PPC professionals have been talking a lot about AI lately, but the news and announcements just keep coming. To stay prepared and safeguard the role of PPC experts, today’s PPCChat host, Julie F. Bacchini, asked the community for their thoughts. She explored whether AI could take over some—or even all—PPC responsibilities in the near future, and whether professionals are feeling pressure from clients to rely more on AI or justify why expert guidance is still essential.
Q1: How are you feeling generally about the possibility of AI taking some or all of our job functions in the near future? And how likely do you think it actually is?
Ok, so I am an on-the-record AI skeptic…But I think there is a lot of hype and puffery and bullshittery happening about what AI can and can’t do and do well. So I think in the short term, we are going to have headaches and some rough sledding, long term I think people like us are/will be very much needed. @NeptuneMoon
I’m excited to have AI take over some of the work I don’t like and it does better e.g. pattern recognition. @Pete_Bowen
I am also an AI skeptic, but we have to watch our language around AI too. “Taking” suggests only one entity can possess something. I think there are definitely tasks that AI can do more efficiently than I can (and probably just as accurately) but I’m still needed to audit outputs and guide the AI. I see the role of PPC practitioners changing, but not the necessity and value going away. @robert_brady
I’m investing a lot of effort into building a tool for gathering clean ad performance data from ad platforms and clients’s systems so that the (future) AI has legit info to work from. Hoping this will be a career-saving moat. @Pete_Bowen
I’m also super skeptical for the NEAR future because AI currently sucks at math. Even Claude. But even I had been one to think AI was a bubble, but I find myself using it more and more every day. @williamhboggs
I agree with you @robert_brady, but that is the language being used from tools and people pushing the narrative, so we can definitely push back on that. And businesses LOVE anything that will save them money and give same or better output. Which is how AI is being sold right now. The big consulting firms are ALL IN on it too, and that filters down to smaller orgs too. We might know that ultimately those savings might be fleeting, but it can be really appealing to numbers people to try it out. @NeptuneMoon
I also think there is a major FOMO element happening. No one wants to seem like they are not on board with AI, even when they don’t understand its capabilities/limitations. @NeptuneMoon
100% agree on the FOMO. It’s leading to some really stupid and dangerous things. @Pete_Bowen
The disconnect between AI platforms sales and public statements and what it can deliver is VAST. Sam Altman will be remembered as a villain when this is all done too – you heard it here first. @NeptuneMoon
I’m okay with it taking certain functions. Let me do the critical thinking and let it execute on my vision. I think of when I’m in the zone, totally locked in, and I’m struggling with Chrome loading and tabs failing because I’m moving too fast. Then my computer freezes up because it can’t handle the combination of processes it needs to do at once. In the same vein, if I know what I need executed, and I have all the pieces (ad copy, campaign structure, bid types, audience obs. or targeting layers, location down to the zip code, etc.), and I jump into Editor, it’ll still take me 50 minutes to have a draft ready for QA. Maybe even 3 hours if it’s a big build. Multiple that by 2x or 3x if it’s a high traffic sale for a few brands like BFCM. Now if I was able to offload the execution by chatting in plain language to an AI chat that was tied in directly with Meta/Google Ads API, and it was able to seamlessly execute on my conversation, doing exactly what I ask it to do, that cuts down on using my “RAM” for low-effort tasks, and I can focus on the fun part. @timmhalloran
I think the danger zone is thinking that PPC can be done without any human oversight. I know many won’t totally go AI and no people, but enough will try it. So I do think in the end, PPC pros will not be replaced, but the things we are asked to do will be a specific set of tasks and strategy. But until we reach that point, it could be very bumpy, and a lot of us could find ourselves displaced. @NeptuneMoon
I think it’s becoming more about strategy than execution. @revaminkoff
@revaminkoff ya that’s the part that worries me. It’s in the ad channel’s interest to brand it as such too. A true, fully-usable, tactical-PPC execution layer turned into an AI app of sorts will come from a 3rd party that is able to package and bundle something made for this crowd. I don’t think we can expect Google/MSFT/Meta to help us out in that way. If we get too efficient we’re going to hurt their bottom line. @timmhalloran
The platforms could not care less if we survive all of this as long as the ad dollars keep flowing to them. @NeptuneMoon
Sometimes I feel like practitioners are the only ones calling out the shenanigans that platforms pull on advertisers. Without us, they could be even more devious/unethical. @robert_brady
Absolutely they could! I also think we need to wrap our heads around the idea of “good enough PPC” because we are so focused on getting the max results and efficiency for our clients/brands that we can forget that for many organizations – large and small – they really only want “good enough PPC.” Meaning PPC that brings in sales and leads at an acceptable level. Not wasting time or energy trying to go beyond that level. AI may be ok or pretty good at achieving that…@NeptuneMoon
Q2: Are there specific announcements by platforms or AI companies or other parties that you find interesting and/or troubling?
