PPCChat | ChatGPT Said… And Other Phrases That Give PPC Pros Hives | 4th November 2025

The topic for this week’s PPCChat session was “ChatGPT Said… And Other Phrases That Give PPC Pros Hives,” inspired by ChatGPT’s announcement that it will no longer give financial or medical advice.

Here is the screencap of the entire session, which Julie F. Bacchini hosted

Q1: Have you had a client or stakeholder come to you with PPC advice from an AI engine like ChatGPT or some other type of “AI says this” statement? What was that person’s position in the brand’s organization?

Yes…Both a “well ChatGPT says we should do X” to “we ran this through AI and it says…”Positions varied from VP over Marketing to Director of Marketing. @NeptuneMoon

Luckily not yet, but I can see it in certain emails, and it’s come up in new client conversations. @JuliaVyse

Interesting add on to this – do you consider outputs from Copilot/Gemini in the ad platforms the same as “ChatGPT says” @navahhopkins

@navahhopkins When I wrote the question I was thinking more of a client putting stuff into say ChatGPT and then coming back and telling me what I should be doing, but I suppose they could get a similar output from internal AI in a platform? @NeptuneMoon

For this question, I’ll say clients do ask me about messages they see in the platforms, not just genai, but also straight up recos. @JuliaVyse

Yes.. @runnerkik

Haven’t encountered it yet, except for how do I get my brand in there. @alimehdimukadam

@alimehdimukadam same here – clients just want to know how to show up in AIO @beyondthepaid

I am so happy for you all you haven’t had a client ask ChatGPT how their Google Ads should be run. @NeptuneMoon

If we haven’t yet, yes, we have. We just have clients who haven’t admitted it yet. @JuliaVyse

I might have to modify some of my questions if you all are not dealing with AI suggestions… so let’s see how this flows. @NeptuneMoon

Ha – not yet… but they are asking about AI Max more and more. @Galliguez

Oh yes, many times. And I can also spot AI Chat influence! @RaeBassett

Q2: What was the advice provided by ChatGPT or similar AI? What was your opinion of the quality and validity of the advice given? How specific was it?

It is accurate but thin and sounds like Google propaganda. @runnerkik

I asked it a few questions just to see what it came back with. All of it was fineish? But very basic and nothing you couldn’t get from a high quality blog or video. nothing interesting or strategic. @JuliaVyse

Lots of OLD concepts too, so sometimes fundamentally WRONG. @runnerkik

The advice was basically do everything Google would put into recommendations or super basic. @NeptuneMoon

I was thinking this too – it would be basic and toeing the Google party line. and not strategic. @beyondthepaid

Sometimes outdated in things like a campaign type or something that doesn’t exist in that format any longer too. @NeptuneMoon

And what is funny is the AI advice is ALL over LinkedIn too. @runnerkik

I wish that it was clearer to people in general that these LLMs are not out there scouring the web in real time for the answers to your prompts. They are guessing the best pattern completion based on their training data which is dated. @NeptuneMoon

AI does not think for you, it puts together the best “answer” based on the patterns stored in its system @NeptuneMoon

The thing with LLMs is it all depends on how you are prompting it. Like garbage in / garbage out. So if a client has asked how to run Google Ads, it will parrot standard items. But if they prompt specific with context, numbers and situations and ask for multiple ways to optimize/adjust, it’ll come close to how a seasoned professional would recommend. @alimehdimukadam

I want to scream this daily. @NeptuneMoon

From GPT, I got a lot of ‘let’s start with this and aim for this’ it sounded like me talking to a person new to search media. @JuliaVyse

Also, if you upload your ads data into a tool, that data is fair game for training the model. And prompts and conversations have ended up in search results so TREAD CAREFULLY FOLKS. I will get on my soapbox here for a minute too and remind you all to make sure you have clauses in your contracts about the use of AI. And where liability lies if a client asks you to use their data with an AI tool…@NeptuneMoon

And it’s different – Claude, Grok and Perplextiy is better than GPT for such cases (as per me)

Perplexity is real-time search. Grok gets better coz of X data. Claude for analysis and overall better. Gemini only for Deep Research. @alimehdimukadam

A bunch of us screaming for Claude licenses over here. @JuliaVyse

Big fan of Claude myself. @beyondthepaid

It is also a bit telling to me if a client comes to you with “well AI said…” it does give me pause as to how much they are valuing me as their partner. @NeptuneMoon

We have a company policy that we can’t use client data in AI unless we get express permission to. @beyondthepaid

@NeptuneMoon it’s the new ‘my nephew says’ @JuliaVyse

@JuliaVyse  I literally thought that myself this morning as I was thinking about this chat. @NeptuneMoon

Q3: How did you handle the client or stakeholder bringing the advice provided by ChatGPT or similar AI to you? And did they expect you to just implement it?

