Google's NEW AI Max: A Guide for Business Owners

So Google have just rolled out a change to Google Ads, and it is either going to grow your leads, they say, by nearly 30%, or, on the other end of the spectrum, it could actually burn through your entire marketing budget if you’re not paying attention to what it actually is. This new tool is called AI Max, and it is now active in Australia and New Zealand. It’s been out in the States for a little while. But the thing is that most business owners and Google Ads managers have no idea that it’s even happening, because it has been a very quiet launch. We’re going to discuss what is AI Max, and do you need to add it to your Google Ads campaigns. If we haven’t met before, my name is Jordan McFadyen.

Welcome to For The Daring Growth Seekers podcast, a podcast designed to help you navigate this cluttered world of marketing in the AI era. And like I say, today we are talking about Google’s new AI Max mode. Now, this is specifically for search campaigns, and it is not to be confused with Performance Max. If you’re in Google Ads and you know a bit about Performance Max campaigns, you would know that Performance Max has been run for a very long time. But this is different. This is called AI Max.

Before we get into what this actually is, I just want to zoom out really quickly as part of this intro, and just preface by saying I think that AI Max isn’t just this new feature. I think that AI Max is another signal towards this much larger shift that we’re seeing. We are literally watching the slow death of keywords as what we have grown to know them as. If you think about it now, the way that people search. Five years ago, you might have typed in the word “plumber in Auckland” or “plumber Auckland”. But today, that could be completely different. You might even ask your phone, my toilet won’t stop running, it’s 11pm, how do I get it fixed? You can’t plan a keyword like that. But AI and AI Max can understand the intent behind conversational type searches like that example.

Obviously, Google’s AI Overviews are already appearing in a massive number of searches in New Zealand and Australia. We’re seeing that clicks are dropping everywhere. And this means that people are getting a lot of the answers that they require without ever actually clicking through to your website. What I’m trying to say is that old strategy of finding 50 keywords and then writing ads or writing blog posts for those particular 50 keywords, that is becoming much less of an effective strategy by the day. We’re seeing more successes being more around shifting towards having genuinely helpful content on your website that AI can actually understand and serve up as the answer to someone’s problem.

It’s that age-old thing. We need to know who our customer is. We need to know what their problem is. And we need to be able to have the content, the authority in the market, to be able to solve those problems. The question then becomes, it’s no longer, what keywords should I target? The question is, what problems do my customers have? And is my website and my business the best place to solve those problems?

We’re going to cover what this AI Max thing actually is. We’re going to try and strip out all of the Google speak, all of the tech speak. We’re going to have a look at whether you should actually be testing it in your marketing strategy, who should definitely not be touching it right now, and also what this quiet update is actually telling us about the future of how customers are finding your business. So at the end of this podcast, hopefully you’re going to have a really clear plan about what AI Max actually is, how you’re going to integrate it into your business, and whether you should in the first place as well.

Firstly, let’s get into it. Google has made a habit of making things sound much more complex than what they actually are. And AI Max, it may sound really complicated, really flashy, as a brand new type of ad campaign that you have to learn from the ground up. It’s going to take you a whole heap of time to actually learn. But it’s actually better to think of it as, literally, it is a single switch that you can flip in your existing search campaigns that turns on three powerful AI assistants.

So to be able to switch this on, you can literally go into your Google Ads account now, go to settings on each campaign, and you’ll see right there in the settings, you can literally flip on AI Max. Don’t do it just yet, though. We’re going to go through how we can actually test that coming up very shortly. But like I said, when you switch it on, it is going to turn on three powerful AI assistants. So these three things, what do they do?

The first is search term matching. So this is the most significant change, okay? So right now, you’re telling Google in a Google Ads account which keywords you want to target. But with AI Max, Google’s AI is starting to look at the intent behind a search, and not just the keywords that someone is actually using. So again, let’s go back to that plumber example. You’re a plumber targeting “plumber in Auckland” as your keywords. The AI might see someone search for “urgent toilet repair near me”, and it’ll understand exactly that they need the exact same service, even though it doesn’t have any of those keywords that we put in for “plumber Auckland”.

So your ad is going to show up for a search that you never even thought to target. It’s going to help you to find customers you didn’t even know were actually looking for you as well. So that is the big first thing. It’s moving away from keywords, and we’ve talked about this on the podcast before as well: keywordless search. It’s looking at the intent behind a search as well.

The second big lever that it’s pulling in is ad customisation. This is an interesting one. Still don’t know quite how I feel about it. But the AI is actually rewriting your ad headlines and descriptions on the fly to match exactly what the person’s searched for. And that goes back to some of those Google principles that we’ve known for ages, around making sure that our keywords match the headline, match the content on our website. It feels like a real cohesive campaign that was literally written for that person.

