The Art of Surviving Google’s AI Takeover in Paid Search

Introduction and Guest Welcome
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[00:00:00] 

Hey everyone. Welcome to this episode of Digital Marketing Stories. I'm so pleased today to have Kirk Williams as my guest and people that have been involved in, in PPC marketing. He's also known as PPC Kirk. Kirk. Good, good to have you on the show.

Thank you. It's good. It is good to see you again. I think it's been a, a few years since we've seen each other in person. but it's good to see you, on online again.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting. I, I know that you've, you've continued to be doing lots of, speaking and everything. You, you traveling a fair bit, is that right? I mean, I, I think I saw you in mute. Was it SMX somewhere? And so where have you been?

Travel and Speaking Engagements
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so I, I was doing a ton of speaking up until COVID hit, and it's funny 'cause COVID actually,hit around the same time. I had some other personal things going on too, and, and I was starting to get a little tired of traveling. So all of it hit at the same time. And then I, I, I didn't travel much for four or five years, and it's only in the last year that I really started picking it up again.

and so yeah, over the last month I was in, [00:01:00] I was in London and then I had to actually come back because then I had my team here in Montana. 'cause we, it was just one of those timing things, like the team trip thing. So I headed back, jet lagged, led the team thing and the onsite, and then headed back to Berlin, spoke there and then flew to Bologna, spoke there and then came back.

yep. So

And did did you do? 'cause I, I mean, I, I, last week I was in, Brighton at Brighton SEO. and I know a lot of my kind of peer group from PPC world have gravitated towards Brighton SEO in San Diego. Which, did, did you attend that at all, or?

I didn't this year. And some of it was because it was in the middle of two international flights, like two Europe flights. people were like, why don't you just stay in Europe? And I was like,I got, I got six kids in business. I just, I kind of had to, had to get back, help the wife a little bit, head back, 

and so we decided that we weren't gonna fly. I, I wasn't gonna fly to San Diego in the middle of that too, yeah.

Yeah, it's, it is really interesting. I, I, I find,sometimes that there are a lot of people I know who will go and speak. [00:02:00] Anywhere about anything. And a bit like you, I used to travel a lot more kind of pre COVID. I, I probably, I worked it out, I was probably on the road for probably three months of the year.

'cause most of my trips weren't local. I didn't speak in the uk typically it was like Australia or,Dubai or, the States. I used to go to Vegas. I mean, I, I'd always say to people when, when they say, so have you been to Vegas before? I'm like, I must have been to Vegas like 50 times.

And I'm not, I'm not exaggerating when I

all the conferences are there.

yeah. I mean, I used to do affiliate summit and Pubcon and, and various other kind of trips here and there. and it, and for me, again, people used to say, so have you been to New York? And I used to say, the thing I like most about New York is the taxi going back to the airport to leave.

it's just not, not a place that really vibes with me. 

Favorite Speaking Locations
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where's been your sort of favorite place to go and speak? Both in terms of the venue itself, the country, and also the content.

Gosh, that's a good question. I, I actually really thought that, So I'm, I'm a big London fan. and I know that makes, as [00:03:00] the kids say these days, I know that it makes to be basic, whenever I say I really like London, people are like, oh, there's so much more exotic places. And I'm like, I know.

But also, I don't know, there's just something about London. I, I always enjoy visiting there. I always enjoy walking around. So I really enjoyed, really enjoyed SMX London. I will say that Berlin, so Berlin was SMX Advanced Europe, and some of that may be just, that was just a different vibe. so it was in East Berlin and I'm a huge, I, I'm a huge World War II fan.

Like I was a, I was a World War II fan in high school, a deal. Like it's not just an old age thing for me. and, and so to be in Berlin and so that was actually cool 'cause London, I was there like two weeks earlier and I went. I always try to do something real quick in, in, in the city I'm in.

So I'm not just doing a conference and I, this time I went to the Churchill War rooms, so that was interesting. And so then in Berlin I went to, I forget exactly what they call it, like the topography did terror or something like that. And it's where, it's basically where like all of the [00:04:00] main Nazi buildings and stuff were, I like, first of all, it's amazing how they've both kind of like honored the horribleness of that without also like celebrating it.

I just, I was just super impressed by, the exhibit they had there. It was just real factual in terms of here's all of the horrible stuff that happened. There was a lot of like school kids there, which is really cool learning. And it just, and it really struck me. I was like, I wonder if some of these school kids might have relatives, older relatives who were involved in stuff.

It was just this like crazy experience and I was just like, man, in two weeks. I was just sitting there pondering as I was looking. I was just, I was there in Berlin and I was like, in two weeks I was in Churchill and Hitler's headquarters basically. And that was so, that was so interesting, just 'cause, less, less than a hundred years ago, that was almost the end of the world sort of deal.

so anyways, so Berlin

you, and you look at how, how easy it is to get from London to Berlin, like by plane and everything else, and how difficult it was to get from London to Berlin, [00:05:00] like back then. exactly. Yeah, just, just fascinating. I, I love history and I'd never really processed, even just like the East Berlin, west Berlin, of course I'm aware of the Berlin Wall, stuff like that. I didn't know I was gonna be speaking in East Berlin and, and that was almost this It was so visible, the architecture was so visibly different between the two halves of the city too. That was fascinating. I didn't, I didn't realize that until you're there. so in some ways, yeah, and then Italy. Italy to me is all about the people. I love Italian conferences whenever I've been because it's just it's just people who like get together and they just love to eat and chat, 

which I love to eat and chat. so that's what I like about Italy as well. But, Berlin had me on the, the history, I think. Yeah.

Yeah. 'cause I think Jam, jam Polo, that kind of puts on the, the show in, in, bologna. I mean, I bumped, I, I met him I guess probably I wanna say 2016, something like that. and we, we met in the Czech Republic. we were, we were at this conference. He, he said to me, I run a conference in, in [00:06:00] Italy, you should come along and speak.

And ever since then I've been like, yeah, I really should. I really should. so far, like he, he, he, he didn't invite me to speak, but he, he he said, oh, I'll, I'll give you like a link to the video. And I think at the time that he gave it to me, I was actually traveling, so I wasn't able to watch.

But again, anyone know who's spoken at that show said, it's a great show, organized. The, the content's really good. but again, as you say, the food and the networking is always like top-notch, right? Which I think is, for, for me it's always one of the, the reasons as to why would I want to do a, an in-person event versus a virtual one, right?

yeah. Yeah. Especially like the food in Bologna. Hard to beat that. 

and actually I got to, and real quickly, like when I was there, I actually took half a day and took a train to Venice and back. Literally justtook a train, walked around Venice, ate lunch, came back. That was just again, just like super fun.

Like Kirk's day And, and it's, it is really interesting. I mean, I, I know, I know like all of my friends, the American friends I have in the industry, and I've got many of them, they travel a lot, right? They go, they go to lot, lots of different countries and so on. 

NFL and International Travel
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I thought was [00:07:00] really interesting, like when the NFL started to do games overseas, right?

I think the, the first, the first year that they decided to do a, a match. Or a game in, in the uk I think it was the Miami Dolphins. And I think bearing in mind that all of these guys that play for, for the dolphins get paid a crap ton of money. And I think something like 75% of all the people in the team didn't have a passport, right?

