The £10,000 Google Ads Mistake ft Scott Carruthers

Anu Adegbola (00:01.315)
Hello, Scott, welcome to P P C Live the podcast.

Scott (00:04.44)
Thanks for having me.

Anu Adegbola (00:06.101)
It is such a delight, Scott. Like, and you know, and I will with all, you know, full transparency, this is a long time coming. And it's not been Scott's fault. It's my fault. We tried to book a time, and with my ADHD brain and just being so distracted, I started getting onto work and like 10 minutes into the time, Scott was like, Anu, are we still meeting? And I was like,

obviously when when like you've been waiting for someone you know you're not going to be in the mood to have a nice fun conversation so yeah Scott very respectfully was like let's let's let's reschedule thankfully yay after the fantastic talk that you did on last week Wednesday for PPC live's fourth anniversary it was so I was like yeah let's let's get that back on track because especially during like the whatchamacallit like the panel that we do I was like most

A lot of us have been on the podcast. I was no, Scott hasn't, and I have to fix that. So I was like, You know exactly. Love me. I am glad you didn't speak up about it. I really appreciate that. Anyway, as as usual, I get so excited with my guests and just start chatting away. Let's let me introduce to you, our audience, who Scott is. Scott is is one of those who I I genuinely feel.

Scott (01:00.863)
I noticed that at the time when you went, yeah, you're following me on the podcast. And was like, not me.

Anu Adegbola (01:21.431)
Scott, you're so generous with your knowledge, so willing to help. And you've done that for several years for PPC Live. And I couldn't be more grateful about it. And that comes from Scott's eight year plus with Journey Further as their senior paid search director. And he's done even has a lot longer experience with the likes of Epiphany Search and these guys called Redcats and, you know, other stuff. So he's been in the industry for much longer.

Than eight years really trying to help solve Google Ads problems that most agencies just work around. So the complex stuff, right? And accounts with like messy data, challenging client requirements, budgets that are big enough that mistakes are expensive. And we'll talk about, yeah, one of those expensive mistakes today. So you know, it's and it's it's the kind of work that as as we said, even like to when we talked, we talked about this in our previous episode. Like some people we just follow, think, okay, if I follow best practices.

That's the way to go. And no, we need we need str strategists and you know heads of like Scott to really think beyond of you know what the best practices should be and how to, you know, relate it to the account. So Scott's approach is very much about understanding the platform properly, testing things rigorously, building systems that work without constant babysitting. Cause yeah, we can use AI and that AI can be used for that, but you should you help help to do it more.

there he leads teams across Leeds, Manchester, London, and New York. Love that. And focuses on developing analysts who think strategically rather than just execute tasks. All right. and yeah, I know another like nice little I note that it was not just me that makes mistake. Scott feels to me like someone who's been talking for years and talking on so many stages. But apparently PPC Live was just the set your second one.

Speaking engagement, wasn't it?

Scott (03:17.408)
second live talk last week yeah I've done a few talks online a couple of podcasts and webinars but yeah last week at PPC Live was my second live speaking event.

Anu Adegbola (03:27.522)
Amazing. Well, it was a great one and I really feel that more people definitely should book you. before we get into our chat, another nice nice bit that I'd like to add is fun fact. What's your fun fact that you'd like to share with us, Scott?

Scott (03:39.758)
This one you specifically asked for. So last year I walked 100,000 steps in a single day.

Anu Adegbola (03:47.958)
my god. No I'm all about I don't understand people who go marathons. Talk less of someone who's decided to do a hundred K. What possessed you? How did it how did it happen?

Scott (03:58.319)
So I'm good at habit forming or obsessive over habit forming. So I did 15,000 steps a day for a year. And then it was like the years come to an end. How do you top that off? So I tried to do 100,000 steps a day just to see if I could do it. Raise some money for charity, which was really nice. So I think we raised the £1,200 for charity. But yeah, just got up at 4am, set off walking, walked.

Anu Adegbola (04:03.231)
Okay.

Anu Adegbola (04:06.719)
Okay.

Anu Adegbola (04:12.031)
Right.

Anu Adegbola (04:21.11)
Wow.

Scott (04:27.182)
I think it was just over two marathons in distance, 100,000 steps. I was so tired.

Anu Adegbola (04:29.952)
Yeah.

I'm sure, I mean w you do you I'm sure you s I hope you stopped to eat at some point or did you wear like

Scott (04:39.788)
Yeah, No, no, stop to eat, stop to eat. The worst thing is my headphones running out of battery that I didn't account for. That was the worst, having to raw dog the last half of it, just like, yeah, lose my mind.

