EP330 - How a £2K mistake made me a better PPC Manager ft. Matt Shenton

Hello and welcome to PPC Live, The Podcast, formerly known as PPC Chat, Roundup. My name is Anu, the founder of PPC Live, and if you are used to hearing from PPC experts about how to ensure that we are keeping up with the ever changing landscape, don't worry, you are still in the right place, but instead of relaying what the PPC experts are saying.

I'm bringing the PPC experts to you. Every week I'm going to be speaking to a different PPC expert about their biggest f-up and how they've turned things around. So we are talking heads of teams, paid search directors and heads of departments, who share about what went wrong, but how they overcame it

and continue to be a success in the industry till today. So today we've got Matt Shenton from one of the biggest global agencies Croud. They've got a New York base, they've got a UK base, and Matt himself talks about, one of his experiences from his early career, a story that he doesn't even think that his current team may know of yet about him overspending and how that went, about what the reaction from his manager was, how it was

quite neutral, but it actually worked for him. It's one of those, not one size fits all. So yeah, share some great stories about that. And as someone who's actually, I would say probably one of the few people in our industry who is highly educated in the area of the field, because I've spoken to loads of people who did archeology and are in marketing and are doing it well, but he actually has

ai, education experience. He's got a mini MBA as well. So he's got some very amazingly intellectual advice to give us about the ai revolution and how we should approach the future of paid search. Yeah, let's go speak to Matt. 

  📍  📍 Hello, Matt. Welcome to PPC Live, the podcast. Hi Anu. Thanks. Great to be here. Amazing. Yeah, I say amazing a lot. I'm sorry. I was like, I need to apologize to start. I find everything amazing. That's my own, that's my like my filler word yeah, Matt and I, we met at SMX Advanced.

Like literally earlier this year, first time in person. And it was just so lovely to, yeah it's always great to meet other, very eager paid search professionals in our fields, especially people who come to events. I don't know, I think the people who come to events are different. We are different breed of people.

We are actually it's always like we're suck of the, for punishment of the whole talking about Google. And we are not, we're not okay with it just being our nine to five. We really wanna get involved and be in a room with all loads of other people talking about it. But I feel that's where you learn the most.

. Matt leads a very talented team at Croud.

There are, I know they Croud are global. 'cause I feel, I know you have us and the uk, but. . And yeah, Matt's got a over a decade of experience in digital marketing, bringing a blend of data-driven expertise and a deep understanding of AI to the table, enabling him to design and optimize strategies that have driven business growth and enhanced customer engagement and increasing retention

across various industries. We, we are both like Alma maters of the Marketing Week mini MBA in marketing with Mark Ritson, which is lovely. We need to send this to him and be like, yeah, both of us. The graduates of his university come together and we still credit him for his, the fantastic learnings that we got from his mini MBA.

He's also done an AI as in Matt, not Mark. Now back to Matt. Matt Matt has done an AI and machine learning course with the University of Texas at Austin. Some lovely, interesting facts. We had a sing song beforehand because I was like, Matt is like an Englishman in New York, like the Englishman in New York that Stings sang about.

Yeah, he's one of those. Famous folks loves to travel and he wanted to be a pilot at some point. I find that very interesting. He says he's gonna weed that into the story that he is gonna talk about. So really looking forward to that. And at some point he tried his hand at standup comedy, you just did it for one, one show. Why, Matt, why did you deprive New York of your comedic skills? Because it didn't go terrible. Things like that. You quit while you're ahead. So yeah, if it goes well, that's it. One and done. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I don't know.

I feel like if the paid search field if AI takes over all our roles, I think that going back into comedy that we need to laugh, that world needs a bit more laughter. So maybe think about my earnings would plummet if I did that. So hopefully it didn't come to that, but, oh, let's hope not.

Let's hope not. Okay. Yeah, it's, this is really grateful that you're on this. Because, yeah, talking about mistakes is not something a lot of other podcasts do. I don't think any other podcasts, I've not listened to any of your podcasts where it's all about talking about, errors and failures and we see a lot of people bragging about their work, which understandably that's how you make it.