So they all the places that they'd gone, they'd gone to, to the Caribbean. So they'd gone to, the places where they didn't need a passport, they could use their driving license. And that was, that was it. And I thought, wow. With all that money, and they didn't go anywhere other than, just the 50 states or, or some of the Caribbean islands.

And I just was amazed at how little travel they were. Whereas I think now because of the, the NFL having such a great sort of, exposure everywhere. I mean they had a match in Ireland, I think, and they've got them in Germany. It's all over the place. Which again, I think it's a, it's a great way of taking your product, right?

In this case football right. To [00:08:00] kind of countries other than the, the kind of the country

expand your tam.

Absolutely. and I think at some point in time, I dunno whether it's gonna be in, in my lifetime, but I'm sure at some point in time there will be a franchise in, in the uk, probably in London, There'll be an NFL team from here. And, and that will just, again, it broaden the, the horizons on that.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting that, yeah. That's so fascinating just to consider. And I mean, people do this in the World Cup and that too, but you know, the, the effect that jet lag and that must have on a team, I I, I would imagine they're gonna have to try to be in country for a few days to get acclimated before the game.

You would expect otherwise they'd be significantly disadvantaged, I would think.

Yeah. But again, I guess

soon as you fly in

the, the beauty of it is that it's both teams are impacted in the same way, right? So if two teams are coming over, then they're both impacted with jet lag and what have

I, oh, I wasn't, see, I don't, I don't watch football, I confess. I like sports, but in, in kind of the, wow, that's [00:09:00] cool and fun to see. Not stay up with it. I have too many other things to do, and also other hobbies I enjoy better. But anyways. Are you saying, so you're saying two US teams came over and played like an exhibition game.

Oh, I

Yeah, yeah,

that makes more sense too. 'cause I was like, I wonder who they played like.

originally it was just an exhibition, but then it got to the point where they now actually have regular season matches in London, and then

I did

in

know that. That's cool. Okay. That's really cool. I also didn't know, I'm also learning so much here. I didn't never even thought about the fact that players would need passports, but of course, of course they would. I don't know. You just don't think about that. You're like, yeah, the team just goes somewhere.

But no, they all need individual passports. I wonder if they have to go through like normal passport control or if there's a special place for special people. Hmm.

I mean, usually it, again, I, I, I dunno about you. I've been to the airports a few times where they have VIPs and they get walked through by somebody from the airline, right? There's usually a kind of concession stand for, for vip, so they don't have to stand near public members like us.

Cl clearly, [00:10:00] clearly I'm not aware of that. Clearly I do not hang with that crowd.

No, nor do I, I I think, I think the, the funniest one I had, I, I, I was supposed to be taking a flight from London to, LA and I was traveling with a guy who, he phoned me up and he goes, Jim, I'm, I'm running late. You're gonna have to try and delay the plane, right? And I'm like, what do you mean I'm gonna have to delay the plane?

I was already curbside the other side. I'd gone through customs, right? And I'm waiting to get on the plane. I'm in the lounge, I'm having breakfast, and he goes, I don't think I'm gonna make the flight. I'm like, so what do you want me to do? Do you want me to lie down in front of the plane?

I mean,

yeah, yeah. and any, anything invol that just sounds illegal somehow, like

so

would actually delay the plane probably will have you ending up in jail.

so I, I had to get off, get, get, come out of the, the, the kind of my end and go through basically, passport control again. So I had to go through as though I'd just arrived, even though I hadn't gone anywhere. And, and I couldn't do that until such time they had to take my bag off the plane.

So I had to physically wait until that [00:11:00] plane had left before my bag was brought to me and I could go through and, and start the process again. And in the process of waiting for my bag to arrive, The, one of the Beatles, Ringo Star was walking through with his wife. And they were walking through with, With, I think somebody from Virgin or something like that. not Richard Branson, but somebody, somebody kind of like, who was part of the VIP team for Virgin. and again, I was like stunned at how, how accessible he was to the public, but also how short he was.

He was tiny. I never, I always thought that, that, these Beatles would been eight foot tall and, and huge. But he was really, really short.

they're giants in the industry. It's just not in

Exactly. Exactly. 

Digital Marketing Beginnings
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so Kirk, thanks for coming onto digital marketing stories. We've talked an awful lot about stuff, but not really much about digital marketing.

So tell us a little bit about how you got into the industry.

Yeah. other, if anyone has heard other times I've told this, this might be familiar, but, basically I was, I was in seminary getting my master's in theology and I was working [00:12:00] overnights at, at a big box store, kinda like Walmart. It's, it's Target, for those who are familiar.

And,was dying slowly because I was working all night trying to get two hours of sleep, taking master's levels classes, doing the master's level reading, writing and all that. And then, and just trying to survive that. We didn't have any kids at the time, but you know, was married to, and, just, just trying to, trying to survive really.

And I was like, I will take the next job that I get. lo and behold, it was a marketing, it was actually a content marketing job back before content marketing was even called content marketing. it was just a small little online e-commerce business, and, and they were literally like, Hey, we'll pay you no money to, I mean money but not much, to take this, this parts catalog, like we're talking like restaurant equipment parts, so like air, compressors and things like that.

So take this catalog and go page by page and put this product online. so I mean, this would've been, probably 16 years ago or so. And that's one of the way, [00:13:00] like these products were not online anywhere else. and so that's what I did. I literally like, had the physical parts catalog and I would just be like typing it in.

And then, and then shortly thereafter they're like, Hey, we wanna try some, some additional marketing things. There's this thing called PPC Google Ads. you wanna take a shot at it? I was like, sure, I, I wanna do something different. I'm bored. And, and honestly, and I'm sure other people are like this too. is just one of those things where from the beginning I loved it. I don't know. There was just this draw to all of a sudden realizing, and that was, especially back in the days where there wasn't as much competition, it was easier just to be like, Hey, I'm gonna try to target these 10, these 10, these 10 exact match keywords where there's six words in them.

They're very long tail. You may only get four four, clicks per, per month on them, but you'll sell two products per it. so it was, it was also very easy just to immediately do some experimenting, see some success and just really, really respond to that. and, and then, long story short, eventually was like, [00:14:00] Hey, I should get some clients on the side.

'cause like I said, not really making any money, eventually went out on my own and figured I'd just be, I had, I, I had zero business plans, figured I'd be a freelancer consultant. And over time I've added a few employees on still trying to figure. What my exact role is. 'cause I still love to, I still, I actually manage three accounts myself, so I'm still really trying to be in the weeds purposefully.

'cause that's where my content comes from really. but then also I, I like to do content and then also I do some management and so yeah, I'm, I'm busy, I think, I mean, I, again, I, I'm, I'm like yourself. I love, I love physically managing campaigns and being hands-on. Rather than just sitting back and being a manager and, and, and everything else. For me it's, it's a lot more fun to do it, I still enjoy it. Again, I'm, I'm, I'm sure at some point in time say, I'm sure I don't, I dunno, maybe, maybe I won't, but at some point in time, there may come a point where I wake up one day and go, I don't wanna do this anymore.

But I've been doing it 25 years and [00:15:00] I've, I've loved it. 

Evolution of PPC and Google Ads
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It's really interesting to see Google are now celebrating the 25 years of Google AdWords or Google Ads as it's called now. that's happened quite recently. And I, I always remember when they first started up, I mean, we, we had already been doing PPC with other, other channels.