So again, someone searching “emergency plumber”, your ad might lead with “24/7 emergency plumbers”. If they’re searching “affordable plumber”, the same ad might then automatically highlight the pricing instead of the 24/7 emergency. It’s kind of like having a copywriter creating thousands of variations of your ad, but being able to do it in real time, and doing it for every individual search as well.

The third lever that AI Max is pulling is that final URL expansion. And all these things, they’ve been testing for a while in the background anyway, but they’re pulling it together all into one big campaign now. And the URL expansion, essentially what this is: instead of sending every person who clicks your ad to that one landing page that you’ve set in your campaign, AI Max actually understands your entire website. Scanning your entire website, it’s then going to send the searcher to the most relevant page for their specific search query. If someone’s searching for, again, “emergency plumber in Auckland”, they’re going to land directly on the emergency plumber page on your website that has all those contact details of what they need to do.

And it’s not going to be a generic homepage that then they have to click an emergency button, then they’ve got to click the region that they’re in. No, no, they’re going to get there. The customer is going to get right to the page that they’re looking for even faster. So those are the three levers.

And the next question then is, do you need to do anything to actually test this, to see whether it’s actually going to be a viable option to add to your strategy and your campaigns? And the answer there is yes. But my big advice would be, obviously, looking at those three levers, you need to get your house in order first. You can’t just turn up without the right foundations and just turn on AI Max, because you’re basically then giving AI all your money to learn from a broken system and a broken foundation. There are a few things that I would suggest you need to be thinking about and sorting out before you actually touch that AI Max button in your account.

The first one: conversion tracking. It’s got to be accurate. And look, this sounds basic, but so many businesses get it wrong. The AI will make decisions on how to find your ideal customer based on what you tell it is a conversion. So if you’re only tracking contact forms being filled in, but the real value is then actually the qualified leads that actually will turn into a sale, the AI is going to find the wrong quality, low-quality leads for you.

You need to know that when someone calls you from an ad or fills out a quote form, the action is being tracked correctly, and that you’re actually telling Google exactly the type of customer that is important to you, so that it can go out and find more people just like that. If you’re not sure about your conversion tracking, that right there is your first job. Your data is key to making all of these AI systems work. So you’ve got to get that right.

The second one is your website. Now, it can’t be a mess, because, as I mentioned, AI Max is going to send people to different pages on your site automatically. Those pages need to work. If you’ve got things like outdated content, you’ve got broken links, you’ve got confusing navigation, you’ve got different messaging across your site, the AI is going to send potential customers straight into a dead end. That’s just going to confuse them. You’re going to pay for it. So making sure your website is an actual cohesive marketing machine, that is another big key thing that you need to be focusing on.

And then finally, you also need to be using smart bidding. So Google’s automated bidding system is what they call smart bidding, and AI Max is built on top of smart bidding. If you still are manually setting your cost per click for each and every keyword, that’s going to be your first mistake. I would suggest you need to be going in and testing smart bidding first, and then moving on to AI Max after that as well.

So the word test: how do we actually set up a proper test? Should you be testing it? I, again, don’t think you should just be flipping the switch on your main campaign. That’s going to be how you’re going to blow your budget, and you’re giving far too much trust to this new machine. What I think you need to do is head to the Experiments section within Google Ads, and then you select the plus button and then select custom experiment. From there, you’re going to choose the existing search campaign that you want to test AI Max with.

You then allocate a percentage of your traffic to the AI Max experiment, even 50%, for example, or you can even do 25%, so you can make sure your campaigns are still running okay. And then the remaining of that budget will go to your current campaign setup. Literally, that process, those three steps that I’ve just outlined there, that’s going to take you about 15 minutes to set up. I’ve already set these up for a few of our clients as well.

But from there, you need to be able to watch it closely for the first few weeks. You definitely don’t want to turn something like this on and then give it a couple of days and think it’s not working. It’s going to need probably at least three to four weeks, to ensure that you can actually give it a really good test to see if it’s actually going to deliver correct results. But making sure you’ve done those first things first: your conversion tracking, your website’s in order, that type of thing as well. So that’s how you’d set up a bit of a test.

But the real important next question: is AI Max actually the right answer for me and my search campaigns? Here’s my initial thoughts of when AI Max makes sense. If you’re getting good results from your Google Ads right now, but you feel as though you’ve hit a ceiling, this is where it can get really good. For example, we’ve got a client who spends between $750 to $1,000 per campaign, and got multiple campaigns at that spend level. But it’s not spending $750 every single day. We’re allowing that budget to go to there, but it’s not spending that amount. So essentially, we’ve hit a ceiling with the keywords that we have. So this is where AI Max, and where we’re testing AI Max, for that particular client.

