AI Max for Search Campaigns: Everything You Need to Know

AI Max for Google search and Google Ads. You probably have heard of it by now and you might have questions like how is this any different from broad match keyword targeting or my automatically created assets or dynamic search ad technology? I have the answers for you. I've done lots of research into this, so let's dive in. Okay, quickly, I have a few of Google's own articles on AI Max. I will have these in the description below, but Google introducing AMX for search campaigns. A comprehensive suite of targeting creative enhancements that brings the best of Google AI to help you take your search campaigns to the next level. Sounds amazing. They even have a case study in here and they're claiming. So it was right up here that, hey, the data is already showing that advertisers who are activating this are seeing 14% more conversions at the same CPA or ROAS. And for those that were only using exact and phrase match keywords, 27% increases pretty high. Right? Here's my favorite part about all of Google's case studies on new tech that they launch. It's like they are beta testing this with some of the largest companies in the world, not small businesses. And so yeah sure, if you're one of the largest businesses in the world, you've got a bazillion data points that Google has. Yeah, I'm sure there's some like grand things that Google's technology is doing with that. But small businesses probably don't relate. I know I don't relate. And so it's like l' Oreal was used. So I always love, you know, they come out with these case studies with some of these incredibly big spenders with like tons of data points. Like I've consulted with companies who literally are spending millions and millions per month. You can throw anything at it and it's like it's going to work because there's so much conversion data that Google has. But like when you're a smaller business, you know, this doesn't always actually pan out for you. And so some of this stuff usually gets built for like the l' oreals of the world, which doesn't translate to most of my clients. So that's why I'm just, I always laugh at that and always, you know, I take this stuff with a grain of salt. So don't, don't think you can turn a setting on in your, your search campaign and get a 27% lift in conversion. Probably will not happen. So they give like they have in this article a bunch of like neatly written ways of explaining AI Max. But to me, listen, what it is, it's, it's, it's a bunch of features that already exist. And I'll break those down. They have just packaged those features which is essentially like broad match keyword technology, dynamic search ad technology, and automatically created assets. They just bundled all of that into one little setting that you have to click. That's it. And so they made it, they're just making it super easy to combine all of that. And I think they want to force more advertisers into the, into using all of those features anyways. And a lot of them probably have it turned off. I know I do in many accounts. And, and so this is just a way of kind of probably forcing people into some of this, similar to how they force a lot of advertisers into performance max campaigns over time. Now listen, they're using something called keyword list technology now or keywordless matching. So that is like right here, keywordless technology. This is something that people in the space have been talking about for many years. Like Google is going to move to a keyword list advertising world where, where, you know, it used to be Google Ad words and now it's just Google Ads. They did a rebrand many years ago and now even keywords and the way they play a role, it's changing. And so yeah, this is another sign that maybe we are moving into a future one day where you're not really actually bidding on keywords anymore. That's possible. This is kind of showing further signs to that. But who knows? We'll see what the future holds. I'm not some profit. Some Google Ads profit. I love when some people do talk about it as if they know what Google's about to do. Like, I don't, I don't even think probably some of the people in Google know what Google's about to do in the future. So. But it is, it's an interesting point. They did make one. They have a good example here. And I just wanted to bring this up though. This will help you visualize how this does differ from just like. Well, how does this make sense when I already have Broad Match keywords being used and they. Google already told me Broad Match uses AI signals and a million other signal points that exact and phrase match keywords, don't they? Give an example, if someone searches for colorful midi dresses for spring and summer, your campaign with only exact match keywords would have missed them. And if you had a Broad match, it would have actually shown or should have shown. Right. However, AI Max Ensure your ad stays relevant by intelligently adapting your ad content to the query. So this proves my point. What is the difference between Broad Match and AI Max? It's nothing more than like I don't think broad match keywords are changing in any way. It's nothing more than broad match does not have this sort of asset automatically asset created tech to it along with the final URL expansion that I'm going to show you and aimax does. So AI Max to me is behaving like a broad match with DSA combined and then automatically created assets just like I've already said. So that's the exact way of how this would work is like hey, your broad match keyword and ad copy and final URL could actually do better. And Google saying we're going to test different final URLs and ad creative that we're going to create for that search term to try to get higher performance for that. This is all broken down on another page here. Okay, how AI Max for search campaigns works and I will have this again in the description below if you want to go through it all. But this to me, I like this sort of breakdown and then I'll break it down a little further for you. So features available in AI Max search term matching. So it uses broad match asset based and landing page based technology to improve campaign reach. Again, this is basically like you got a broad match keyword and it's also going to create assets for you and final URL expansion to that. You can't do that currently in a standard search campaign. You can now with AI max. So that's all it is. I think broad match keywords will continue to perform as broad match keywords do. I don't think AI Max or this keywordless matching technology is actually probably going to expand your reach any further. I think it's just basically baking in allowing Google to create assets and also change the URL that they send traffic to in that at least auction at that time. If it's being a keywordless matched auction, not using one of your keyword matches. Text customization which they just changed the name. Basically this is automatically created assets. This is allowing them to change your ad copy based off of the contextual data it has like off of your landing pages and other ads. Again, this is not new final URL expansion. This allows Google to direct traffic to pages that it might believe will perform better. Again, this already exists and this is not new location of interest. This is new. This is interesting. It gives you ad group level control. Now so today if you build a campaign and you set the targeting to California, your ad groups have to also target California. Ad group level targeting is now going to allow you. Let's say you have one ad group