And Google pleaded with us. I mean, I remember getting a, an invite to their sort of small two person serviced office here in the UK and London. And they were in the basement of, of one of these serviced office places. And they pleaded with me to spend some of my client's money with them.

And I'm like, why would I wanna do that? And at the time we were getting a 15% agency. For working with Yahoo. Alright. And I said, if you could match that 15% discount, we'll we'll divert some of our money to you. So they did, they gave us the agency discount, which was great. So we were getting 15% from Google, 15% from the clients every, every month we were billing, reasonable amounts of money, and growing the agency.

And, and I, I think for me it was, it was so new, so interesting and just evolving like at such a rapid pace, right? There was no YouTube, we couldn't, if we wanted to do [00:16:00] something, there was no YouTube where you can go and watch a video to say, this is how you do this, this is how you do that, right?

And,you had to figure stump some stuff out yourself. And quite often if you figured it out right, you could have such a, such an advantage over some of your competitors, right? I remember when you had things like dynamic keyword insertions and stuff like that, and it's just like all of a sudden people were going, that blows your mind.

So before you, before long. Every advertiser knew about DKI. And they were like, all of a sudden, all of the ads were exactly the same. 'cause they were all using the keyword as the, the title in, in the ad. So we changed from using DKI to not using DKI in some cases. but, but for me it's, it's been like that evolution.

There's always been change. There's change, there's change. The one thing we can guarantee that's gonna happen, change is the only thing that we know is going to continue. 

Challenges with Modern PPC
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and, and again, I dunno, I dunno what your thoughts, I'd love to know, but in the last couple of years, the change has been so rapid. So in some respects, harmful for people that have been doing [00:17:00] it for a long time.

I guess if you were just coming in for like now into the industry, you'd think, yeah, this is all great AI and, and everything else makes it super easy. But for people like you and me, it's wow, this is, this is really harmful to what we know to be the, the product that we've grown up with and, and we love.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, for

do you think, I mean, what.

yeah, I, I mean I, yeah, I would agree with all of that. I mean, and we can go, we can just meander in any direction you want too. it's funny, as you were talking, I was just thinking, oh gosh, I even forgot about Yahoo. like I remember doing some Yahoo campaigns and then Yahoo and Microsoft work together, stuff like that.

And then I was also thinking gosh, we have been managing things a while. And it's interesting, like I look at other agency owners, I'm just like. They have 250 person businesses or something. And I'm, and it's one of those interesting, things that I've come to learn and appreciate.

And that's just that, you have, you have various skills and part of being a business owner right, is that you have the ability to have multiple skills and to do it well enough to sell that and [00:18:00] that, but yeah, one of just some self-reflection, like one of the skills I, I think, like I've only begun to attain recently is almost more on that process slash hiring slash management slash how do you actually turn it from, Hey, I know Google Ads and I like doing this for a brand.

How do you actually expand that into a business, if you will? but anyways, no, to answer, to answer your question more on the technical PBC side, for sure, I mean, absolutely it's changed more on, in one sense, here's, here's my thing, it's changed more. Management has changed more in the last two years.

I, I still maintain that the core of Google is still relatively unchanged. And in some ways this is where I think Google is shooting them, has shot themselves in the foot a little bit. because in my opinion, the core of Google and, and we can discuss up until ai 'cause there are some differences. So what I mean by the core of Google, let's say on the capturing demand side, is it is ultimately [00:19:00] like a semantic universe.

Like it involves, it involves words and words involve, knowledge enough to communicate that word. So that's the capturing demand side, right? and because of that there are certain level of intent tied to words that in my opinion, will, will always be important. And one of, I think the biggest mistakes Google has made over the last few years.

By, by trying to move aggressively away from that, by smushing everything together, by, by making it about the person and, and the, and the efficiency target. And one of the, one of the reasons I say that is because I just don't think they have quite the view of the person and demographics and stuff that, that actual audience channels like Meta has.

I think that's one of the problems. But I, but I think at the very least, just this idea of the semantics of communication and that there being some intent involved in words themselves is still like highly important. And I actually think it's pretty [00:20:00] important for 'em not to move too far away from that.

And, and, and that kind of changes. And I would argue it still doesn't change even in a world of ai. I just think it gets more complex. But as things move to more conversational, for sure, it's more complex. But really at the end of the day, we're still. We're still like talking about what has been communicated in words and, and assigning a value to that.

And I just, I mean, that's as, as I look back at the industry, that's just one of the things that has always been Google's strength, that I think they, they moved away from it a little bit. And it'll be interesting to see what happens overall. And I don't, we can go in any direction you want. That's just kind of me, me, like blabbing out loud about that.

but anyways, yeah, that's,

because I mean, Google have always been a business that has said, we know more about things than you do. right? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And, and again, don't get me wrong, I mean, I, I think when you look at all of the data that they have access to that we don't. I, the, one of the biggest arguments you'd always hear [00:21:00] agency owners talking about is they'll be like, oh, I'm getting,I'm getting broad matched, with this term and it's not really relevant and everything else, but we don't have the context of all that's taken place with that individual before they get to the point where they've served up you as a, as a, an, a, a possibility and people have clicked through.

so for me it's, it's, it is, it is one of those things I, I kind of have to take it with a, a big. Huge grain of salt to kinda make sure that I'm okay with certain elements of the way things are now. 'cause it's completely alien to the way I've grown up with things. But it's a bit like, if you, if you drive a car, if you drive a car and it's stick shift versus driving one, that's automatic.

It's a fundamental difference. In terms of the experience that you have. But both will get you to, to where you want to get to. And I, I'm always interested to, I'm always interested to, to to talk to people. Sorry, carry on.

No, that's, that's a really interesting analogy because actually like Google, I think Google would say that. So look at P max AI max, stuff like that. I think, I think they would say that analogy. They'd be like, yeah, we're, [00:22:00] you've been doing stick shift. We're saying, Hey, here's the automatic, it's way easier to get in the car and drive.

Automation and Small Budgets
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And the funny thing is, is that I increasingly argue it is absolutely not the case because,because as as things I, so I've noticed, I've noticed that more automation, increases instability. That makes it more difficult for, for projections and for budgeting and for clients just to know what to expect.

With Google, I've actually had clients complain about this. not, not like. Not led by us, but just to us in terms of, Google used to be like the stable channel and it's just not anymore. And what they meant was we just knew what we were getting and how much, whether we were happy or not. It was just kinda like that's what we'd get from Google and now it's chaotic.

Some of that is just because of the idea of AI and, and to me, this is where especially it's not great for small budgets and smaller advertisers because it's like in order for AI to learn well and to do its thing [00:23:00] like, there just has to be such an, an amount of data as we all know. that like it, there are times where it does really well.

Like we, we obvi, we definitely use p max and AI max as we've tested it and things like that. But, but, and I think this is my thing, especially with small budgets, is I genuinely think that there needs to be a better understanding of what are the needs and size of each account? And then what, like how do you build an account for that?

And some of on the smaller side. What that means is like Google coming in and saying, Hey, we have all of this potential for you. It's yes, but a a, a budget spending $2,000 a month is like never going to realize that potential. And so what, what we need, and this is where I go back to words, what we need is to say, Hey, you're right.

There's a whole lot of opportunity there. At some point we're gonna be able to invest in that. We can't right now. That means what we need to do is we need to invest in these 10 [00:24:00] words that we know are exactly what our target audience and exactly their location. They're, they're, they're looking exactly for us.