That's how you gain your new clients. But I think there's also room to be human. We never leave on the defeated note. We are gonna, we're gonna talk about what's what was the defining thing that turned it around and con continue to, make you a trusted, a leader

in the field. ' . Yeah, let's get into it. No, no more rambling from me. Let's hear from Matt. Matt, what's the effort you'd like to share with us today? I wanna first, this question first of all, thanks for having me on.

I do think it's great to do this and share values because as you rightly say. If people don't talk about it enough, it can feel like you're the only person who's making these mistakes, which is Yeah. Far from the truth. Yeah I've been in the industry long enough to have more mistakes I'd like to admit.

The one that comes to mind though, as the first one that really impacted me, taught me a lot was I think I'd started at Croud. I've been here for about a year. So this was seven years ago. And I guess some additional context I came into paid search as a proper job when I was about 29, 30.

So I felt like I was having to start again in, not in a new industry, 'cause I'd come from affiliate marketing. But I've been affiliate marketing prior to that, been made redundant, had to start getting paid search. So it's a bit of a catch up needed to, really do well.

And I was on a client that was a gaming developer in the uk. Pretty big name. And they had this one title and the budget for it per month with I think it was about 20K a month. And I realized on the first day of the next month that I'd overspent by £2,000. Oh, okay. And as soon as I realized that it was worse feeling in the world it's awful.

Even just trying to go back there, it's ugh. It's it is so horrible. And. I think re remembering back, I think there was probably like a period of maybe like 20 minutes, 30 minutes, where I sat with it myself and tried to, just deal with the emotion and then fact find what happened, why did it happen?

And it was like, okay, now I need to book a, a meeting with my boss. Yeah. I called James at the time, had a meet with him later that day, sat down and was like, there's no point in trying to beat around it. I'll just come straight out with it. And he was very. He was very matter of fact about it.

He didn't try to say, oh, it's okay. I think he, he realized that it is an area you need to kinda learn from. Yeah. He gathered the facts and then we, we communicated to the client pretty quickly. Yeah. And that was the big learning for me is that with these mistakes, you kinda have to figure out what's happened, get the facts, find out why it happened, and then as quickly as possible go to the client, communicate it.

Here's why it happened. Here's why it's never gonna happen again. Yeah. You just deal with it very quickly. Yeah. And I think because you do that very fast. It's not over, but I go through the process pretty quickly. Yeah. The only person who made me feel slightly better was the the client lead on the, on our side at the time.

Said he, he said he reassured me that he'd seen a previous, or maybe he, he himself had made a previous overspend that was like, yeah. 50 times more than that. Oh. And that was when I realized, okay, I'm not the worst person that paid attention in the world like this just happened. So yeah, that, that's the one I think of.

Okay. So what was the, what caused the overspend to actually happen Was like a targeting issue or like a budget daily? Budget limits was not set right. What was the thing that had gone wrong? Yeah. I think from memory it was miscommunication. I think I. Maybe thought it was T 20, it was 22 and it wasn't, it was 20.

Yeah. And so I, from memory, I think I just, I misunderstood. And then when it, I think the way it happened was I checked the first day of the next month. And noticed that actually the comms were, that it was, it was 20, not 22. And that was yeah, my, my misunderstanding on the budget, man.

Okay. It's not good. No. Not good. Yeah, 'cause you almost have a double the client might think you're not listening to them when, or the briefing that they've put in and all that kind of stuff. Okay. Yeah. And what you said your manager was very matter of fact. Did it but how did you feel about it?

How did you feel in that meeting? Was it a bit like a. Awful mess that you felt or afterwards was it like, okay, let's just learn and move on. I think eventually learn and move on, but it took a while, probably a week. Alright. I think that the first moment it happened in the first few days did feel pretty terrible.

I think because my manager was very matter of fact about it. He wasn't like, oh, this is terrible. It's really bad. He wasn't like. Don't worry about it. He was just very middle of the road. You couldn't really tell what he was thinking. Okay. I think that's because of the manager and I can appreciate that.

Now his main thought was like, how do I fix this? Yeah. How do I fix he doesn't really care necessarily about Okay. Blame. It's just like, how do you fix it? So I think because of that it did, he didn't make me feel any better or worse, if that makes sense. No. Okay. Which, I think I appreciate it because you, you do need to.

