PPCChat | Getting the Support You Need | 24th February 2026

Posted by & filed under PPCChat.

During this week’s PPCChat session, host Julie F. Bacchini led a discussion on “Getting the Support You Need,” exploring both platform support and the value of professional help. The conversation felt particularly timely following recent news that Google Ads now requires advertisers to authorize Google reps to make changes to their accounts before they can submit a support ticket.

Here is the link to Google News: https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-support-now-requires-account-change-authorization-469989

Q1: How would you rate the state of advertiser support available from ad platforms right now? Are there platforms that are better or worse when it comes to their support?

I have to be honest. I don’t even talk to them anymore. They don’t understand my strategy and goals, and it feels like a waste of time. @lilypolowin

Google gets a solid 1/10 for me. It’s very rare they do anything other than paste support articles and ignore my questions. For the amount of money they make from ads the level of support advertisers receive is frankly disgusting. @Josephwilliams

I have been hearing form a decent number of community members about issues with Google Ads support lately. Endless loops, months of back and forth with no real help, etc. @NeptuneMoon

Honestly, I still think Google is one of the better ones when it comes to support, despite all the issues. You CAN get a hold of good people who care, build relationships, and help you. It’s hard to do, but it is possible. I assume at this point, I’ll get 0 support from Meta. @revaminkoff

support from AE’s/HOI’s for top spenders is great…. but what it means to be a top spender is definitely evolving.

Mid-market support has gotten WAY worse (as they shift to smaller AMs with too many accounts or AI), and technical support is horrific. Impossible to get timely resolution for billing issues/conversion or data passback. @Aaronlevy

From what I see from folks who work on social platforms, Meta’s support is non-existent. If you didn’t see already too, scroll up in this channel for more details, but Google Ads now makes you check a box authorizing reps to make changes in your accounts JUST to open a support ticket. And puts all responsibility for what happens on advertisers…@NeptuneMoon

If you have a Google rep that is a full-time, actual Google employee, then they’re pretty helpful (though they still push AI Max, new features, etc.) The general support offered by Google is terrible. Meta support is virtually nonexistent, and even technical support is virtually worthless. Microsoft has been helpful when I’ve needed them. Pinterest, Walmart and Amazon support have also been good. @robert_brady

@NeptuneMoon I think this may still depend on the type of support ticket being filed, though…@revaminkoff

Microsoft does have actual support you can access. Which feels like a bar all platforms should clear, but they don’t…@revaminkoff It is being reported everywhere, so I hope we get massive clarification on it. Cause if it is blanket it is absolute bullshit. @NeptuneMoon

I would honestly rather go to the community at r/ppc and ask for help than waste my time talking to reps at Meta or Google. @lilypolowin

Absolute, the CEOs of these companies should be ashamed. I can’t imagine how many millions of ad $ they lose out on every year for providing poor customer support. @williamhboggs

It is wild how crappy the support (which is a customer service function) is for paying customers of ad platforms. Like you get better response time and issue resolution from your cable provider. @NeptuneMoon

@NeptuneMoon I think I know at least three forms that don’t have it…It is dumb – the platforms would make more money if they just worked with us…@revaminkoff

If your customers get better support from 3rd party AI than your actual Customer Support team, something is wrong. @williamhboggs

Harder to get support if you don’t spend money… compared to back in the day (2007 – 2014) @duanebrown

They aren’t customer support. They are salespeople. @lilypolowin

I was on with meta support for 7 hours a few weeks ago. Got transferred 10 times back and forth between the same 2 departments. Nobody knew how to fix the issue and kept saying “our other department handles this, let me transfer you”. Finally gave up. It feels like their system is actually designed to just make you give up. @williamhboggs

First Party In-House Support – Great. Third-Party Outsourced Sales Agents Disguised as Support – Extremely Poor. @alimehdimukadam

Even companies spending upwards of 5-10 mil are getting garbage support these days. They have absolutely cut the support budget. The reps cannot do anything anymore. They used to be able to do stuff for you, whether it was get you into betas or fix small issues. Now, even they have to put in tickets to get things addressed. They have shifted from a support model to a sales model. @Ichasse

Q2: What are your biggest frustrations when it comes to getting support from ad platforms?

