How To Leverage AI In Enhancing PPC Campaign Performance

Sam Searle - Head of Delivery Operations

PPC is one of the most successful forms of paid advertising, and more and more companies are overcoming their fear of it to reach business success. In fact, in 2024, it’s projected $190.5 billion will be spent on search advertising; and one of the key ways companies are achieving their PPC goals is through leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI).

In the last year or so, AI has become the hot button topic in most industries. Although we’re still learning the best ways to harness its capabilities, the benefits of machine learning have already been making themselves known.

In PPC advertising, AI has been transformative, enhancing our ability to strategise and optimise campaigns for increased conversion rates. We’ve seen changes from a purely manual process to one that automates ad placements and provides invaluable information for successful ad campaign adjustments.

Nowadays trying to do it all manually is impossible, and certainly not a good way to keep up with the competition who are leveraging insights from countless data points using AI. If we enhance and embrace AI solutions, we can see ROAS of 162% or higher.

In this guide, we’ll be providing all the information you need to find greater success using AI in PPC advertising; from insights to how to increase conversions.

Understanding AI in PPC

AI has changed how we run PPC campaigns. As it learns faster than any human, AI can analyse information from thousands of data points. From there, it’s able to recommend adjustments to PPC campaigns at a more granular level, and tailor them specifically to who the ad is being served to. Using AI we can streamline the PPC process, optimising ROI and reducing time spent on repetitive tasks.

When PPC campaigns first started, the process was fully manual. You would create an ad and its copy, choose keywords, manually adjust bid prices and select who you wanted to target. Then, you’d analyse and assess your campaign’s delivery to make changes.

But now, through machine learning, AI in PPC advertising reacts in real-time, adjusting campaign delivery, visibility and bid management, at a lower cost and with far less manual labour. You still need to provide the information and overall campaign direction, but AI can make powerful recommendations based on the large volumes of information it utilises.

There’s no denying that in the future AI will be harnessed across the industry, freeing up marketers to spend longer on overall strategic direction of their PPC campaigns.

Strategies for Enhancing PPC Campaigns with AI

AI achieves its real-time reactions through predictive analytics. By analysing historical campaign data, market trends and competitors’ actions, AI can use algorithms that predict the most likely future outcomes of strategies, and suggest adjustments accordingly.

In using AI in PPC you can make changes before your competition even has the necessary data their side, based on real qualitative analysis of market patterns.

There are multiple ways AI in PPC can enhance your campaigns and further improve your ROAS (return on ad spend).

Automated bidding

Rather than having to manually adjust and set bids, AI allows you to leverage automated bidding for better results. With it, you can provide the AI with metrics to optimise your campaign depending on the results you want to achieve. This could be maximising clicks, conversions, traffic, etc.

AI can also provide actionable insights for you to further adjust budget and strategy, and inform creative choices.

Ad creative optimisation

Predictive analysis in PPC also uses algorithms and machine learning to tell which demographics will respond best to which creative. They can test out multiple combinations of copy, image and calls to action and assess which have the best results based on clickthrough and conversion rates.

By leveraging AI in PPC ad creation, you can ensure you’re delivering the most appropriate ad to each segment of your audience, making them more likely to convert.

Audience targeting

AI algorithms look at data sets on user demographics, preferences and online behaviours. The AI can then analyse your campaign and recommend adjustments for targeting high converters, as well as tailoring the ad delivery to a specific subset.

Generative AI

Utilising generative AI in PPC is becoming more and more common; and indeed, across all areas of digital marketing. With more open-source options like ChatGPT, we see it being utilised more often to create new content, based on existing work. That’s not to say it’s copying content (although plagiarism by AI is a hotly contested topic), but that it instead analyses what already exists to provide something new. That could be pictures, copy, music etc.

Implementation Guide: How to Increase PPC Conversions With AI

Using AI in PPC marketing can cut down on a lot of manual hours and provide you with strategies for optimisation that produce fantastic results. But you need to know and use the right tools for implementing AI into your campaign strategy.

Most AI platforms, such as Google Ads, come with certain AI components integrated. Features like smart bidding, automated targeting and responsive search ads allow your campaigns to adjust independently for better performance. With the introduction of Performance Max, there are more tools than ever within the platform.

But outside of the ad platform itself, there are other ways AI tools can still support your PPC campaign and its landing page. The famous (or infamous) ChatGPT for content and research, Canva Magic Pro for image or video creation, and Google AI for a whole range of extra features including targeting information and predictive analytics.

None of this means the marketer is no longer needed; on the contrary, their decisions are just becoming smarter and more targeted for better long-term results.

Here are a few ways you can use AI in PPC campaigns in the future.

Keyword research

AI technology, like ChatGPT, means no more coming up with increasingly more random keywords to trigger an effective run of suggestions in your SEO app. Instead, you can tell the ChatGPT the topic and have a variety of suggestions instantly.

From there you can either go ahead with the choices that sound best to you, or investigate search volumes using Google Ads keyword planner or a tool like SEMrush.

