PPC in the Age of AI: Amy Hebdon on Control vs. Automation

Episode Description

In this episode of PPC Town Hall, host Frederick Vallaeys (CEO & Co-founder of Optmyzr) sits down with Amy Hebdon, founder of Paid Search Magic and one of the most influential PPC experts in the industry.

Amy brings 20+ years of hands-on experience in paid search and shares her perspective on how Google Ads and PPC have evolved—especially in the age of automation and generative AI. Together, Fred and Amy dive into critical topics like:

• The evolution of “magic” in PPC—from manual optimizations to AI-driven automation.
• How Google’s reduced transparency (e.g., limited search term visibility) impacts advertisers.
• Balancing control vs. automation: when to trust AI, and when to push back.
• How to use AI tools like GPT for persona research, ad copywriting, and client communication.
• Crafting ads that qualify the right clicks—and intentionally discourage the wrong ones.
• Demand Gen campaigns, influencers, and founder-led marketing as part of modern PPC.
• The future of ads in an AI-first search experience (AI overviews, Perplexity, Claude, etc.).
• Why authenticity and human connection matter more than ever in advertising.

Episode Takeaways

This discussion between Fred and Amy covers Google’s reduced transparency in search terms, the rise of Performance Max, and the move from keyword targeting to AI-driven intent.

Amy explains why she takes a cautious approach to automation, stressing the risks of giving up too much control, while also sharing smart ways to use AI tools, write ads that filter the right clicks, and build authentic human connections. Whether you’re new to PPC or a veteran, this episode gives clear insights into how the industry is changing and how to stay ahead.

The evolution of ‘magic’ in PPC— from manual optimizations to AI-driven automation

In the early days of PPC, the magic came from hands-on work. Advertisers spent hours in spreadsheets, managing huge keyword lists, adjusting bids, and finding little tricks that gave them an edge. Success depended on how well you could control all the moving parts yourself, and that control made practitioners feel like they were directly shaping results.

Now, much of that control has shifted to Google’s automation and AI. Tools like Smart Bidding try to predict intent and make decisions on the fly.

“I absolutely love it as it applies to paid search. I will say especially you know as paid search has been evolving just how much control we have had over levers to really make magic happen for our clients and businesses.” shares Amy.

This makes campaigns faster to scale and often more efficient, but it also means advertisers have less visibility and influence over the details. The role of a PPC expert has changed: instead of pulling levers, it’s about guiding the strategy, cleaning the data, and using the right tools to make sure automation is working in your favor.

How Google’s reduced transparency impacts advertisers

In recent years, Google has pulled back how much search term data advertisers can see, and that’s created real headaches. Advertisers used to be able to spot exactly which queries triggered their ads and quickly block irrelevant ones. Now, with less visibility and fewer controls, it’s harder to keep campaigns focused. For businesses that rely on very specific themes, this can mean wasted spend and ads showing up in the wrong places.

Amy explained this with a clear example: a client focused on training and licensing foster parents. Their ads are relevant for “foster care” or “foster to adopt,” but not for general adoption. With Google limiting keyword-level insights, it’s nearly impossible to stop queries like “how can I adopt a kid” from slipping through.

“I can go through and play, you know, infinite whack-a-mole to say, oh, someone typed in how can I adopt a kid. We don’t want to show for that. But there’s always going to be variations of how they spell or write or think about that. I can’t get that to not show. So, it ends up being a bad experience for the user who is looking to adopt, not to foster.” explained Amy.

Balancing control vs automation: When to trust AI and when to push back

The big challenge in PPC now is knowing when to trust automation and when to keep control. Some tools, like Smart Shopping, have shown they can deliver better results, and in those cases it makes sense to lean in. But handing over everything to AI is risky, especially when it comes to things like writing ads or handling brand rules. The safest path is to adopt automation where it proves its value, and hold onto control where relevance and brand safety really matter.

As Amy pointed out, being cautious doesn’t make you old-fashioned—it’s often the smarter choice. Jumping on AI too quickly can lead to mistakes, wasted spend, or even harm a brand’s reputation. Frederick Vallaeys noted that advertisers are often the ones paying for Google to “learn” while its automation improves. The real skill today is finding that balance: use automation where it clearly helps, but push back when it puts your business at risk.

Using AI for persona research, ad copywriting, and client communication

AI can be a great partner in PPC work, but only when it’s used with the right context. On its own, asking AI to “write 10 headlines” usually produces bland, generic ads that sound like everyone else’s. Where it shines is in persona development and creative brainstorming. If you feed it details about the audience, the offer, and what makes a brand different, it can quickly generate ideas that humans can refine. It’s less about replacing creative work and more about helping teams avoid the blank-page problem and get to stronger ideas faster.

Amy explained that giving AI clear briefs, much like you’d give to an influencer or copywriter, makes the output far more useful.

“I will use AI to like come up with questions and then ask them like here’s three possible answers, you know, what sounds good and then they’ll be like, ‘Yeah, A is correct. B actually isn’t right because of this reason and C is right.’ So it’s a lot easier for them to respond to like something on the glass than having to think of something, you know, kind of the blank page syndrome that we’ve all experienced.” said Amy.

Fred added that tools like ChatGPT are especially good at exploring audience personas and suggesting what might resonate with them. The key is still human oversight: advertisers need to check for accuracy, brand fit, and compliance.

Crafting ads that qualify the right clicks and intentionally discourage the wrong ones

Good ads don’t just attract clicks, they filter them. The goal is to make it crystal clear who the offer is for and who it isn’t, so only the right people click. That way, advertisers protect their budget, avoid wasted spend, and give users a better experience by not luring in people who won’t actually benefit from the offer.

Amy gives examples where this kind of clarity matters.

“There’s a search about like personal finances or investing, right? And then there’s a company that says get started for as low as a dollar and then there’s a company that says you must be an accredited investor, right? And that means you have a million dollars to invest. Those are entirely different audiences and they’re not trying to play like whatever they’re doing on the back end to qualify their audience didn’t work very well because they’re both showing up in the same query.” Amy explained

Both ads show up for the same search, but they make it obvious who should engage. This kind of pre-qualification—even saying directly “this isn’t for you”, helps ads work smarter. It narrows the audience to those who will actually convert and saves money by discouraging the wrong clicks.

Demand gen campaigns, influencers, and founder-led marketing

Demand Gen campaigns tend to perform better than traditional display ads because they feel more natural in-stream instead of being disruptive like banners.

“I would say that they’ve (demand gen campaigns) definitely outperformed display like when we have had the option to run both and now that’s not really an option, but it we see a much higher click-through rate, which makes sense because it’s more in-stream than more disruptive, you know, in terms of banners." says Amy.

They usually bring higher click-through rates and help advertisers reach people in a way that fits how they browse today. At the same time, Google Ads isn’t always the go-to place for catching people right before they take action anymore, but rather one part of a bigger mix.

Founder-led marketing also plays a big role in standing out. When founders share their own stories, insights, and experiences, it creates trust and makes a brand feel more authentic. As Frederick Vallaeys noted, people don’t just buy software or services—they buy from people. That personal connection can make all the difference when someone is choosing between similar options.

The future of ads in an AI-first search experience

The future of advertising may bring fewer clicks, but each click will be more valuable and more expensive. As Fred explained, Google is likely to push ads that are closer to the exact solution a user needs, reducing wasted clicks. He also predicts that landing pages could become less important, with Google acting as the direct connector between buyers and sellers, handling more of the transaction within the platform itself.