Anu Adegbola (04:44.641)
Anu Adegbola (04:48.255)
Right.

Anu Adegbola (04:52.584)
Okay. Yeah, yeah. Just you know, be we kept company with your thoughts. Yeah, I think to myself about that. Sometimes I'm literally like I don't want to be kept so I'm left alone with my thoughts at this stage. So we need to do something. wow, that is amazing. To be able to build a habit of that consistency like that, that's quite a skill in itself. And yeah, that's that's absolutely amazing. Anyway.

Instead of talking about talking walking and and and marathons, people are here to talk about, yeah, not not the things we do so well, but the things that we don't do so well. And I always love it that it comes from you know people who are doing their jobs very well right now, very respected in our industry to emphasize the the the the key message that mistakes happen to the best of us, and mistakes is is all part of the journey.

Of of you know, leading a career of success, which I genuinely feel Scott has. Like he must have, because several of us think he's spoken on many stages for many years, but he keeps correcting us saying that he hasn't. So he's definitely doing something very right. But like, yeah, let's let's go back to the like some of the the past mistakes. he go he's gonna start with a funny one, but definitely we're gonna go into one that's very like, you know, account specific. So yeah, Scott, what are the F ups you'd like to share with us today?

Scott (06:12.91)
Yeah, so the first one you've alluded to it just there speaking on stages I am I got a speaking slot for hero conf this year speak on stage But accidentally booked my stag do on the same weekend So couldn't make it to hero conf although I had a lovely time almost like do so, you know Can't really complain too much. We a great time Yeah, that's that's one f up from this year

Anu Adegbola (06:38.396)
I remember messaging you about that and I was like, I mean, Brighton is a great spot for stack do. I don't know why you guys just didn't have it there. There's so many bars, you know. I you you you do a talk and around three o'clock and then you go and do bar crawling for the rest of it. No, you do

Scott (06:53.77)
I don't think at three o'clock I would have been in a fit state to be talking about PPC.

Anu Adegbola (06:57.766)
Amazing. Where did you go for your stag dude? lovely. Okay, yes. Absolutely much better than doing it in Brighton. I agree. So yeah. I mean, like any regrets about I mean, I know not not regrets on going to Tenerife, but the fact that you couldn't speak at HeroConf. Is that now something that you want to really get back to doing?

Scott (07:00.535)
at Tenerife.

Scott (07:18.164)
Yeah, yeah. And like you said earlier, if anyone wants to book me, me a shout.

Anu Adegbola (07:23.978)
I totally highly recommend it. And we're gonna show you, give a YouTube video of of Scott's talk very soon and you'll really see how good an on-stage speaker he is. but yeah, anyway, so go on, Scott. Next next mistake you'd like to share with us. Yes, let's do that.

Scott (07:37.583)
Should I talk about account f-ups? So back when Smart Bidding first launched, so must have been like 2017, 2018, I wanted to launch Smart Bidding on one of my accounts. So testing a target CPA bid strategy, so moving from manual CPCs. And I said it live and stopped paying attention and spent a client's entire daily budget of over 10,000 pounds in less than an hour.

Anu Adegbola (08:06.907)
Lord. Yeah, yeah. So when you said that you didn't give it the leeway it needed to, what do you mean specifically?

Scott (08:07.086)
Errrr

Scott (08:17.386)
I didn't give it the credence, like the, I didn't give SmartBid in the power because it was such a new tool, because it was something so new, that it would change things so drastically. From my understanding of it, the targets were set as they should be. The budget caps were potentially set as they should be. However, I was wrong about all of that. And what I should have been doing was monitoring it a lot more closely than I did.

Anu Adegbola (08:23.18)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (08:28.545)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (08:35.894)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (08:41.076)
Okay, all right, and who picked up on the mistake? Lord. yeah.

Scott (08:44.814)
The client was checking the account and I got a phone call saying, why is the Google Ads interface, or probably the AdWords interface, why is the Google Ads interface saying that we've spent over 10,000 pounds?

Anu Adegbola (08:58.338)
Hank already. Already. Okay. And how what was your reaction? How how are you feeling about that all?

Scott (09:04.654)
A lot of panic at the time, a lot of panic, as anybody would spending that amount of money in that period of time.

Anu Adegbola (09:07.415)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:13.492)
Yeah. Yeah. So what and then t take us through. Take us through that that phone call, that the rest of that day. Well how d how did you turn around and even then the relationship with the client moving forward from there? Like, yeah, how did that the rest that day and the rest of the following days go?

