EP353 - When Automation Took Over: How Opteo Rethought PPC

Anu Adegbola (00:11)
Hello and welcome to PPC live the podcast. I'm your host Anu and the founder of PPC live. And if you're used to hearing advice from PPC experts about how to ensure we are keeping up with the ever changing landscape, don't worry. You are still in the right place. Every week I speak to a different PPC expert or industry expert even about the biggest F-ups they've made and also how they've turned things around and learning that they've made the challenges that they had to turn things around to ensure that they're still experts in their field.

And now I'm not just speaking to one individual expert, I'm speaking to two experts in the digital marketing field, two people from the fantastic company Opteo, brand that have been a fantastic support of PPC Live for a long while. And they are people who have sent, they are brand who have sent their team to really interact with the community in a very non-salesy way, in a way that really just ensures that they are listening firsthand

on what our issues are in this industry. They listen through all the talks, they listen through all the panel discussions, especially where people share what their biggest issues have been. And they take that away to ensure that they're building a tool that responds to what are the customers' issues, what search marketers' issues mainly are. So we speak to Adam, and Shaquira to ⁓ hear from their experience of how...

mistakes that they've had especially in the AI industry and how they how as a company they turn things around the people who are like you know pivotal in those changes and what were the real challenges to make those changes to ensure that they were keeping up with ⁓ you know the AI revolution that we're very much in right now so yeah let's go speak to Adam and Shaquira.

Anu Adegbola (01:53)
Hello Shaquira hello Adam, welcome to PPC Live the podcast.

Adam Dale (01:58)
Thanks, Anu

Shaquira (01:58)
Hello?

Anu Adegbola (01:59)
Hey guys. So yeah, I've got so much delights for having these two very wonderful people joining our podcast. As I said in the intro, they've been a long standing support of PPC Live out of the 19 events. Led especially, we've got to give a shout out to Ben, our fun leader Ben, who's always bringing the Opteo band together for the PPC Live events. so I'm so grateful.

that Opteo are sponsoring us this year and always coming to our events. yeah, know, part of, part of like the benefits is being able to have this nice chat with, the people who helped ensure this PPC live events come alive and continue to go. So I'm just so delighted that there's this opportunity to do this. So a little bit about Opteo and what they do. Opteo have been around for over 10 years, originally as a Google ads optimization tool.

They've now launched, just launched like an early access to a big new version of the platform. So this is kind of their, you know, launching tour. You're going to hear them on loads of other, I'm sure podcasts and publications talking about this, you know, fantastic new launch. And it now covers multiple channels with powerful analysis tools and thoughtfully integrated AI. It's designed for performance marketers navigating a world that's a lot more automated than it used to be.

We know about that. If you're not using AI, you might as well not be doing paid search at all, right? Right now. They're also expanding their agency growth program, helping agencies grow into channels like Microsoft and more recently, TikTok. So if you're managing either of those, they are definitely people worth knowing and all in all, it feels like it's gonna be a big year for them. yeah, check out what they're doing. There's loads of exciting stuff ahead.

But before we get into like the the crux of what we're going to talk about, because it is don't worry, you know, don't do like, my God, I know you just, is this just a brand coming to share what they do and how great they are? No, they are going to share F-ups. They're going to, you know, go down the path of being a bit, you know, self-deprecated and trying to look back as things where things have gone wrong and you know, how they responded to that.

But so that you know our lovely speakers, the lovely reps from UpTale are a little bit better, they're gonna share a few fun facts about them. From, you know what, sorry, I'm actually gonna get them to do this themselves. So Shaquira, your fun fact, and you'll hear her speak and then her fun fact will really make sense as to why ⁓ it is a fun fact. Shaquira, what's your fun fact?

Shaquira (04:32)
My fun fact is, despite this lovely English accent, when I was growing up I had quite a thick Irish accent. When I started school, yeah, I came in with a very thick Irish accent. Obviously very disappeared quickly and I can't do an Irish accent full disclaimer anymore.