Amy, however, highlights the challenge of user perception.

“Most people don’t like AI. Most people who use AI like it, but most people don’t use AI and don’t like it. So, I don’t think that like in the typical user of Google is going to be placated by having AI mode or an AI overview box as far as like it solves something for them that Google doesn’t.” explains Amy.

For advertisers, this means the shift to an AI-first search experience will be as much about managing user trust as it is about adapting to new ad formats.

Why authenticity and human connection matter more than ever

As AI takes over more of marketing, people are craving authenticity and real human connection. What stands out is when a founder or leader shows up as a real person who can be trusted. Amy pointed out that AI can say anything, but because it has no identity, it makes genuine human voices even more valuable. People want to know there’s someone real behind the brand.

That authenticity also has to be consistent. If an ad makes a promise but the landing page doesn’t back it up, trust is lost right away.

“I always tell my clients if it’s not on the landing page, it’s not true, right? I could say, ‘Oh, come to our hotel. We have got a great pool here in the ad.’ They get to the landing page and there’s no doesn’t mention that they have a pool. They’re not going to call up the hotel and say, ‘Do you actually have a pool because I saw it in your ad?’ They’re not going to remember.

We always start with the landing page and making sure the landing page represents the offer we’re trying to represent.” Amy shares.

Fred added that brands with visible values and leaders who actually live those values are the ones that connect. In a world where AI is everywhere, being real and human is what makes a brand stand out.

Episode Transcript

Frederick Vallaeys: Hello and welcome to another episode of PPC Town Hall. My name is Fred Vallaeys. I’m your host. I’m also CEO and co-founder at Optmyzr, a PPC management software. For today’s episode, we’re continuing our journey down the list of the most influential PPC experts. And today we have Amy Hebdon. She is the founder of Paid Search Magic. She’s a longtime PPC expert and practitioner who speaks all over the world on this topic. She’s also a great educator. So with that, we’re going to learn a lot, I think, about how she sees the evolution of paid search when generative AI is starting to do a lot more things, which is a common theme throughout our episodes. But I really look forward to hearing from Amy. And so with that, let’s get rolling with this episode of PPC Town Hall. Amy, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on.

Amy Hebdon: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. Where are you calling us from today?

Amy Hebdon: I’m in Tennessee, just about an hour north of Clarksville. Excuse me, an hour north of Nashville. I am in Clarksville.

Frederick Vallaeys: Okay.

Amy Hebdon: I know I know where I live.

Frederick Vallaeys: Well, it’s funny. Yesterday I was introducing myself to the other parents at my son’s soccer team and I was busy on my phone and I was like oh um I’m Fred. I’m Fred’s dad. I’m like oh wait no that’s I’m dad.

Yes we all get confused sometimes. But yeah, so calling us from Tennessee and that’s where you run Paid Search Magic and I think that word magic has special meaning, right? Like tell us a little about the business that you have and kind of what you stand for and your background in PPC.

Amy Hebdon: Okay, so yeah, magic is it’s a word I absolutely love. I absolutely love it as it applies to paid search. I will say especially you know as paid search has been evolving just how much control we have had over levers to really make magic happen for our clients and businesses. And then MAGIC is also an acronym that I use internally for our business. It stands for magnetic offers, account leadership, growth strategy, insights and reports, and then client happiness is really the acronym for MAGIC. So, I’ve been doing paid search back in the AdWords days of 2004. So, it’s been quite a while, quite a journey, and I’m happy to be here.

Frederick Vallaeys: Nice. And you do this together with James, right?

Amy Hebdon: Yep. With my husband and business partner. We’re an intentionally small business. It’s just us. And I like it that way. I don’t feel like my strongest suit would be, you know, being a manager or a boss or having employees. So, I like being able just to have like a lot of control over the results we’re able to give to our clients and it works well just staying in that zone of genius, you know.

Frederick Vallaeys: That’s awesome. I really love that and I think that’s going to give us some really great insights because you are very close to the accounts that you manage and you have been very close for that entire what 20 plus years now. So, I can’t wait to hear how you perceive that evolution.

Now before we dive into it a little bit deeper, are there certain types of accounts that you primarily work with?

Amy Hebdon: Not so much. Like for us, it’s really about making sure it’s a good fit with the business, but from there, like I really grew up on both ecom and lead gen, you know, and I don’t see as much of a stark divide between them and as a lot of people want to say like obviously there are differences, but there’s also a lot of overlap.

So you can have ecom that’s a really long sales cycle and you can also have lead gen that’s really quick right so all the things that we say oh this one’s this way and this one’s the other way they can also go back and forth and so being able to like know how different channels and different opportunities work and being able to apply them kind of cross across business type can really be an advantage in a lot of situations.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, that makes sense. And we often hear a lot of complaints from lead gen advertisers who feel like there’s not enough features from Google coming out to help them. But oftentimes I think it’s also the features are there, they’re just not being put into action because tracking is a little bit harder when you have these long sales cycles which are more common sometimes with lead gen. But very good point.

Some of these leads can be very quick and so you don’t face those same challenges.

Let’s go into the first topic here, Amy. So you having been around since the days of AdWords the sort of the magic I think has shifted right so in the early days the magic that you brought to an ads account was what you would put in because there wasn’t that much automation and it was about you figuring out what are the tips and tricks and the nuances and how do we almost game that to the benefit of our clients. But then over time the magic has become Google magic and the smart bidding magic and the AI magic. But there’s still magic that you bring to the table as well, right? But but talk about that evolution and where you see AI taking us.

Amy Hebdon: Yeah. So I mean when we think back about the early days of AdWords, you know, I remember working at a company where we had to use a certain version of Excel that could handle more than a million rows for keywords, right? Because like of the bulk sheets that we’re doing like that manual tracking and I remember thinking like there’s got to be someday some way that Google can solve for the fact that misspellings of the same term mean the same thing right like someday we’ll get there and I think not only have we gotten there but that’s definitely in the rearview mirror and I think Google’s really pushing the envelope of how much can we understand or infer from what’s not there and kind of assign meaning to it and find different ways to get to find relevancy where there isn’t like intuitive relevancy where we’re not saying hey this is a direct match of you know keyword search term to keyword to what’s in the ad to what’s on the landing page and kind of just infer what the user wants and what we’re able to deliver and I think AI is really trying to solve that problem. I don’t think it’s always the best solution. I don’t think always gets it right but I think that’s definitely where it’s trying to go.

Frederick Vallaeys: So how do you play in that space when like you said so it’s no longer the keyword specifically or the query doesn’t carry all the intent of what the user wanted. So there’s so much more and Google can decide to show ads for queries that may seem a little bit less relevant because there’s something else happening there.

So how do you deploy that then in your ad campaigns? How do you look at these additional signals? Or how do you make sure that if you’re maybe using an older methodology of just analyzing search terms that you’re not eliminating search terms that could have actually been good even though to you and me as humans who just look at that one piece of data, it doesn’t look good.