Too many different teams and departments. Some people can spend to much time getting shuffled from internal team to internal team before they talk with the right person to help solve their issue. Plus AMs are nice but have no power to help saldy. @duanebrown

The general lack of knowledge from anybody in a “support” role @williamhboggs

Brand new reps trying to give me a strategy when they don’t even understand my business. Then they don’t listen when I explain why their strategy won’t work. @lilypolowin

1. WHY CAN NOBODY FIX BILLING!@#!@$@%!$%^^
2: Generic sales sheets/tactics – “XYZ advertiser saw 10% more conversions at the same CPA!
3: Under training and/or bad incentives causing junior reps to push things that aren’t a fit, yielding spicy client and bad relationships. @Aaronlevy

Support for new clients is REALLY HARD TO GET. @revaminkoff

I need someone to “own” my problem and stick with it until resolved. Feels like a ticket gets created and then they’re just trying to close the ticket or transfer to somewhere else as soon as possible. @robert_brady

Oh and 4: reps transition without sharing any context so we’d have to re-train someone every 6 months. @Aaronlevy

@robert_brady I agree with this – I just want to talk to an actual human who can understand what I’m saying and own the whole problem versus filling a half dozen different forms. @revaminkoff

I feel every one of @Aaronlevy’s points in my bones. Especially the billing one. @robert_brady

The quality & level of support changing as per how much money you spend….@alimehdimukadam

The overly pushy There is An Emergency spam emails are not helping anyone. @revaminkoff

Being sent links to documentation articles as “solution”. Sir/madam – trust I already tried anything I could think of or find. @NeptuneMoon

Has someone ever leaked the bonus structure of account reps and support reps at Google? I’m almost sure that feature adoption is the core driver for account reps and speed to ticket closure is the core driver for support. @robert_brady

The biggest challenge I always faced as an agency in dealing with engine support is we could get fired and they couldn’t, so sense of urgency was never congruent @Aaronlevy

@robert_brady I think it depends on the team. @NeptuneMoon

@robert_brady Someone posed as a hiring candidate for an ads rep position at Google a year or two ago and blew the whistle that all of their hiring questions were sales related, not customer service or ads related  @williamhboggs

@BorisBeceric That was the amazing. @NeptuneMoon

Honestly, these days, I assume zero support, because it is that bad. @Ichasse

@Ichasse I’ll reach out to fellow PPCers here, on Twitter, or through LinkedIn before trying to get platform support help on most issues. @robert_brady

@NeptuneMoon Yes! Yes, my claim to fame. In their defense, it was Teleperformance, not directly with Google.

I can dig up the old documents and my interview transcripts, pretty wild stuff in there. Think I also still have the contract they sent me LOL @BorisBeceric 

Q3: Have you found any ways to get better support from any ad platform? If so, which one and what type of sorcery did you employ?

Raising points in PPCChat & reaching out to Ginny & Navah…@alimehdimukadam

We’ve managed to get great support from Google a good chunk of the time. We’ve done this by building strong relationships with our current and past Google reps and maintaining those relationships so we can get unofficial help when we need it. I also made a post two weeks ago venting into the LinkedIn Void that yielded me a new rep on the exact team I was looking to connect with, so that was extra awesome. @revaminkoff

Well, it helps if you know Navah and Ginny, for sure. But it should not come to that! @NeptuneMoon

It is a bolder move, but you can threaten to turn off all the ads (yes, I did that once), and it helped escalate things. It is not even the reps’ fault, because they are hired as “sales reps”, not support reps today. They have almost zero knowledge of their own platform and cannot do anything, so they are a glorified phone person at this point with no authority or power to make any changes. @Ichasse

Spend more money so they can not ignore you, relative to what other brands spend of your size. @duanebrown

On Google: Spend more. Found that >$5k/mo got my accounts better-trained reps. Higher-spend (I think it was +$10k/mo) even got American reps, but they were still trained on theory and Google kool-aid, not practical advice. On Facebook… No clue, but I’ve considered driving to California to go protest outside their HQ. Google’s office isn’t too far from their either. 2 birds, one stone? @williamhboggs

Well, that’s if you even have a real rep @Ichasse most advertisers get the quarterly swapping ones. @NeptuneMoon

This may not land well given the first 2 questions…. but be nice, build a relationship and assume neutral intent. If someone screamed at me for 6 months, then asked for urgent help, I wouldn’t rush either. I always tried to build close relationships with the,m which enabled us to have better conversations, better understand what each other could/couldn’t do, etc. @Aaronlevy

I actually found Microsoft had a little better support than the other platforms. They seem to escalate quicker and we got help with some technical issues. It was slow, but they did help. Google it takes an act of Congress to get help with any real issues. @Ichasse

I’ve always found sending detailed, structured emails, especially to Meta and at times Google, with highlighting urgency, often works. Meta live support also improved significantly since they moved it to messenger. And Amazon is always the fastest to resolve/respond – though you rarely need to reach to them. @alimehdimukadam

I am worried about having only AI agents for all but the largest of advertisers as the only support paths too. @NeptuneMoon

@Aaronlevy has a good point. If you have a good relationship with the account rep, they can often connect you to better internal support people than the general support channels. @robert_brady