Scott (09:29.11)
It gave us a lot of learnings as to the type of reporting that you need from a Google Ads perspective. Like you can't just set things live and let them run, particularly when you're making significant changes. So for me, significant changes would be bid strategy changes, particularly moving from bid strategy to bid strategy, conversion action changes, again, particularly moving to optimising towards a different conversion action. Really, really getting an understanding.

Anu Adegbola (09:36.994)
Hm.

Anu Adegbola (09:42.081)
Mm.

Scott (09:58.827)
of the power of new tools and new automations like smart bidding and then being able to put practical things in place to prevent errors from that like happening again in the future. So at the time, I think we were using supermetrics for our reporting, pulling that into Google Sheets, but just making sure that, and now obviously that's significantly different. There's lots of other tools available. There's lots of stuff you can build with AI. There's lots of different alert options out there, but

Anu Adegbola (10:01.504)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (10:14.955)
Okay.

Scott (10:28.622)
taking those considerations and being able to build tools to then flag up if something like that starts to happen was all the type of stuff that came off the back of it.

Anu Adegbola (10:37.93)
Yeah, absolutely. And even I I like also, you know, digging in and I hope you don't don't mind me us us taking down this path, the emotional side of these kinds of stuff. Like literally of the whole how did that make you feel as what what level were you were you at today? Are you a manager or more of an executor?

Scott (10:49.645)
Yeah.

Scott (10:56.526)
Yeah, yeah, I was a lot more junior than I am today. Yeah, it made me feel awful. And I think the thing that I've realized, well, probably from that point is that no one, no one else is going to, no one else can, no one else is going to beat up the person who made the mistake as much as the person themselves. So there's nothing that anyone can say that was ever going to make me feel any worse. But similarly, when you see it happening or when you see mistakes like that happen now,

Anu Adegbola (10:59.167)
Okay. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:17.78)
Yeah. Yes.

Anu Adegbola (11:26.53)
Mm-hmm.

Scott (11:26.734)
There's no point in someone being reprimanded by a client or told off or whatever because nothing you can say can make that person feel any worse than the mistake they've made themselves. I think that was a big realisation for me, is like there's nothing anyone can say that's going to make me feel any worse than I do right now.

Anu Adegbola (11:36.322)
Less Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:46.047)
Nah. Nah, na. And what was the what was your team like about it? What was your manager like when when they also found out? Did they support you in it? Were they they have you know, help handle things better?

Scott (11:55.439)
Yeah, the team were super supportive. My manager was super supportive, helped me in conversations with the client. We've always had a super supportive team, both up and down, junior level, senior levels, for Journey Further which has been fantastic. But no, the team was always supportive of it. The client wasn't as bad as I thought they were going to be, again, because can't beat yourself up as much as you have, someone else can't beat you up as much as you will yourself.

Anu Adegbola (12:20.578)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (12:25.194)
Yeah. Yeah. So what was but what was the journey of rebuilding? Cause if if nothing else, there's a bit of trust lost from the client's perspective. Like, you know, there's money lost, there's trust lost. Like what was it like building back that back?

Scott (12:25.518)
So yeah.

Scott (12:34.209)
Yeah.

Scott (12:42.07)
It took a long time to test smart bidding again for that specific client. A long time, like six, eight months or something like that. I guess we had the benefit of it being a relatively new tool, of it being something new that was introduced. So there is a little bit of leeway in that that's provided. But outside of that, was, let's make sure that all our checks and balances are.

Anu Adegbola (12:45.718)
Mm. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (12:54.87)
Mm. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (13:00.96)
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott (13:07.904)
a right make sure that we've got the right reporting, make sure we've got the right alert systems, make sure that we're going to do it right next time so that the same thing doesn't happen again.

Anu Adegbola (13:16.17)
Absolutely. No, that's great. And actually, yeah, if we can touch on on the point of as well, because we are seeing this a lot more now than before. When the times of like smart bidding coming out, it was probably like smart bidding, and then you know, nothing else was announced for maybe another few weeks or a few months. Now there's like three updates a week. And you know, there's always something to try. And you know, with AI Max and even when P Max came out, there's this whole initial thing of like it's yeah, Google just

Ps, posts something out, releases something out, and then when there's a lot of complaints that come up, then they try to change things around. Was that a is that a benefit for people? What's the pros and cons of being the person who first starts something that is new? What would you say?

Scott (14:03.374)
I mean, there is the early adopter benefit of there's less people doing it. I remember when Discovery first launched and just being there, just playing the game, just had such a big advantage to it because nobody else was doing it. You got much cheaper CPCs, you got much more volume because there's no one competing for that volume. So there's always that benefit. But obviously the other side of that is something can go wrong.