That made sure that I was more accountable and took ownership of that. Yeah. Mistake myself, which is really important for them learning about it. Yeah. Yeah. And I can tell you now, there are things I still do today on accounts that are as a result of that happening. Okay. Seven years ago.

Yeah. So what are those things, what are those things that specifically that you make sure that you do now because of that story? Yeah. So a crowd we have pretty good. Level of like intraday and day reporting. And and that gets emailed to us. We get alerts, we get different dashboards, so we've got plenty of places to look at hourly and daily data.

I look at that all the time. It's certainly first thing in the morning, it's one of the things, the first things I do. And then during the day on certain accounts, I will look at the hourly reports to understand what's going on. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Still in the detail a little bit.

Yeah. Still a lot of the details, but I, yeah, because I don't know, like I feel that could be, 'cause it's someone's role definitely to be in the detail, whether that's your role, I'd say, I'd argue maybe it's not in terms of or Yeah, I don't know. Look, I don't even do account manager anymore, so do not take a advice from me as to what role is for different people in different teams.

I know it can be very different now with yeah. AI revolution and all that kind of stuff going on. But I'd also say that I'd be interesting to know that what's, how that impacts client communication, even like how does that impact client processes because. What stuck out to me was the fact that, okay, maybe you did see that, you thought it was 22, you thought it was 20 2K.

Let's say for example, it was actually 20 k. Is there anything in terms of like actually the cr, the client processing, or in terms of the detailing as to what the budget is for the month for the year that you do differently? Yeah. But both me personally and as as any agency grows and develops the processes and automation just increases.

Yeah. So it's almost, I'm not gonna say it's impossible to make that mistake again, because I really shouldn't say that. But there are certainly a lot more processes in place as a company that gets larger. Yeah, there's places where there are centralized records that, that have budgets.

Yeah. Both exterior to the platform and then in the platform. Obviously you can put camp budgets now and do that. I was thinking about this earlier. I do feel like overspends generally seem less common, and I dunno if that's become platform have changed slightly and it's less like it's harder to do that now, but I can't really think of why that would be, because on a, campaign budgets can still spend.

Yeah, 200%, or double, yeah, double the amount. I was gonna say, when you say overspend is not possible, I'm like, dude, what, which platform are you talking about? Google will overspend your budget in a blink of a you let it. Yeah. It's definitely still possible. Yeah. But yeah all those processes and shared documentation meant that it's just far less likely now.

It's far less likely. No, that's good. And what's your advice for. For someone going through this right now, like someone's like just been in the middle of they have overspend by a couple of grand. They're junior in their role. They're really nervous. What's your advice to them? Great question.

I would say first of all don't think you're the only person in the world that's ever done that. Yeah. There's plenty of people that have made that mistake and those people have still gone on to have great careers. Very smart people. You it is always good to take ownership and accountability.

Yeah. Don't try and make excuses or pass it off Yeah. Own up. Own up to what the mistake, yeah. And depending on your part in it all. Yeah. But I think that's really important because that helps you to to internalize it and then make sure that you, it doesn't happen ever again.

Yeah. Like you, when you take ownership of something like that, you're so motivated to make sure it never happens again. Like you will go and do things like I mentioned you, I still look at reports and dashboards and to your point at my level, probably shouldn't be doing that as much as I do.

And it is definitely someone, it's definitely people on my team's role. Yeah. And we'll probably come onto this, but there's an important role I have to play where I have to give people the room to own that stuff and then potentially make their own mistakes because I can't. Because if I'm there constantly, they like, there's no room for those people to own that stuff and, so yeah, it's a good point.

Yeah. Yeah. Look it's just a thought process. I have problems with that. I have problem with delegating. I do a lot of things and I'm like, why do I do this? Admin, I the weeds of things when you really shouldn't be. So I get that when you just want things to be right.

You do things a certain way, but then you don't necessarily give your team the opportunity to learn. Yeah. That mistake or not, even to learn from your mistake. And I don't know. Is it a story that you've ever shared with your team in terms of, because I think that's, they might look and be like, why is Matt always looking at the daily budgets and maybe after they listened to this episode, they'll oh, that's why, because Is that something that you've ever shared with your team?