Amy Hebdon: I mean, I think this is an area where Google has decided for us that it’s not something we’re able to do as much by like making search term data less available. So we can’t even necessarily see what drove the query and we can’t make decisions. We can’t put in necessarily those guardrails of saying, “Hey, I only want to show up on this term.” So, I’ll give you an example. I have a client that is they do training for and licensing for foster parents. So, foster care obviously is a big term for them, a big theme, and then they also do foster to adopt. So, if you become a foster parent and then along the way decide you like to adopt, that becomes available too. What they are not is an adoption agency.

I have no way of keeping adoption queries from entering. I have, you know, exact match foster to adopt and I can go through and play, you know, infinite whack-a-mole to say, oh, someone typed in how can I adopt a kid. We don’t want to show for that. But there’s always going to be variations of how they spell or write or think about that. I can’t get that to not show. So, it ends up being a bad experience for the user who is looking to adopt, not to foster. That’s not, you know, the journey that they want. And it’s not great for my client who’s paying for all these keywords and searches that don’t really relate to their business model.

And yet, we can’t keep that from happening. So, I think that’s an example of like how things have changed and that lack of control. It’s hard for me to see a benefit in that of not being able to say, “Hey, I need to make sure that foster is always there.” Because right now, I have no lever at all to be able to do that. And I think that’s ultimately a net loss.

Frederick Vallaeys: Right. And do you think that is going to evolve as AI mode becomes a little bit more prevalent and where the queries are no longer shorter keywords, but they are more conversational and they take some history into account. Are you already seeing a shift or not?

Amy Hebdon: No. So, I mean it’s obviously everything’s going to depend on what the offer is, what the business is, and what those search terms are. But like in this example, if someone’s not saying the word foster, there’s really no benefit for us to show up. There’s not different ways to think about it than using the word foster in this instance. So I just don’t see that as a benefit if AI is going more towards I don’t know how AI solves for that problem that I’m currently experiencing. I don’t see what the benefit is of AI rather than me saying hey in this instance I would like to force keyword relevance. I want to have that word in there.

Frederick Vallaeys: Right. And maybe the way that I think about that is in e-commerce it’s a little bit easier because there’s a merchant feed. Consider structured data. So, it’s very clear what it is that you are selling and Google can map that to a query or a moment in time when the query maybe doesn’t match, but there’s still another indicator that says it looks like this person’s ready to buy that Sony video camera, right? Maybe they didn’t put Sony in the query. Maybe they didn’t even put video camera. Maybe they were just talking about like setting up a studio and they’re like, “Okay, that’s the right time to show the video camera they will need for that.” But I think what’s more challenging then is in the lead gen space like the Foster example that you’re describing where there’s probably a lot of explanation about what that business does on their website but how do you encapsulate that in keywords and then how do you then weed out like you said adoption when maybe it’s more about foster. I mean what are your thoughts on that like does SEO connect to this at all?

Do you feel like in AI mode, how are we feeding it information to steer it in that right direction? Because I think that’s ultimately where Google wants to go. They don’t want to show irrelevant ads either, especially when we’re seeing that the number of clicks are starting to reduce because there just not that many ads that you show during AI mode. But once the ad is shown, it should be hyper relevant because it knows so much more about what it is you need.

Amy Hebdon: Yeah, I actually don’t know that I’m 100% in the same conclusion that Google doesn’t want to show irrelevant ads. I think they do because there’s a benefit for them. They don’t want to have ads that feel so irrelevant that people interpret Google as a spam engine and stop using it. But I think there’s a lot of advantage to them. Like I will say as a marketer, my goal is to make ads that qualify the click, right? I want to make sure that if you’re likely to want what I offer that you click. And if you’re like, you know what, I don’t want that. Then you pre-qualify and don’t spend my money. That’s not a benefit to Google, right? Google benefits more if you’re like, oh, what’s behind door number two? It’s kind of vaguely about this thing. Let me see. If you do that too many times and you’re like, I can’t find what I’m looking for and it starts to feel really spammy, that’s a different scenario. But if like the first two clicks you get something that’s not exactly what you want, Google just made three times as much money as it would if it gave you the exact right thing on the first try.

Frederick Vallaeys: Right. So yeah, obviously they make more money on the CPCs and the clicks happening. Right. I mean, I see what you’re saying, but I think my vision of the future is that they will get you much closer to that ad that actually has the right stuff behind that door that the click will be much more expensive. So I don’t disagree at all that Google is going to make more revenue one way or another. But I think the right path to more revenue is to actually make the right clicks more expensive and get rid of these. Let’s check behind this door to see if it matches. Now, what’s interesting too is that if you open that door to see if it’s the right thing, that’s actually a signal to Google too of figuring out what should we have shown. And that’s always I think a little bit the challenge with Google’s automation and Google’s magic is that we are the ones funding them learning how to do the magic properly. So what tricks do you have up your sleeve to make sure you’re not going down those rabbit holes and spending 10 grand from your client to just help Google figure things out?

Amy Hebdon: Well, I think I am very reluctant to be Google’s guinea pig. I want to maintain control as much as I can. I mean within certain constraints, right? Like when shopping switched to smart shopping back in 2018 and we saw we were getting better results from smart shopping, I’m fine with that. I’m happy to do smart shopping because we get better results. Like there are times, you know, because there Google isn’t like making up stories about what my company does or does not offer. They’re not writing the ads. They’re not doing all the stuff. It’s just like, hey, if you can if you can do this better than I can, be my guest. But what I see a lot is actually even within the industry how there’s really a stigma of being you know a dinosaur of not being technology first enough of not being a fast enough adopter and I think that there’s a real risk in being an early adopter of AI where AI can make mistakes and we’re saying yeah go ahead and write our ads for us that’s a risk to every single business that is going to use it if it either interprets your offer wrong or misses things like there’s things that you like can’t say regulated industry or not, that could be a real problem when that happens. And there are instances of people losing their job because they’ve adopted AI too quickly. I don’t think that being slower and more considerate is the risk that we tend to assume that it is.

Frederick Vallaeys: Interesting. I feel like we have the yin and the yang on this call. Like I’m all in on AI. Let’s go fast probably. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, but that’s really interesting then. So let’s maybe shift that into a conversation about Performance Max for a second because one of the premises of Performance Max is the automatically created assets.

Amy Hebdon: Yep.

Frederick Vallaeys: And Google luckily is giving us a way to see what those assets are and then exclude those if we didn’t like them. But it is still sort of your—

Amy Hebdon: Didn’t like it. Not if you don’t like it. You don’t have the ability to preview and say hit publish on something before it runs.

Frederick Vallaeys: Exactly. So it runs first, but at least they’re not hiding what is being shown. But then like so have you tried Performance Max at this point?

Amy Hebdon: No. How can I in good faith tell my clients who all have some sort of rule about what they can and can’t say, right? Whether that’s we can’t say we have vetted contractors. We can say you can vet your contractors on our platform, but we can’t say vetted. Google I don’t trust it to understand that nuance because when it even when it recommends like hey maybe you want to use this in your RSA it gets that wrong same with every single client and I have had the unfortunate experience of having it wasn’t Google it was Bing back in the day but like it ran an ad as a site link that suggested we participated in human trafficking because it misunderstood the name of the product right that’s not good that’s a risk that I’m not willing to take on behalf of my clients so I’m willing to say, “Do you want this possible outcome?” And they’re like, “No, it’s not worth it.” Okay, then we won’t do it.

