Is Anything Real In Paid Advertising?

All right.

Welcome back to

Is Anything Real?

in Paid Advertising?

The show where agency

founders unpack what's real

and what's just noise.

I'm your host, Adam W.

Barney.

And today we've got someone

who's not just keeping

up with AI's pivot.

He's training it

to work smarter.

Ben, welcome.

How are you doing today?

Doing great.

Thanks so much for having

me excited, to chat.

Awesome.

You want to give about two

seconds on where you come

from, what you're building

with Rise Marketing

Group before we dive in?

Yeah, definitely.

So, yeah, my name is Ben.

I'm the founder

of Rise Marketing Group.

I've been in the marketing

advertising industry for 20

years now, which is crazy.

Started off, earlier in my

career at companies such as

Yahoo, when that was a thing,

when people went to the Yahoo

portal to access the Internet.

And then, and then over time

I worked at a big agency.

Then I worked at Google

up here in Cambridge.

We live in the greater

Boston area.

And then a little over

seven years ago, I founded

Rise Marketing Group

and we're a full service

digital marketing firm

offering ads, SEO,

website design, development,

email marketing.

Awesome.

All right, well, let's start

with a quick pulse check.

With Google specifically

dropping more AI into

the Ad mix daily, is anything

real anymore in paid media

from that perspective?

Oh, yeah, it's getting

crazy, but it's also very

exciting in the same lens.

I mean, one of the draws

to advertising 20+

years ago for me was

it's always changing.

So it's exciting.

It's if the Google

product and the Google

ecosystem was never

changing, you just had your

traditional search campaigns

and based off a different

phrase, match, you know, you

probably get bored of it

after a little while.

But it's constantly changing.

And Google is keeping up with

all things AI because they

kind of have an arms race

going on against ChatGPT

perplexity and all the AI

tools that can now provide

just as good of a search

engine or knowledge engine

as Google can.

And we're starting to see

a shift in consumer behavior.

And that has Google a little

concerned or probably

way more concerned.

And then so they're updating

their ecosystem to be more

AI heavy from both an organic

perspective and then

also from an advertiser

perspective as well.

Right.

And I know that's something

that's changed over 20 years.

I mean, maybe we could talk a

little bit more about how,

you know, the Google beast

has shifted from having 90

plus plus 98%, maybe percent

of the search share and how

that's changed over recent

years.

That's driving a little bit of

the shifts here that we're

seeing with Google's approach

and how they relate to all of

the other search bars that are

out there across different

platforms.

Definitely, even if we talk

about that consumer

behavior is changing, it is

important to know that

Google is still Google.

Google's not going

to disappear next year.

They have a lot of smart

people trying to figure it

out but their share will

definitely deteriorate and

then they're going to lean

on some of their other

products that they're not

going to lose share on.

Like, such as YouTube.

But yeah, even I think

it was noted earlier this

year was like the first time

that Google search market

share started to decline.

Now it only declined from like

90% to like 89% but that 1%

times global population.

That's a lot of

searches that are happening.

And if that's a sign of what is

to come that is a little

nerve-wracking for them.

And where are

the folks going to.

I mean Microsoft

still hangs in there.

Bing and their search alliance

with bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo

has been an engine that's

increasing popularity but hats

off to Microsoft because I

feel like once people started

like "Microsoft who go, who

uses bing"

they made it relevant through

the partnership with OpenAI

and ChatGPT and put a lot of

new life into them.

And not only from their

search product but Then also

within ChatGPT

and all the other tools.

And at our practice we for

every one of our SEO

clients we track referral

traffic of where's all this

traffic coming from?

And we are starting to see

referral traffic from these

AI tools increase month over

month at a high clip.

Granted small base to start.

So it's nothing too exciting

but it is exciting

of the growth

and we're even seeing business

impact from this.

What does that mean?

E commerce.

Real purchases, leads.

Real leads.

And I can speak

firsthand experience.

You know we actually got

a client last fall that found

us on chatGPT on

the other side of the country.

Turned out to be

a great client.

We're still working with

him today but he prompted

his whole project,

said who should we work with?

And he said talk

to Ben at Rise.

I'm like I don't know how

that happened at the time

but not complaining.

That's an incredible

referral story actually

to talk about that.

I don't think most people

understand of course,

you know, there's that

level set with, you know,

the way Bing operates.

And I have to admit part of

my 20 years in a nonlinear

digital marketing career

and a marketing career

across large

companies was spent at

Microsoft working on the

Bing ads product.