Is this is why I look into the. To the daily? That's a good question. I've not shared that specific example. Yeah. I will say that they probably don't know. They will now if they watch this, but they probably don't know. I look at those reports as much as I do. It's more like I will look at it and it takes me two seconds.

It's not like a Yeah. Something. But I will look at that stuff. And it's more just making sure that the processes around the team ensure that they're looking at that stuff. Yeah. So yeah, I'm not necessarily being like. They don't know. I'm looking at this. No. They'll now maybe,

no, it's no I think it's a nice thing to for the team to know that's why. And they'll know the why. In fact, it's, I think it's, if they know and they just don't know the why, I think that's where it can be dangerous. But if they know the why, I think, yeah, that story moves on that, that really makes sense in their head and.

So you are managing your team and you spoke about how your manager did not necessarily try to, cuddle you through this process. He was just like, okay, this is what we've messed up. This is what we need to do. Bam. Is that a good way? Would you say, of approaching that?

Did that help you or would you have rather had a a different style in terms of how the manager approached the issue? Yeah, good question. I think for me personally, that was probably the right approach. Okay. And I think as a manager myself, I would probably do something similar. Okay. But then that said, I think you probably also need to tailor it to the person.

If you've got somebody who is clearly very upset about it, then you probably to take a slightly different approach to make sure that doesn't. That mistake doesn't really set 'em back too much. Yeah. But on the flip side, it's someone who is barely phased by it, then you probably need to, make it a bit clearer that this is a mistake and yeah, it could really happen again.

Yeah. So yeah, generally middle of the road, but I think probably tailored, depending on, the individual. Individual how they purchase. Yes, I know. I think that there's this might make me sound so old, but like the younger generation. Oh God. I like, why did I say that phrase? I might cut that out, but like the newer, the, the newer, the more junior folks in the that, that coming.

Yeah. I do feel nervous for some of them that feel like, oh yeah, like this podcast is to show her share that. Mistakes can happen, but it's not about being lax about them. It's not about being like mistakes are happen course, or whatever. I'll just, I'll just do my bare minimum and Yeah.

If mistakes happen. I think it's still important to go in with your best foot forward and, when the mistake happens, approach it. It's, for me, it's like the analogy, the person who has done wrong shouldn't be the one who decides how, how the situations is approached, whether it's a strict matter, it's a not a strict matter kind of thing.

If you've made, if you've made a mistake, come owning it, come, with a contrite, oh my God, so sorry, I've not done this. Try not to do it again and showing that effect of how you're going to, improve your, yourself with it afterwards, which I think is what you're doing.

So regardless of that whole Yeah you're senior, you're still looking at the daily thing. I imagine your manager, even if your, that, that manager you had, if they listen to this episode, they'd be proud. They'd probably be like, oh, good on Matt. Good on ma. Matt definitely learned his lesson.

'cause he's still even as senior he's still making sure that he looks at those daily reports, right? Yeah. I probably will send it to him actually. I'll let you know his reaction. I would, I'd love to hear that. I definitely would. I definitely would. So as, just before we round up this, that, that great story that you just shared with us, what's like your biggest takeaway that you'd like to leave our audience with about that lesson in terms of, not making that mistake and how you approach it.

Yeah, I think I think I probably covered the main things like the ownership and accountability. Yeah. Getting through it, finding the facts, communicating it internally for sure externally, if that's your responsibility, getting that done as quickly as possible. And making sure you follow that step of find the facts, what's happened, why did it happen, communicate that to the client and then tell them why it's not gonna happen again.

Yeah. And move on from that. I think more broadly. My, my advice generally in that area of spend and performance is just, yeah. It's just really just make sure you've got eyes on that stuff. Because what that put in me was almost like, this is my money.

This almost my money that's being spent. I think when you have that attitude, you you care more, you look at the data more. I think just it makes you better, better at your job as well. Yeah. By having that attitude that really shines through to clients and and clients wanna work with people who care about their business.