Anu Adegbola (14:11.671)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (14:20.372)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (14:30.242)
Mm.

Scott (14:30.766)
I think to the point you've just been making about the number of releases that Google are making at moment, I don't think any of them are as pivotal as a change like Smart Bidding was or a change like Introducing Performance Max was. I think everything is iterative at the moment. So they're making small adjustments. It's very difficult to keep on top of it all and make sure that you are fully up to date on everything that's going on in the platforms. But also because it's iterative.

Anu Adegbola (14:44.055)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (14:51.841)
Yes.

Scott (14:58.336)
I feel like there's less opportunity for these significant mistakes. Maybe it's because there's a lot more, again, checks and balances in place, a lot more alerts available to make sure that people are reacting to things, to make sure that people are checking in on things. But I feel like from my perspective, there's less opportunity to make those big, big errors like that. Unless of course you're not doing your due diligence and checking in. But at the moment I'm...

Anu Adegbola (15:02.357)
Okay.

Scott (15:25.87)
launching your account and you struggle to get smart with it to spend not the opposite way around when you're panicking going and why do you spend 10,000 pounds?

Anu Adegbola (15:30.87)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is there an advantage to not being an early do you know, early tester to for to actually wait? I mean, apart from the fact that, you know, Google might make it better, like are you more of a be an early adopter or are you rather actually wait a bit?

Scott (15:54.435)
think there's a sweet spot. There's obviously people that could probably talk to that better than me. I know that adoption curve, I don't know what it's called, but there is certainly a sweet spot in when you should be adopting things. For me, think it depends entirely on what the product is. I don't think there is any answer to should you adopt first or should you wait until you last. Like, again, to that discovery point, there was no...

risks that I saw there if the performance was to follow and there was certain accounts that we saw massive benefits from doing that on. But if there's probably others for other specific accounts where that's not eligible or that's not relevant. If you look at, again, you just mentioned AI Max there. I think a lot of us are early adopters. There's so many people trying to use it or testing it when it still has really been like in its infancy.

Anu Adegbola (16:24.598)
Mm.

Anu Adegbola (16:42.902)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (16:50.582)
Yeah.

Scott (16:50.86)
Like it is starting to progress a lot, but there was so many people writing it off far too early.

Anu Adegbola (16:55.122)
Yeah, it's very early. Yep. Yeah.

Scott (16:57.706)
so again, there's just the, there is just a sweet spot to all of these things and it, it's an account by account basis. It's not necessarily a product by product basis. Like AI max will work really, really well on specific accounts and won't work well on others. And you have to be able to weigh that up and determine when it is that you want to throw your hat in the ring.

Anu Adegbola (17:15.434)
Yeah, absolutely. That makes sense. Okay, let's come coming back to to the story you shared about, yeah, the loss in revenue and no, the spark. Actually, that's the thing. It was a big spike in in in cost. Did that reflect well in revenue or not as much as it should have?

Scott (17:33.354)
I don't think we'd be having this conversation today if it did because it would have said the critter said she spends 10,000 pounds every hour.

Anu Adegbola (17:37.859)
It would have been a good story. Very true. Very true. Well, there's people who are reluctant, just you know, there's not the budget. There's CFO will not approve a 10,000 pound budget hours. Just maybe just needs to prove it. But yeah, yeah, that's obviously that's almost a stupid question. Of course, you didn't, you know, reflect a revenue unless it wouldn't be a mistake story. but like if if someone has gone through that mistake and if someone

You know, have seen that they have made that, you know, spend of, you know, ten K in one hour when it should have been that that's like the the day's budget or the week's budget. And then that that that ring, their their phone is ringing and they know what the client's about to say. What's your advice to them?

Scott (18:22.22)
I you have to, one, be transparent with the client. There's no point in hiding, trying to hide it. Not that I ever did, but I know that's often a conversation. I think you have to be frank with them and tell them what's happened. And then you need to get the time and space to be able to understand why that happened from a practical perspective so that you can stop it happening again in the future. And that's not just that, I didn't check it. That's why did the smart bid and react the way it did? Why was the budget set in such a way? Why was the target set in such a way?

Anu Adegbola (18:40.028)
Mm, mm. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (18:48.704)
Hm.

Scott (18:52.098)
How did we expect it to react? Based on those things, what reporting do you need to put in place or what measures do you need to put in place to make sure that you've got the visibility and this type of thing wouldn't happen again in the future.