I treat it like a test. I mean, if I dismiss it, they don’t feel heard, so we have to find out where the question came from. and if I just implement it, i’m a button tapper you don’t need to pay. fine fine lines. @JuliaVyse

• Step one – take a deep, cleansing breath.
• Step two – look at the advice.
• Step three – talk through if it is applicable, what it might be missing, etc.
• Step four – ask why they put it to an AI.

One client recently did want AI recommendations implemented. That was not fun. Because I think we are in the beginning of companies asking themselves, couldn’t we just have AI do this for us when it comes to our jobs. And bad/weak economies will only speed this up. @NeptuneMoon

I try not to judge because I use it too…I am SURE doctors are dealing with it…@runnerkik

And if you think Google isn’t going to absolutely shove Gemini into Google Ads, you’re kidding yourself. @NeptuneMoon

Weirdly lucky that I have so much in public sector. The level of required accountability makes AI takeover much slower and less likely with them. @JuliaVyse

As more companies see companies like Salesforce and others saving big money using AI, this will only increase. As Julia mentioned, we need to make sure our brands feel heard. I have a client right now who is wanting to lean into AI as much as possible in most aspects of the company. If we make is sound negative, they honestly just think we are not embracing the new technology and stuck in our old ways. It also signals to them we may be more afraid of losing our positions to AI. The best thing to do is treat it as a test and use it where we can, and it does okay (ish). This is the reality we live in, and if a client is dead set against AI or wants to embrace it as much as possible, that is a role we need to take on for the client. @Ichasse

The whole cycle is kind of wild right now. @NeptuneMoon

I feel like our job will be to be the best we can while utilizing AI. If we show that value, it can mean them feeling confident we are using the technology to make their account better vs. fighting it. @Ichasse

I will say, my experience with a no-longer client is that they were very keen. Small brands need all the help they can get and want a robot to help. that’s not intrinsically bad or even a bad business approach. that’s it! are WE up to date on all the things. also…@JuliaVyse

It’s hard when there is so much hype and non technical folks don’t know how to parse it too. @NeptuneMoon

Pro tip: make friends with the brand leads. the BRAND leads. The AI-ification of creative is very scary to them and they will support you in shaping the overall approach. @JuliaVyse

The core problem with AI advice has been that it has no foundation in actual research. So often the keywords recommended have zero to no traffic! Or that other advice lacks the full context. Luckily, I am still smarter than ChatGPT so it is always easy then to prove how I add value. @RaeBassett

Q4: What role do you think ChatGPT or similar AI can productively play in PPC strategy or management, if any?

Right now, I am still in a space where I don’t trust that the information coming out is accurate, and if I am using it and then making strategy based on it and it is wrong, that is ultimately on me. So clients view as time saver but for me it is almost double the work to verify it’s not wrong. @NeptuneMoon

I could see a time where you can upload screenshots, or graphs of data and ask it to help troubleshoot why leads are down, CPA is up, etc. Then taking the output as a suggestion for possible starting points of a diagnosis, not the diagnosis itself. @AnthonyMcDaniel

I think it could do a lot depending on your needs. Merchant centre optimization is still relatively manual, and lots of on/off rules for cross year promos are a bit of a headache. I think a lot could be done, with human guidance. For strategy, I am weirdly optimistic: we deal with big data, and every year at this time, we do landscapes for clients about what’s happening. Taking sales/revenue data, tv data, OOH data, ppc data, and economic indicator data, even stock market data and making a set with a bot who can help you come up with key areas of focus is a huge win for small teams. The key is to do it right, be skeptical, and set the tone. @JuliaVyse

So I’ve seen people uploading an archive of their own work and then creating custom chatbots essentially so kind of… but again I’ve played with these and I find them a little basic not quite there yet. @runnerkik

Essentially, I view AI information the same way I would trust a buddy for directions if he had recently moved to a new city. I’d listen to his general advice/direction, but I’d take it lightly, and confirm everything for myself. @AnthonyMcDaniel

There is some value in helping put together marketing plans currently. It can help identify market segments, sizes, etc… that we can use in the models we create. Creating some ideas for campaigns and topics can also be helpful as brainstorming ideas. In no way is it even close to being a finished product, and the copy is kind of clunky still, but it can provide some starting points in some cases. It is going to get better and better as time goes on, and I think I ready improvements are doubling currently every 6 months, so in a year this will be very different than today. I do feel like we need to be using the tools now, so we are used to them and not trying to learn how to ask questions starting from zero in another year. @Ichasse

So are you all using a proprietary or individually walled AI to analyze client data or are you putting it into public ChatGPT, Claude, etc.? Cause to me those are two VERY different things. I almost want to search in these tools for my clients competitors too to see if they put their data in a public system and I could then see it…@NeptuneMoon