The speed at which AI is being baked into all parts of the ad platforms is troubling to me. @NeptuneMoon
Goog’s recent announcement about automatic AI voice-overs is troubling. Who’s responsible for what they say? @Pete_Bowen
And everyone wants in on it. I saw a post about Nvidia (the chip maker) launching agentic AI. Let me see if I can find that. Agentic is not ready for prime time yet either. According to Polymarket (which is a whole other topic), AI has a 26% approval rating among the general public. @Pete_Bowen have big questions about that too! Even big companies who are rolling AI into their businesses are having to backtrack @NeptuneMoon
I think there is still a lot of pain to come while we figure out who gets the blame when AI does something wrong. e.g. when Skynet increases your target CPA 1000x because the tool builder vibe coded a rule that didn’t account for edge cases. @Pete_Bowen
There are more pieces out in the last few days too about when agents do things, where is the liability? Who is responsible? It is unclear. @NeptuneMoon
I feel like self-driving in cars is earlier into this process, but the legal battles Tesla has dealt with are intense. @robert_brady
I think there are a lot of questions that we don’t have legal answers to. The law always lags behind on tech and AI is no exception to that. But it is moving forward and deploying at such speed a crash into some kind of wall seems inevitable? @NeptuneMoon
Grounds maintenance it is then @Pete_Bowen
Q3: Are you getting questions and/or pressure from clients or stakeholders to either utilize more AI or to justify why they need you and not an AI tool instead? And if so, how are you responding to it?
I had a client ask ChatGPT what it thought of me. Fortunately ChatGPT had a positive view of me, but that’s because I write a lot. Someone far more competent but without a public body of work might get a much worse review. @Pete_Bowen
I actually have a service on my updated site that is literally – did you ask ChatGPT for PPC strategy? Do you want to know if what it spit out has errors? @NeptuneMoon
Nicely done @Pete_Bowen
I’ve had clients hand me outputs from ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude and say “What do you think about this?” I have to explain why the ideas sound good, but often aren’t as good as presented. For example, one said that excluding adsenseformobile.com or whatever it was, would eliminate all app impressions. That hasn’t been true for years. @robert_brady
Not getting questions, but I’ve been leading some AI efforts at my agency, and the owners are super interested. Saving a lot of time with it. @williamhboggs
Clients are definitely getting pressure/interest in using more AI. so if you say AI it will help them buy into things they might not otherwise have bought into. @revaminkoff
One of the biggest problems with AI platforms is that everything they output SOUNDS right/plausible. They are programmed to sound confident about every answer regardless of whether it is correct or not. @NeptuneMoon
Today’s AI is largely a validator of what you ask it/tell it. It is not pushing back on you. So if you start with faulty premises or data, you get bad outcomes. And even with perfect inputs, the systems are still just guessing on the likely words to spit back out. They are not thinking about your problem like a person would. But then we have the Anthropic guy out there saying Claude is anxious so it must be sentient or nearly sentient @NeptuneMoon
Not explicitly, we don’t usually have that conversation, but I sense it. The gears turning around the time contracts are up for renewal. Owners doing the math on whether it would make sense to have their multi-hat-wearing 1 or 2 person internal marketing team “handle the PPC” and use AI to fill in the gaps and cut down on $3-7K/mo. in agency fees. I had a client come back after doing that. Haven’t had much turn over yet, because of the integrated piece that we handle too, so there’s usually a few depts. outside of just paid, which makes it harder to replace. But I foresee less leads once there are solutions out there that tout their ability to handle it all. @timmhalloran