For example, if you’re a SaaS business building a PPC campaign to target people looking for content management software, you can tell ChatGPT just that and be rewarded with a list of relevant keywords for your industry.

Always ask follow-up questions, and ask the AI to specify keywords based on wants and needs in the industry. Providing competitor sites allows it to target more specifically and generate long-tail keywords for further investigation.

Ad copy & creative

AI can even write the copy and create the image for you. But be wary, savvy digital marketers will be able to spot poorly generated AI text. So, if you’re going to utilise this option, make sure you have appropriate prompts to reflect human writing patterns and organically created text as a jumping off point. And always edit for clarity, grammar, and consistency in messaging. AI can do a lot of the leg work, but you still need to lift a finger.

That being said, AI is invaluable in providing feedback on text, offering changes for better readability, and generating ideas for additional PPC ads. Just make sure it all fits your parameters, and it’s been grammar and fact-checked.

A great use of ChatGPT can be for small bits of text like a call-to-action, as it’s able to produce a variety of options and ad extension ideas that you can use to A/B test campaign clickthrough rates.

Using other AI tools like Canva, you can also produce images to enhance your PPC campaign, in an affordable way. But be wary, AI images are still rife with inaccuracies, strange positioning and uncanny valley faces; not to mention the ethical issues of plagiarism that have arisen since AI’s popularity soar.

Instead, you could use it to automatically adjust and fix issues with existing, real images by removing backgrounds, adding text, sharpening outlines etc. for a more dynamic and powerful ad.

Bid management

Google AI offers Smart Bidding strategy as an option in PPC campaigns. Provide the system with clear campaign goals, historical data, and bid strategy, and Google AI will optimise the campaign accordingly.

Automated bidding and bid management will then require far less human interaction, although it’s important you still monitor and adjust the campaign.

To implement Smart Bidding:

  1. Choose the strategy that aligns with your campaign goals (CPA, ROAS, conversions, CPC etc.)
  2. Set conversion actions. This could be a purchase, form submission, demo sign-up etc.
  3. Choose any additional parameters
  4. Apply adjustments manually for audience targeting, location, and ad position. AI will then serve up ads accordingly, adjusting based on high-performing features over time.
  5. Set up any budget constraints and maximum settings for things like CPC.
  6. Monitor and use the actionable insights from AI to inform future campaigns and improve performance.

Audience Targeting

Much like coming up with a new keyword list, ChatGPT can be a great help in segmenting an audience into different demographics.
Put in the information you already have on the type of people targeted, and ChatGPT can analyse data from across the web to provide information on their buying trends and consumer behaviour patterns.

Ask it to then segment this into groupings and use those as the basis for each ad group in your PPC campaign, fully informed by AI. Then, when it’s live, the AI can make further adjustments using predictive audience targeting and performance metrics based on success rates.

Measuring Success: Tracking PPC Campaign Performance

AI can provide all the information and adjustments to ads served as the campaign runs, but as always, without capitalising on those actionable insights, you won’t achieve much. As with any campaign KPIs should have been set in advance so there is a clear objective and strategy to your PPC advertising.

The data AI can provide is invaluable to enhancing and optimising this, both during a campaign’s run and in amending future approaches.
Standard metrics for calculating the success of a PPC campaign include:

  • Conversion rate
  • Clickthrough rate
  • ROAS (return on ad spend)
  • Quality score
  • Cost per impressions

But beyond these numbers seen on the screen, AI can provide deeper analysis and advanced capabilities. Using AI analytics you can see more information on:

  • Actionable insights
  • Detailed performance metrics
  • Trends and patterns
  • Alignment with business goals
  • Data visualisations with charts and graphs

AI generates this information instantly and accurately, so no time is wasted hunting down specific metrics for reporting. Instead, campaign owners can spend that time focusing on strategic initiatives, future campaigns and proving the effectiveness of existing tactics.

AI can also help bridge a difficult gap for marketers – cross-channel analytics tracking. Some AI tools and dashboards like Reporting Ninja or Agency Analytics can collate the information from the PPC campaign and standardise it across all channels. This makes it easier for the marketer to measure the success rates of PPC advertising in relation to other campaigns and more easily identify success and failure points in the campaign’s strategy.

Different visualisations help make the information more digestible and are more effective in proving success rates in a real, tangible way. We all know how important this can be when communicating with stakeholders, and in persuading them of the legitimacy of your next big idea.

In summary, the future of marketing is in utilising AI for success. PPC is highly competitive and AI can give that much needed edge over rival companies by harnessing the power of actionable insights and real-time strategy adjustments.

From automating repetitive tasks, cutting down time spent on research and providing audience insights to detailed dashboards that inform campaign optimisations and improve your ROAS, AI solutions help marketers gain deeper insights into behaviours.

Tools like ChatGPT and Google AI are invaluable in enhancing your campaign and by integrating it with dashboards like Reporting Ninja, you can see more detailed data insights than manual collection could provide.

By embracing AI, you’re embracing the future of PPC and setting yourself up for campaign success.

Sam Searle - Head of Delivery Operations

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