Is Google Trying To Cut Us Out?

This question comes from the perspective of a Google Ads freelancer named Mortiz.

(This also applies to people running their own campaigns.)

“Hi, Kyle. I am a Google Ads Freelancer from Germany. Three years from now, do you think there will still be a demand for freelancers and agencies that business owners and companies will seek to run their campaigns?

I, more and more, have the feeling that Google is trying to cut us out with the help of AI bid strategies and expanded Google support teams.

What’s your take on this?”

Great question.

I know this is a common sentiment among people running Google Ads agencies. And I don’t necessarily think it’s wrong. Google has done a lot of things that would make it appear like they don’t have a use for agencies, and they would rather just go straight to the customer. 

Now, the real question is, “Will the artificial intelligence be able to run campaigns without input from humans?”

Is a business owner going to be able to give Google only their website address and say, “Here you go, Mr. Google Machine, go ahead and get more customers for me!”

Well, they are already trying to do that on some level. There are smart campaigns where that’s essentially what you do. And of course, as of right now, those smart campaigns don’t work nearly as well as a campaign that’s actually set up by someone who knows what they’re doing. 

But I can definitely see those types of campaigns getting better in the future. The artificial intelligence is definitely going to keep improving.

If the time comes where the artificial intelligence is that good (where you just need to feed it some basic information and it can run a successful campaign), what’s going to happen then? Everybody is going to have that same access, right? 

Every company, your company, and the business down the road who does the same thing as you, they’re going to have that same capability to give Google some basic information and let Google run a campaign. When that happens, there will be a need to further differentiate your business. 

Everything can’t be equal. That’s not how it works.

This is not communism, we can’t all be equal. There will always be someone who comes out ahead. Someone is always going to have a competitive advantage when it comes to advertising. 

So if these other tools get to the level where humans really can’t do a better job, and it’s all going to come down to the artificial intelligence doing that for us, there will always be something that we can differentiate on.

There’s always going to be something that allows us to differentiate ourselves from our competitors. 

Whether that’s a different website, a different offer, different graphics, there’s always going to be so much that machines cannot do for us. That will allow people who know what they’re doing, (people who can take advantage of how the system works) to maintain that competitive edge. It’s going to allow us to maintain a demand for our services. 

Now, the day to day life of a Google Ads freelancer could very well look a lot different three years from now.  Maybe you’re not even working in the Google Ads system anymore. Who knows, right? At some point, Google Ads won’t even exist anymore. 

I’m not saying that you are always going to be secure in what you’re doing. In fact, quite the opposite.

You always need to be looking to see what’s next.

Keep an eye on what’s happening. With Google Ads, see what the machine can help us with, and see what we can still do better at the future.

And I’ll take this quote from Mike Rhodes, who is a brilliant Google Ads strategist. He has been presenting stuff about Google AI for years now, even before I really had much faith in it.

He said, “It’s smart people working with smart machines.”

And I truly believe that. I think it’s a great way to look at it. We should never be putting everything in the hands of the machines. It might work for a little while, but the people who are making it work the best are going to be the ones who stay involved. And we can use the AI to our advantage and figure out how to make the AI work better, how to make it smarter for us. But we need to be involved, and we need to be doing that ourselves.

That’s what’s going to give us the advantage. That’s what’s going to allow you to continue to show value to clients, because you know how to control the AI better than they do. And they’re not going to want to learn how to do that. They are not going to want to learn how to manage Google Ads accounts as well as you can. That’s why they’re hiring you. 

And this message goes out to business owners too. If it gets to the point where all Google wants from you is your website address and they say: “Okay, we’ll go ahead and run this campaign for you.” I’d be pretty wary of that because you’re going to be competing against people who are putting a lot more effort into it than that. 

What’s the bottom line?

As a freelancer or agency owner, or business owner, always be looking for that edge. Even if the machines are doing a lot of the work, you need to be looking for what it is you can do. That’s going to give you an advantage.