The Herculean journey from manual to machine

Exploring the past, present, and future of the Paid Media landscape and how it has shaped the professionals behind the tech

This article was originally featured in Issue 13 of Benchmark Magazine, Titans of Search. 

Myth: AI has been slowly integrating with marketing practices for several years, and roles simply evolve and strengthen alongside the tech
Reality: Google’s algorithms and regulations are constantly changing, and updating your website content to reflect this can help you flourish

Over the last 12 months, the topic of AI has exploded into the forefront of digital marketing conversations. This integration of AI into the world of digital marketing has had some professionals fearing they might someday be replaced by speedier, more proficient, cost effective computer programs.

In reality digital marketing has gradually been intertwined with AI technology over the past few decades; whilst many previously manual aspects of digital marketing are now fully automated, roles have merely adapted to these changes rather than becoming obsolete.

The role of a Paid Media specialist is a great example of this. The day-to-day tasks Paid Media specialists did 10 – 15 years ago, are now completed by a fully automated system, and yet the role not only still exists, but remains a crucial part of a digital marketing team.

As Paid Media technology continues to evolve in function and ability almost daily, we should explore how previous technological advancements have shaped the role, and give us some insight into how the role might evolve in the future.

A brief look back at the (not so) ancient past

When we look back at the early days of Paid Media, the strategy was centred around control. Paid Media specialists wanted complete control over all of the keywords they were bidding for across all match types. This gave them the ability to set pricing for each bid based on the predicted likelihood of success for each keyword, and each match type.

The same would be done for analysis. Paid Media Specialists would have to analyse their results manually – and make bidding decisions based on the results of their evaluation.

As a result of this segmentation, typical ad campaigns at this time would have thousands of associated keywords across the three match types, each needing a human to set each bid, and then analyse the success of each keyword – and adjust bids accordingly.

This was a time consuming process, and led to an essential set of skills that were centred around data, analytics, and mathematics.

This need for meticulous control over the bidding and analysis process, and preference for working manually was rooted in a mistrust of the automated technology that Google was trying to push on the field…

Enter, “Conversion Optimiser” – or more fondly known by our team at the time as “Conversion Floptimiser”. One of the first automated programs for Paid Media created by Google, Conversion Optimiser required a large volume of keyword level data to make decisions, this resulted in it favouring the few generic and high volume keywords – and would then push all budgets towards those few. This meant Paid Media specialists were spending a huge amount of time and effort building these intricate and complex campaigns, only to have the vast majority of the keywords ignored by the automated technology.

This was problematic for two crucial reasons:

• Conversion Optimiser was not advanced enough to understand that whilst some extremely niche keywords might not see an abundance of searches or clicks, they might actually have a much higher conversion rate or success rate. This led to Paid Media specialists becoming mistrustful of automated technology, and opting instead to continue with their preference to complete their tasks manually.
• Google knew that automation was the future. As their technology advanced, and became more capable than the “floptimiser” Paid Media specialists were simply opting not to use them, as a result of past experiences with the technology.

Google knew something had to change if they were going to make advancements in the field.

After a series of workshops, advancements in technology, and communicating with the specialists working on the front lines – Google began to earn the trust of Paid Media specialists, and the increased use of advanced automation technology paved the way for our present Paid Media strategies…

An exploration of the present day

In the modern era, all the above tasks that were previously done manually (adding thousands of keywords, analysing performance to set bids) are fully automated. Paid Media specialists put their trust in Google’s automated technology to stick to their set budget, and spend money where it will be the most cost effective.

The “floptimiser” has evolved to become “smart bidding”, which is a much more effective and accurate AI product than its ancestor.

This change means that a typical ad campaign has gone from having thousands of segmented keywords segmented into thousands of ad groups that we had full manual control over, to hundreds of keywords in tens of themed ad groups..

Alas, the role of a present-day Paid Media specialist has changed exponentially; their focus has shifted to amalgamating keywords into themes. While an understanding of data, analytics, and mathematics are still an important foundational set of skills for Paid Media specialists, there has been a shift in hiring people who have more marketing acumen including a greater sense of creativity, and understanding of audiences. Daily tasks for a Paid Media specialist now include:

• Creating, implementing, and optimising innovative digital campaigns from conception to deployment.
• Collaborate across departments to synchronise campaign strategies and company wide objectives.
• Perform thorough research on keywords and websites, organise ad groups, and target audiences effectively.
• And most importantly building campaigns with data streams that fuel the smart bidding algorithm to maximise its effectiveness.

As AI and automated technology continue to advance, it would be foolish to assume that the field of Paid Media would not continue to evolve alongside it.

A vision from the oracle…

So, what does the future of Paid Media look like?

Well, it seems that we are heading in a direction that has a diminished focus on keywords and a shift to focusing on understanding audiences. Whilst the idea of a Paid Media strategy with no keywords might be a surprising thought – when we analyse the importance of keywords over time, they have gone from being the only focus, to the most important focus, to just one of many important things. So, it is not too far-fetched to predict that sometime in the near future, the importance of keywords might continue to decline until they are no longer essential.

Instead, future Paid Media specialists might have to provide information about the themes surrounding the product or service and insights into their target audience, rather than specific keywords or phrases they may search for.

As the role evolves, essential skills for Paid Media specialists include:

• A greater understanding of target audiences
• Using and manipulating data
• How to feed data into a machine learning algorithm
• Enhanced comprehension of the buying funnel

Apotheosis

The journey of AI integration into digital marketing, particularly within the realm of Paid Media, has been a testament to the evolving relationship between technology and human expertise. While initial scepticism and challenges marked the early stages of adopting automated AI technology, the landscape has drastically transformed.

No matter how the Paid Media landscape might look in the future, what we can say for certain is that Paid Media specialists (or digital marketers in general) do not need to fear losing their role to AI powered computer programs. If anything, advancing technology and the emergence of AI will continue to challenge Paid Media experts, encouraging them to evolve and expand their skill set; this can only lead to better things for Paid Media, moving forward with a highly skilled and expert workforce driving innovation and creativity alongside advancing AI and automated technology.