Absolutely. There are many ways to, to show up and do that, but I think really treating it like you, you're a part of this may, maybe not like it's your money. Maybe that's the extreme, but you've gotta stake in making sure that's well and effectively I think is really important.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, even like the whole, like it's budget. Don't necessarily treat it like it's your budget 'cause we're not saving lives here and that's why, you know what mis yeah. We're not saving lives here and that's why we are talking about mistakes is not a wrong thing at all.

But do show that you care, do show that look, this is a kind's budget. They entrusted it in you and it's all about, proving that they have chosen the right people to entrust Yeah. And trust their money with. So yeah that's all very important. Thank you so much for that. Fantastic story.

And now switching it, the spotlight away from you, yeah. You're not the only one in our industry that has made mistakes. They, some of the mistakes that you see, we are not tell asking you to name names, but what are some of the whole the, some of the worst mistakes, especially even like in more recent years that you think, wow, guys, the industry has gone on.

For long enough that you shouldn't be making these mistakes. What are some of the mistakes that you see, the most popular ones that you see that you'd like to touch on? Yeah. Maybe a bit of an extension of what we've just talked about, but, performance stuff. So not noticing certain negative trends.

Cats going down for longer than you should, we're talking days. But even in those situations, I think. I think everybody do I wanna say this? Say it. What I wanna say is, say it. You've gotta know what I wanna say. I think what's more important is not necessarily the the mistake you make.

It's what you learn from it. And then when might happens again, like I I nearly said everyone gets to make that one mistake. Okay. The key thing is not making it twice. Yeah. So that's why I'm a bit hesitant to say oh, you shouldn't make this mistake, or you shouldn't make that mistake because I, I probably made most of them.

Yeah. And, I'm still here. Yeah. I think it's, yeah, the key thing is just learning from it, not doing it twice. Yeah. No, I totally agree with you. The other thing I'd add to that, sorry, about the whole flying thing. The comparison I had there was when I was learning and I got my license early twenties, there was nice trying to find it before coming on.

It was either a magazine or a forum, and part of one of the sections was mistakes made by other pilots or something like that. Oh, yeah. And the whole premise was. You won't live long enough to make all the mistakes. Yeah. So you basically have to learn from other people. Now again, the stakes are very different Yeah.

In that's what we do. But I think the idea of really making sure you learning from other people's mistakes Yeah. Is really important as well. Yeah, you definitely wanna learn from other people's mistakes when it comes to piloting. What are the mistakes that you can walk away from when it comes to Yeah.

Being in the pilot that's the only ones that you want to dare make. So since you are the, expert in AI here, you've done a proper university degree here. On it. Tell us. I know it's a course, but hey, it's a proper, it was a proper course from the University of Texas.

Let's give them their props. Let's give you your props. AI mistakes that you see that you're, that. And what I'd love to for you to, get for our listeners is that not just a AI mistakes that you've heard other people mention. The ones that are not being talked about, that you feel like, oh, I can't believe people are not talking about these are actually the, 'cause I think there's a lot of.

AI talk. There's a lot of, oh, Gemini's not doing this properly. Chat GPT is not doing properly. Oh yeah, you're not doing this right. But I feel that could be possibly a distraction. I'm not sure, maybe and maybe there isn't. This could be a distraction from actually what actually that are the big issues that people are not paying attention to yet.

Are there any of those that you've perceived the things that come to mind? I don't, I dunno if they're things like a claim that nobody's talking about, but what comes to mind is is [those] talking about AI and prophesizing what AI is gonna do in a certain industry. Yeah.

When either you're not really in that industry, or at least, or you're not using it like to a large extent within that industry. Yeah. So I think, and what I notice is the people who are really using this stuff, whether it's the LLMs, whether it's vibe coding or whatever it is people who are in their industry doing this stuff

aren't talking about ai, like it's gonna replace everything. Like they're they're seeing the limits of the tools, they're understanding the opportunities they're quantifying what's possible and what's not possible. Yeah. And that just makes, that makes the whole conversation less emotional.

AI's gonna take everything to more, yeah. Heres what it can do, here's what it can't do. So I think anybody that talks about AI replacing everything or or even just a large part I'm like, okay, how much are you in the industry and how much are you really testing the tools and finding the limits?