And it's incredible to see,

and understand

how maybe Bing doesn't

come to the forefront of

the conversation

necessarily, but they're

powering things like, like

ChatGPT, like Siri.

They sit behind the scenes

in so many of these scenarios.

But let's, let's shift

it back a little bit

to Google as well.

I know you were just recently

on a Google marketing

call where they were talking

about launching

their next gen AI updates.

From your perspective, what's

actually changing behind the

scenes with these tools

rather than just thinking

about say the consumer end

where the search engine

results page now gets that

dynamically updated AI answer

which sits above where the

paid ads sit rather.

Yeah, definitely.

And a lot of SEOs don't like

that move because it's less

referral traffic.

But you just have to play

the game, you have to stay

with it and then try

to get featured on that

and all that good stuff.

But yeah, and like behind

the scenes, you know,

obviously they're, they need

to compete with this new

experience that people like.

They like the AI overviews

and things like that and

also give options for people

to do their own research and

due diligence by sending

referral traffic which I

feel like they're hearing

loud and clear that that is

important to do.

Because if you don't do that

eventually you don't know

where this AI is sourced from.

And I just read an article

just a couple days ago that

the AI content engine

is already starting to show

signs that it's declining.

Because if everyone's using AI

for content, you're

just making clones of clones

of clones of clones because

that's all AI does, it

just picks up whatever.

And if anyone saw the old

school movie Duplicity with

Michael Keaton or so you can't

make a clone of the clone, it

just doesn't work that well.

And then if you do it multiple

times over then you're

just going to get garbage.

But kind of behind

the scenes a little bit.

What we're seeing and hearing

from Google is they're

actually penalizing sites that

primarily use AI content as

the main content source

because they know if that's

the main source of content,

their AI crawlers are using it

and it's just going to be a

really bad experience.

And in that case it makes me,

you know, kind of happy that

Google's taking that stance

to it because otherwise, you

know, if there's anything, if

anything's too easy or too

good to be true, it probably

is.

And it comes down to like

a real, you know, having

real marketers and really

copywriters providing

real value driven content.

And then on the ad side,

you know, Google's

making a lot of updates.

On the back end, they're

really pushing towards AI,

which they've done years ago

with the advent of

Performance Max, which is an

algorithmically derived

campaign serving ads across

all of their platforms.

Search display,

YouTube, email, etc.

Targeting a specific

conversion event.

But now they're rolling out

Search AI, which

we're excited to try, which is

very similar to that.

But search product, where

you just give it

the parameters and it's just

going to go crazy.

Google's pushing that.

They think they can

monetize that really well.

You know, time will tell.

I think, I think we're even

at a point, I mean, where,

Google

has gone over the last few

years for people who aren't

under the hood, launch

things not only like

Performance Max, but

responsive search ads.

I think we're at a pivot

point possibly where even

the, the idea of a keyword

and the definition of

a keyword is going to shift.

We've always, across our

careers, I think, talked about

the need from a paid ads

perspective within Google that

you always needed to connect

the dots of keyword to ad copy

to landing page, which then

led into that black box of

quality score.

But now it's more

about letting it fly.

Right, and kind of trusting

the Google engine.

So I know you've said it before

that agencies aren't dead,

but they just need to train

the algorithm properly.

How do you coach your team

and your clients to think

like AI whispers and not just

like their button pushers?

Yeah, definitely.

So there's a lot there.

Yeah, there's a lot

there, unfortunately.

Like, yeah, it was really nice

when you had the exact match

keyword or the appropriate

copy and best landing page.

And you know, it's like if

anyone does this search,

this keyword is worth $5

a click because I'm gonna

make $15 in or whatever

in revenue from it.

And that was just great.

And then, yeah, Google's,

since then they made exact

match, now phrase match

and then now phrase match

is more broad match

and broad match, who knows?

Good luck.

The good old match type dance

that I know to have to lead

clients through that

conversation and explain time

and time again how types are

different and match types are

even going away.

Right?

So they're going away.

So eventually you're right.

Like with Aimax, it's not going

to be match type derived

campaigns or potentially even

really search keywords.

It's going to be Here are

my URLs, here's this.

Go crazy.

So you know, what we focus

on is we have to feed

the algorithm We have to feed

the AIs and give Google

the best information possible.

So underpinning it, which

we've always been really

good at even before the ad

push, is setting up proper

measurement and tracking

which means every action

that's valuable on the

website that is funneling

through ga, that's funneling

through Google Ads because

ultimately you're going to

tell Google Ads and

performance max works just

like this.

