Google Ads is going through one of the biggest shifts the platform has seen.
For years, advertisers have focused heavily on campaign structure, keywords, bids, match types and manual optimisation inside the Google Ads interface. But as Google continues investing heavily in artificial intelligence, that model is beginning to change.
The direction is becoming clearer: Google wants to automate more of the advertising process, reduce the number of manual decisions advertisers need to make and rely increasingly on AI to determine how campaigns should run.
A recent example is Google’s Ask Advisor, an AI-powered assistant designed to help advertisers understand and manage their accounts.
The current version still has significant limitations. It often encourages advertisers towards Google’s preferred products and settings, such as Performance Max, Demand Gen and broad match.
However, the more interesting question is not what Ask Advisor can do today.
It is what tools like this could do in the future.
If Google’s AI can eventually analyse campaigns, identify problems, recommend improvements and make account changes directly, the role of the Google Ads advertiser could change significantly.
Google Is Moving Towards Greater Automation
Google has been gradually reducing advertiser control for years.
Exact match is considerably broader than it once was. Search term reporting does not always reveal every query that triggered an advert. Automated bidding has become the standard approach for many campaigns, while products such as Performance Max require advertisers to hand over more control to Google’s systems.
This trend is unlikely to reverse.
Over time, Google may continue reducing the importance of manual controls while expanding AI-led campaign management.
That raises some obvious questions.
How long will phrase match continue to exist in its current form?
Will Manual CPC remain available indefinitely?
Could Performance Max eventually become the default campaign type for many advertisers?
Nobody outside Google can answer those questions with certainty, but the direction of travel is clear enough that advertisers should prepare for an increasingly automated platform.
That means optimisation can no longer focus exclusively on changes made inside Google Ads.
There are three wider areas that are becoming increasingly important.
Pillar 1: Better Conversion Data
The first is data.
Google’s automated systems depend on conversion data to understand what success looks like.
That data influences:
- Who Google bids for
- How aggressively it bids
- Which searches it targets
- Which audiences it prioritises
- Which creative combinations it serves
- How automated campaign types optimise
In an increasingly automated Google Ads environment, conversion data may become more important than keywords themselves.
Performance Max is already an example of this. It can generate conversions without relying on a conventional keyword-based campaign structure.
If your account has strong conversion volume, reliable tracking and meaningful conversion actions, you are in a much better position to benefit from automated bidding and targeting.
Focus on Meaningful Primary Conversions
Primary conversions should represent actions that genuinely matter to the business.
For a lead-generation company, this might include:
- Completed enquiry forms
- Qualified phone calls
- Booked appointments
- Submitted lead details
For e-commerce, the obvious primary conversion is usually a completed purchase.
The problem occurs when advertisers feed Google weak or misleading signals.
A page view, button click or click-to-call interaction may not represent a genuine commercial outcome. Optimising heavily towards those actions can teach Google to find more people who complete the easy action rather than people who become customers.
Track Micro Conversions as Secondary Actions
That does not mean softer conversion points have no value.
Actions such as:
- Click-to-call
- Click-to-email
- Click-to-WhatsApp
- Important page views
- Product interactions
- Progress through key stages of a funnel
can provide useful additional data.
If your campaign already has plenty of strong primary conversion volume, these actions can remain secondary conversions for observation.
However, lower-volume campaigns may need to think more carefully about how they provide Google's systems with enough useful signals to learn from.
The important principle is to build a richer, more reliable measurement framework before automation becomes even more dominant.
Improve Your Tracking Quality
Advertisers should also make use of improved tracking methods where appropriate, including enhanced conversions.
The more accurate your conversion data is, the better chance Google's automated systems have of understanding which users are genuinely valuable.
If AI is going to make more optimisation decisions on your behalf, the quality of the information you feed into that system becomes increasingly important.
Pillar 2: Your Website Becomes Part of the Targeting Strategy
The second major pillar is your website.
Landing page optimisation has always mattered because a better website can convert more Google Ads traffic into leads or sales.
But in the future, the role of your website could become broader.
Google is already using website content and URLs to inform automated advertising through features such as URL expansion and AI-powered campaign settings.
This means Google may increasingly use your website to understand:
- What your business offers
- Which searches are relevant
- Which pages should be promoted
- Which users are likely to be interested
- Which stage of the buying journey a page addresses
Your website therefore needs to do more than simply convert traffic.
It needs to give Google enough context to understand your business properly.
Build Content Across the Buying Journey
Think about the questions potential customers ask before they are ready to buy.