that targets California and you have another ad group that targets New York. You can now do that. I'm not entirely sure. I have to probably brainstorm on this. I'm not entirely sure how or why I would use that, but I'm sure there's some pretty good use cases for it. And, and I like more control now I just hope Google will allow us to have that ad group level control even if we're not using AI Max. So I hope standard search campaigns without AI Max settings on will still have that ad group level control. Brand settings, you can have inclusions or exclusions. This already exists. This is not new. URL inclusions, exclusions. This already exists. This is not new. You can just now also do this. It looks like at the ad group level that is new. That is neat. Again, I don't know how often I would actually use that. This is all fine and dandy but again all these features exist now. There's some update, updated reporting that's coming. I do like that. By the way, they have updated reporting already coming to Performance Max campaigns that I talked about. Basically they took. If you're kind of a nerd in the industry, you probably know of a guy named Mike Rhodes, he's like an og. He created something called the Mike Rhodes script. So shout out to him. It's a free thing. Um, I think he has a paid version but it allows you to see more clarity in your Performance Max campaign placements, your ad placements, Google. It's almost like they're kind of copying that and just now putting it inside of Google's own interface. Good sign. Usually I dog Google but I like seeing them kind of give back to what advertisers want. And we want more clarity, we want more reporting. We want to know where you're taking our money and spending it. And I think they should provide that clarity. And so I'm happy that this is being brought into Performance Max campaigns. This seems like this is they're bringing that a lot of that reporting features into then AI Max. Now again I hope I get more reporting if needed if I'm not using AI Max, but I might not need it if I'm not using AI Max in the general search term report auction insights and all of that is all I really need. So that might be fine if you're just using standard Search. But if there's anything cool in AI Max that would also help a standard search campaign without AI Max. I hope they do that. So more reporting is coming which will be great. You can learn more of the details, more keyword reporting, landing page reports which you already basically get inside Google Ads, and then more asset reports which Performance Max is coming out with too. So this, you're just going to get some more reporting. And I like that. So this doesn't really change the way a search campaign behaves. It's just additional reporting, updates. I'm happy for that. Okay, I've got then. And I'll. I'll end this after this. I promise. I've got. Because my biggest question is how? If I'm already using Broad Match keywords in a search campaign with smart bidding, how does AI Max doing, other than like a cute name, how does it do anything better for me? Okay, so Broad Match keyword alone Aimax for search. Right. Keyword matching tech. Broad Match alone expands a keyword's reach with AI. AI Max uses that. Plus it will look at your landing pages and assets and then create new assets and send to a different landing page if it needs to. So Broad Match alone is. Is just Broad Match with AI Tech. AI Max is Broad Match with AI Tech plus da DSA style asset creation and final URL expansion. That's all it is. So I think your Broad Match keywords are going to behave the same. I think your exact Match keywords will behave the same. I think your phrase match keywords will behave the same. I don't expect any massive changes in the behavior of those keywords. Ad copy creation is just whatever your RSA is inside of a standard Broad match only or even again, doesn't what matter what keyword match type you're using. It's going to be whatever RSA ad you wrote. AI Max for search will use text customization or automatically created assets. So they'll just create more assets for you. In a standard search campaign, Landing page is going to be the final URL you set in. AI Max is just going to expand the final URLs just like a DSA campaign does. Just like Performance Max does. If you have that sitting already on and then you get extra controls and reporting. So all of this noise, and this is why I take a little time before I anything new comes out, sometime I like to just dive into it a little bit. Right. So all of this noise and potential search is changing forever and all this stuff. This could be a game changer. The reality is this is not that big of a deal. This is signals to what Google wants to continue to move to in the future. I do believe that. But the reality is no. Search is not like changing forever. It's basically just literally taking features that already exist and then pushing them into a setting that will be easy to do if you want. So how am I testing this? Or will I? Or will I test it? I guess yes, I will test it. You must always test new tech. I believe that. But I am conservative. My clients are not a testing ground for wasted adspin. So you know, we are going to be conservative with testing and if it works, we'll continue more of it. If it doesn't, we'll continue to figure out why not and then continue to figure out, okay, does our old ways of doing things still make more money right now? And then we observe what others are doing as well. So that's it. I've heard people saying, hey, they're going to build brand new camps, campaigns that have AI max and then run their other campaigns as is. I probably won't do that. I just don't like that overlaps like strategy. Here's how I would do it. A I would do it with a campaign that if I rock the boat on it, I don't really care, it's not going to be detrimental to the performance of the account. But a campaign that still has enough conversion volume, right? So 30 plus 50 plus conversions at it in a 30 day time frame. So I will test it not on my best performing campaigns but somewhere probably in the middle. Then, then if you can do a 50% split through like an experiment, a campaign experiment where 50% of the traffic goes to my current standard campaign set up and 50% goes to my AI max settings enabled campaign, then I would love that. And that's what I would do. I'd split the traffic 5050 and then reassess what the data shows. So yes, I will be testing this and we do it in a very conservative way, not aggressive. And then if it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. So that's how I recommend to anyone who's watching this, how they go about it. Be conservative. If it makes you more money, then keep doing it. If it doesn't make you more money and stop doing it. That's the name of the game. Make more money with the money that you're spending but keep testing. I don't believe. Okay, so if you've been shaken up by all the noise out there and all this people screaming from mountaintops of how search is changing. I honestly don't think this is that big of a deal. I think it's just like, okay, cool. Like, they. They took features that already exist and they're baking it into a simple setting. Button click, that's it. I'll test it. But no, I don't think search on Google Ads is like, you know, the whole world's been changed because of it. So just be something to test, and if you make more money, you make more money. If you don't, then, you know, move on and go back to what you were doing. So there you go. Don't freak out and just test. I'll see you on the next video.