And part of probably my biggest complaint right now is it's just harder to do that with Google than it used to be as we get into the mush of close variance and, and, and even just yeah, like the changed, match types and all that stuff. And so again, that's where I just think there's a both and yeah, the lack of data and there, there is an argument for, yeah, go ahead.

and you think about it like, I'm paying for, I'm paying you for keywords, right? And you, you are not even telling me what you've matched me with. So you just, again, I mean, I think in some respects it's almost I guess maybe they've all so Facebook saw things that Google were doing and went, oh, we're gonna do that, right?

Google saw things that Microsoft were doing, oh, we're gonna do that. And, and ultimately, I think what's probably happened is they've just ended up in this position where they can, they can underperform with impunity and not be punished for it. I mean, if you think about it, if you're an agency, [00:25:00] if you had a horrible performance, right?

Based upon you said, Hey, I want to generate leads at, or, or let's say in your case, your, your primarily e-commerce, I wanna generate sales and I can afford to spend $25 to acquire a sale, right? And Google come in and they deliver you sales that cost 150 bucks, right? And they're like, with impunity, they can just go, you just spent your money, right?

And there's not much you can do short of switching everything off, right? You either have to say. just carry on playing the game and hope things improve. Or like I said, you, you just have to go and say it's our way or the highway. And in, in the case of, with Google, there's not really that many alternatives.

You can say, I'll go and do that instead. And I think Facebook had done it. Google had done it. Microsoft had done it to a point. and, and for me it's, it's disappointing. I mean, if we were an agency and we did poor performance, let's say we didn't deliver like for a couple of months, we'd probably be canned like that.

And I, and I'll unfortunately, Google's in a position where they can, like I said, with impunity, just deliver poor results and not be [00:26:00] punished for it. I don't, I dunno if punish is the right word, but, there's no, there's no penalty for them doing that.

Yeah. Yeah. Like you said, other than us just not spending, yeah, I mean, I. to me, if, if so to me it's okay, I think Google should do two things. have your automated stuff for big budgets for, I will say it again, like we absolutely have seen various certain clients where there, there are certain audit just really,successful.

They have a good, a good look at the market that that matches with Google's ability to identify who that audience is, the product, all that stuff, right? There's just a good fit that they have with some of those automated tools. And, and I do think there is, I do think there's additional success that can be found more rapidly by Google's automation tools too.

So I think there is a world with that. And then I think there's just a world.

brands, are those brands that have got like a significant amount of above the line, activity going so tv, radio, print,established brands that have been around a while or is it kind of new, new [00:27:00] startups?

Not, I, I would say, I would say well established, but not, not like doing, a bunch of o o out of or out OH and all that. like you described tv, all that. No, I mean, a lot of these are just like solid D two C brands. And, and again, like what I've noticed is sometimes it's almost like what aligns with, Google has various audiences I think, that are a little better defined, that for some reason they're, they're able to better define, this is this exact, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm trying not to say exactly.

There's especially one client that I have very specifically in mind where it's just for some reason Google's Hey, we have this exact audience for you and you can build it, and like we will, we will crush it at it. and not, not all of our businesses are like that. And, and again, some of that is just like to, and then to Google's like defense.

Then we'll have clients where it's let's, we talk about Tam, the tam is Women, 40 to 65. That's the tam. That's that's a whole lot of people. so that's why you're, you, so you're either, I'm [00:28:00] trying to think of what some of the trillion, the, the billions of dollar, mega companies are, but so you're either like L'Oreal because you're able to actually target your tam, or it's actually really difficult because, because, and, and you have to you, and that's where that's part of what we do as PPC is, right?

We try to like, we try to better define and filter into, okay, yes, this is everyone we could reach, but also how do we get better at really finding that out? And, and I think part of my thing that I've, I've beat the, I've tried to beat the drum on this regularly, especially because we do have a bunch of small budgets, that we work with as well, is I think, I think what I remember people getting into Google and being excited about in the beginning was because you could find.

You, you could find relatively specific phrases that were, that were low cost in the auctions, that were good targets for you to bid on, that were reliable in, in converting. So you had a decent CVR. That is how [00:29:00] smaller budgets were, be able to begin with Google and then eventually grow to the point where they could, they could risk more in, in waste, right?

Because as, as you start to get way into more prospecting, there's, there's greater risk. You're gonna have greater waste. That's why you have a lower ROAS target o often for prospecting. And all that to say is, I think a big thing that Google should be aggressively pursuing for their own long-term health is seeing how to allow for more specific targeting again.

and I understand there's privacy issues. Hey, that's figure it out. so more specific targeting as well as lower CPCs,

Do you think they're gonna go there?

Oh no, absolutely not. Be, be because the draw of, I, I think, I think they are, I think it is impossible for them to get away from the shareholders obsession like that, that that's the game.

So of course, of [00:30:00] course, like the shareholders are obsessed with like ongoing, growth, right? 

Challenges with Google's Advertising Policies
---

and so if you don't, if you don't post that growth, even if you have a long-term plan, whatever. they're not gonna be happy. So No, I don't think so. But I do think that if they, if they do want to be able to continue to be able to be on the small budget side so that small budgets can get into bigger budgets, I, I just think like CPC costs overall have to go down.

And that's not just an auction argument because we've seen now proof from DOJ and that sort of thing that they are, that they, they're inflating bid floors on, on low competition auctions. And again, that's exactly what I'm saying is like we used to find low competition auctions. That's what I think what I'm trying to say is that's what started the game for us in a lot of clients in liking Google and Google's shooting the very thing that like first got a lot of brands into Google.

I just think that's foolish.

Performance Max: A Double-Edged Sword
---

I mean, it's a bit, it's a bit like,when they introduce Performance Max. They did it to the [00:31:00] detriment of the advertisers who had spent an advertising agency, who had spent a ton of time working out how to run a Google Display Network campaign or a YouTube campaign. They knew what the pain points were in setting those up and some of the, the kind of the trigger points that could really kind make things go badly wrong, but also kinda get you scale, right?

And obviously when they introduced Performance Max, it was like a, a kind of a consolidation of all of the products that Google had. And I think a lot of people were trying Google, trying YouTube campaigns, failing miserably, turning it off and saying, I'm not gonna run YouTube, right? Trying, GDN, failing miserably, turn it off, try Gmail, failing miserably, turning it off, right?

So Google could see that, that advertisers were just not spending money on some of these products. They had. Clearly like a, a large, footprint in terms of the, the amount of page views or impressions that they had. And I think, and I think that obviously they introduced Performance Max to enable you to take that and go elsewhere.

One of the [00:32:00] challenges was always like, if you wanted to run YouTube campaigns, quite often the barrier to entry was that the advertisers didn't have creative, didn't have any videos, So again, go Google came out with some tools to help people to create videos. And now with ai there's a lot more,people can create variations of product images and things like that, which again, I think is, some of those elements are quite cool, but they've made it everything has to be, you have to adopt everything.

And I'm like, I want to be a lot more selective.

You have to adopt everything. And by the way, it's gonna take, six to 20 months to train in which you're paying us all that time. And of course, of course no one can guarantee success. And that's fair. That's part of that is, that's part of marketing is risk. But, but again, that's the whole, like how do you tell a business, Hey, we're gonna adopt every single thing they do, hope it works.

for for months and months. Months. And I think that's part of my thing when in, when like what used to be is you were able to say, Hey, I'm not, I'm not totally sure, but as we look, we've done [00:33:00] our research and as we look at this is what people are communicating, they're interested right now. That's, that's what you're selling.

