Eric Siu and Neil Patel break down how Google and Meta use AI to automate ads through Performance Max, Advantage+, and responsive search ads. The key: let machine learning learn by feeding it data and variations instead of micromanaging every element.
All right, so we're going to talk about how Google and Meta are actually making advertising easier for you through AI. And look, we know there's a lot of hype around AI right now, but the bottom line is both these companies have mountains and mountains and mountains of data, and data is really the X factor when it comes to this AI stuff. So Neil and I wanted to give some thoughts and we'll kind of go back and forth here. I'll kick it off first. I mean, look, you know, when it comes to the very easy stuff that you can start executing today if you're running ads right now, Performance Max, also known as PMax on Google or Advantage+ on Meta. These are basically end-to-end automated campaigns that use AI to help you target. You can generate ads and optimize towards set goals.
Yeah, and what we're seeing right now is these tools that Meta and Google are creating when it comes to AI, they're trying to do everything to also help you get better performance in a shorter period of time. So for example, I don't know if you've actually seen Google's videos when they first started talking about this. You can end up saying like, I'm selling cat food and it'll end up coming up with tons of different image variations for you. And you can give it a prompt on how you want the image modified and it'll do it on the fly. And they can do tons of variations and figure out which ones convert the best for you. But they're trying to end up making it where You can end up getting more out of your ads in a shorter period of time and a better ROI. So then that way you can scale up your ads faster.
Yep. Look, another one is responsive search ads, right? So this is for Google and they use AI to mix and match different portions of their copy and they're looking to give you different permutations for the individual searcher. So it's just making sure that you are serving the right ad at the right time to the right audience. And what I would say is just going back to the Performance Max thing, the old days of doing Google, for example, Google Ads, I do believe it's harder to run Google Ads than Meta. That's just my personal opinion. But the way was, oh, look at my account structure, look at my keywords. It's all about negative keywords here and all this bidding strategies and all this stuff, right? I'm not saying that stuff's not important, but it just is not as important anymore. And the old ways of doing optimizing for Google was you have to have someone that's Johnny-on-the-spot looking at the numbers every single day, optimizing every single day, making sure that you're making changes. And then typically the client, let's say for example, they will look at the account and see how many changes you're making. So just to see how active you are. Now, it's kind of changing a little more where it's just like you just want to let the machines learn. And so you set it up to Neil's point. Let's say you're running for cats. You're going to get to a point in the future where it's like the ads will optimize themselves and then What Performance Max does right now is like they might drive you to a blog post first on your website because they feel like you're the type where you're more, you're in the discovery phase right now. And then maybe later they'll retarget you to another page that's a product display page, right? So you have to kind of let the machines learn now because if you keep disrupting the learning, you're not going to get the most optimal responses. And so we've seen in some cases where, you know, you have an account running and maybe for the first 2 or 3 months you're not getting much at all and it looks like it sucks, right? But then after month 3, it just starts to take off and you kind of just leave it there and it's kind of on maintenance mode. You're checking it every couple, maybe every week or so or every couple days, but you're not checking it like every hour or so.
Yeah, the other thing that Google's doing is they'll help you with the headlines now and descriptions. Another cool feature that they've introduced as well is when you use AI to help create images, they promise that no 2 images are going to be alike. So your image is your image. This way when your competition uses similar tools to create an image, it won't be duplicative even if it's their tool, right? So they'll make sure that yours is one of a kind. And I think that's super important because when everyone's using AI for headline generators, description generators, image generators, et cetera, the last thing you want is a ton of people in the same vertical using the same old stuff. It's going to be hard for the competition to figure out or the consumer to figure out how you're going to stand out or what makes you different. And that's the last thing that businesses want in which everyone's using the same stuff because it performs the best. It's like, no. And they know this. So they're working on making sure that yes, they want you to have optimal performance, but having optimal performance while by being unique.
These platforms have trillions of data points and you have to think about their incentives. So the late Charlie Munger who died, passed away last week, rest in peace. He's always said the line that he says that really sticks with me is, show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. And well, the Googles and Metas of the world, they are still— they generate most of their revenue through advertising. And their incentive is to make sure that people are performing on their platform so they can continue to make money because these are both very good money printing machines, very good businesses. And so you can bet that these AI features are only going to get better over time. And I would just suggest that taking a look at the recent Google Marketing Live videos, the Meta Connect 2023, if you're actually an ad manager, maybe if you're running the business, not so much, but just understanding that in the next 5 to 10 years or so, the people that really embrace the world of AI, these are going to become 5 to 10x marketers versus the ones that actually try to resist it. Those are the ones that are going to be left behind.
And lastly, make sure on Meta you check out the image expansion and text variations. It's really cool. Especially the image expansion, because sometimes you have really amazing images, but it's not the right size and it can help you, you know, fix that and still look amazing.
All right, that is it for today. Please don't forget to check out this next video over here. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. It helps us grow and we'll see you tomorrow.
