From Kitchens to Pools

“Not havin' a go. Why am I paying you when AI can do this?”

It's a fair question. ChatGPT, or any AI tool, can suggest keywords, write headlines and lay out a whole campaign, no doubt. But once that campaign is live, it isn't ChatGPT running it. It's Google's own AI, and that's a different thing altogether.

A campaign can be built, well enough, and still be very wrong

Take a kitchen renovation business, for example. AI can build its campaign in seconds. Once it's live on Google, who's there to check it?

Then searches like these start coming in:

kitchen cupboards
outdoor kitchen
my kitchen rules
kitchen tap leaking
masterchef australia

They're all real searches, and as far as Google can tell, they're relevant. They're about kitchens. Nothing is broken. It just isn't finding people who want a kitchen renovation.

Google doesn't know what a good customer is

Google was told to find more people who click, click again, call here or there, maybe fill out a form. So that's what it does, and every one of those clicks is paid for. It doesn't know which of them wanted a new kitchen.

Then came the pools

The search terms and impressions kept expanding, just in the wrong direction, until “kitchen renovations” meant anything with the word kitchen in it. Then Google expanded it to pool installation.

“Not havin' a go. But why am I advertising pool installation?”

Nothing failed. It all followed the logic it was given.

Would you hand a robot your credit card?

That's what an unchecked campaign is. Google's AI does exactly what it's told, and keeps spending. A person decides what it should be told, reads what's coming in, and pulls it back before kitchens turn into pools.

AI can build the campaign.

The question is whether anyone is checking where it's taking you.