It makes my head explode. @NeptuneMoon
@timmhalloran I can already see the requests for help once the “multi-hat-wearing 1 or 2 person teams” let the AI do its thing for a few months with little supervision and things go totally down the drain (because the internal folks don’t have the knowledge to effectively judge/audit the AI actions) @robert_brady
Yes, @robert_brady I think it will be a bit of an FAFO scenario where businesses try to get away with the absolute fewest number of humans and find out they can’t really do that. But the FO part usually takes a while, and we are in the early stages of FA unfortunately…@NeptuneMoon
Q4: Are you doing anything to try to increase your job security or “future proof” your skills in PPC with all the AI hype currently happening?
I am leaning into human-powered digital advertising as my mantra. And calling on my old school marketing skills. @NeptuneMoon
Yeah, as I mentioned before I’m working on the data completeness and integrity problem. Someone has to connect the ad platform data to the business outcome data and make sure it’s working. I figured it’s not something that can be done as easily by AI as some other parts of the process. @Pete_Bowen
I am also focusing on helping clients to get their big picture in better order as AI grabs more and more itself rather than an advertiser inputting it. So are you competitive on your web site and how you talk about and position your product or service. The machines are not doing this type of work either. @NeptuneMoon
I’m focusing more on strategic problems than simply build and execute. @revaminkoff
Trying to position myself as a ‘translation layer’ between what works on the ground tactically, that’ll include AI- what it’s good at/not good at, and then being able to actively listen and then pitch without getting lost in either direction (in the weeds vs. esoteric big picture). So the job security in my mind is being able to do those two parts well. And then actually deliver on it. I feel like my attention always gets shoved in one of those two directions (why isn’t this working, troubleshoot, test, new feature rolls out, repeat VERSUS Hi, this is us, this is what we can do for you, sell sell sell). @timmhalloran
Q5: What are your biggest concerns about how AI will impact our industry? And are you facing any situations where you could use some advice on how to handle the AI conversations you’re being pulled into?
As I said in earlier questions, I think we will see some contraction in favor of AI “solutions” at least in the shorter term. The platforms also continue to move toward fewer inputs and less data to review for PPC pros. Together, these could have a big negative impact on the industry in the next few years. @NeptuneMoon
You know that recurring plot line of clients coming to you saying they got burned by a bad agency in the past. Well I think we’re going to see a big resurgence in sh*tty marketing agencies using ChatGPT to do their entire job. I’ve had 2 brands in the past 4 months where they were burned by so-called SEO or PPC Marketers. I literally saw UTM tags baked into their Google Ads final URL with utm_source=ChatGPT. Like, come on. If you’re going to phone it in, at least TRY to cover your tracks. So I think more of us doing the work are going to have to field questions around how and when we use gen AI, and explain our processes around keeping their brands safe. @timmhalloran
So we should brush up on our client trauma recovery processes, then huh @timmhalloran I don’t think you are wrong about this. And we should be ready with reassurances and concrete plans for these types of clients who will find us or come back to us. @NeptuneMoon
I’ll be ordering a bunch of ‘told you so’ T-shirts. @Pete_Bowen
PPCChat Participants
- Julie F Bacchini @NeptuneMoon
- Tim Halloran @timmhalloran
- Reva Minkoff @revaminkoff
- Boggs @williamhboggs
- Peter Bowen @Pete_Bowen
- Robert Brady @robert_brady
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