I think there's a very high likelihood if we start getting in front of those people that, they're, they're gonna buy from you. And, and there was, I mean, that's, that's the thing is that was proven over and over again. I, I don't know. One, one thing I'll say that I am encouraged by. so I was thinking like, as you were talking about P max is interesting because for us, we remember when P max first rolled out and, and like part of, part of my still frustration about P max is not the p max of right now, it's just the, it's just what happened back then, which was basically what you said.

It was kind of like, Hey, here's this magic tool that's gonna solve all your problems. and, and by the way, do it because we're the, we're the, we're the people saying take your medicine, we're the doctors saying take your medicine and do it. whether you like it or not. That's how it was treated.

And thankfully I'm really happy about this over time Google has really switched on PMA, so maybe someone walking into p max is a new advertiser today would be like, wow, there's a lot of visibility to [00:34:00] data, stuff like that. Some of this 'cause because of conversations like this, we fought like our butts off for

Tooth and nail. Yeah.

for search, for search terms and stuff like that.

So I'm really, I'm really happy about that and, and some of those changes in that. That it does seem have, have taken place. so that that's, that's been encouraging and I think there is,more, I would love to see, more of that. It'd be nice to not just have channel insight, but, more specific channel control.

For instance, AP Max vice versa and demand gen and all that. but we're, there have been some, some changes in a healthy way with that too that I think are good. It was, it was always the thing, like whenever they came out with a new thing, right? There would be a controlled audience of people that would have access to it, right? And for me it was, it was, it was always going to be the real rubber hitting the road with Pax was when everyone had access to it, right?

If you had a small, white labeled group of people that had access to it, then those people are always going to have success because nobody else has access to it, right? So the competitive nature of the auctions are not built up in that [00:35:00] ecosystem, right? Once everyone's got access to it, all of a sudden the floors and ceilings right, reposition themselves right in every vertical, right to, to the points where, it's good for Google and it may be just about good enough for advertisers.

To go, I've got enough success to keep going and keep trying, right? Rather than getting no success at all and going, I'm not gonna do that anymore. They've always, I've always said, it's a little bit like, them, them giving you a little dime bag of cocaine or something, right?

All of a sudden it's just want to give you enough to keep you going. Keep trying, right? Rather than, solving things and, and as you say, putting in the right floor for, for what the auction should be at. I mean, most auctions, they'll start at a particular level, which in most cases is far above where it ought to take place.

The Complexity of Brand Bidding
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I've always said with brand bidding, I see so many people who bid on their own brand and people go, again, whole different conversation about whether you should or you shouldn't. but, but, but equally what you shouldn't do is you shouldn't have brand bidding where you are bidding $15 a click for your own brand, right?

Because if [00:36:00] somebody's typed in your brand name, they're looking for you. They're not looking for anyone else, right? If Google serves up anyone else as an alternative, they're doing. The person that's doing the search, the, the end user, a real injustice, right? By I'm looking for, for your company and they're giving me somebody else's an alternative, right?

That's not what I wanted. so for me, I've always maintained one of the, the lowest hanging fruits with any new client I work with is I go and see what they're doing on their brand. If they're not bidding on their brand, great. I can set up a brand campaign and get some good success.

They are bidding on their brand on a p max, and it's wacky big prices. I'll put it onto a manual CPC, bring it right down to what should be a more sensible level, right? I look at impression, share volume, and see how much they have, right? And as long as that, that doesn't drop to a certain point.

we can usually make a dramatic difference in terms of the overall sort of success that they have. And, and ultimately I want, what I'm trying to do there is I'm trying to free up budget that they're wasting on brand campaigns that could be going to generic or other stuff, test campaigns.

That they're just wasting on, on bidding on their own brand. So that's [00:37:00] for me, what's always been the challenge about brand bidding versus not brand bidding. I think, there's, there's more kind of, points in the, in the middle that make it a relevant argument to put forward.

What, what are your thoughts on, on brand bidding?

no, I, I love it. so I, I tend to be of the mind that, anyone who makes the brand bidding conversation overly simplistic, doesn't, doesn't actually understand what's happening, right? or, or just hasn't worked with enough brands to be completely frank, because when you've, when you've worked with brands from the smallest, tiny little local up into some mega international, billions of dollar corporation, you understand that, bidding, like someone typing in brand has vastly different intent.

Behind it, based on the brand. like the context, there's a whole lot that can go into it. so to just have this overly simplistic, here's what I do with brand terms, is to me unhelpful. as an [00:38:00] example, someone typing in a brand for, it's the easy one that everyone knows, but let's say Kleenex and tissue, right?

Someone typing in the literal brand term Kleenex, that does not mean that they have high intent to purchase the actual brand of Kleenex. It, it probably just means they need some tissues. And that's actually an interesting way to look at, your brand as in some ways it might actually be less down the funnel than you think.

And it might even be in the, the prospecting category, right? And it's just really crucial to, I think, look at your, your account, your specific account. You're a specific client, the specific. Industry. and to really start to try to identify like when people are searching for brand, what are the different possible intents, and then maybe start to organize your account and, and, set your bidding targets and stuff like that around that.

because I just think it's way too overly simplistic to say, oh yeah, we, we do not [00:39:00] wanna bid on our brands. I hear that a lot from brand owners and operators. I don't wanna waste money bidding on brand and it's hey, there might be some of that, that is the case. In fact, it's not uncommon for us to do some quick searches and auction insights and make sure, and if they really do own like their exact, exact match of their exact domain or something like that with organic and they don't really have competitors and oxygen sites.

Sure. Let's exclude that. Like excluding any time your brand is listed with any other, if someone's searching for zeto, PPC marketing, there's a lot of, there's a lot of agencies that are bidding on PPC marketing, right? it be dumb for me, I don't know, we might have POed to test, but we have typically defended our brand on in ads just because there are other agencies bidding on that.

so all that to say, yeah, I would, I would agree. I think it's complex and we, we have various standard process for how we identify that, what we do, based in search and shopping and p max. and a lot of those, for me, [00:40:00] increasingly is that I just, I, I think there are very few standard best practices across every account.

Even if there are some places that we may implement to start. But, but overall, I think, really customizing an account is, is the secret to being a good Google Ads manager and also like surviving,let's say the AI domination era sort of a deal because I, I do think more of a custom approach and, and, and that is, is pretty crucial still.

Yeah, I, I mean, I, I always said with brand things, things like, are they a new versus existing? If it's an existing person that knows who you are, right? Then the, likelihood is they're, they're just being lazy. They go to Google type in your brand, right? They click on the first link, which could be a paid ad, right?

If you, if you created your audiences properly, right? Then you should be creating a different user experience for those people, people that you know are existing customers of yours. So it could be that they're looking for. The app to download, or they're looking to leave reviews or they're looking to engage with you socially or look at [00:41:00] their existing kind of purchases that they've made to download something they, they may have forgotten, right?

So their experience of why they've done it, why they typed in your brand is different than somebody who's never heard from of you before. But equally, somebody may have never heard of you before and they do all their work in the Google ecosystem, or it could be that they've seen a TV advert where, where you've been mentioned, right?