They're not CPC bids, it's hey,

this is my conversion action.

Either maximize these

conversions or pay up to $20,

$100 whatever it is, cost per

conversion and it will, it

will hit those metrics but

you need to have the data in

real time coming in and also

sufficient budgets to support

that learning.

It's going to be really hard

for small businesses that

adopt these AI advertising

products that need a lot of

data when they just don't have

that marketing budget.

So they might, you know, that's

a little tough for them.

But yeah, it's, it's

different but it's exciting,

it's an opportunity.

And so we always try to be

the first at everything and

just kind of get a good

understanding and lead our

clients to success early

before everyone else

catches on.

It's not being, it's, it's

about not being scared of it.

Right.

And embracing the change

which is the thing that

when it comes to marketing

in general, digital

marketing overall, but paid

marketing, especially paid

advertising, it's always an

evolution, it's always,

always changing.

And I know you touched

on this quickly,

how reporting is finally sort

of catching up here.

What would you say?

Just when we talk about broad

strokes, whether it's B2B, B2C

small business enterprise

scale company, which metrics

are the most critical to, to

AI strategy feedback loops to

focus on?

Yeah, definitely.

So there's a couple things

obviously like if you're lead

gen, having like that main

conversion event to be that

lead that comes through, even

better is if you can follow

that those leads through to

the sales cycle through a CRM

platform like HubSpot or

whatever it might be and

imported those into Google.

So Google's like,

okay, I'm optimizing

towards these leads.

But over time it might say,

oh wow, these leads became

customers and then you place

different value amounts.

So that way Google is

not only just, you know,

years ago, just focused

on the click, right?

Last five years focus

on that lead and now

future, like actually like

getting real business.

And then that shows real

dollar signs that any company

can see and CFO can see.

I'm like, oh, okay,

yep, I see it.

You are making money off of

this and this is good thing.

But the challenge is

budgets have to support it.

So if you have a campaign

that, you know, you can't have

a campaign spending, you know,

$20 a day and say optimize

towards real customers.

Because maybe your sales cycle

is 90 days and you're going

to get like one conversion

event every month, maybe

it's never going to learn.

So in those cases you have

to be flexible, like,

okay, I can't have it

focus on that sale event.

Maybe it's just driving leads

or it could even be, which

we do sometimes is optimized

towards site engagement.

So it's like, okay, if anyone

who's clicked on my ad has

been on my site for at least

a minute, that's a positive

sign and maybe we can get

enough conversion volume,

off of that for it to

optimize.

So there's a lot of ways

to think about it.

But again, the whole spirit is

training the bots

with your budget based off of

your goals and kind of moving

in that direction.

And then that opens

up that wonderful world

of retargeting.

Right.

So retargeting is always

a piece of the puzzle here.

How do you sort of, from a rise

marketing perspective, explain

the value of the strategic

oversight that you provide to

clients versus the clients who

just believe in this old

school adage of say set it and

forget it.

Oh yeah, you cannot

set it and forget it.

And if you do like, yeah,

campaigns will just

deteriorate and heaven forbid

if you have Google auto

recommendations enabled, I

would actually be really

curious, that'd be quite

funny to see how an account

could just be like, oh, we're

increasing budgets, we're

changing match sites, we're

doing this.

And what would happen, and

even like working, you know,

I worked at Google and I had

a great experience and I

still have friends over

there and there are great

Google reps over there, but

there's also reps that

aren't as knowledgeable or

maybe put their interest way

ahead of clients.

And to a client that

doesn't have a consultant or

an agency, they'll just

finally say, oh yeah, Google,

I'm talking to Google.

I'll do whatever they say.

But Google really prioritizes

themselves over the client.

You need someone there

to be like, okay, all right.

Of your 10 recommendations,

I like three of them.

Two I'm on the fence

on and these other five

I can see right through this.

No thanks, not at this time.

Right, that's when the BS

meter goes up, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I'd love to understand from

your perspective, what do you

think breaks first though?

Is it the agencies who over

automate or is it

the platforms that over

promise on the quote unquote

magic that AI is delivering?

Yeah, definitely.

I think it comes down to

the agency to make the right

decisions for the clients.

And and then yeah, it just

comes down to.

And I, I see this

in agency land all the time

where you know, agencies

will come and go and,

and rise and whatnot.

But the agencies that I have

that don't really do a good

job for their clients are

those agencies that they go

after a specific niche and

then they over process

everything and then just put

like a junior marketer to

run everything.

So at this point there's

an agency for everything.

