AI Is Making Google Ads Agencies Dumber

Just last month, we had another furious business owner contact us and join Define Digital Academy. And the reason why they did that was for this simple reason: that despite being in their peak seasonal period, which was so crucial for their business, they were getting the worst results month on month. What essentially happened was that this business owner saw their best results in 2025, so they decided for 2026 to engage a digital agency. Now, this digital agency. Promised that they were experts at Google Ads, and they also heavily sold that they used AI to make their results better and to really use the right data so that they could get better results for her and her business. 8 months down the track, unfortunately, her business is in a worse position than what it was. And as I said at the top, is that right now she's in the peak selling season for her brand, but she's getting the worst results her business has ever seen. And this is the unfortunate hard truth that is really real in our industry right now. Sadly, in many cases, AI is not making agencies smarter, it's just making them more confident. So they're getting more things wrong, but they're more confident about how wrong they are. And this is what is really dangerous for your business, because AI doesn't make a weak marketer strong or a bad marketer good. It just makes a weak marketer or a bad marketer more confident. Being skilled at Google Ads or being an expert at Google Ads used to mean that you knew how the platform worked, and it used to mean that you knew how to operate ads inside of Google Ads. Whereas that has now actually changed with the influx of people using tools like Claude or Gemini, and also the way that Google Ads has used AI within the Google Ads account. Being skilled at Google Ads or being an expert at Google Ads actually means that you know when the platform is wrong and Google Ads is wrong and you know how to correct it. And herein lies the danger, is that ultimately AI can keep telling you you're doing a great job and really justify the position or the wrong position that you have while your business continues to suffer. And that's the hard truth of where we're at right now as an industry, as Google Ads practitioners. Now let's get back to that furious business owner because I want to take you through, especially if you're watching this and that story resonates with you, is that you are currently a business owner who is seeing declining results in their Google Ads campaigns month after month. Because what was so frustrating for this business owner that reached out to us is that while they were running ads in 2025, they were seeing the best results that their business had ever seen before. They then passed the reins over or passed the responsibility over to that digital agency who they trusted who has just seen a decline month on month of worse after worse, poor after poor results in their business. And despite all this time they've been talking to the agency, and the actual quote from the business owner is that it's just like they're throwing spaghetti against the wall. The agency has all this data, but they don't know how to interpret it. They don't know how to turn the results around for their business. And when we came through and had a look at their account, we spotted the problem within about Now, it took us quite a bit longer to really get into the core nitty-gritty of what we needed to do in order to fix this, walking alongside with the business owner. But essentially what they did is that they defunded their best-performing products, and they did it in one of the most stupidest ways. And the reason why I say that is because one of the core foundations for success with Google Ads and any form of paid media is that when you're seeing good results— so you're seeing your winning products or your winning services get good results in Google Ads— The last thing you want to do is stop spending money in those high-performing areas. That is what this agency did. And let me give you some stats here. So this business, going back to their peak period in 2025, there was actually 2 campaigns which was marketing around about 50 of their best-performing products, and that was generating over 80% of their total store revenue. But then what this agency did by making changes and split— and they took all this data from AI, they took the Google Ads data out, put it through their own Claude system, and came back and go, this is a better way of structuring your account. And what they actually ended up doing is that those top-performing products that were getting about 57% of spend in their account, generating over 80% of revenue, they— by the changes they made, those top-performing products were only getting 12% of their spend. So rather than spending just over $10,000 a month on those products, that spend went down to $2,645 for the month. And then surprise, surprise, the revenue, which was hitting at about $30,000 for just that group of products, went down to about $3,800. Their conversions went from 415 down to 69, once again for those top performing products, or as we should say now, previous top performing products. And here's the real kicker, and the real killer for this business owner was that those 50 products that were defunded are still available in their Google Merchant Feed, still all in stock. In fact, they've got more stock than what they had the previous year. So they're still able to sell. There is no reason that those products should not be being continued to be actively marketed inside of their Google Ads campaigns. And that's why I said in this case especially, is that all of these AI tools that the digital agency was using did not make them better at Google Ads. In fact, it made them dumber at it. Now, if that's you, we're going to break down why this is happening and how we can overcome and stop this issue of AI making agencies worse at Google Ads. Because let me tell you really, really strong is that I am 100% pro using tools like Claude to get better results inside of Google Ads. But you need to use it in the right way. But before we get to those points, if that is actually you, and if it is, I'm so sorry to hear that, that your business is currently struggling when it comes to Google Ads. And every month you're seeing the results trend down. And whether you're running it in-house with a team, or if you've got an external agency or an external consultant running the ads, and you just feel like they're not giving any solutions and they're not actually helping your business grow month on month. If that's you, once again, I'm really, really sorry that that isn't the case, but that's the exact reason for why we created Define Digital Academy. My name is Aaron Young and I'm the founder and CEO of Define Digital Academy, and we exist for