I had a client meeting today. Good client, long relationship, smart operator. We covered a lot of ground, but one thread kept surfacing: shrinking conversion rates, why they're happening industry-wide, and what actually needs to change. The answer connects what's happening inside Google's auction to what Google is building outside of it. And it's worth putting on paper. Google Says Search Traffic Is Declining. Are You Paying Attention to What That Signals? Google search refer

I write a lot about PPC. Brand and performance convergence, AI measurement gaps, Performance Max controls, first-party data strategy and if you have been reading this blog for a while, you have seen me cover that ground in depth. I am not going to repeat any of it here. What I have not written about yet are the specific tactical moves that came out of a recent deep-dive conversation between the ads liaisons at both Google and Microsoft. These are the details that tend to get

Why That Matters So Much for Your Budget For two years, Performance Max has been Google's favorite way to eat advertising budgets while keeping advertisers in the dark about where their money actually went. The pitch was simple; hand over your creative assets, set a budget, and let Google's AI do the rest. The reality was messier. Advertisers lost control of where ads ran, which search queries triggered them, and whether the system was cannibalizing existing high-performing c

What It Actually Means for Your Marketing Budget Advertising has arrived in AI search. Google expanded ads in AI Overviews to 12 countries in December 2025. OpenAI is building ad prototypes for ChatGPT. Perplexity launched ads a year ago, then pumped the brakes when they couldn't prove ROI. If you're running paid search campaigns or relying on organic traffic for revenue, this isn't theoretical anymore. It's reshaping how your prospects find you—and what it costs to reach the