@Aaronlevy You are correct, but even when you are kind they still have limits on what they can actually do for you or get escalated unfortunately. Google has built a structure that is meant to not really support and then even on support calls they are asked to get folks to turn on AARs etc… It is crazy the stuff they try and sneak in on the brands. We should never be abruptly rude to the reps, because they are just like us. They are doing the job they were asked to do to pay their bills. Blame the process, not the reps is my thing. @Ichasse

I am definitely going to be extra nice to the AI support agents (so I get a good pod when they take over and enslave the human race) @Aaronlevy

I always say thank you to our AI overlords, hoping they will let me live if/when they take over, lol @Ichasse

@Ichasse exactly – found that a good relationship gave us much clearer guidelines on that front so we could help each other win.. @Aaronlevy

Mixing support with sales is just icky. You have a product that supports your platform. You need to actually support the folks using that product and paying you money every month. @NeptuneMoon

Google behaves like a monopoly. And given the way that shareholders/Wall Street judges them, they’ve set up support exactly the way that maximizes shareholder value. @robert_brady

I find the AI agents to be utterly useless 99% of the time. @revaminkoff

Is it just me, or does if feel like current iterations of AI support agents feel like an overconfident teenager who did a couple simple searches in the help docs and proclaims to know the right answer? @robert_brady

Wow, Robert! That’s a great comment and very Insightful — I did a few searches and confirmed that you’re right, I am right all the time! Please remember to enable Tablet bid modifiers in your new Enhanced Campaign. @Aaronlevy

It’s true for most – people are deploying without testing

Coz everyone wants to be AI first & the easiest to start at an org level is to deploy an AI Agent as a support chatbot. They don’t realize it’s probably the last place (anything customer facing) is where battle tested AI should be deployed especially if that same LLM is gonna look at your customer complaining about how shit your support was and send it to future prospective customers. @alimehdimukadam

Q4: If you could make changes to how support functioned at ad platforms, what would you do? What would the top priority be?

I would have real support that was knowledgable and empowered to solve problems. And enough of them to do it in a timely manner. Which is crazy because that is what support absolutely should be. @NeptuneMoon

Return to the old agency support model that Google and Meta used to have – I think Microsoft might’ve had it to – where reps are assigned to agencies and are responsible for the growth of the agencies. @revaminkoff

@revaminkoff beat me to it.. @timmhalloran

Let’s remove the notion of support borrowed from financial services/banking that every touchpoint is a sales avenue. It is if you do the support function right. And no I am not auto applying anything…@alimehdimukadam

BRING BACK SIX PACK COOLERS FOR CHRISTMAS! But honestly it’s a very difficult problem to solve for an org of that size. I don’t know that I have a realistic suggestion…. maybe near shore/localized army of junior support people with a large training program and client retention incentives (rather than growth or product based). @Aaronlevy

Reps that are technical-first. Many of our recent reps on Google have felt like they’ve been pushed through 10 levels of sales training, with their only goal being to convince us to turn on AI Max and crank budgets. @Nathancleveland

I could show you call logs on my cell phone of 80 unanswered calls from separate Meta/Google reps. I’m an admin on MCC/Meta Business Manager because I delegate permissions to staff and that makes it so I’m the first call, even on accounts I don’t manage. I’ve removed myself after assigning staff, and updating notification permissions and I still get calls/emails. @timmhalloran

@NeptuneMoon and @revaminkoff already said it. They had a great model that worked. When they shifted support to sales opportunities that seems to be where the train fell off the rails. I will be honest, if the account is making money for the brands, they will automatically increase their ad spend, so find new ways and areas to show our ads instead of trying to force things that increase spend and decrease ROAS. etc… Get ads on television shows, partner with other platforms and build your own new platforms. @Ichasse

I would stop incessant and falsely “urgent” communications to anyone who ever sat next to anyone who worked on an account too. @NeptuneMoon

The incentive model needs to change. Current support & account reps are doing what maximizes their pay. The platforms need to change the underlying system before we expect better behavior from reps. @robert_brady

Ultimately, we WANT to spend more for our brands if the results are there. If another platform could beat Google they would get all my spend instantly. Google has the biggest audience by far, not even close for advertisers to make revenue. Just keep improving your product and we will spend. Give us solid support avenues along with that so when we run into issues, they can be resolved quickly. @Ichasse

What Reva said about an agency support model. And @timmhalloran

  • The ability to toggle “On” based on accounts that are actively being managed.
  • An interface that allows me to assign staff emails to different accounts, so it’s easier to route support to the correct employee.
  • A “notification” preference so I can choose email/phone versus getting both
  • Simpler escalation mechanics for important issues like disapprovals or billing, this is especially important during sales-seasons
  • Instead of quarterly rotations, allow us to request the same support rep for longer periods of time — Related to this:
  • Tie incentives to customer feedback, not program adoption