one reason, which is to empower business owners like you to take control of their business and run Google Ads themselves. Now we do this in a whole heap of different ways. One of our core flagship programs is called On Demand, and that is essentially where you can get direct one-on-one coaching. Also, you can get direct lack support every day of the week. And then on top of that, we also do a complete audit of your business first and then your Google Ads so that we can get the right strategy for you. If you'd like to find out more about that program or find out about some of the other ways that we can help you and your business, just follow that link in the description below. But right now, let's get to this whole core concept of why AI is making agencies dumber. And the number one reason is that AI makes an unskilled operator or an unskilled Google Ads manager feel right. I don't know if you've had this experience where you're talking or you're doing some research using any of the different AI tools, and sometimes you need to tell it to stop and really force your point because it's just agreeing with what you want to agree with. Now let me be clear, and this is where AI is amazing. It is able to consolidate data and present it to you in, you know, a really, really quick fashion in ways that you wouldn't have been able to do previously. I know, as I said, inside of Define Digital Academy We are so pro using tools like Claude for your Google Ads. We use it every single day. Just last week, we did an analysis of the account that we're able to input over a million different lines of keyword research and product data that we would have never been able to manually do before. So it is a powerful, powerful tool. And, and then on top of that, not only in the external tools, but also inside of Google Ads is that Google is really, really empowering its campaigns, especially campaigns like Performance Max and, and some campaign features like AI Max, in order to really, really go through with the promise to supercharge results. But the problem being is that if you're not giving Google Ads, especially campaign types like Performance Max or features like Smart Bidding, so you maximize conversion value, target CPA, target ROAS, or features like AI Max, if you're not giving it the right data, you are going to get some really, really bad results really, really quickly. And when we come into the external tools, so if you're using tools like Clawd to help review and optimize your Google Ads campaigns, once again, whoever is managing your account isn't taking a step back and really looking at the data critically and going, is this actually improving our business month on month? Things can go bad really, really quickly. And the reason for that is because if you're using data to make further decisions that is wrong, What's going to be happening, like that example that I gave you, very, very quickly you can see your whole business completely turn around for the worst because you've made some wrong assumptions. And with that example I gave before, when we looked at that account, they had actually stopped spending money, or as we called it before, they defunded their top-performing products. And as I said at the top of the video, being skilled at Google Ads used to be that you knew how to run ads on the platform. Now, being skilled at Google Ads means that you know when Google Ads or any external ChatGPT or Claude tools are wrong, and that you're able to actually make the strategic choice on what's best for your business when it comes to your Google Ads strategy. And the second big reason why AI is making agencies dumber is because AI optimizes for the data that it is given, not for your profit or not for your real business results. And this really comes back to a core understanding that skilled marketers have when it comes to Google Ads is that, yes, we spend our time looking at the Google Ads dashboard. So we look at the data inside of the Google Ads dashboard. We do want to take note of the conversion data. We want to take note of, you know, the conversion values. All those things are highly, highly important, but they are not a true reflection of what is happening inside of the business. And that's why for us, and I know other skilled Google Ads marketers, what we're more concerned about is what is happening in your sales. What is happening in your lead flow, because that is what's really, really important. And it tells us whether what we're seeing with Google Ads lines up. So the actual source of truth as to whether a Google Ads campaign is successful or not successful is not found inside of the Google Ads dashboard. It's found inside of your monthly profit and loss statement. It's found inside of your Shopify dashboard. It's found inside of your, your CRM where you can see the number of leads that are coming in month on month. And this comes down to the key takeaway that I really want you to get from this video, is that AI tools are great at data analysis, but they are terrible at strategy. So when it comes to using tools like Claude or ChatGPT to help manage your Google Ads account, is that they should never be making the decisions. The decisions are always held by you, the business owner, and you're the one that is directing the AI tools and asking it to get the specific data insights that you need to get so that you can get the best results for you and your business when it comes to your paid ad strategy. So you use it to be able to help you to run larger, larger points of data pools, aligning it with your business data so that you can make faster decisions, but you're not letting it run free and make those decisions for you. Otherwise, your business is going to be in a really, really similar scenario to what it was for that furious business owner that we spoke about at the top of this video. Hey, thank you so much for joining me. My name is Aaron Young from Define Digital Academy. And as I said, if you would like further help with your business so that you can run more profitable Google Ads campaigns, why don't you follow that link in the description below where you can apply for our on-demand program, which is that program where you get not only one-on-one coaching but also private Slack support with one of our Defined Digital Academy coaches. And while you're in the description, you can also see access to our very own Claw Tools and other Google Ads resources that we give away for free just for watching this video. So just follow that link in the description below. But if you would like to stay right here on YouTube and you're currently paying for clicks inside of Google Ads and you want to know the practical steps of how you can actually start getting more conversions inside of your Google Ads campaigns, I want you to go through, watch this video right here. See you next time.