Frederick Vallaeys: I feel like we’ve discovered a whole spectrum here of like it’s just a little bit bad to like, “Oh my god, you are a horrendous person for doing human trafficking.” Like—

Amy Hebdon: Yeah, it’s not a good look, right?

Frederick Vallaeys: Not a good look. And so I mean, myself as running a tool company, I kind of love what you’re talking about, right? because we see this that it needs to be a partnership between the technology and the human and in this scenario with Google, I mean obviously they’re doing things before you get to judge on them. But it sounds like a workflow that’s like here’s a couple of suggestions of new creatives you could try like approve, disapprove, and then it starts running. that could actually be a timesaver because I think we are all none of us have enough time and for as creative as we all think we are the AI can often point us in new novel directions. So like do you use AI on the back end and ChatGPT Claude for ad generation like talk about that?

Amy Hebdon: Yeah. Well, so I found it’s not very useful for me to say, “Hey, write 10 headlines about this product, right?” Because what you lack there is differentiation and where AI is really driving towards the probabilistic center of like what’s most likely. Then you just end up with an ad that sounds like every other ad, it does nothing to again to qualify the click.

And so being able to like input a lot more about who my target audience is, who the personas and where especially I’d say where our offer maybe doesn’t hold up to maybe the other offers that someone’s going to see on the page to really differentiate it and say like you know this is for the small business, this is for someone who fits XYZ. So it becomes really obvious of who it’s for and not for so that we get the right clicks and AI can really help with that. So, I’m not at all opposed to using it, but I don’t just say, “Hey, write me an ad and hope that it does better than, you know, all of that context.” Like, I think that in paid search, we’re used to not having briefs. And I think that’s a real disservice.

You know, most other forms of advertising, whether it’s email or, you know, traditional or even now you have influencers, influencers all get briefs before they just like start talking about a product. And yet, we’ve kind of skipped over that for paid search. So, we’re just used to being like, “What’s the keyword? Let’s write ads about it.” And it kind of made sense in the beginning because you barely had any character space anyway. You couldn’t, you know, you were targeting towards someone who wants the keyword. You weren’t using persona targeting at all. But like now, I think there’s just a big hole where we just kind of lack understanding of who we’re trying to speak to. So, we’re just like, let Google figure it out. Let Google run the RSAs. Let it optimize because we don’t we lack that skill set because we never grew up with briefs.

I think that briefs are an important part and that’s where AI can really help because we don’t have the budget to go and do a lot of like user testing and focus groups, but AI can kind of help us figure out who we’re talking to, what’s going to be important to them, and say it in an appropriate way.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great piece of advice. Ask your client to work on a brief with you so you really understand the personas the target audience and like you said ChatGPT or any LLM for that matter is really helpful because you can say here’s the product we have who might be some personas who might be some audiences that might be looking for this and then the next query is you know put yourself in the shoes of that type of person what type of ad or value proposition might resonate with them right and so it helps to make all of these assets available. Now, when it comes to then actually putting it into Google Ads, what campaign structures do you like to deploy? Do you attach audiences to singular campaigns, multiple campaigns with different audiences? Like talk about that a bit.

Amy Hebdon: I mean, I’m really agnostic about this. Like, if you were to look at my campaign portfolio, it’s all across the board just depending on like I’m really specific about what the strategy is for an account and for a campaign. And then from there, like they’ll look drastically different just based on what I’m trying to accomplish within that campaign.

Frederick Vallaeys: Interesting. So, let’s talk a little bit more then about how you go about maybe crafting these messages and connecting that with audiences like what techniques do you like to use?

Amy Hebdon: Yeah. So, you know, we were just talking about how to use AI to like get deeper into personas, which again, I think is a really good use of AI. We can’t trust AI to give us exact correct answers but we can expect it to kind of get to you know the aggregate center and so that becomes really valuable when we’re trying to do say audience research because it can just kind of give us that approximation pretty quickly.

And so in the context of putting together let’s say an ad or a message or even just thinking through who our audience is, if we ask like who’s who might be interested in this category, who would be interested in the brand specifically? Who would be interested in the category but not the brand? I love that question of AI because it helps to arrive at essentially the anti-audience.

Like these are people who are going to respond to the category but aren’t going to be your buyers. and you can create messaging that excludes them so they’re less likely to click in the first place that’s not going to be appealing to them. And again, that’s when especially when Google is trying to, you know, get those clicks like being really specific and saying this isn’t for you can be a real benefit to better maintain protect your budget and keep the wrong clicks from happening.

Frederick Vallaeys: That’s really interesting. Can you give an example of what an ad might say to turn away the wrong people while still looking appealing to the right people?

Amy Hebdon: Yeah, I mean there’s one that I there’s a screenshot that I have that I share because I think it’s just such a good example, but there’s a search about like personal finances or investing, right? And then there’s a company that says get started for as low as a dollar and then there’s a company that says you must be an accredited investor, right? And that means you have a million dollars to invest.

Those are entirely different audiences and they’re not trying to play like whatever they’re doing on the back end to qualify their audience didn’t work very well because they’re both showing up in the same query. But the point is like you know if you are ready to start investing with a dollar or if you’re an accredited investor and you’re not going to get confused and click the wrong ad. It’s very clear who they’re for and not for. But if they just said invest now, we’re the best. Click here, you know, and we’re really redundant with investing is so great. Now is the right time to get started. You wouldn’t know which one to click. That would be really redundant and not a good use of the ad space.

Frederick Vallaeys: Right. That makes a lot of sense. And now you also did say they might not if both of the ads show at the same time, one of the two didn’t do a good job getting to that point. But what are some ways they could have made sure the wrong ad didn’t show in that scenario? Because oftentimes it might be a relatively generic query like investing. Obviously, both of these could be relevant, but are we now talking about there’s some audience layering that was done to do that pre-qualification and hide some of these ads on that page?

Amy Hebdon: Yeah, there can be right there. There can be a way within when we’re talking about audiences for search, we’re obviously a lot more limited than if we’re talking about Demand Gen or really anything else where those you can have a lot more control over that. So audience, you know, for search, audience targeting is a lot more limited to preset qualifiers, but there are things you can do. I mean people always like to do oh what is it like household income which may or may not be very accurate but like there are different things about like are they interested in personal finance type of things that you could potentially do but like you said if it’s a vague term there might not be enough signals to know if someone is you know just starting out or an accredited investor. So again, using that ad to qualify is probably the best form of qualification you can do.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. Okay. And then you mentioned Demand Gen and that’s really interesting too, right? Because we often talk about sort of that last moment before the purchase where search and keywords are really relevant. But as the world shifts and as people go more to AI mode, go more to ChatGPT, you really have to build that connection to your brand much higher up in the funnel. You can’t just wait until that last minute. So Demand Gen plays in that, right? Because somebody’s not necessarily searching for your thing, but we’re exposing them to what your business offers, your value proposition. So how do you like Demand Gen and do you have some tips and tricks on that one?

Amy Hebdon: Yeah, I mean I think getting really specific about the audiences like what might someone have searched for where it would have made sense for you to show up and maybe it was cost prohibitive. You know, what might they be in market for? Thinking, you know, putting together a lot of those segments and then being able to come up with ads that speak specifically to them, I think can be a really rich way to reach people earlier in the funnel. That’s not going to convert at the exact same rate, but it also is a nice way to kind of like, you know, for years I said that Google Ads was the best way to put your best offer in front of your ideal audience at the time they’re most ready to take action. And I think for years that was true. I think that’s less of Google’s main service offering now is like that premium moment like right before they’re ready. And like it’s a lot more full-funnel and we can take advantage of that by using you know Google’s knowledge of its audience which is hugely expansive to try to reach people not necessarily in the right moments but the right people with the right message and kind of start to reach people earlier in the customer journey.