You could say, oh, give me

the best agencies for H Vac.

I'm making this up now.

But it could be best agency for

bowling alleys and like, oh,

we're the specialized and you

know, they put together

amazing processes but they

don't have a real marketer at

the helm.

And I hear this from our

clients or clients that come

to us because I hear it, I'm

like, okay, well benefit is

they do have a decent system,

but they just have someone

that's following a playbook

versus a real marketer to

navigate them through the

change of lens and can provide

real meaningful advice.

In that case, I think it

really falls down on the

agency to be that true

trusted partner to navigate

the clients and not just

rely on over processed,

deliverables.

I have to laugh because that

brings me back about 20 years

to my first role in marketing

where our client was

lawyers.com and literally law

firms across the country could

buy packages of 10, 15, 25 or

50 keywords at different

investment levels.

Talk about a specialized

approach that didn't work

from an effectiveness level.

Also lawyers, who are you

going to track back to?

Right.

From an hourly billable

rate, you can't really lead

to a conversion It's

a complicated, complicated way

to work towards that.

Yeah.

In that sense, though, Ben,

outside, of course, what

you're doing from your

expertise standpoint there

at Rise Marketing, is there

someone else in your circle

who's getting it really,

really right right now that

you might want to recommend

or mention here?

Oh, that's a really

good question.

Yeah, no companies

come to mind.

Everyone.

Sorry, that's a bad answer.

But, you know, like,

there's not like one marquee

company of like, oh, my

gosh, in the age of AI,

they're just knocking

it all out of the park.

I think everything

is on a scale.

You know, some agencies are

probably like, you know

what, they got AI down,

really well as it comes to

E commerce feed optimization.

Awesome.

And other agencies might do,

you know, provide some

good ideas for SEO, which

is now called Generative

Engine Optimization.

There's like five

other names for it.

And then.

But what I would stay away

from is if you're talking

to an agency and if you're

on the market for one, ask

them, what, what are you

doing for your clients on

AI?

And I hear this out on the

field, like, we go to trade

shows and the worst answer you

ever want to get is, oh, you

know, I don't think it's

really going to impact our

clients that much.

And I've heard that

twice over the past month

of agency leaders.

They're like, you know,

we're a local shop.

And I just don't, I don't

really see it's going

to impact us that much.

Is like, okay, I just smiled

and kind of walked away.

But that's an example

of an agency or shop where

it's like, they probably

know it does impact.

They just don't want to invest

the time and the resources

to make it work.

They're like, you know, we

have our tried and true.

So let's just sit on that.

So that's a roundabout way of.

I'm sure there's a lot

of shops that are doing

certain aspects well.

Just stay away from those that

aren't doing anything with it.

It's about always, always

being learning though, right?

It's always learning

and being moldable.

Ben, where can people

learn more about your work

and Rise Marketing

Group's approach here?

Yeah, our website is

risemkg.com otherwise

just Google or ChatGPT

Rise Marketing Group.

Check out our website.

We publish a lot

of content on it.

Most recently a lot of AI

type content just

to help navigate our clients

or prospective clients.

And if anyone's listening

and wants to schedule a quick

call to talk about their

business, more than happy to.

Cool.

Perfect.

And then let's end with, If

someone's feeling

overwhelmed by the AI Wave

in this space, what's one

no BS Piece of advice to

help them pivot smarter or

adjust smarter?

Yep.

If they're feeling overwhelmed,

they're not alone.

Nobody knows the answer.

So just kind of, like,

set the record straight.

Like, they're not behind.

They're actually ahead.

If they're actually

concerned about this,

they're well ahead.

And then the best thing

that you can do is just.

Just read.

Go.

You know, I have my list

of sites that I go to.

Search Engine Land,

Search Engine Watch,

Search Engine Roundtable.

They have a lot of coverage

and just,

you know, get to know it.

But if you actually feel

a little anxious of are you

on top of everything?

You're probably ahead

of most people.

I love it.

I love it.

Awesome.

Well, thank you, Ben.

That's a wrap on this episode

of Is Anything Real?

And paid advertising.

Massive thanks to Ben

and Rise Marketing Group

for join here today.

If you're looking for some

of that AI Clarity,

definitely reach out to him.

You can hit the show notes

for links to Rise Marketing

Agency and Ben below.

And if you're ready to

rebuild or build with AI

in the forefront, definitely

reach out to him.

And then, until next time,

stay curious,

stay skeptical, and stay real.

Awesome.

Thanks, Adam.

All right.

Cheers, Ben.

Thank you.