Yeah. 'cause I've, I vibe code, I don't know the term vibe code, but it's such a weird term. It it's like you're not actually creating anything real. It's like you're just going by vibes and Oh God, yeah. It's not vibe. I love that. Like I've used, Chatt, BT Claude Gemini, and then things like rep play lovable.

And I finished building something last night and it took me about four weeks to build it vibe coding. And it is not very stable at all. And it, it connects together a few different sources. Yeah. But what I've, from my experience, what I've found is if you don't have any coding knowledge, it'll probably take even longer.

Yeah. I can write Python. Okay. So I, I know a little bit about what needs to connect to what and how it needs to connect so I can make sure the prompts Yeah. Account for that. Yeah. It still took me a long time and it's still pretty shaky. Maybe that's a reflection of just my building ability, but I think if you're really trying to do complex stuff.

The best you're gonna get to is like a, an MVP, a, a basic product that works a little bit. Yeah. But as soon as you start using it, it you find works. Yeah. Yeah. But again, that comes from testing this stuff, getting into it, finding limitations, finding what's possible.

Yeah. And I think the last thing I'd say is and maybe I'm not super qualified to talk about this in any great depth, but AI is it's still just math. Okay, you break down the algorithms. It is just really complex in some cases, basic math, but just built on top. Yeah, I guess math as well. I think.

Again, I'm not super qualified to talk about it in depth about that in that way, but I think when you break it down to that you realize it isn't necessarily super intelligence or artificial intelligence. It's something slightly different. The way it shows up manifests itself looks kind of magic.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I think it's important to remember like the sort of basics of it. Yeah, absolutely. Remember the basics of it. It's maths and it has so many limitations. I think where you were just talking over there about, people, overemphasizing it. I think the SEOs have it worse because God, the amount of "SEO is dead".

SEO is dead. Like our, the team and or the Search Engine Land, we're going to do a, like a webinar two 30 Eastern time. Literally I'm like Barry Schwartz, Danny Goodwin coming together, just being frustrated. I think they just saw an article from In the New York Times and you're like, oh my God, we are done with this.

I think they just had a frustrated, we are going to go on a webinar and. And just rant on about SEO is not dead and 'cause that's what everybody is talking about it. Someone even put in the PPC Live WhatsApp group lives and even there's a careers area in it to saying oh by the way it's SEO dead.

Because I'm thinking of, branching out from PPC. This was a subgroup of SEO professionals helping each other. And I was like, you are asking SEO professionals in this group whether their jobs are obsolete. I don't understand those questions. I think people just want to sensationalize the conversation and feel like they're saying something or big and, thought provoking by saying, ah, God, that's SEO is dead. I think it's a very lazy way to start the conversation, but yeah, I think it's very, I wanna talk more to people like you who are trying, and we hate the term vibe coding but who are vibe coding, what you know, and if someone who's got like your AI experience, got your coding experience, create something that it's not necessarily stable kind of thing.

I think there's hope for the fact that, yeah, digital marketing will still need people that have the brains to actually know what their customers wants and actually use that properly are going to, we are still going to need the people who are coders or decoders, who are who know how have the brains to put all these systems together and yeah.

Humans are still gonna be needed in this system, in, in my opinion for sure. Yeah, I agree. I think just to add to that. Sure. Sometimes I break down the people who are good at this stuff generally fall into one of two. You're either, you either probably lean more towards the marketing side.

Yeah. So you're good at understanding the fundamentals of marketing and how that shows up in like page search, or you are more of like an algorithm person? Like I just love finding out how to get more outta the system. Yeah. Whether that's optimizing. RSAs or, do key manual keyboard bids back in the day mods.

Or even now, it's like different bid strategies or different campaign structures. Yeah. You're an algorithm person. I think both of those type of people are still gonna be around what they do slightly differently. There's gonna be different algorithms to optimize towards. Yeah. Can be different inputs, but the way you think and the way you are motivated to optimize algorithms.

Like that, that's still a really valuable skill. I think that's gonna stay around for a while, if not become more valuable. Yeah. And on the marketing side, obviously, how it all, how all this stuff translates from a marketing perspective and things you do still will be super valuable. So yeah.