And all of a sudden they're going to Google to type in your brand, right? Never having any exposure to you before, right? So because there's no click from the tv, right? It'll come through as a new visitor, right? But if you, again, if you, if you've done any sort of TV advertising, worked with brands that are running TV campaigns, if you line up the, when did the, the 32nd slot appear on the TV versus when did you get a spike in brand search terms, right?

There's usually a kind of correlation between those two, right? Can't quantify it. You can't say, we spent this money on tv, we spent this money on paid at search. We got this sales, we're going to give the, the money accordingly, but it's, it's de there's definitely an [00:42:00] impact there. And I've always maintained, like if it, if it's a case of I can be there or I'm not there, and I'll let Google decide whether one of my competitors is what shown, right?

That's gonna be de damaging, right? I mean, if you've, if you've done really good work in building your brand good social presence and everything else, and you don't bid on your own brand on Google, right? Then again, you're leaving it open that potentially one of your competitors can come in and steal it, steal the click out from under your feet, right at the very last minute, right?

And you're going, why, why ask, why are our sales through the floor? again, as much as I don't want to bid on brands, sometimes it's going to be a tactical and strategic thing to do that.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, for, for sure. 

Manual CPC and Auction Strategies
---

along those lines too, let's, let's say the, the brand slash, custom managing account and having all that in your mind, brand is one of those places where I'll still utilize manual CPC once in a while. I, I think. I don't care if someone thinks that I'm an old, grouch for this, but I, I just think, I think anyone who [00:43:00] really diss on manual CPCs is not actually fully understanding always, like what that means.

'cause again, like a manual CCP c you're, you're, you're setting the max, right? you're setting the max that you're willing to pay. And so there's actually still some level where like you're still going to pay under that if the, if the floor of the auction is lower and all that sort of thing. so even then you're not saying, this is what I'm going to pay all the time.

and so what I've found is on a very stable auctions and brand is a great example of this, sometimes a really core non-brand term, especially in an account that's been existing for a while where you, you have an idea of where your impression share is and all that stuff. Sometimes that can work too, but, but to your point earlier of overpaying for CBCs, we see that all the time in brand campaigns.

If we audit an account and someone is just like lazily slapped a t row as, and I will say lazily, I. I, I, every once in a while, I'm not a huge one on all the time [00:44:00] things, but every once in a while, like maybe T row's brand, but you should test that because I just typically think that depending on the brand and depending on the, the match types and all that stuff, but if we're talking about you just really want to ensure you're owning some core brand terms, especially in exact, and maybe some phrase match.

And you, and that you do in this particular client wanna be relatively aggressive on those. So you really are controlling the brand landscape. You should, you should test CPC, manual CB, C, because what you might see is that you still gain the exact amount of traffic and sales, but like on average you just pay lower auction costs.

and again,

always, I always do that, I always do manual CPC, but I, I include the columns that say impressions top and impressions absolute top, right? Because I want to make sure if there's absolute top impressions is high, right? Let's say it's 85, 90% or whatever it might be, then you know that whatever your bidding in terms of that manual, CPC, you are capturing the top spot in [00:45:00] paid ads, virtually nine, nine outta 10 times, right?

Which is probably as good as you're gonna get, right? but if it, if, if the impression top and impression absolute top is low, then you know that you're probably below where the floor is, right? You are probably harming the, the performance of that campaign because it's too low, right? Because again, sometimes you, you'll work with the brand and, and quite often it could, it could be.

Sort of, it's not quite as ubiquitous and, and well known. to your, your point about Kleenex and tissues, right? It's kind of like, Hoover and vacuum. It's kinda so many different things where people will use one word but they mean something else, right? So it could be that, that there is some, some kind of anomalies in, in terms of the brand itself.

and that's why the floor is maybe higher than you might think it ought to be. Again, I, I always think all these, all these auction just start at a penny, right? There should be 1 cent or one p or whatever it might be, and work it up from there. And if there's nobody bidding on it, then you know, if you're the only person bidding you get, get the click for for 1 cent, right?

Mm-hmm. That, and that, that goes back to my point earlier of I, I, I [00:46:00] do think that that is a way to actually expand it back into reach for smaller and local, local businesses to do that. no, I, I mean it's interesting. I, I love conversations like this. 'cause I think what they do sometimes, especially if someone's newer, is helps them think and understand a little bit better of what is happening behind the scenes and not just that, nah, let's test this bidding model.

'cause to me, like again, let's just take this brand conversation with manual CPC, like if you have a T row s set, again, what you're communicating to Google is you're, you, you're telling Google, Hey, I'm okay with mush and averages. which again. In, in, in certain cases, especially prospect, that's is really good.

It's really important because what Google is doing is they're just like, they're trying different things to see what they can get to over, over that 30 day period or whatever to hit your targets. And they might, and especially with prospecting, I think they do a pretty good job of, of figuring that out in ways that like you couldn't anymore with manual CPC but with something like brand where, to your point where it's very, very controlled.

And again, [00:47:00] that's the key. I don't want Google thinking, oh you know what we should do this time, we should bid on this $17 click, on this $20 product brand search. because over time we'll mush that into everything else. And again, that's the whole point is because you're already aware of what exactly what's happening in the auction and you're forcing those CPCs lower there, there's no go Google's actually kinda wrong on the, the mush ability, which is why you might, at the end of the month, probably still see the exact same value you would've gotten.

At a much lower cost, a much higher efficiency,

that's the thing you, you could, you could say, I've got a 400% roas, target roas, right? And then you could have all your brand stuff could be like. A thousand percent. And all your generic stuff could be 40%. But it blends out at the average of 400, right? And people go, look how great it is, right?

And I, I've always said that there's so much at the top and the bottom that if you could kind of like, think of those sort of independently, [00:48:00] right? Then you would be able to get the stuff at the bottom. You go, I don't really think that should be there and I'm gonna do something to try and mitigate for that.

And the brand stuff, again, I think it should work harder for you and deliver more for you for less money, right? But, but it, it's, again, it's amazing how, as you say, you, you, you call it mushing together. I, I call it blended. It's kind of same, same sort of thing, right? Ultimately it, it, yes, you want to have a blended overall performance, right?

But you need to analyze it a little bit more granular detail, what that performance looks like, right? So you can see if there are any inefficiencies. Where are those inefficiencies,

Yeah,

right? Because it, it sometimes they're not always obvious, right?

The Efficiency Game in Google Ads
---

I, I think, I think at the end of the day for a Google Ads practitioner, and I'm actually curious to hear your thoughts on this, but I think more and more I've started seeing, I think that really we are playing an efficiency game. Like more than, more than more than growth. And I wanna be careful in what I, what I communicate that, that, 'cause I do think like good efficiency leads to [00:49:00] growth.

but I actually still believe that most of a business scaling ability is, is outside of the demand capture channel. so it might be in YouTube or meta or like changing up your offer or things like that. That's where you actually really like finding a new tam, whatever. And all demand capture is doing is simply like moving along with that.

That's actually a little bit of what I talked about is this like a vacuum cleaner illustration of our job is to vacuum up the room as efficiently as possible. and, and, but we can't grow that room. so all that, all that to say like to this point, I think that's such a key part of what we're doing is we're saying here's the available demand.

We cannot grow that demand personally. like we, I cannot through sheer willpower, make more people search for my brand term. you can, you can do that by running Google You again, you can do that by running demand creation channels, YouTube, whatever. But like I'm just saying, like me as the Google, PB cer cannot, cannot force someone to type more [00:50:00] brand terms in which means at, at this time, without an external influence, there is a limit to, to the amount of value I can get from, from that brand term, if you will.