Anu Adegbola (19:03.542)
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. and yeah, and even like, you know, just just honing in a bit more on that point because another question I like asking is that, you know, what do you feel maybe that you missed? Like what what should people be like? This is what you make sure that you don't do the things that you check on the run up of changing a bid strategy to ensure that you don't spend, you know, ten K in an hour. What's what's your advice on what what people should make sure that, you know, they should or shouldn't do?

Scott (19:31.791)
Again, for me, it's checking things like making sure you are optimizing to the right conversion action. That's number one in Google Ads for me at the moment is your conversion action setup. Effectively using budget caps. Now we know Google can be really funny with budget caps. There's the whole, there's the whole two times a daily cap as long as it evens out over 30 days. There's the always take the higher of two budgets that are set in any given day that I think is less known about. So I know it can be funny with those, but

Anu Adegbola (19:47.648)
Yes.

Scott (20:01.422)
using them as much as you can. And then again, making sure those targets are aligned. So making sure that those bid strategies that you're putting in place do actually make sense for what it is that you're trying to achieve. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (20:13.258)
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And so yeah, we're gonna go on to talking you know, about the industry in the whole and how how we're we're approaching digital marketing at the moment. And I know you have very useful insights on on that as well. But before we do that, just one last takeaway about that story, about your experience and what people should really like remember in case they weren't they've been really busy for the past 20 minutes. What's one key takeaway, big takeaway that they should have?

Take from that story.

Scott (20:44.462)
It sound really simple, but when you are making a significant change, whether it be conversion action, bid strategy, be around, be there to check it, make sure that you've got eyes on that because not everything always goes according to plan. And particularly when you're playing around with significant amounts of money, it is real money. So keep an eye on it.

Anu Adegbola (20:52.832)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:06.474)
Absolutely absolutely. It's the it's the it's the rule that I'm sure you've heard a lot of times before. Don't set it and forget it. The set it and forget it rule will always come and bite you in the behind if you if you decide to do that. So yeah, and even if you you you set it and then you you check it every few minutes and nothing's wrong, that's better. That's better than just leaving it to do its thing.

Okay, Scott, thank you so much for that. We'll we'll we'll move on from that PTSD moment. I feel so I tell my my guests, let's move on to what you're you're you're you've been really good at, I'm sure, in you know, in the past several years of like, you know, let's say you you know a new client comes up, you're auditing, you're looking through like big, big, big things to like optimize and change. what are some like big mistakes? or even like just regular mistakes that you're supposed to

Surprise that's still happening in 2026. What are some like the mistakes that you know the industry is still facing that you're surprised at? Okay, good, go. I will I will stand back. It's your turn.

Scott (22:07.384)
got a list. Where do we start? Let's start with the biggest one. conversion tracking and making sure that that's set up correctly. Or even it's line to business objectives. So we talked about this at BBC live last week, but oftentimes I will get say an account has two different products that it's trying to sell or

Anu Adegbola (22:19.606)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (22:25.591)
Yeah.

Scott (22:36.462)
two different types of leads that it's trying to generate. Oftentimes, people will have a single conversion action that is set up. And then we'll have two different campaigns set up for the two different products that we've just mentioned. And then we'll complain that there's cross-contamination between them, that one campaign is using broad match and matching to the type of keywords that are the type of search terms that they expected the other campaign to match. What they need to do is sell multiple conversion actions because

Anu Adegbola (22:39.018)
Hmm.

Anu Adegbola (22:50.092)
Yeah.

Scott (23:06.638)
effectively what they're doing is telling Google that all of these kinds of conversions are success, this is success, this is success, but not steering it towards what they actually want the campaign to do or what they want it to achieve. And that's before you start to get into just actually broken conversion actions, like the amount of accounts that you open nowadays that just have 50 different conversion actions set up and some are primary and some are secondary and not quite having that set up. But yeah, having a real serious think about what it is that you're trying to achieve.

Anu Adegbola (23:11.82)
Same yeah.

Scott (23:35.5)
what it is that you want individual campaigns to achieve, what is the overall business should be achieving, and getting that reflected in your conversion actions, I think, is the most important thing that you can do in Google Ads today.

Anu Adegbola (23:46.058)
Amazing. Okay. Next. You say you have a list?

Scott (23:49.263)
Performance max audiences are suggestive, they're not prescriptive, they don't allow you to split out campaigns like a lot of people seem to think they do. think Jill's asking girls to it best when she talks about them being placebos, as in they don't actually really do that much. The audiences applied to or search themes applied to performance max in that they're there to make you feel like you've done something, whereas actually Google can do.