Anu Adegbola (04:48)
I at the beginning of the cry was gonna try and get her to do something, a phrase but let's not let's even for any Irish listeners maybe we don't we don't set them up but like so how long were you in Ireland for before you left?

Shaquira (05:01)
Not that

long, a couple of years, but it was like formative years. you know, like when I first started school, yeah, it was that kind of time.

Anu Adegbola (05:05)
Yeah.

Right. was quite

the knowledge and fake. Okay. And Adam, what's your fun fact?

Adam Dale (05:14)
It's not quite as shocking as Shaquira's but being from the North East of England, proud Geordie, I very much planned and still half do plan to be a professional footballer at some point. So if ever I start becoming less available then I finally have the call up from Newcastle United.

Anu Adegbola (05:24)
Why not?

Right? Newcastle, New United, that's the team you're 100 % play for. Okay, but no one else. Love it, love it. But there's another fun fact that I do love as I'm a very music inclined person. Please tell us your second fun fact is.

Adam Dale (05:35)
Of course, 100%. No one else.

Yeah, OK, so ⁓ I mean, I wouldn't have said it's necessarily that fun of a fact that me and my brother, who also does work here at Opteo, James, shout out to James. ⁓ We do like to spin tunes on the weekends where you could call us DJs, bedroom DJs would be the qualifier. We just normally get roped into playing our mates birthday parties and house parties whenever that happens.

Anu Adegbola (05:56)
Hey!

Nice, nice. No, look, it's nice to have a fun thing that has nothing to do with the marketing world and digital marketing work that you do. So you and your brother must be really close. You work together, you DJ together. Has it always been like that? Great family relationship.

Adam Dale (06:23)
Yeah, it's hard. It

has actually really lucky to have for it to have turned out that way. There's a five year age gap between us. So when we were growing up, like I would say to say we weren't as close as we are now. I mean, it's just the annoying younger brother used to get picked on from all my mates. But as we grew up, we realized that, you know, it's like a freebie mate, isn't it? Like if you can get on well with your sibling and you've got a lot of common ground, we actually live together as well, which is, you know,

Anu Adegbola (06:45)
Yeah, absolutely. Wow.

Adam Dale (06:53)
It would be a bit annoying if we didn't get on so well, but thankfully we do. Mum will be pleased to hear me talk about it so positively. Shout out, shout out, Mum. I'm sure you'll be listening to this at some point.

Anu Adegbola (06:55)
Yeah, oh that's amazing. I'm sure right we've got to, right? Of course,

of course you better send this link to her, better send this link to her, that would be fantastic. So yeah, going now straight into you know what we talk about on this podcast, it's all about sharing f-ups sharing mistakes that we've made and that this episode is going to be

Adam Dale (07:07)
I will.

Anu Adegbola (07:21)
no difference, and really grateful that, Adam and Shaquira, you're to be talking about, things that have gone wrong. And I'm also grateful for, your founder, Guillaume, and, know, for allowing this to happen. Cause yeah, who, tech company is actually brave enough to be like, yeah, we did this wrong. ⁓ you know, but yeah, thankfully you guys are, you know, being very good at, you know, working on that, creating new solutions for your customers. But yeah, let's get into talking about that,

I think Adam, you're going to kick us off. What is the FOP that you want to share today?

Adam Dale (07:50)
Yeah, I just want to start off by saying thank you very much once again for having us on. We have been huge fans of what you've been building at PPC Live for a while now. I you mentioned Guillaume just then. He reminds me ever so often that he was at your first ever PPC Live event. So we are really pleased to be sponsoring the podcast for the year and events for the year ahead. Yeah, excited to share what we've been working on as well. And I guess through the lens of what is it? I'm allowed to spare on here, aren't I?

Anu Adegbola (08:09)
Amazing.

Are you allowed to swear? don't hold back. DJ, speak in the language that you would like to speak in.

Adam Dale (08:18)
Yeah, just to clarify. Yeah. I'll go easy. I'll go

easy through what was ultimately a kind of turned out to be a bigger fuck up than what it was if we hadn't dealt with it the way that we did. So, Shaquira and I, may well have recognized our faces if anyone any listeners or also anyone watching on YouTube, which I've always wanted to say this.