Frederick Vallaeys: Right and so Demand Gen campaigns you’ve generally been happy with them?

Amy Hebdon: Yeah I mean I would say that they’ve definitely outperformed display like when we have had the option to run both and now that’s not really an option, but it we see a much higher click-through rate, which makes sense because it’s more in-stream than more disruptive, you know, in terms of banners. And yeah, it’s kind of its own story, right? It functions to stop the scroll a lot more than display did. So, we saw a lot better results than display. And then sometimes because of the cost savings, especially if you’re dealing with really expensive terms, reaching people not at that exact moment, can really be can really bring down the CPC enough that you can have comparable cost per acquisition for either Demand Gen or search in a lot of cases.

Frederick Vallaeys: Right? And then so Demand Gen sort of as people are scrolling you have that moment of connection that you could have. You also mentioned influencers and how they get media briefs or they get briefs before they start speaking. Do you work with influencers or do you see your clients doing so?

Amy Hebdon: No, I’m not my advertising isn’t necessarily in that space. I definitely have had clients that have, you know, been on TikTok or been working with influencers. I think it’s still a tough nut to crack for a bunch of different reasons. You know in some ways I mean there are platforms and things that are trying to make it easier for companies that want to work with influencers to kind of do that at scale a little bit better. So I think that’s really interesting but I mean it’s not something that I offer or work with directly and when I have seen my clients do it it’s always it has always been with questionable returns which is not to say it doesn’t work just that it’s not fully solved for yet.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. Now it’s funny because you are an influencer. I mean you are is it number four on the top 50 most influential PPC.

Amy Hebdon: Yes. But I mean you know that it is not my job to create content. I don’t do that very well. So I would say it’s a completely different category of you know of advertising and solution.

Frederick Vallaeys: Right. But at the same time, let’s I mean, so I’m number one on the list and I think it is important for my business to put out content and the fact that you’re on a podcast, I mean, that is content, right? So influencers aren’t necessarily I think when you say influencer, a lot of people just think lifestyle influencer on Instagram. But being active on LinkedIn, being active in the community, giving presentations at events, being on podcasts, blogging, all of these things are building influence and so how do you think about that? Because you obviously made it to an enviable spot on that list, and I think a lot of listeners would love to be in my position or your position. So, even if you’re not like cognizantly really driving towards it or don’t see it as like I want to be an influencer, like what was your decision process to do the things that you did that got you to where you are?

Amy Hebdon: That’s an interesting question. I think just a combination of writing articles and showing up and speaking at conferences and I’ve kind of treated it I will say this I had no interest in it for the first 10 plus years of my career and then I was talking with a Google rep who was like well why aren’t you speaking at conferences? I was like why would I speak at conferences? That’s not that’s not me. That’s other people who have all this knowledge right? Like I’m not that. He’s like, “No, you could speak at a conference.” Like, “Oh, okay.” So, that was like the first time I thought about it was probably like 10 years ago. And then from there, I would say it’s been a little bit of like a bigger or better game. Like, you’re not going to automatically get on a huge stage, you know, the first time you want to pitch something. And it wouldn’t even be advantageous to go that route. Like, getting more comfortable in smaller spaces definitely helps prepare you for the bigger stages.

But yeah, I like to just find different opportunities like, oh, can I get published there? Can I do this thing? You know, what makes sense for me? I don’t have like a real game plan at this point. I just show up when people invite me to their podcast. That’s about it.

Frederick Vallaeys: Well, well, thank you for coming on this podcast. No, but I think it’s a little bit the same. But nowadays, you see people saying, okay, I want to when I grow up, I want to be an influencer. I want to make money from that. But before that, people were just posting on social because that’s what they enjoyed doing because they were speaking about something they were passionate about and that ended up becoming a monetization opportunity for them. And I think maybe what you said then is really refreshing, right? So, don’t be an influencer for the sake of being an influencer because it’s right like not many people grow up dreaming of being on a big stage and speaking at a conference. Right.

But we dream about Yeah. Actually, what do we dream about? I think we might have to cut this a little bit here, but it’s like for me, I just really liked PPC and I liked talking to advertisers and to some degree showing how smart I was because I’d figured some of these things out, right? I got a kick out of that and so I was on stage for Google and this is before influencers existed in any sort of form. But that was sort of the influencers of that day, right? And then that transitioned into social media and podcasting and all of these other things. But it was never for the purpose of being an influencer. It was just because I enjoy what I do. And like right now I’m so deep into vibe coding and like it’s kind of like the next evolution I think of Google ad scripts. And then I get so excited about these things and I want to go out and talk about it. I want to tell people about it and I think that’s where it has to come from like have that passion and have something to share. And then hopefully it resonates with people and you get that feedback and that feedback that gives you a kick and that keeps you doing more of it.

Amy Hebdon: Yeah, I would say that I mean in the context of influencer and influencer marketing like as a marketing channel like there might be some necessary disambiguation here because like if you’re on TikTok you’re like I’m going to be an influencer. I mean it’s almost network marketing right? It’s like I’m going to be someone who shows up who has enough of an audience that people that companies can pay me, you know, brands can pay me and I will pitch their product and it will do well because I have like cast a wide enough net and people will it’ll get that attention which is completely different than someone being a subject matter expert who has attained some level of you know maybe influencer status.

But like I mean for me I don’t anytime anyone’s ever offered me money to do any sort of like selling their product it’s never been a yes for me and it’s not working at all to make money from brands whereas there’s some you know there is a career trajectory at this point where you could say I’m just going to make money from brands and sell their product on TikTok and Instagram. Those I see those as completely different even if they share the name influencer.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. Well, and I think the other unique thing here is that I also don’t accept money to pitch stuff, but I’m basically pitching Optmyzr in some way, right? And you’re pitching your agency and I think that’s an under represented category like I call it founder-led marketing and that’s what both of us are doing and it’s a form of influencer and so I think a lot of people listening to this podcast they also want to get more clients for their agency they you know they might have a business and try to sell stuff for it and so we are then being tasked to go out and position it and pitch it and find audiences.

But at the end of the day, there are so many solutions to any problem you have and people like to buy from people. So if those people then see that, oh well, here’s three pieces of software that I could choose to help me with my PPC management. Oh, but this one it’s Fred’s company and I’ve seen Fred and maybe I like what he writes about and he’s like helped me with a question or two that I had. Like that gives you the preference, right? And I think that disambiguation again like yeah, we’re not talking about audiences of millions. We’re not talking about hawking like skincare products to a bunch of people, but like there is real value in figuring out how to be an influencer. And so I think what you and I have done I wish that if we were marketing on behalf of a company that sometimes their executive team was more active in having a presence and saying like why did we build this thing? Like And I think it was Will Reynolds did an amazing job at one of the keynotes that I saw, but he was like, “Listen, if you’re going to be buying jeans, like you can buy jeans from Banana Republic or from all of these other brands and like what differentiates them, ultimately they’re all just jeans, right?