Anu Adegbola (23:53.171)
Mm-hmm. Okay.

Anu Adegbola (23:57.142)
Okay.

Anu Adegbola (24:01.621)
Okay.

Anu Adegbola (24:07.169)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (24:13.921)
Mm-hmm.

Scott (24:17.888)
open targeting with Performance Max unlike it can with other campaign types. But the amount of accounts that we audit where you go in there and people think they're running like a retargeting Performance Max campaign and a prospecting one and one that's broken out for whatever else, where it's not. They're basically all just doing the same thing and all you're doing is fragmenting your data.

Anu Adegbola (24:22.71)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (24:34.742)
Yeah. It's

Anu Adegbola (24:40.778)
Okay, so don't so don't put audience don't don't implement audience targeting on P mines because that doesn't

Scott (24:47.726)
You can use audience target on PerformanceMax absolutely 100 % and you should be pointing in the right direction, but it will not segment your performance like you think it's going to. As in, if you apply a retarget audience to a PerformanceMax campaign, that does not make a PerformanceMax campaign exclusively retargeting. That means you're saying to Google, I want more users that kind of look like this. So it's the reporting point afterwards that's more of the problem with that.

is that people think they're doing something that they're not necessarily doing.

Anu Adegbola (25:14.604)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (25:18.548)
okay. Okay. So the reporter is not doing do it like d presenting to a client that you know that this performance max only did show it in this way and that performance only showed it that way is actually a a bit of a waste of time.

Scott (25:30.91)
Yeah, and then that leads on to things like how you optimize for it because people will say, I'll set a different target for my retargeting than my prospecting, or I'll set a different target for whatever it may be. So if your reporting is wrong, then your optimization is going to be wrong. So it just leads to all sorts of problems. But the fundamental thing to I think to remember there is that performance max audiences don't restrict your performance max campaign. They're just a signal for you to lean on.

Anu Adegbola (25:45.399)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (25:55.555)
Okay, so you're using it to be li yeah, you're using that 'cause yeah, I was going to ask about that. So what's the main use of you of being able to implement that audience targeting? It's to tell Google I want more of these kind of

Scott (26:04.44)
It's

Yeah, it's to give it a starting point, a jumping off point to say, heading this direction with this type of user, but it won't restrict the campaign to only that type of, or only that user.

Anu Adegbola (26:10.155)
Okay.

Yeah.

The user. Okay. And there's no way of doing that. What's what's what's the best lever to actually restrict it from sh not showing to a certain kind of audience?

Scott (26:24.686)
And if you don't want to, you can apply negative audiences, but it's the positive audience signals that I think people struggle with.

Anu Adegbola (26:27.242)
Sure.

Right. Okay, of course. So use it for for to exclude, you're using negative, yeah, for exclusions, but don't, yeah, don't don't add it like if you're using like a remarketing or retargeting kind thing. Gotcha. Gotcha. Okay. Anything else? Any any point? That was a great point. Yeah. Huh? I think we should stop using it. Get rid.

Scott (26:40.972)
Yeah.

Scott (26:45.934)
Can I just say phrase match in general, just in general? Just a lot of it, just get rid. Exact match is golden, love broad match, none of this phrase match, don't it?

Anu Adegbola (26:57.182)
Yeah. But talk more about broad match and how why people are so scared of it and be like, you know, 'cause I know broad match should always be, you know, approached with like, yeah, very, very kind of careful gloves kind of thing. Like I I have I'm sure you you have you heard about people's issues with broad match. Yeah.

Scott (27:15.854)
Yeah, yeah, obviously. I think people gave it a bad rep again from the jump. You had early adopters who were saying it was matching to a lot of rubbish. But again, did those people have the conversion action set up correctly to tell it what success looks like, to tell it what the right thing is, for the right point in the conversion funnel or for the right type of project that they wanted to optimize for? A lot of people don't and then complain about broad match not working. The reason I love

Anu Adegbola (27:22.944)
Nonsense, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:28.929)
Mm mm.

Anu Adegbola (27:40.695)
Yeah.

Scott (27:42.511)
Brawl match so much, or hate phrase match so much, sorry, is probably the more accurate thing to say is it's the worst of all worlds. It adds onto exact match, but doesn't have the additional user signals that Brawl match leverages to target the right user or the right searches. So Brawl match uses things like previous search history that we've never had access to, but it's super powerful in terms of actually you could maybe match to something more generic than you would have done historically because Google can see that that person has actually searched for your product in the past. So actually.

Anu Adegbola (27:46.284)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (28:02.978)
Okay.