Anu Adegbola (08:31)
Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Dale (08:43)
⁓ Anyone watching on YouTube listening may have recognized names, voices, if you've been an Opteo user over the years, we've been at the company since day two, haven't been really secure. We missed the risky founding part, but we were one of the first cohort of Hire's team members who didn't code, didn't design, didn't develop. So we've grown through various iterations of Google Ads, various iterations of Opteo learned a fair bit along the way.

Anu Adegbola (09:08)
Mm. Mm.

Adam Dale (09:12)
And talking of such iterations, we are about to release a new version. In fact, we kind of have started to slowly roll this out. And it took a bit of learning and a lot of struggle to get to that point. So I guess that's kind of the fuck up that we're going to talk about today is how distilling it to a sentence, the rise of AI and automation has changed what it means to be a Google Ads manager.

And therefore, by proxy, it's very much changed what it means to be a tool that serves Google Ads managers.

Anu Adegbola (09:41)
No, absolutely, AI definitely changed the landscape for...

for a lot of us, mean, some of us will say like, know, Nils Rooijmans was a fantastic like speaker at our last event and you know, who has been working on scripts, you know, and him and I fell in love, you know, and actually, I've not fell in love with each other, like, so let's clarify that, fell in love with automation, fell in love with paid search and got, really good friends for our love of paid search kind of thing and our love of doing automation and that's how we became really good friends.

Shaquira (10:01)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (10:14)
The whole automation thing has been around for a long time, but the fact that it's now became the show, the main show, was like Google Ads with some rotation. Now it's automation through Google Ads, a little bit kind of thing. But yeah, so you said that in past couple of years, became really big, AI became really big, really. And what was the thing that really...

What was slow in the way you guys did things? was kind of your response? At what stage as well did you like, okay, we need to be acting faster.

Adam Dale (10:44)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's a good question because I mean, it's AI. I mean, you mentioned it's not necessarily a new thing, AI automation. Like I remember my, when I started at Opteo, it would have been 2017 now. It was the year before that when Google started to roll out smart bidding. So, and I can remember, I can still remember one of my first days at the office sat down with Guillaume and he had his pen and paper out trying to explain to me how a smart bidding algorithm works. And it was all shrouded around this.

Anu Adegbola (10:59)
Yeah, yeah.

Adam Dale (11:12)
be aware because customers are going to have worries and concerns about it. And for so long, that was the normal. We'd see new automated product released in Google Ads. Our customer reaction, like user reaction, through our support inbox was often a good barometer. And for so long, we would always sound strong, but almost reject it. was kind of like a, yeah, in the very early days, because there wasn't the trust or the robustness behind these algorithms.

Anu Adegbola (11:15)
Lately.

Yeah.

⁓

Adam Dale (11:41)
that there are today. And it took us a while, and our users a while, to accept that this is the way that Google is heading. There is nothing we can do about it. So we shouldn't keep trying to hold on to the old ways of managing Google Ads. This idea where we're losing transparency, we're losing control, and Opteo as a solution was always, OK, well, we're going to try and do all we can to help you use the manual alternative to this automated product.

Anu Adegbola (12:00)
Yeah.

Mmm. Mmm.

Adam Dale (12:08)
but we're going to give you the benefits, the time saving benefits through our own algorithms, which don't require you handing control over to the overlords of the big ads platforms. And it was in hindsight, I think it was probably the release of PMAX when Google really went all in with a, OK, full black box transparency here. And they took away our ability to muscle in, pull these extra levers.

Anu Adegbola (12:13)
Yeah.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam Dale (12:34)
And that was when we thought, OK, we kind of might need to go back to the drawing board here and think about what do we need to change fundamentally to make sure that we're continuing to give our users an edge today and also tomorrow moving forward.

Anu Adegbola (12:38)
Mm.

Yeah.

