trying to help us out by improving performance?
I optimistically err to the latter. The better the accounts perform, the more businesses will invest with Google Ads and so it is mutually beneficial to drive down cost per leads for all involved. As we embrace this direction and admit that the robots do have the edge on us, being able to analyse 1,000s of market signals to decide the likelihood of a conversion and suggest a bid based on that likelihood (OH, it takes them mili-seconds too!), it does leave a question of what value can we bring to managing PPC accounts?
Thankfully, it isn’t time to consider my career completely obsolete yet. The smart bidding, dynamic search ads, auto-generated messaging are based on machine learning – not A.I. At the moment, a number of these automations will only begin working once an existing campaign has been running for long enough to collect data. In other words, for the machine to start doing its thing, it has to learn from what the humans set up first. They’ll make decisions based on logic, not always based on the qualitative context we’ve developed throughout our careers and understanding of our clients’ audiences. When it comes to lead generation, clients want quality, not just quantity and that’s something the machines cannot apply without our help.
By 2030, Google Ads will likely have been able to automate and supersede a lot of the work we fulfill now. However, our jobs in the digital sphere are designed and based around working with a constantly shifting, ever evolving landscape so we’re used to it! The core objective of driving our clients’ leads has never changed – will never change, it is just how we achieve it, has.
If you have a PPC account that is still relying on manual CPC and expanded text ads without an AB test in sight then it’s time to upgrade your activity and embrace this new era of PPC account management.