So that's where, again, what we're saying is, therefore what it does is it becomes an efficiency game. What is, what is the most, what is the most efficient that I can spend this, this cost to get the highest possible sales within the that limitation. Yeah. And, and then we're, we're limited to that, but, but really at the end of the day, in my opinion, like Google Ads is an efficiency game.

We're just constantly trying to be the most efficient we can with the budget as then we also then work with the client and other channels to, to grow all of that, that demand. And I, I just think it's important to understand that that's what's happening behind the background, and that's our goal,

Yeah, you are absolutely right. You can't, you can't create demand that doesn't exist, right? So if there's a thousand searches for a search term, you're not gonna go, I'm gonna go and find the other 10,000 that exist elsewhere. It's there's a [00:51:00] thousand. That's it, right? There's not that many, there's nobody else looking for it.

As you say, you can do some TV and radio and all that sort of stuff to try and build your awareness. I mean, again, that's why sometimes I think, when you, when you are an agency that does Facebook and Google, you can understand the journey from Facebook on a, like a. Branded brand awareness campaign, right?

You may not get as many sales in Facebook, but you'll definitely get an uptick in search volume for your brand on Google as a result of somebody going, oh, that's an interesting product. Never heard of that before. Never heard of that brand. They, they fire up Google and, and maybe look at it on a different device, right?

and that, and that's like those kind of omni-channel, visits are the ones I think a lot of agencies struggle to put together, right? it's understanding what that journey is. And I think part of it is because the, the channels have taken the data away from us, right?

They haven't. Opened it up so that that, Facebook can know exactly what happened after the event. So literally the point in time that the battens handed over to the next person, they don't know the outcome of that particular journey. Because of privacy. And I [00:52:00] think,in some respects, privacy for me has put paid to a lot of success that advertisers could be having.

Just by virtue of the fact that they're more worried about, what people's experience is. And I think I've always maintained, I've got friends that say, whenever I see a cookie banner, I always reject cookies. And I'm like, you do realize you're still gonna see ads. You're just not gonna see ads that are personalized.

You're just gonna see ads that are gonna be for whatever. it's just, yeah. The biggest budget. Yeah, that's, I mean, yeah. That's, that's so one of the things I alluded to before, but that I, that I've been speaking on lately. And, yeah, I just really have enjoyed giving this particular talk, especially in Europe. because Europe really, to me, Europe is an Europe is interesting in the PPC space.

so I, as an, I, as an outsider to Europe, looking at Europe and I see a lot of incredible technical knowledge. There are just some,astounding technical marketers in Europe, who think deeply about things and designing scripts, things like that, that are just like beyond me and challenge [00:53:00] me all the time.

And then also you have this privacy issue as well. privacy issue or positive, depending on variety of things. and, and one of the things that I've been leaning more into kind of along how we're talking and what I've been presenting as well to them is this level of, at some point, part of being a good Google Ads marketer is knowing when, okay, yeah, we might not have that data.

And, and, and sure, let's keep fighting for it. Let's try to get it. But also, like we don't right now have a lot of that data. the, we have other limitations. we have the efficiency limitation that I was talking about, as well as the inability to create demand o other than on outside channels, like all this stuff.

So we look at all that, and I think that that means at some point we as PBCers need to also be more and more willing to stop trying to solve. A, a what I call a business problem with technical PPC solutions, if it's not something a technical PPC solution can solve. So for instance, going back to my [00:54:00] efficiency thing, if you are looking at these thousand brand clicks that came through and we've talked about it, you're maxing out everything.

You've got like 98% of pressure share all that stuff, right? And, and like let's, let's say, your boss, your client comes to you and they're just like, Hey, I really want more performance outta this brand term. At some point then I think it is our responsibility after we've done the, we've ab tested, we've done this stuff right?

But at some point to, to, to, as part of that help utilize our Google Ads knowledge to identify. And, and help our clients, actually move forward with business growth, which in my opinion would not in that exact instance, be somehow changing the brand campaign. So in order to solve the business problem, the actual best thing that you as a technical PPC marketer might be, is to not touch that brand campaign and to communicate and sit down with them and, and communicate on here's how this works.

And so what we need is we need increased brand traffic. How do we get that primarily [00:55:00] right? so I, I think that's a big part of how increasingly our value will, yes, we still need to, to know we're doing that technical PPC stuff too, but at some point being able to tie that to actual business problems and solutions and then like help, help actually move the, the, the true growth markers of a business, forward so that then our channel can continue to grow in its demand capture way.

So that's been a part of what I've been presenting on.

yeah, and, and I mean, again, I, I'd, I'd at some point in time, I'm, I'm sure, again, I've, I've watched you present many times. I would love to be in, in the audience again when you're doing, that, that presentation, because again, I, I'm, I'm very much a kind of, I, I tend, even though I specialize in PPC, I look at marketing in a much more holistic way.

because again, I, I've always maintained PPC is not a magic wand, right? You need to have a good, good user experience. You have a good landing page, right? There's so many things that have to go in your way, go, go the right way for you to [00:56:00] succeed, right? As much as I, I think I'm good at doing PPC and I've been doing it a while, right?

There's definitely things that I always learn from, from people like yourself and so on. and some of it's driven by test and learn. Again, I hate, I hate the, the whole kind of idea of having to spend money on something where it may or may not work, right? But that's part and parcel of doing what you do, right?

You, you have a hypothesis and then you throw some money at it to test the hypothesis, and it can either be. Favorable or unfavorable. If it's unfavorable, you're like, I'm not gonna do that again, because that costs us money. But if it works well, then you can start rolling it out and scale it to other things and maybe other clients that you work with and that type of thing.

And I think that's always the challenge sometimes. 'cause Google knows Google And yes, you'd have to give them the benefit, the doubt that they know it better than we know it. But what they don't know is they don't understand the other aspects of what that client is involved in.

Are they, have they got tv? Are they doing podcasts? Are they running SEO? Have they got some sort of, so again, some like native advertising going, are they running programmatic? I mean, what sort of, what does it all look like [00:57:00] as a blended overall kind of thing? And how are they giving credit for what comes through?

I mean, ultimately attribution is always one of those things. It's, the models that they, that they have, I mean, they're all last click, first click, data driven, blah, blah, blah. And it's sort of like, again. I still maintain, you're spending money and there's money that comes in from sales, right?

Those are the two things that, are absolute definites, right? And everything else in between is just a kind of blurry mess of how you actually distribute the credit according to what's actually come in. and, and to, to your point about, in Europe, you, you have to worry about things like GDPR and people that don't give permission to be tracked and things like that, right?

And all of a sudden, instead of having deterministic, data where you know that a, a sale has taken place, you have to work on what they call probabilistic data, which is. Based on everything that we see that we can report on, we think a sale may have taken place, right? But it's not a definite sale, so there's no definite value, right?

So people are trying to get all your numbers to marry up on [00:58:00] GA four and Google Ads and, and they're never gonna marry up. And,and that's just something we just have to accept, right? I've spent a lot of time with some enterprise clients I work with where, all we're doing is we are, we're going backwards and forwards on, well this, this data's not right with what's throwing in our CRM and blah blah blah.