Absolutely. No, that's a very, very interesting and great point. And to be honest, really, really impressed that you guys I'd say weathered this storm. know I definitely feel like, you you guys might probably even be underplaying it for how tools really needed to be able to respond to like, okay, we can't just be like, okay, we'll be the one that shows you the visibility while Google is closing. Google like this big

behemoth off of like, you know, brand, they've got the monopoly. There's so many like lawsuits against them that it's literally like, yeah, and they're still doing business as usual. and, ⁓ honestly, I'm one, one, man, cause this is not about, you know, you know, putting down any other brands, but some brands didn't make it. Definitely. Some brands had the same issues that you guys had. They weren't able to, you know, change the direction of their ship. Their ship had been built such in a very

you know, stagnant way that they weren't able to really respond in kind of that kind of way. But one thing I am curious about, even from my experience that I used to work for a different, you know, tool at some point, where you seen that your customers like when like those smart campaigns or smart bidding where we're working, you were, they were your customers not finding smart bidding working well for them. So you guys were an alternative solution or the customers customers were just, or customers more

apprehensive of this new thing so they didn't try it. Which one was it?

Adam Dale (14:15)
more so,

I think a mix of the both, but my memory is more so that the latter is what prevailed there. It was definitely wrapped up in this idea where, I mean, again, I'm talking nearly 10 years ago now, like this, was very much a new thing. And everyone that was managing campaigns at the time, they were somewhat set in stone or like they tried and tested processes and like, hey, I'm so used to controlling everything down to daily keyword bit adjustments.

Anu Adegbola (14:21)
Okay.

Sure.

Adam Dale (14:43)
And now all of a sudden there's this new wave and I expect it to trust these, you know, I say these algorithms as if they're entirely bad. Of course they're not like timers. They stood the test of time and then they're more robust, more refined, but there were benefits to it. We would just give them the security, peace of mind and that, you know, we can help you with these massive time saving benefits, standardization benefits as well, but just continue using the bidding strategies that you're used to. And

in hindsight, as we're about to get onto, maybe we should have took an if you can't beat them join them approach a little sooner.

Anu Adegbola (15:17)
Sure,

sure. Can I also, it's been too late. I saw this like five minutes into the call. Shout out to your hat. Shout out to your hat, because it's all about that. At some point, Google were just taking a lot of things and one of those things was the exact match issue and the fact that all close variants and everything that we're like, what is a match type anymore? And whether you like it or not, it is part of that journey into making more things.

Adam Dale (15:26)
yes.

Shaquira (15:29)
you

Anu Adegbola (15:45)
more automated because it was a matter of no you can't just tell us the exact thing that you want to bid on we're going to decide for you we're going to decide the variety of that actually exact word that we feel that you know your ads should be showing again so so yeah that was definitely one of those ⁓ pivotal moments in ⁓ that area as well so like now going on to like how you guys did turn it around you mentioned the fact that when then p max came about

That's when you started thinking, Oh, actually, maybe we should do some, although my memory of PMAX, I don't know about you is that loads of people complained about it at the beginning. PMAX was a trash fire. And it's really actually only recently with, you know, channel reporting and, know, having more access to like your search query reports on an asset groups that people have been more, okay, now I have more visibility. at the beginning,

people were a bit annoyed with it. So was it right to the beginning of PMAX coming out that you guys, or you waited a bit? Go on.

Adam Dale (16:48)
Yeah, no, wasn't. we actually, funnily enough, are very early days in PMAX. We had a really nice value-adding Opteo in that we built a tool which supported or could reveal Performance Max search terms before they were available through the API. And I think that in hindsight, that probably delayed the motivation behind making this decision to have a big rethink. It's because, wow, we can keep doing what we're doing.

Anu Adegbola (17:04)
Wow, okay.

sure.

Adam Dale (17:14)
It was almost like an accidental feature to be honest. It's like, okay, we've found a cool way to engineer these search terms and apply what's named called n-gram analysis, adding new negative keywords. But in answer to your question, no, was probably a couple years after PMAX was originally introduced. I think it was maybe 2021 when PMAX was fully rolled out the year before in beta. So we matched that.