But one companies might stand for the more sustainable way of making jeans and that might mean a whole lot more than the generic jeans that Banana Republic is selling where they come up with marketing slogans, but it’s not a real thing. There’s not a person at Banana Republic that we can look at and say like, “Oh yeah, we actually believe what they stand for because that person who like leads that company or is influential within that company does it.” And so then you end up pitching through these lifestyle influencers who might be saying something, but it’s still like there’s a disconnect. Have they just been gotten the media brief?

Did they just get the media brief and now they’re saying that thing because that’s what the company told them to say or is there something real there? And I think this all comes back to what you were saying about messaging, right? Like how do you differentiate yourself? What is your value proposition? And so maybe give me your thoughts on you can come up with the most brilliant messaging, but how do you make sure that once someone gets to the landing page, they feel like they haven’t been duped and that that message was actually real?

Amy Hebdon: Okay. So, I think there’s two really interesting parts about what you just said. One about just like how people want to connect with real people and the difficulty when the leadership team isn’t willing to like be the face of their brand and just how what a disadvantage that is that we don’t necessarily collectively understand that yet, right? Like it just seems like no, you can just throw money at something and that takes care of it and then that’s how you grow your business. It’s like that’s I feel like the pendulum is completely swinging from there. Like we used to just do business with people we knew and then it got to be like we were really happy to do business with corporations. It kind of stood for something and now I think we’re going back especially I’m going to say this that AI is kind of part of like AI can say anything and represent anything. So the more authentic you can become and you can be a real person and trustworthy the bigger that advantage is going to get right like the more opportunity there is for like a founder brand. So, I think that there’s a huge opportunity there to use, you know, human-to-human connection to grow a brand.

As far as what goes on the landing page, I start with the landing page as opposed to starting with the getting the right messaging and then going landing page. Like, if I always tell my clients if it’s not on the landing page, it’s not true, right? I could say, “Oh, come to our hotel. We have got a great pool here in the ad.” They get to the landing page and there’s no doesn’t mention that they have a pool. They’re not going to call up the hotel and say, “Do you actually have a pool because I saw it in your ad?” They’re not going to remember. They’re just going to go with whoever has a picture of a pool on their landing page.

Like, it is so important. Like, the thing you want to represent to your end user is on the landing page. We start with that. We get the landing page, right? And then we take bits and pieces of that and form an ad. It essentially becomes the teaser trailer to the movie. But we’re not going to make a trailer without knowing what the movie is about. We never start with the ads. We always start with the landing page and making sure the landing page represents the offer we’re trying to represent.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, two brilliant points. I really love the one about the pendulum swinging all the way in the other direction because we need to know we’re actually speaking to humans. I recently got human verified. So there’s now an app for that. Sam Altman from OpenAI is one of the investors and they basically have an orb that makes sure that you’re human and then you get human verification in an app so that if one day there is a clone of me that’s actually a robot and my agent, it can’t just go through my bank and take all the money out and run away with it and give it to someone else. So yeah, some crazy stuff happening in the world that we’re all going to have to think about.

Amy Hebdon: Right.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. What’s it like in Tennessee, by the way? Like, do you have self-driving cars? And like do people talk about AI there much?

Amy Hebdon: I would say it’s a lot slower of a tech place than say, you know, I lived in Seattle. I’m from California. I lived in New York for a while. Like here it’s a lot slower pace. Which is fine because you know a lot of the those conversations are happening online. They’re not necessarily with our neighbors. And so like my neighbors have no idea what I do. And that’s okay. Like doesn’t matter how many times we tell them. You know, there’s like cool. So, it’s a little different.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yes. Well, good. So, let’s wrap up maybe with a couple of quick ones, but what is your favorite new capability in PPC that you think more people should be using?

Amy Hebdon: Let’s see. How new are we talking?

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah, I mean, Google releases stuff mostly around May, so it’s kind of old at this point. Could even be from last year. Yeah, but just something that you don’t think enough people use.

Amy Hebdon: Well, I mean, they just released the ability to see what search partners are. And for me, I don’t know how useful this is going to be like now and forever. But for right now where we’ve never had that visibility to see what search partners are running, to be able to see that, I think is pretty cool. And then, you know, maybe it’ll be like one time where you go and do a bunch of negatives and don’t look at it all the time. Or maybe it will be like an ongoing thing. But I’m pretty excited about what has always been a black box finally us having some transparency into. I think that’s pretty cool.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. No, that’s absolutely huge news. And as we’re recording this, it’s I think it’s like two days ago that it happened. By the time you’re watching this, it’ll be about a month old. So and it’s funny because I was talking to my team and they already gave feedback. They were like, “Oh, we need to do a big data study around this.” And then someone else on the team was like, “That’s weird because I was literally on that page yesterday that had no stats of any sort.” It’s like, yeah, it’s rolling out. So, if you looked at it recently and it wasn’t there, go check again because it is really cool data.

Another quick one. So, what’s the biggest mistake that you see advertisers continue to make? And maybe during the audit process, like what’s one thing that always like blows your mind or gets you frustrated like that people are still doing this wrong?

Amy Hebdon: Okay, this is a little bit of a meta answer, but you know, I think it’s an authority bias. We say, okay, Google has the world’s data. Google has so much data. Therefore, everything that it does is based on its knowledge of an end user and it’s going to be to the benefit of me, the advertiser. Those things are completely separated, right? Like, it’s true that Google has tons of data. It’s also true that it’s not always acting in the best interest of an individual advertiser. So, there’s a lot that you still need to do to protect yourself, to set guard rails, to do everything. And I see a lot of people make the mistake of just thinking, “Oh, I just thought if I put all my keywords into one campaign that Google would figure out which ad to show or, you know, do this thing right for me or handle this thing so I didn’t have to like understand it or think about it.” Google would just get it right. And Google’s not motivated to get it right to the extent that you are.

So, like it can burn through a lot of your cash and still benefit from that and you don’t benefit from that. So like being aware of just like being aware of what controls you have and exercising them you know critically I think is a really important skill that a lot of newcomers don’t have and I think that they’re being a little bit scared of doing that because again it can seem anti-tech you know to like be clinging on to what we could do in the past like everyone wants to just kind of give free reign to Google and that’s not always a good idea.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah makes sense. Okay, final one. What is your favorite recent example of using AI to do something cool?

Amy Hebdon: I mean, I use AI a lot for personal and a lot for paid search. So to give a paid search example is I have found that trying to get information from our clients, you know, we talked about using, you know, getting having clients help us create a brief, figuring out what their offer even is. Because sometimes the landing page isn’t going to say it very well. If I just ask them, you know, a page of questions, they don’t do it because they’re like so overwhelmed and like, “Oh, that’s too many questions. I don’t know how to think through it.” And they don’t want to give the wrong answer or sound stupid.

So they just kind of avoid it and then we never get the data that we need. So I will use AI to like come up with questions and then ask them like here’s three possible answers, you know, what sounds good and then they’ll be like, “Yeah, A is correct. B actually isn’t right because of this reason and C is right.” So it’s a lot easier for them to respond to like something on the glass than having to think of something, you know, kind of the blank page syndrome that we’ve all experienced. But then it also has a benefit, you know, because the AI’s answers don’t have to be right.

