Google Advertising · Operator's AI Playbook

Google Advertising

I've been spending quite a bit of time inside Google's new Performance Max campaigns lately, and I think a lot of people are missing the biggest change.

Everyone talks about AI.

I don't think AI is the interesting part.

The interesting part is that Google is finally moving away from just matching keywords and towards finding people who actually buy.

That's a massive difference.

Traditional Search campaigns are incredible when someone already knows exactly what they're looking for.

Performance Max goes looking for people who don't know your business exists yet, but who behave like your existing customers. Google uses all the data it has across Search, YouTube, Gmail, Discover, Maps and Display to find more people that are likely to convert.

That's where the magic happens.

This week I put around R500 behind a simple LeadLabs campaign.

The result?

• Nearly 400 enquiries

• R0.84 cost per conversion

• CTR sitting at 4.51%

The lesson isn't "Performance Max is amazing."

The lesson is that AI is only as good as the system you build around it.

If you feed Google poor signals, it'll find more poor prospects.

If you feed it high-quality conversion data, it'll go and find more people that look exactly like your buyers.

That's what AI Ops is about.

Stop obsessing over prompts.