Anu Adegbola (17:14)
Yeah.

Yeah.

sure.

Okay. Yeah.

Adam Dale (17:41)
like this gradual rollout and increase in adoption with performance marks by taking a look at the data we had access to. So primarily user actions inside our platform. And we noticed that what was the wheelhouse of Opteo for so long, these bluntly daily recommendations to help you manage manual campaigns starting to trend downwards in terms of numbers applied. ⁓ At which point that was what's spurred on really. was okay, PMAX's adoption is going up.

Anu Adegbola (17:44)
Mm.

Mm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam Dale (18:11)
and performance is getting better and it's clearly going nowhere. Although last year or so maybe there's a different angle to take on that. believe PMAX has started to taper off a little bit in terms of adoption rates. But we just thought that this daily recommendations is being, holding onto this idea of controlling campaigns in the old way is not going to stand us in good stead for the long term. So that's where we went back to the drawing board.

Anu Adegbola (18:13)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Adam Dale (18:39)
Yeah, sorry, I've been talking a lot here. We'll break it up in a bit. ⁓

Anu Adegbola (18:40)
Okay. Noel, look, we, don't worry about that. Shaquira

Shaquira (18:42)
you

Anu Adegbola (18:46)
is gonna take the stage now for us and telling us from like, you know, what happened at the drawing board. How did things then turn around?

Shaquira (18:54)
Yeah, I mean, yeah, we, as you know, we spent many, many, many months rebuilding the app from the ground up, which was no easy feat. don't think anyone, any tool tech company decides to take on that endeavor lightly. And it was, yeah, I mean, Adam probably agrees. It was a difficult year of not releasing much to the public, to users, but behind the scenes being like incredibly busy and incredibly stressed out.

Anu Adegbola (19:09)
Mm-hmm.

Shaquira (19:20)
Yeah, I think we navigated that. Well, we're here now. We're kind of proud of where we've ended up after that year of Rebuild. And yeah, mean, know you had some thoughts that you wanted to share on this bit.

Adam Dale (19:37)
Yeah, I mean, this is case of, you know, for the first time ever going back to the drawing board and you think realizing that it's not just new small iterations of updates, which you've been so used to. was like, ultimately doing a bit of market research, like speaking to first and foremost, our loyal customers. You know, we had hundreds of feedback calls with them about Opteo, of course, but also more importantly, at this point about outside of Opteo, like what are they actually spending their time doing every day?

Anu Adegbola (19:46)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam Dale (20:06)
You know, this time consuming daily grunt work which we set out to help users eliminate back in the early days, which nowadays can in many cases actually be solved by in-platform automation. You you've got your automated bidding strategies, you've got your responsive ads, so you don't need to manage your split test with ETAs. So it was just a case of thinking, okay, what are you doing? What are we not doing to help you with what you're doing?

And, you know, that was, so there was existing customers. actually, looked at a lot of, as I say, the data, which I guess Shaquira can talk on a bit more shortly. But also we got, we made an effort and I'm sure some of the listeners here will, yeah, will agree that you may have bumped into us and you've mentioned Ben already at industry events over the last couple of years. Like we made a point to put our faces out there and meet like experts in the field that really learned.

Anu Adegbola (20:57)
Thanks.

Adam Dale (21:01)
What do you need? Who are we building this thing for? And what are the challenges? What keeps you awake at night? And what we realized it I know it sounds like we're putting a target on the back of AI and automation here, but it is all a consequence, whether intended or otherwise, of how our work life has changed. As with Google Ads Manager, now that AI is the default. So, sorry, Anu

Anu Adegbola (21:19)
Yeah.

Nah, no, go ahead. Yeah, absolutely.

I'll just say absolutely. Yeah, you're right.

Adam Dale (21:27)
I thought long and hard about this and I think I can distill what we found to three points. So first being the role of a Google ad specialist we're seeing is perhaps on the decline, you whether it's, I know you, touched on the, and again, don't want to get too political here, but the court case with Google, maybe there is something to be said in that there's a, I guess a default lack of trust at the moment, all time high, you know,

Anu Adegbola (21:40)
Mmm.