They just have to get them thinking. So someone saying this is wrong because is just as helpful for me as them, you know, as anything else. Like being wrong isn’t a problem. You know, being right and being wrong are both valuable and sometimes being wrong is even more valuable because then we get that insight into the differentiation. Like this thing isn’t the expected answer, but it’s the answer that they’re giving us. And so it can help us to really use those answers to craft a much better page, much better messaging around the offer than we would if we’re just like, “Hey, tell us everything about your brand.” And then, you know, six months later, we still don’t have that document back.

Frederick Vallaeys: That’s really cool. It’s something I haven’t heard before, but I really like it. Now, you did say you were going to differentiate here between PPC and personal life. Like, is there a personal life one that’s cool that you would also not mind sharing?

Amy Hebdon: Well, I mean, just to me, they’re not very unexpected because they’re just like the way I think, right? But like I’m using it to practice Spanish right now. I can say, “Oh, you know what? I learned this word that I’m not used to. Use it in 10 different cases for me so I can kind of get a better feel of how it would be conjugated.” Or yeah, like we have an older house and so, hey, I don’t really understand how this how our pipe works. And then it can like explain it to me, you know, it can understand where it I could do a lot of research and not find anything on Google because it’s like such an obscure thing.

But then AI can help me figure it out and solve an answer to why this thing is dripping or what to do about some permaculture project we’re working on or how to treat our chickens when they have bumblefoot, you know, just like that. Some very specific things that if you ask the hive, sometimes the hive really doesn’t understand it, but we can get much better answers from Google. I was I just said Google, I meant AI. I don’t know how many times I said AI, but I have meant ChatGPT throughout this conversation.

Frederick Vallaeys: Well, and that’s also then back to the fundamental shift that we’re seeing here, right? Is that you get frustrated at the limited answers you get on Google, the AI somehow understands it better because it allows for that conversational aspect to happen. And then we tie all this back to well if your chickens have some condition and there is some sort of a product that could help with that how do you show that within Perplexity, within ChatGPT, within Claude, or even Google’s AI mode and I think that’s one big shift that we’re seeing that you’ve been alluding to.

Amy Hebdon: Do you see that as going with ads or do you see that as a different monetization model?

Frederick Vallaeys: Well, I mean I think Google has to monetize it somehow, right? So it is going to be ads. But in my mind, it’s just, and I know you’re going to slightly disagree with me here, but it’s even more relevant ads at the right moment, at the right price. The thing that’s going to shock a lot of advertisers is the price is going to go up tremendously because it has to, because fewer ads will be shown.

There’s going to be fewer incorrect clicks. And I also predict that in many cases, the landing page is not going to be there anymore. I think it’s just going to get bypassed altogether and Google’s going to become a connector between what it is the consumer needs and what it is that you sell. And so if you’ve gone far enough into the AI mode and it’s really like okay, I’ve explained everything about my chicken’s conditions and like this is exactly the product we need and like I care about fast delivery more than the cheapest price because my chickens are dying. Then okay, here’s the product. Here’s the merchant that has it. Like say yes and get it delivered to my door. I don’t want to have to go to a landing page. Like I mean, and I’ve gone on rants about this before, but I hate how many times a day I have to pull out my phone just to go on the Target app to put in that I’m out of dish cleaning product or I need to go on the Safeway app because I’m out of Spindrift or it’s like there should be some assistant that I can talk to. And by the way, I have an assistant right there, my little computer and it collects all these facts for me. I should be able to speak what I need and it should be handled like—

Amy Hebdon: Well and that’s why I’m asking you like where does ads come into play because I’ve heard you speak before about like you know you take a picture of a sofa that you like in New York and then you say hey remember that sofa it would not be to your advantage to have an ad show up nor to go to the landing page right you want that transaction to happen seamlessly any sort of ad that happens there is friction now so if your assistant if your AI is going to go and make that purchase for you. That’s probably not an advertising revenue model. That’s probably some other sort of like share of sale or something else like a commission for completing the transaction on your behalf. But we’re probably if you saw an ad that would be an interrupter that would make your experience less valuable for using that technology.

Frederick Vaalleys: No, that’s a really fair point. And so if that monetization is through an affiliate rev-share model, that’s fine. And then but I think your point is showing the ad and making it clear like hey now you have to go through the ad to achieve the thing that you wanted. Yes, that is a blocker in the experience. That’s a bad user experience. But Google’s still going to gatekeep that, right? So Google could say, well, this company that has that sofa that for instance is not willing to pay me a share of the thing. So I’m just flat out not going to show it to him as an option. And instead I’m gonna go to Wayfair. I’m gonna be like this one looks pretty similar might fit your need. That is a bad experience for me as the user who just wanted that.

But at the same time like that’s the economic reality, right? So and that’s again where I think and you’re alluding to it too, but Google makes trade-offs between like the best user experience and the user experience that makes them enough money to keep offering the service. And so I think to a large degree merchants will come on board and if the pricing is fair they will be like that’s fine like then I don’t have to worry about the landing page and I don’t have to worry about what the ad says. I can just be shipping sofas to people’s houses and that ultimately is my business right like nobody went into business making sofas because they were like I need something to market like let me build sofas. So if we can cut out and sadly to a degree that means cutting out you and me as the advertisers and the marketers. But yes, we have been an intermediate piece that maybe is no longer going to be necessary.

Amy Hebdon: I think in those examples like where AI can be useful in completing a transaction without an ad, I don’t see how it benefits anyone to have an ad in that. You know, like I can go to IKEA and take a picture of a couch that I like because I don’t have a wearable that’s going to take a picture for me, but I go take that picture and then I come back and I search for the product and I find it and I buy it or don’t buy it. Now, that might be more steps than you want. But what neither of us want is a substitute that we didn’t ever like or approve of that’s like, yeah, but they were willing to pay Google. Like that doesn’t that’s not a good user experience for either one.

Frederick Vallaeys: But it’s interesting because now equate that to what’s happening on Amazon, right? So, I’ve heard stories of like I don’t know if this is a true story, but an elderly person their waterpik flosser device is broken and they go on Amazon and they type in waterpik, assuming that they’re going to get a waterpik and they just pick the first result, add it to cart, buy now. Shows up at their house and they’re like, “Oh my god, this thing is horrible.” And like they call Waterpik and they’re like, “You didn’t buy a Waterpik. This is like some Chinese knockoff no-name brand and it just happens to be the one that paid the most money to get the top result on Amazon, right? And so to a large degree, we see that yes, it is a bad experience, but Amazon continues to do this. So clearly there’s a monetization model here that is working where it is not beneficial to the user. But the users are also not revolting in big enough numbers to make Amazon change their game in that regard. And maybe that’s an existential risk to Google then right if they get too dependent on that revenue and they will not do the right user experience a competitor can come in give a better user experience they make a little bit less money but ultimately that is the more sustainable business model.

Amy Hebdon: We are seeing Google market share fall for the first time so I think that you know there is a certain point where people are like enough is enough I don’t like this bad spammy experience like we all have seen how the quality of results that you experience as a user has been declining for the past several years. And I think there is a certain amount of like I mean Google started out like Google ads or AdWords as that three-legged stool like where it had to be beneficial for Google and for the advertiser and for the user and now it’s like highly beneficial for Google much less so for the user and the advertiser and if it doesn’t kind of grow those legs back it’s going to make itself irrelevant after enough time you know like people are going to go find other solutions that better solve their problem.