Absolutely. No, that's, that. That's great. I feel like we veered off into a conversation that I'm like, oh we are running out of time. But I literally will have love another half an hour conversation about that. But we are going to stay on track and maybe we've gotta invite you, Matt, for another episode and talk more about this AI stuff.

'Cause I feel that you just got a very sensible POV about it, just like it says, and I'm like, yeah. Oh my God. Yeah, that makes sense. So yeah, honestly, yeah. Matt, again, thank you so much for joining the episode today. Before we leave you a very fun non-AI, non-paid search, anything digital marketing question, well related.

If your PPC career were a movie, what would be the title? This is probably the question I spent most time trying to prep for. I have no idea. So I did turn to Chat GPT. Oh, I love it. I think my favorite ones were. The algorithm always wins, which is okay. Your title? Okay. Honey, I shrunk the CPC. That's a lovely one. I like that. I like that. And then the last one I'll leave you with- The good, the bad, and the bounce rate. Oh wow. Okay. Although I think I like the mo. My favorite one is, honey, I shrunk the CPC. 'cause it's it's a very positive way for like consultants to be like, yeah, this is what I'm gonna help you with.

I shrunk. I am, I'm here to help shrink your CPCs. Because that's what we're all talking about. There's so many articles I wrote about, it was like, oh yeah, CPCs have gone up. Costs have gone up. Yep. Beware. Google wants to take your money. We know that already. Nothing new there, so just hang on in there and keep working for your client's revenue.

Keep owning your mistakes and yeah, keep thriving in our industry. Anyway, man. Matt where can people hear you talk about? Yeah. Some of the, lovely discoveries and you have a podcast too as well. Do you? Yep. Paid Search NYC. Spotify, YouTube, and then I'm pretty active on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn's probably the main platform yeah, find me on there. Amazing. We'll share the links for everybody on that, on the show notes. So yeah go follow Matt on all these exciting ventures he's doing and yeah. Thank you so much, Matt, for joining us today. Thanks, Anu. Very fun. Amazing.

  📍  📍 Thank you so much Matt, for sharing that very honest and transparent experience of yours and giving us a very great insight as to really how we should be preparing for the p the future of paid search, how we should be with our mindset of the present of paid search, about how algorithms and all this AI is com quite complicated maths, where it is just maths.

And I feel like when you look at maths, when you say math, I think to myself, it can't be that simple. But sometimes it is. And I really feel it does tie in with what Garreth Westhead said in our previous episode that really it's about, shit in, shit out. Excuse my French. So yeah, it's about what you put in is what you're gonna get out.

And Matt, it's all about equation. One side has to be equal to, it's gonna match the other side. Yeah it's not that hard. Use it to help the work that you do, but really honestly bring your brain into it. And recently, if I just before recording this episode, we I put up a blog on the PPC Live site, talking about the future of AI and how PPC experts should be and what AI really has taken in terms of.

The work that we do, but what AI really will not take as well and how PPC experts are still need to be part of the solution for brands and when they wanna do digital advertising. So go check that out to give yourself the confident that you are still needed, even with the whole AI revolution.

So yeah, for. Full transcript of this episode, particularly go to yeah, podcast of PPC Live. Yeah, you'll get the full transcript, show notes, everything and all details about the whole talk and yeah, and also PPC live events. There, there will be a what macall it, an online version of our PPC Live 17 events.

So go onto the PPC Live site or go to our YouTube page or our LinkedIn page, and you'll see the recording. If you are listening to this after what's it 3:00 PM UK time or if you're listening to it after one, not 1:00 PM earlier than one, but 10:00 AM if you're listening to after 10:00 AM Eastern Time, you'll want to check out the recording of it.

Otherwise, go check it out and watch it live at three excellent talks that we are gonna replay to you. And Ayisha and Paul Salame are going to be joining us live for a live q and a from you if you'd like to. So yeah, so join us for that. And also before I leave, I'm also delighted to share that I'm taking on coaching clients.

So if you wanna really just improve the confidence in yourself and in what you do in terms of digital advertising and take control of your career. Why don't you send me a message, send me a DM on LinkedIn and we can chat about how to work with you on that. So yes, I hope you've enjoyed the show and I look forward to bringing more PPC F-ups and Triumphs next week.

Thank you. Bye.