Yes.

Adam Dale (21:56)
Maybe advertisers are a little less reluctant to invest in Google Ads. ⁓ Maybe there's also new opportunities have opened up in other channels. What we're seeing is Opteo users who signed up managing just the Google Ads account are now managing a Microsoft, a Meta, a LinkedIn, and in some cases, a TikTok. Well, in many cases more, but those are the new channels which we've ultimately decided to roll up into Opteo.

Anu Adegbola (22:00)
Mm.

Adam Dale (22:22)
Off the back of this big project, can officially say we are a multi-channel automation tool, not just a Google Ads one, which is exciting.

Anu Adegbola (22:28)
That's a one.

And what I'd also love you to touch upon, because yeah, you're right. There's an all time low in changing, know, changing tactics in terms of like, you know, Google trust for them. And also a big challenge in trying to make those changes in terms of like, okay, finally going, all right, we need to get on board with all this AI stuff. And what does that mean?

for a marketer and how do we support these paid search marketers in a way where they are more integrated with their other channels and it's more like they're working for the brand success. I think that's a big thing that has shifted where a lot of times the paid search manager's job was to drive traffic. Now you're really supposed to be like, yeah, you might be driving traffic and your PPC might be doing great revenue, but if the business is not making money, they're gonna cut your cost. And so you need to know.

what are the other channels are doing? What are the marketing factors that are going to be affecting what that paid search manager is going to be doing? But like, what also I'd like you to touch upon is that with those changes, what would you say what, you know, cause you did said you did some big market research, went to several different events. I saw those. I got a little bit jealous sometimes, i might add was like, I hope they're coming back to PPC live. Of course, of course. I love that.

Shaquira (23:40)
Thank

Adam Dale (23:43)
Of course we're back, of course we're back, we'll never leave you.

Anu Adegbola (23:47)
But yeah, what would you say were some of those big challenges for like a tool to do? What aspect of that re shifting of that year of trying to really like kind of reach, change what you guys actually did? What part of it was the most challenging for you guys?

Adam Dale (24:06)
Yeah, well, it's

The developers will kill me for saying this, but the boring stuff from my point of view, the data stuff, it's this, they're doing some very clever stuff behind the background. This idea of, we've got 10 years worth of code, which we built to support Google ads. know, Microsoft ads is pretty similar, but meta is not at all. So we have to find a way, we're still a small team and we don't have the time to continue to build four individual features moving forward or five. So there was a lot of the work.

Anu Adegbola (24:15)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

Adam Dale (24:37)
behind the scenes went into a way to almost like normalize the data between the four or five platforms that we're now supporting. So we can effectively build one feature and it can as close as we can get it to copy paste across the others. So there's a big emphasis in Opteo of getting all of your channels performance data in one place. And you don't need to bounce between different ads platforms.

Anu Adegbola (24:44)
team.

Yeah.

sure.

Adam Dale (25:00)
holistic view as you've touched on there, how's the business performing rather than just how's my Google Ads account performing? It was all taken into consideration when we redesigned the interface, but also thought about how we're plugging in all these data sources.

Anu Adegbola (25:06)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, that change in dates, that's a very good point. Honestly, I think I'm going to actually, the way I'm going to promote this episode is like the most honest of an interview you'll get with a tool company as you can get because you, know, all the tools, these, like, we do great things. We do this with this, but actually talking about

Adam Dale (25:30)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (25:36)
You know, what are the true, you know, annoyances? Just the software engineers will love you for this. All year, all, all of them, regardless of what, because, because you're being honest about how it's challenging. I think we underestimate how much coding it takes to, you know, be an API, to be able to work with the API. And I think sometimes we're like, you've done it for Google. So you can do it for anything. Right. And actually it's reported to know, no, no, can't. It might even take.

Adam Dale (25:42)
I don't know whether they will.

Shaquira (25:44)
Yeah.

Adam Dale (26:03)
No, can't.