Frederick Vallaeys: Right and for me that became really true when I was shopping. So, I redid my bathroom and I wanted to find like certain styles of cabinets and vanities and it was almost no matter how I formulated my query, it would always come back with the same ads with the same vendors, right? And then having to go to those vendors, they didn’t have AI. So, I’d be reading through 500,000 pictures trying to find the thing that I wanted and it was never really fitting my need. And then I was like, I’m done with this. Like and I sat down on the couch. I took my phone and I went in voice mode with ChatGPT. And I gave it a picture of one thing that I kind of liked and I told it what style and it was really a half hour conversation. But what came out of that was like here’s the perfect look that I want. Now the disconnect there was I couldn’t just go and buy these things because it was all generative. It didn’t actually exist. But it understood my vision at least. It was like, “Oh, here’s the type of cabinet vanity that Fred might really like and that fits the style that he wants.” So I think we’re in like these two places, right? Google doesn’t understand what I need, so they show me the stuff that’s not that relevant. It’s not necessarily spammy, just it’s not right.

Amy Hebdon: Or it does understand what you need perfectly and it’s just not incentivized to show you that.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. Well, no. And I kind of disagree on that. I think having worked there, if they really knew what I wanted and they had an advertiser for it, like they’re not going to block it, right? I think it’s just a matter of either they don’t understand or they understand, but they don’t have the way to match that to the thing that I want.

Amy Hebdon: But when did you work there?

Frederick Vallaeys: Well, it was a long time ago.

Amy Hebdon: Everything has changed in the last like since 2018. You know, they dropped Don’t Be Evil. They decided that ad rank was based on bids, that relevance was based on how much you’re willing to pay. And now they’re like all bets are off now, right? There was a time where relevance was that was their unique value proposition. That’s how they got market share and they were like that for you know at least a decade that that’s why everyone went to Google because of what it offered. It doesn’t offer that same experience anymore. I wish that it did. I was a huge fan girl of Google at the beginning because of how well it delivered on that promise because you want a search engine to be relevant, but that’s not where we’re at right now, unfortunately. And it’s I think that is something for them to change or to, you know, kind of to lose market share if they don’t.

Frederick Vallaeys: Right. And so there are these studies about market share for Google shrinking but the overall pie is getting bigger. So Google is still in a very good position. And there’s different studies on this and like how you interpret but like I don’t see Google crashing and burning in the near term, right? I don’t think that’s what you’re saying either. But like given these frustrations that we have with Google like do you see AI mode as a viable solution or are we talking about like Bing is just better DuckDuckGo Perplexity like where do you see people going and is that a place where we as marketers will follow or because the other interesting thing is like Claude has great answers but there’s no ad platform on Claude ChatGPT like we can’t advertise on ChatGPT so what do we do?

Amy Hebdon: Right. Well, I mean, like every AI solution right now is essentially in its infancy, right? So, it’s really hard to predict. Here’s what’s going to happen. Frankly, I wouldn’t have predicted Google’s trajectory the way it’s gone either, right? I would have expected it to kind of really stay close to its roots, and that’s not what it’s done. Obviously, at some point AI is going to be monetized so much more than it is. I think it’s going to cost us a lot more to use than it does. But I don’t see Google kind of stuffing in here’s an AI response, here’s AI mode as being even analogous to like a conversation that you’d have with an AI, you know, chatbot sort of thing where you have a full conversation and you spend a half hour talking to it versus like I go to Google, I type in one thing, there’s an AI result at the top. I hate AI, so I’m not going to use it. You know, because most people don’t like AI. Most people who use AI like it, but most people don’t use AI and don’t like it. So, I don’t think that like in the typical user of Google is going to be placated by having AI mode or an AI overview box as far as like it solves something for them that Google doesn’t.

Frederick Vallaeys: I mean, we’re way over time here, but this fascinating. So if you have a couple more minutes, I’d like to go deeper on this. So, do you think this is a positioning problem then? If you say people don’t like AI because so Google just did their made by Google event with the new Pixel phone coming out and they announced the Google home devices will soon have Gemini so their answers will be better and then that makes me think about Alexa and like I love having an Alexa in my house because of the utility that it offers but Alexa is often not that smart and they’re promising Alexa plus which is going to have probably ChatGPT in it. But I’m like, if that just sits in my house, like I don’t necessarily think of, oh, I put AI all over my house. I’m just like, I’ve got this little dongle from Google or this thing from Amazon that sits there and it’s actually really helpful. And it is AI doing it, but just kind of like in the old days, the really old days, but you’d go to a conference and you’d ask people, “How many people have clicked on an ad on Google?” And like nobody would raise their hands. They were like, “Well, you know, you did, right?” Because they just didn’t look like ads. They look like useful information. So I wonder is it a positioning thing where people don’t want to go to AI mode because it says AI or—

Amy Hebdon: Yeah, I think that’s exactly I think it is positioning. I think it is mostly the average person at least in America today would rather say that they are anti-AI than they are pro-AI. It’s a values positioning thing like it’s just better like within tech it’s a different story, right? And if you’re if you’re a CEO in tech, then you want to be 100% all-in on AI and make grand gestures about how invested you are in AI. But most people, it kind of gives them the ick. They don’t like it because they think it’s bad for the planet. They’ve had negative experiences. And it’s one of those things that like you only notice if it’s bad. Kind of like editing, right? You don’t notice good editing. You don’t notice good AI. You just feel like, “Oh, I got answers to my question or whatever.” But you notice bad AI and it’s really bad and it makes you really mad. So, I think that most people don’t feel good about it. They feel like it’s a huge waste of resources and they don’t like it and they don’t like how heavy it’s being pushed. They don’t like that someone was saying on LinkedIn the other day like half their screen on Gmail is like Gemini can do XYZ for you. Like they don’t want that. They just want to write an email. So, I think I think we kind of miss the mark when we lead with hey this is AI rather than hey here’s how this solves your problem and kind of like it can go in more the background be more seamless and just solve the problem. So, I don’t think people are like really excited about like it’s AI mode. I’m going to trust it more than top results. I don’t think anyone’s thinking that.

Frederick Vallaeys: Very interesting. And that’s like living here in the Silicon Valley bubble. I mean, I don’t know if you saw my post on LinkedIn, but like the billboards of San Francisco. It’s their whole own lingo. Everything’s about AI.

Amy Hebdon: I’m sure that’s true. Yeah. And it makes sense there, right? But like if you go outside of there, everyone’s like, “What are they talking about that jargon and AI?” No one, you know, it’s terrible and we hate it. So, it just depends on where you’re at.

Frederick Vallaeys: Yeah. Hey, well, cool. This has been a fascinating conversation, Amy. So happy to have had you on. If, people want to find out more about Paid Search Magic, where can they find you?

Amy Hebdon: Yeah, go to paidsearchmagic.com . I am a bit of a bad influencer. I’m not posting all the time, but I do send out a newsletter every week. So, if you want to like follow, you know, I am very consistent in that. So, if you want to get the newsletter, go to paidsearchmagic.com and sign up for the newsletter.

Frederick Vallaeys: Great. Good. And then, everyone who’s been watching, thank you so much. Please give this a thumbs up or a like or a heart so that more people will find the show. Please subscribe if you want to know about the next episode. With that, thank you Amy. Thank you everyone for watching and we’ll see you for the next one.

Amy Hebdon: Thank you.