There are more customers out there, and your search campaigns just aren’t reaching them, but you can’t figure out exactly what they’re searching for, what those keywords are. That is why you could be a good fit. It could also be a good fit if you’re maxing out on things like your impression share on your current keywords. Maybe most of your keywords are really specific, like exact match phrases. Then you might want to test AI Max then.

And also, if you’ve got a really solid website, it’s got multiple useful pages across the site, that’s another good way to test it, because, as we’ve learned, it’s going to scan through your website and be able to craft those ads for you. We’ve found that businesses with e-com stores with heaps of pages, or service businesses with a lot of different multiple offerings and a lot of content across their site, they are seeing the best results, because they’ve got more pages, there’s more products for the AI to actually work with in the first instance.

When do you hold off? I would recommend not touching AI Max right now if you’re in a highly regulated industry. Maybe you’re in finance, or a real specific law industry, or healthcare. The AI is going to write some ad copy automatically. It’s going to go live without your approval. And that is a compliance risk that I don’t think you should be taking just yet, while it’s still a new technology. The other reason not to turn on AI Max is if you’re on a razor-thin budget, where a sudden increase in ad spend is going to be a bit of a problem. If that’s your case, I would also wait, because the AI is going to need some budget to actually experiment with.

And honestly, if your website’s a disaster, fix that underlying problem first. Like I said before, make sure your house is in order, your foundations are right. Fix all those things first, before you let an AI tool help to run your campaign. Because obviously, sending more traffic to a broken website is never going to fix that underlying problem, which is where the strategy comes. So important to make sure you have all those foundations in place.

The key takeaways: what are you going to do this week if you’re considering AI Max? First thing, verify your conversion tracking. Log into that Google Ads account. Make sure it’s accurately tracking the actions that actually matter to your business. If you’re not sure, this is where a marketing person, or a company like ours, Done By Nine, can come in and actually help confirm that type of detail with you. Second thing is, if you fit the criteria that we’ve set up so far, set up that small test. Use that experiments feature on a single campaign. Do not bet your entire account based on AI Max. Do it slowly. Integrate it slowly. Learn from it. And then slowly, slowly release it.

Third thing is, be patient. Like I said, if you are going to test this, test it for at least a month before you make a call. And just remember that you’ve got to keep your core proven campaigns running separately, away from this experiment, because we’ve got to make sure that you’re actually generating income and your marketing’s still doing good stuff in the background as well. Hence why the Experiments feature on Google Ads is a game changer for this type of thing.

And look, AI Max, it is a real opportunity to find customers that you’re currently missing. But I’ve got to preface, it is not a magic button. It still is going to require that solid foundation, that solid strategy behind it. And it is going to allow and need careful management. Because the bigger picture is that AI-driven marketing, it is being developed really fast. It is here to stay. So we do need to learn more and more about it. And this is an example of just it starting out. The businesses right now that are learning how to work with these tools, rather than ignoring that they exist, they’re going to be the ones that are going to be better positioned for what comes next, as these tools develop and get better over time.

So the question isn’t really whether AI is going to change how people find your business, because that change is already happening. And that change has already happened in certain markets as well. The question I would be getting you to think about now is, how fast are you going to adapt before your competitors do?

And if you need help navigating any of this, that’s exactly what we do here at Done By Nine with our team. You are more than welcome to contact us. Go to our website, donebynine.com. There’s a contact form there. You can apply to work for us through there, get some information. We have AI workshops. You can also go and click on the podcast tab there. You can have a look at all the different podcasts that we’ve shared on this type of topic, other topics there as well. You can also go behind the scenes of us growing Done By Nine on there as well, with the For The Daring Growth Seekers podcast. So you can get all that information on our website, donebynine.com.

And look, hopefully you find this helpful. This is a brand new product with AI Max. So what I’ve shared today definitely is not the answer. It’s definitely what we are seeing so far. It’s only been a couple of weeks in the market, and it’s about testing. It’s about learning and trying out these new tools. Because like I say, if you don’t, your competitors will, and they’re probably going to get ahead of you in the long run anyway.

So thank you so much for joining us on another episode of For The Daring Growth Seekers. If you have a spare moment, we’d love it if you could leave a five-star review on the podcast platform that you’re listening to us for. Or if you could leave us a review, that would be great. Or even to send us an email with any feedback, any topics you want to hear from in future episodes. That would also be great. And we will see you on the next episode of For The Daring Growth Seekers.