And it's again, you just got to choose one. And make that your single version of the truth and everything like that you operate, comes off that rather than me trying to get the numbers to marry up when I know that they never will.

Mm-hmm. 

The Role of Attribution and Incrementality
---

Yeah, and I mean that's, we probably are running out of time soon, but, that's even a, then the next conversation is moving from attribution to incrementality and trying to better understand how, how do you track, what my contributions are to this business that they would not have otherwise received.

and that, that alone is tricky even when you do have the, the maze, let's say, of a customer journey where it's, it's difficult to really identify,yeah. I, there there's, there's so much. There's so much there. And I think that [00:59:00] even incrementality is a little bit of a buzzword where it's oh yeah, run some holdout tests.

It's okay, I mean, yeah, let's do that. But also that, that still might not be a full picture. this stuff's hard. It's why, it's, why not every business sees over its

But it's all, but it's almost going around full circle, right? When we first started doing digital marketing, the reason it was so successful in the early days was. Budgets were being squeezed, right? Because of the, the econom economies of what was going on in the world at that particular point in time.

And tv, radio, and print was not as trackable As, as people wanted it to be. They wanted to have some definitive, I spent a thousand dollars, I made $5,000. Therefore that is profitable. Whereas with tv, you never know, right? You just can't say, I might have spent 50 grand on TV ads and never know whether any of that generated any revenue.

But we're always moving away from that trackability. In digital, right? To all of a sudden it's this, the ethereal. Now we just, we spend money and we know that we've made some sales, but we don't really know who we [01:00:00] should give credit to, right? And sometimes that's, that's good, right? But equally, if you, again, if you're a performance based agency, I mean, I've been running a performance based agency for forever, right?

That is challenging, right? Because sometimes it's very difficult to quantify the performance, right? Because you've got one metric that you are measured by, right? And because of all that's going on in, in the kind of digital ecosystem, that's not always the kind of the right way of doing it. Same as pricing models for agencies.

It's like when I first started, I used to charge a percentage of spend. 'cause that was just the way, the way of the world, right? But if you think about it, if, if you are, if you're doing, let's say you do a brand campaign. You spend a thousand dollars and it generates $50,000 in sales just for throwing out a number, right?

If you're charging a percentage of spend, you get. let's say 15% of a thousand dollars, that's 150 bucks, right? But you've generated $49,000 worth of incremental sales on the back of knowing that running a brand campaign is a good thing to do, right? And that's always the challenge. Whereas if you, if it was 15% of the sales, then all of a sudden you've [01:01:00] spent a thousand dollars, you made five grand in commissions, right?

As a, as an agency. And they're gonna go, this isn't really good value. I'm paying you five times as much money as I've spent on traffic, right? And, and again, there's never gonna be one model that you could say is definitively good or bad for advertisers, agencies, or Google, right? So it's kind of, I just think each one's probably done about you.

I, I always have, each client I have is on a, a model that works for the relationship we have, right? sometimes I win, sometimes they win, and sometimes neither of us win, right? I

The Art and Science of Digital Marketing
---

don't, I don't know if this is wrong or not, but, I am, I'm just increasingly convinced that the, the absolute success stories that you see are often tied way less to the, the marketing steps of data that we all think exist, which is this which is what you just laid out. And sometimes it seems to be more that you can always identify that there is, there's a person who [01:02:00] was placed in charge. Who had some sort of vision for what they thought they should do, regardless of whatever anyone told them. And they were either right or wrong. And I mean, you hear stories like that all the time with some of these, really, really successful brands and businesses. And it's kind of like, there, there is, there is an art to attribution and incrementality too.

there is a, there is a, people say, to me like, how do you, how can you quantify the value of going to a conference or things like that. And there's just some level of I can't really, and also there's just some, there's some reason that I knew years ago that I should just spend a stupid amount of time on Twitter, building a network, right?

and there was literally nothing in the data at that time, at any way that told me I should do that. And, and I, and I just think there's something to ponder there. In terms of, that that's probably also why, CEOs who do well are paid so much money, just because there's some [01:03:00] like direct tie to, if they have the idea and they push something through, it's either right or not.

so anyways, I, I'm not saying that we shouldn't do data and we shouldn't, I still think there's so much directional benefit to things as well. but, but I just think sometimes, and that's what's tricky about business, and that's what we can't get away from. I sometimes there's just something almost more artistic than science in someone who just says, no, we're this, this is what we're gonna, we're gonna invest in AWS even though we're lo losing so much flipping money because someday it's gonna come through for us.

And he was right. and it

Podcasting and Industry Reflections
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a, I mean, it's a absolutely, but it's a bit, it's a bit like, running a podcast. I mean, this is, this is probably episode 50 something of, of, of digital marketing stories. And, and I mean, when you run a podcast, it takes a lot of time to put it all together, right?

Takes money on hosting and, tracking platforms and all that sort of stuff. I mean, I know I've picked up clients on the back of the podcast, but that's not part of the reason why I do it. I do it 'cause it's fun. I love hanging out and talking to people [01:04:00] like yourself. 'cause we don't, again, as much as it's great fun to go and talk at conferences, you never really get enough time to go and sit down and talk to the people that you want to talk to.

For any length of time. There's always people have got stuff to go and do and, and everything else. So for me, having the opportunity to invite people I know and people I don't know onto the show to share their, their kind of, their knowledge and their wisdom and expertise. So that other people that watch the episodes or listen to the episodes can take them, take what we say and apply it to their own situation. And I, again, I know I picked up a couple of clients on the back of. running podcast episodes where I've had guests on and they like the guests, so they wanted to work with me.

And I'm like, why don't you wanna work with the guests? I mean, that's probably more, more beneficial, but you know, at the end of the day they, they'd like some of what I said as well as what the guests have said, right? but for me it is about that whole, I want hold the platforms I work with to account, right?

So Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and so on. I want to make them accountable for delivery of like our side of the, the equation, right? And, and equally I want my clients to do well, and I want their, [01:05:00] their end users, their customers to have a good experience working with them, right? So that's always.

For me, I, I want it to be, everyone gets the opportunity that I win, right? I don't want it to be the shareholders of the platforms are the only people that win here. I want us all to have success as a result. Which is part of the reason why I'm still in the industry, still love it, right? At some point in time I may not love it, but you know, right now I'm still in love with the industry and, and want to continue to do it.

Kirk, it's been so much fun to have you on the show today. I mean, we've been talking for probably an hour. We could probably talk for another three hours without even breaking sweat, right? I don't wanna turn myself into Joe Rogan, right? I know he has people on, and I always say like, how, how do they actually go to the toilet?

Or something like that, right? But, but maybe they're all, perhaps they're all fitted with catheters

they dehydrate themselves before it or something. They'd like train for the, the Joe Rogan podcast.

But again, I, I feel like e even though we've be talking for an hour, we've probably covered the tip of the iceberg when it comes to knowledge about paid search and shopping, which is obviously your [01:06:00] expertise.

Again, I'd love to ha have the opportunity at some point in time in the future to have you back so we can talk a little bit more about some of the, the nuts and bolts of specifically like running shopping campaigns. so if you, if you're up for that, let me know. Cool. Good. So thanks, thanks a lot for being such a great guest.

I'm gonna wrap things up and all, all of Kirk's, details will be in the show notes after the, episode goes live. Only remains for me to say thank you for listening, watching, and, we'll see you on the next episode of Digital Marketing Stories and.