Google Ads forces AI Max in September. Verification becomes the agency pitch.
Google Ads forces AI Max in September. Verification becomes the agency pitch.
In the eleventh episode of Assistant to the CMO, Lexie Meskouris speaks with Will Nash and Harjot Singh about what happens to a marketing budget when the platform spending it stops showing you what you bought.
From 1 September, Google automatically moves Search campaigns using automatically created assets or campaign-level broad match into AI Max, and since 3 August you cannot create either setting anywhere. Will opens by calling it a headline rebrand, then changes his mind on air: the keyword-level report goes, and with it your ability to say what you bid on. Harjot reads the same change as the next rung on a ladder running from URLs to keywords to intent.
The second half turns to WPP, which cut 1,267 roles in six months while pitching itself as a platform. Will thinks the agency of the future sells verification. Harjot calls it a feature that ends up inside somebody else's product. Neither settles it, and the advice they agree on is small: record your baseline, migrate before Google does it for you, and change nothing else while it happens.
Highlights of this Episode Include:
- Creation Closed on 3 August: You can no longer make campaign-level broad match or legacy automatically created assets anywhere, including the API.
- Will Talks Himself Off His Own Verdict: He opens on "a headline rebrand" and ends up arguing you will not know what you are bidding on.
- The Keyword Report Is the Real Loss: Reporting cost per click at keyword level goes away, because queries are mixed together after the migration.
- A Results-Only Relationship: Will's line for what advertisers are left with is that Google defines the product it sold you after it has sold it.
- Cheaper Clicks Are Not Good News: Google can infer commercial intent from searches that touched no keyword, and gets paid on every extra click.
- Verification Splits the Room: Will proposes semantic clustering as a real service line. Harjot says it is a feature and therefore not a business.
- Migrate Before You Are Migrated: Take your baseline now, switch on your own terms before the deadline, and run nothing else across the window.
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