@NeptuneMoon neither at the moment. at least not for anything that wouldn’t be publicly available (like if I’m writing ad copy based off landing page content) @AnthonyMcDaniel

If you do foreign ads, like I do it can be helpful as well. I have a client where we have tested this and it does a very good job (most of the time) if you put your english ads in the tool and ask it to translate them into German, French, etc…. We still have a human double check it and make small changes, but we are testing that. @Ichasse

My example is all proprietary because #holdco life. For a smaller team with fewer restrictions but also less support, I’d advise caution. and remember, lots of marketing data is public and out there. you buy environics sets, but it doesn’t contain PII. @Ichasse we have a dentsu tool for that and it works really well! two different LLMs translate and then make more conversational, and a human approves. WAY better than some of the autotranslate I’ve seen out there. @JuliaVyse

So it sounds like most of you are using it for what I’d call lower level items like “give me ad copy ideas” or “suggest keywords to target from these landing pages” type stuff? @NeptuneMoon

I’ve not done this yet, but I could also see a use case where you ask AI to analyze performance as if they’re the client, and point out things that might be concerning. That could help prep for client conversations, and even proactively identify and fix pain points before it gets to that point. But I think we’re likely a way off before we get that level of empathy. @AnthonyMcDaniel

For day to day. We do build proprietary big data sets and custom GPTs for pitches. @JuliaVyse

For a strategy perspective I’ve asked ChatGPT and Gemini to do a SWOT analysis on competitors. It’s somewhat basic but has provided some ‘ah ha’ ideas to test. @JeffreyHain

And @NeptuneMoon no way anyone should be uploading proprietary data into these public tools. They use your data for learning and could be used to answer questions for competitors at some point. Data security is a huge issue currently in these tools. We have all seen the news articles about the email leaks and other things that have come from using these tools to analyze information or automate tasks. @Ichasse

@Ichasse You know I agree with not sharing anything even kind of private. @NeptuneMoon

@Ichasse  so you’re saying I shouldn’t have asked ChatGPT to remember my SSN and mother’s maiden name for future reference? @AnthonyMcDaniel

That is why I was saying I’m kind of curious to ask questions about competitors to see if any of them did upload stuff that I could see. @NeptuneMoon

I cover some of this in my upcoming SMX talk! We use AI for routine tasks that don’t involve client data: SQRs, competitor reviews, ad cop ideas, etc. Personally I love AI for extracting tasks and to-do lists from meeting transcripts. @beyondthepaid

We all know for a fact, some overzealous CEOs have 100% uploaded their proprietary data already and asked for analysis. @Ichasse

Saves me literally hours every day. But, like a junior team member, you have to check AI’s work. @beyondthepaid

I like using it as a thought partner to explore ideas… and will let it take a first pass at some large datasets. It will easily make some mistakes – but that’s on us as SMEs to see. AI is often making recommendations on limited data – so you have to know when it’s making assumptions on that limited data set. You bring your outside knowledge on top of the machine’s number crunching. @Galliguez

I’ve used it for very basic task, but one that’s baked in is having it organize my MQL data from Salesforce so I can place it in a sheet that I created to visualize the data. I’ve used it to clean LinkedIn audience lists (it took scrubbing it 3xs in AI but it worked fairly well). I’ve used it for ad copy ideas, keyword ideas, and if i need to design an image to give as example of a static image ad to our graphic designer. I’ve also created custom gpts for clients. @DiiPooler

Q5: What is your biggest concern or challenge with ChatGPT or similar AI being used by clients or stakeholders or other PPC pros in PPC strategy or management, if any?

I have to say it – the cost to the environment the way data centers work now worries the hell out of me. @NeptuneMoon

Privacy and security, hands down. @Ichasse

@NeptuneMoon  I hate the environmental aspect of it. also privacy and security. @beyondthepaid

But also privacy and security right up there. @NeptuneMoon

The AI company folds, or is bought by Palantir and then what? I’m not in the US and neither are my clients, so we have robust conversations about where our data is hosted, and whether US servers are involved. I really worry about leakage, data ownership, and future-proofing. As a secondary concern, I really worry about over-optimism about the tools automating busy tasks, robbing new people in the industry of valueable learning opportunities. @JuliaVyse

@JuliaVyse Data ownership is also a great question. @NeptuneMoon

Yeah, the environmental impact is pretty significant. I am kind of hoping quantum computing will help with that, because you know they won’t stop or fix the issues around this if it means giving up all the $$$. @Ichasse

Also – AI makes everything samey-samey. If everyone is using it for creative, nothing will stand out. @beyondthepaid

