Can an artificially intelligent device replace the PPC manager? How effective will be machine learning to manage PPC campaigns? Let’s explore.

We all know that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is overtaking everything. PPC is no exception. Experts predict that the jobs of PPC professionals are in grave danger as the adoption of AI and Machine Learning is growing. But are these just scary probabilities or do these predictions carry any truth?

The truth is that it is time to say goodbye to the PPC manager with the old skillset. PPC managers who are able to evolve with the changing trends will stay around.

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Before we explore the how and why this is happening, let’s dive into some background. We all know that AI and Machine Learning are growing and will potentially be applied to a number of tasks. Yes, the human brain has a tremendous potential. This potential, however, hits an obstruction when faced with the need of processing large amounts of data. This is one of the most important reasons for AI and Machine Learning to become popular. It can help process large volumes of data rather quickly.

How does AI work?

Besides processing large amounts of data, AI is used to understand and identify patterns. The more data AI has to process, the more accurate it keeps getting. With more data, AI gets the knowledge to predict what the users want and what to expect in case of a particular situation.

PPC and Automation

The task of an average PPC campaigner is to manage multiple campaigns and keep a track of them in spreadsheets. Automation can help to preset the data collection process and reduce the workload of the PPC professional. For example, the tool Google Anomaly Detector keeps a track of the campaign on an hourly basis and sends alerts whenever there are changes.

Automation will help PPC campaigners to collect performance data and then use a secondary automated system to assign or discontinue the activity without the need of the PPC manager having to intervene. Automation and AI are still at a stage where the expertise of PPC managers is required to monitor automated operations, identify anomalies and take corrective action when errors happen.

Humanizing of products

We have started treating products like Siri and Cortana as humans to answer our questions. Voice searches are becoming increasingly common. What does this mean for PPC? It means that more than the search, the human intent has to be understood.

Like James Murray Product Marketing Manager at Bing says, it’s predicted that 50% of searches will be voice searches by 2020. He added that for marketers this means thinking in natural language terms. Look at the two examples below; the first is the keyword-orientated style search that users have been ’taught’ will get them results. The second is a much more natural approach, the type that would be more commonly found in a voice search.

a) cheap turkey holidays orb) cost of a family holiday in Turkey

He believes that machine can be really good at voice recognition. Some of the tips he gives to optimize Pay Per Click campaign management as per the changing trends are to change keywords more like natural questions, take prepositions into consideration like ‘for’, ‘and’, etc. consider a broader spectrum of the keyword, also consider ‘near me’ queries with geo-targeted campaigns.

Want to learn more about the impact of AI for PPC? Let’s have a chat.