I’m always so shocked by the lack of technical support to @Ichasse ’s point. if y’all could help people get 360 data passback, then smart bidding/the maxs/broad match etc. all work how Google wants them. so why not help with the technical back end?!?! Everybody wins! (i know the real answer is liability and a lot of back ends aren’t so nice but…. you get it) @Aaronlevy

Those are problems to figure out in brainstorming sessions with a whiteboard and a room of some smart folks. I once had a CMO who taught me early in my career the answer is ALWAYS yes, but then it comes down to the how. @Ichasse

@alimehdimukadam they’re taking a page from the Wells Fargo playbook. Brands don’t want to play ball? Let’s make up a new term and call it “auto-apply” and then bury it in obscure advanced settings views so they don’t realize anything has changed immediately. It’s like signing people up for accounts they don’t want except it’s a “feature!” Feeling spicey. I told myself this morning to be positive and kind, and I’m already failing. I’ll try again tomorrow. @timmhalloran

Q5: Do you have enough support professionally in PPC right now? If so, where do you get it? And is there support you wish you had or could find? (Maybe we can fill some gaps!)

Nope, but the support I get tends to be from other peers I am close with and we discuss things they are I may need help with. Not just saying this because @navahhopkins is pretty active in our community, but Microsoft has not gone full sales mode. I do wish their platform would generate the same or more revenue than Google, because they are more helpful, but usually Microsoft Advertising issues can be solved faster than other platforms. Google and Facebook are burning dumpster fires when it comes to support. @Ichasse

No. I was so frustrated two weeks ago I felt like I was just shouting into a void. Insert void screaming linkedin post here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/revaminkoff_ppcchat-ppczone-ppclive-activity-742525932[…]m=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAEJytQBuTm_LSDGO4MuWd96EPPw3hs8Koo @revaminkoff

I feel better today than I did two weeks ago, but I still don’t feel like I have nearly enough to do the level of work I want to do and experiment on new platforms, etc. @revaminkoff

I just want old Google support back when it was solid. Agency reps, reps would were empowered and some of them even had marketing experience outside the Google realm. @Ichasse

And I think half my time is corralling support. @revaminkoff

I simply don’t want sales/auto apply disguised as support coz that increases additional support work for me (to explain to clients, respond/ignore/explain, etc.) Had mentioned this earlier but there should be a simple optout for all accounts that are connected to an MCC and have a partner status. It just says you’re not a partner if you don’t trust them enough to know what you’re doing @alimehdimukadam

If there is anything we could add here that would help you all, please don’t hesitate to let me know your thoughts and suggestions! @NeptuneMoon

Support from platforms? edit: LORD NO, why did I put yes first. Support from peers…. sorta? Maybe old man yelling at cloud, but I miss the days of ALL of us shouting at each other on twitter. Now so many of my industry pals have their own communities (which is amazing!!!) but that means a lot of the ol’ dialog is fragmented as people devote their time to smaller/more specific spaces. Great people are still great, helpful, and my friends (most important thing). I JUST WISH WE HUNG OUT MORE. Suppose that’s natural as the industry reaches a “critical mass”/we go in our careers etc. And yes i used to walk to school every day with no shoes on, uphill both ways in the snow. @Aaronlevy

Obvious shoutout to @NeptuneMoon for keeping this thing going!!! @Aaronlevy

@Aaronlevy I miss those days a lot too. And we are more fragmented in where we spend time and who is there regularly. @NeptuneMoon

Natural evolution I suppose, as is natural nostalgia for the old timez. @Aaronlevy

Ad channel-wise, if I had to put it in order from best to worst, I’d say:

  • Smaller niche platforms (industry-specific publishers)
  • Programmatic vendors (Stackadapt, Paved, Mountain)
  • Reddit
  • Microsoft
  • LinkedIn
  • *drop about 20 feet on this list and then:
  • Google
  • *drop about 10 more feet…
  • Meta

I find the most support from team members and industry blogs/communities (SEL, PPCChat, Optmyzr, Foxwell newsletter, a few other newsletters) @timmhalloran

@timmhalloran I’ve had really great experiences with Reddit as well. Programmatic teams as well, especially StackAdapt. TTD has been helpful, although their recent transition of UIs really tested that support, but the support team I worked with at the time was great at receiving feedback and helping me make sense of the awful interface. Fortunately, they changed a good amount, which I think is a sign that their support team actually had a hand in providing feedback to product team, which is NOT at all present in Google or Meta. @AnthonyMcDaniel

+1 to StackAdapt. I had a good experience with their support as well. @lilypolowin

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