We also do not yet know what the output of AI will be in the next 2-5 years. Will it keep getting better or will it degrade as it feeds on more and more AI generated slop? That is also a very real question. @NeptuneMoon

For copy creation AI doesn’t understand the brand guidelines and can come up with copy points that can’t be used. And I’m hesitant to upload brand guidelines because then they’re out in the open. @JeffreyHain

@beyondthepaid To counter this, we need to ask AI to write ad copy in the voice of Yoda or something so it does stand out. “Buy not browse you will”. @Ichasse

@Ichasse D-Wave is a former client of mine!  @JuliaVyse

I think it is an interesting exercise to ask AI what it thinks a brand is about and what its selling points are. @NeptuneMoon

Now THAT is a use-case. Does my brand match what I want it to be? I’ve been in more than one pitch where the answer is no. @JuliaVyse

I think big challenge for us will be continuing to find clients who appreciate the value that a human mind brings to the process. The results with AI driven strategy (whether that is using external AI tools or the AI within a platform) will be “good enough” for many brands. @NeptuneMoon

The other is asking what the top 5-10 brands are in your space. See if you even enter the conversation. For the next 5+ years the best combo will be using AI with a professional. One day that may not be the case, but for the foreseeable future, that is 100% going to be the play. Just don’t be a grumpy old curmudgeon who does not embrace the new technology, but someone who uses it to help you and we should be fine. @Ichasse

if you’re a fast food restaurant, we already know. @JuliaVyse

There are a few data centers that power themselves with renewable energy, but unfortunately not enough. Hopefully these companies see success and grow, challenging others to follow suit. @AnthonyMcDaniel

One more: lock ins. There’s a reason the worst product is the top selling. Because the trouble and cost to switch is impossible and annual subscriptions will just keep creeping up. @JuliaVyse

Honestly, I worry about the blind faith in most human output, so I worry even more about the blind faith put into AI outputs. I think people say they fact-check, until that slows them down too much. Then accuracy takes a hit in favor of speed and agility. @AnthonyMcDaniel

The environmental impact also worries me a great deal. But generally I have faith in my own abilities. I am happy for clients to educate themselves because it leads to more productive conversations, so I have to problem with ChatGPT input generally. We are all just wanting to do better, after all. @RaeBassett

Losing the ability to think and make decisions on our own. Not really seeing much upside. @Chriskostecki

Q6. What other phrases that clients or stakeholder say give you hives?

“We are doing a brand refresh” “Competitor x does this, how fast can we do it too?” “We updated our site last week” @NeptuneMoon

Why isn’t the new campaign performing (getting impressions, leads, etc.)? @JeffreyHain

“We need to decrease spend” “We need a 3 ROAS but a $25 CPA too” @NeptuneMoon

I had a brand where we grew revenue by 38% and I got a note saying the owner was not happy and how can we make that number higher. Oh yes, the let’s decrease budget in 2026, but the revenue expectation is going to remain the same… That one just hurts me inside. @Ichasse

“I saw this on TikTok” @NeptuneMoon

Our brief is 12 pages long. can we just have everything? @JuliaVyse

Sometimes its what the client doesn’t say that gives me hives.”Oh, you updated your landing pages last week/month? Cool! Maybe a heads up next time, if that’s not too much to ask.” @AnthonyMcDaniel

This is true. Had a client create a whole new site and they did not let me know until all my ad links were broken the day after release when I asked them what the heck happened. @Ichasse

“So we had the accounted audited and the other agency said…”@NeptuneMoon

Oh, they also did not use an SEO, so zero redirects…@NeptuneMoon That one cracks me up. I have told them to go with that other agency and when they call me in 6 months due to poor performance I may be too busy to take the account on again. Good luck! lol @Ichasse

@NeptuneMoon This one always kills me. You mean someone else who wants your business said we weren’t doing the best job possible, but they could?! No way!! @AnthonyMcDaniel

I know @AnthonyMcDaniel it is SHOCKING. @NeptuneMoon

Campaign launches. Two hours later: Client: “How is the new campaign performing?” Or, worse, “Why am I not seeing any conversions yet?” @revaminkoff

PPCChat Participants

• Julie F Bacchini @NeptuneMoon
• Reva Minkoff @revaminkoff
• Anthony McDaniel @AnthonyMcDaniel
• Julia Vyse @JuliaVyse
• Jeffrey Hain @JeffreyHain
• Dii Pooler @DiiPooler
• Ali Mehdi Mukadam @alimehdimukadam
• Navah Hopkins @navahhopkins
• Sarah Stemen @runnerkik
• Melissa L Mackey @beyondthepaid
• Dave Galliguez @Galliguez
• Rae Bassett @RaeBassett
• Lawrence Chasse @Ichasse
• Anthony McDaniel @AnthonyMcDaniel

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