Anu Adegbola (28:11.244)
Yeah.

Scott (28:12.983)
I feel like Royal Match does a much better job, particularly if you asked me this question like two years ago, I would never have said this, but Broad Match is in a much better place than it was two, three years ago.

Anu Adegbola (28:22.082)
Absolutely. So yeah, the broad match, go back to testing it if you don't like it. Because I mean, I'm I'm pretty much in agreement with you. I just try to like to do the whole argument of like, you know, what they what I hear the industry saying. But because yeah, with exact match that has close variants and all that, you know, it does more than what exact originally used to do. It's very much the two match types that only make sense to me are just exact and broad. And you know, if you if you want if you want those keywords that have

that but you don't have a lot of budget, use exact. But then if you want to expand a little bit more, use broad, but don't set it and forget it, which was our is our initial message of this story. Make sure you're checking those search query reports. And when it expands for as as widely as you want it to expand, yeah, maybe turn it off, add those keywords that you like to your exact match list. And then yeah, maybe come back to it if you want to expand a bit more. Like but phrase, phrase is a bit of like I've been not sure what it's there for, really.

anymore, in my opinion. shall we s switch on to more like in terms of AI usage and and how how the industry uses it that you feel like guys that's not what it's meant for. Yeah.

Scott (29:21.902)
exactly.

Scott (29:34.319)
So the biggest one for me, I don't know if this is just because maybe I'm slightly later to the game or not as clued up on it as possible. But the biggest mistake that I see is people using it for things where there's like a binary answer, where there's a correct answer and then taking that as gospel. Maybe I'm just bit too old and I'm like, just Google that. Why are you asking chat GBT?

Anu Adegbola (29:49.258)
Yeah. Okay.

Scott (29:59.795)
I have something that's got a really specific answer where it could actually just get it wrong because we know the LLMs can hallucinate and I know they are getting a lot better but the thing I'm still stuck in my ways about a bit is just like if I need to know something that I know has a binary answer I won't ask something that's going to give me a potential hallucination or creative answer to that question.

Anu Adegbola (30:05.45)
Sell Lele.

Anu Adegbola (30:13.557)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (30:18.302)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I I I definitely do think that people do need to be using it in a way where like come from it you use it not to be like I don't know. Don't be from the point of view of like I don't know. So let me let me get Chat GPT to tell, give me the knowledge. You should have a basic knowledge as to what you're trying to look at, unless it's just gonna give you some nonsense and you're just gonna take it as gospel and it's gonna be like, yeah.

Your your client is not gonna be going, well it was Chad GPT, so it's fine. They are going to be like, What the hell have you just showed me? That is totally wrong. yeah. I think an and also interesting flip of that is and it is something that we s we we we spoke about at PPC Live last week was the whole also your clients using AI to almost you know, to to to like review the work that you sent them. You know what? Let's even talk to that. Like, you know, it's not just

Scott (30:44.984)
Exo.

Anu Adegbola (31:13.866)
advertisers are making mistakes in any way. Speak to clients right now in terms of like using AI. What is what what is the the wrong way that clients use it when you send reporting data to them?

Scott (31:26.118)
I don't necessarily know if it's the wrong way. There's frustrating ways that they do it. think we're all still in effectively a bit of a discovery phase. So I think if people want to use it to interrogate reports and interrogate the data you send them, then fair play. But it is frustrating when you send a report and you get an essay back that is very clearly just an output of ChatGPT that might not have even been read.

Anu Adegbola (31:33.621)
Yeah, okay.

Anu Adegbola (31:38.593)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (31:55.872)
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott (31:55.951)
it, yeah, it's like, is this a productive use of matter? could be testing some new campaigns, I could launch something cool, but instead what I'm doing is now sat right in an essay back to an essay that you didn't even write. Do you even care about the answer? I don't know. and, and I get it. I get it. It's, it's using a really powerful tool to start to ask questions that you might not be able to have asked yourself. but I've seen examples where it's getting a little bit silly.

Anu Adegbola (32:12.321)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:20.065)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:24.542)
Okay. And how do you how do you respond with that? What's like the best from your senior paid search manager point of view where you want to keep the client happy but you also don't want to waste your time? What's your approach with that?

Scott (32:34.798)
I think it's really useful to go through on a call is to like explain the answer because oftentimes that can be a lot quicker than actually just typing up the answers and then they'll understand where that point of trust is. And oftentimes clients will trust you, it won't be a lack of trust thing. It'll be, I've got this shiny new toy that can ask me, ask questions better than I ever could. But yeah, I think the number one thing is to add that human element back into it and.