A strong website should not necessarily consist of one commercial landing page repeated across minor keyword variations.
Instead, consider building content that addresses the full customer journey.
That could include:
- Early research questions
- Problem-focused content
- Product or service comparisons
- Detailed service information
- Pricing considerations
- Frequently asked questions
- Case studies
- Commercial landing pages
The more thoroughly your website covers the subjects surrounding your products or services, the more information Google's systems potentially have when deciding where your business is relevant.
In a more AI-driven Google Ads environment, your website content could become an increasingly important targeting signal.
Pillar 3: Simplify Your Google Ads Account Structure
The third pillar is account structure.
Historically, advertisers often created highly segmented campaign structures.
Single Keyword Ad Groups, or SKAGs, were once common. Advertisers might create separate campaigns or ad groups for very small differences between keywords simply to maintain maximum control.
That approach makes less sense in an environment driven by machine learning.
Google's automated bidding systems generally benefit from having more data available within the same optimisation environment.
If you unnecessarily divide campaigns, you may also divide the conversion data Google needs to learn effectively.
Segment Based on Business Requirements
That does not mean every campaign should be combined.
Segmentation still makes sense when there is a genuine commercial reason.
For example, imagine an electrician offers two very different services.
One part of the business might focus on smaller testing and maintenance jobs. Another might focus on high-value full property rewiring.
If the company wants separate budgets for those services, separate campaigns make sense because budget is controlled at campaign level.
That is a genuine business case.
What is becoming less useful is separating campaigns simply because customers use slightly different search terminology for essentially the same service.
A good rule is:
Segment when there is a business reason to segment, not simply because you can.
The Risk of Over-Optimising Google Ads
As Google Ads becomes more automated, advertisers also need to become more cautious about making constant changes.
With broad match, AI Max and Performance Max, search terms that initially appear unusual can sometimes generate conversions.
In some cases, a search term might look irrelevant enough that you would previously have added it as a negative keyword immediately.
But modern matching systems can identify patterns and user behaviours that are not obvious from the search term alone.
Adding too many negatives too quickly can therefore restrict campaigns unnecessarily.
The same applies to automated bidding targets.
Constantly changing Target CPA or Target ROAS because performance fluctuated for a few days can prevent the bidding system from settling and learning.
Automation requires data, but it also requires stability.
That does not mean advertisers should stop optimising. It means optimisation increasingly involves knowing when not to interfere.
What About Small Manual CPC Campaigns?
There are still situations where traditional campaign structures can work.
A small, highly specialised B2B campaign might only have a handful of commercially valuable searches.
If almost all meaningful volume comes from one or two search terms, using exact match and Manual CPC may still produce perfectly good results.
There may simply not be enough search diversity or conversion volume for Smart Bidding to gain a meaningful advantage.
However, these situations appear to be the exception rather than the rule.
For many advertisers, moving from Manual CPC towards Smart Bidding can unlock more opportunities because Google can evaluate individual auctions and users using signals that would be impossible to manage manually.
Advertisers using manual approaches successfully should continue using what works, but they should also recognise that Google may continue pushing the platform towards automation.
The Role of the Google Ads Specialist Is Changing
The future of Google Ads optimisation may involve fewer decisions about individual bids, exact keyword structures and constant campaign adjustments.
Instead, advertisers may need to focus more heavily on the inputs that Google's AI cannot create effectively without good business information.
That includes:
- Accurate conversion data
- Strong commercial offers
- High-converting websites
- Useful website content
- Clear business objectives
- Sensible budget allocation
- Reliable profitability targets
- High-quality creative assets
This changes the skill set required to compete.
Knowing where every setting sits inside the Google Ads interface will still be useful, but it may not be enough.
Advertisers increasingly need to understand measurement, conversion optimisation, website strategy, creative, commercial positioning and how to provide machine learning systems with better signals.
Final Thoughts
Google Ads is moving towards greater automation, and AI is likely to accelerate that transition.
We do not know exactly which controls Google will remove or which campaign types will dominate in the future. But advertisers can already prepare for the direction the platform is moving.
Focus on three areas.
First, improve the quality and quantity of the conversion data you send into Google Ads.
Second, build a website that both converts users and provides comprehensive information about your products, services and customer journey.
Third, simplify your campaign structure so Google's automated systems have enough data to optimise effectively, while still separating campaigns where there is a genuine business reason.
The advertisers best prepared for the future of Google Ads may not be those who make the most changes inside the platform.
They may be the ones who provide Google's automation with the best possible data, content and commercial inputs to work with.
