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By now, you have probably experienced AI in some capacity, whether it’s from search engines, large language models, social media, emails, even spreadsheets. It’s at the point where we can no longer escape AI in the digital world, and whether you love or hate it, it’s beginning to blur the lines on the amount of control we have in the paid marketing realm.
As someone who has worked in paid media marketing for nearly 10 years, I’ve seen the landscape change a million times over, with every new feature attempting to make paid media easier. Whether it’s become easier is something different altogether, but the one thing that has become prominent in paid media marketing is automation.
Almost everything can be done by clicking a few buttons, from innovative audiences to target, new and exciting ad copy, fresh images and videos, even a list of keywords for a new campaign. It can all be asked, and AI will wish it into reality before your eyes. Let’s be real, even though automation and AI seems like magic, it’s a sure-fire way for your ads to spend your ad budget on elements that could be irrelevant to your business.
Although here at Koozai, we agree with what Google is saying, there’s still a lot of measures you should put in place to ensure you’re not allowing Google to run away with spend.
We can’t just put blind trust into Google. Take AI Max as an example. Many businesses activate AI Max and allow Google to use Text Customisation to create new headlines and descriptions based on their website. This seems fine at first glance but from our experience, we have witnessed Google’s AI generating headlines based on pages that are irrelevant to the keyword being used in the ad group, leading to irrelevant ad copy and sometimes complete errors.
To take control of your AI Max campaigns, untick the ‘Text customisation’ and ‘Final URL expansion’ boxes. Your ads will still appear in AI Mode placements but with control over what ad copy appears rather than Google’s interpretation of what they think they want your audience to see.
Use automation selectively, with the best accounts using a hybrid approach rather than an automation only approach.
Using these simple guardrails can decrease costs, increase relevant traffic, and allow your campaigns to optimise towards the goals you want to achieve.
A mistake we tend to see regularly is businesses mixing branded and non-branded campaigns in one. We recommend:
AI and automation isn’t broken, it just needs your input and control. The accounts that will outshine will be those that embrace automation alongside control, not by using one or the other. Use automation to strengthen your strategy, not replace it.