Anu Adegbola (32:38.731)
Okay.

Anu Adegbola (32:45.089)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:57.569)
Yeah.

Scott (33:04.374)
actually just speak to them.

Anu Adegbola (33:06.1)
Absolutely. No, that's amazing. Well, thank you, Scott. You've given us so many insights about the mistakes that we're making, sharing your you know, your story about that. Yeah. One yeah, spend spending error and you know, how we should make sure that we're very much on top of like not not set and forget it and on top of like the the the test that we're checking and

Yeah, th you know, i is have stare at those campaigns for like more than an hour after you've set it off so that you know it doesn't slip it doesn't slip your hand, it's not your clients doing that. Although to be fair, I'd say should I say props to the client, like the client would check it and figure it out after an hour. Like, you know, let the c let let it let your

Scott (33:47.214)
They're on it. They're on it.

Anu Adegbola (33:48.695)
They're on it. They are on it. So yeah, don't just think that your client or some you know, some guys, when it's your budget, when it's large budget you're dealing with, they're gonna be on it. So even to avoid things like that, make sure you're you're you're take you're looking at your accounts very well. yeah, so before we we leave you, Scott, we're just gonna ask a now now fun non-PPC really question. if your PPC career were a movie, what would the title be?

Scott (34:13.858)
So this is quite a difficult one, but based on the conversation that had at PPC Live last week or the talk that I gave, so the title would be The Problem Is The Job, that I've been in PPC so long now that I've seen a lot of different iterations of it. And it's not just the processes that we do that makes the job the job. It's all of the fun stuff. It's all of the change in stuff. It's all of the client involvement. It's the problems that come up that...

Anu Adegbola (34:39.98)
Yeah.

Scott (34:41.972)
there to be solved and that is the job of PPC is without problem solvers we just happen to do it in a very unique system.

Anu Adegbola (34:43.114)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (34:49.972)
Absolutely. Can I even cheekily add that even going to events is part of the job now as well? As you know, talking about it with other people, same the results that they've they've tested because the the online, yeah, like our online space can just be a little bit like what are people saying and why is everyone complaining about this or or too excited about this kind of thing. We can be I I just feel like I see a lot of extremes and we just have to be like, guys.

It's our job to figure this out. I d I you know, as I was saying just before we started recording, I loved your point of view about, you know, the August seventeenth update that's coming up. It's not that it's an unimportant update, but guys, it's just our job to pay attention to what's gonna happen and change our targeting as as required and be on top of things like that. I mean, what what is your thoughts about yeah, let l let's speak on even right now. What's your thoughts about the August seventeenth update? Never mind.

Scott (35:45.102)
But you've just said that we have to be on top of it and change our targets. Or if you've got your targets set correctly anyway, which we all should have, then there is no change.

Anu Adegbola (35:53.792)
You might not need to do anything. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Totally agree. So since PP Society is also based on events, where is the next event that we might see you at?

Scott (36:02.175)
I don't know. I didn't have anything lined up after previously live. You put me on the spot there. I'm ready.

Anu Adegbola (36:05.886)
Sorry. Well, you know, like are you are you are you hoping to get to HeroConf? No, it's not HeroConf is not gonna be happening in October, but like there'll be Brighton SEO stuff happening in October. Are you?

Scott (36:16.718)
I'm open to suggestions if anyone's got anything interesting that they think I should attend, either as a speaker or as a guest. I like just getting out there and seeing people and PPC has such a good community. Yeah, let me know. Come into an event near you soon.

Anu Adegbola (36:28.948)
Yeah. Absolutely. And really I don't need to ask. You're on LinkedIn as I I I'm su I've s as I've seen, as I know very well. Any other online platforms that you like chatting about paid search stuff or is it just LinkedIn?

Scott (36:42.414)
No, LinkedIn is the one.

Anu Adegbola (36:45.204)
Is it fantastic? Scott, as always, it's always a pleasure to have a chat with you. Always I always feel like I come away learning something new and just having like a great difference perspective of of how things should be done. we'll share the links in our show notes as to how to get in touch with Scott if you have any questions for him or even like, you know, yeah, ideas of what what events that you'd like him to see him pitch at, you know, share that with us, share that, share that with him.

And yeah, he's also part of our fantastic PPC live community. He's in our Slack, so join our Slack if you have want to have one-on-one conversations with him. but yeah, on that note, thank you so much, everyone for listening, and thank you, Scott, as as well. And yeah, I'm sure we'll chat again soon. There you go. Okay, we'll start first and

Scott (37:27.042)
Thank you.