Anu Adegbola (26:05)
a brand new learning, might take a brand new, you know, need to go on another course and how meta does things will be different, how TikTok do it. And it's all because they're just trying to be challenging against each other. Like Facebook and Apple, we know hate each other. So there's no way that because you can code for Apple means that you can code for Facebook. Absolutely not. And that works with all the different, you know, big brands. So I think that is such a very insightful thing for you to actually share with us on that. So yeah, definitely. Thank you for that.

So like, how are your customers in terms of this process? you know, was it a difficult time for customer retention? You know, I know you don't, don't necessarily, I mean, every, every brand has this. Anytime you have a, clients, your agencies have the issues with like customers come, customers go kind of thing. Was that quite stable for you guys or, and yeah, please touch on that.

Adam Dale (26:57)
Yeah, it was, I wouldn't say it was alarming, but it wasn't, it wasn't a period of exciting growth that we've been used to for so long. Like we, we, we really were, I guess the reason why we're here to talk about, and I'm conscious of framing this around not being fearful of change, but more like complacency. Like we, were really onto a winner for so long. and it was, you things started to taper off a little bit and then

Anu Adegbola (27:04)
show.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Adam Dale (27:23)
things kind of started to continue to taper off and then like releasing new features in the frame of what we were used to didn't really fix customer retention or customer acquisition. So bluntly, yeah, I mean, the numbers, the lines going down on a graph are what motivate you to have tough conversations and decide to spend 18 months like on essentially a feature freeze and a rebuild, but necessary. And we're already starting to see the benefits of it amongst.

Anu Adegbola (27:32)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Adam Dale (27:50)
customers who we've, mean some of our users have been with us for 10 years. It's transparent as possible with them throughout this whole, this whole process. I know things maybe aren't moving as fast as what we would ideally like but you know keeping them abreast of all the plans and updates and you know in many cases showing them what we've been working on as it progresses. I think it goes a lot, some way to just be honest with your customers as much as you can.

Anu Adegbola (27:54)
Bye

Shaquira (27:54)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:58)
Mm.

Yeah.

America.

Absolutely

Adam Dale (28:19)
Especially for a SaaS tool, again, we're not an agency. It's not like we have personal relationships with all of our clients. So it's really hard to be personally honest with everyone. But whenever someone does have a question, just tell them how it is. ultimately, there's a lot of users that put lot of faith in us. And we're looking forward to paying it back to them over the next couple of weeks.

Anu Adegbola (28:39)
Yeah,

absolutely. How about you Shaquira? What do you feel like? Because both of you will have your different customer bases that you were speaking to. What were you getting in terms of like, what was the temperature life of customers during that time of like needing to overhaul?

Shaquira (28:58)
Yeah, I I speak to customers every single day, like I have done for pretty much like the past seven years, right? So yeah, it wasn't like a particularly comfortable time. But we're really lucky that our, I don't know whether it's just us, but like our user base are a lovely bunch of people. And we tend to have, like Adam said, lot of our users have been around for years and years and years. And a lot of them, you know, root for us and were rooting for us during that kind of feature freeze, which was nice in that.

was encouraging too. I think a lot of it came from, like Adam said, transparency, being honest, having that open dialogue between us and them, letting them into what we're up to instead of just like shutting them out completely because we're nervous or embarrassed or scared. Yeah, just having that open dialogue I think helped. And yeah, it certainly wasn't a comfortable year. That's how I put it.

Anu Adegbola (29:47)
Yeah.

absolutely. No, yeah. when you need to make these changes and when it can be like, because you guys have been very honest in terms of like, you are not quick on the jump to actually make the change. And then it can be really heartwarming that you have customers, as you said, who are rooting for you. So you're like, okay, kind of a bit of that helps the journey, which is really great to hear.

Where I didn't realize how long we've been talking for but because I've been interested in all of this but so we're gonna have to switch gears very soon because I'd love us to also touch on the fact of like what you feel like, you know customers now are being you know reacting or maybe mistakes that you see that Coming into like when you get new clients, I'm sure they're like, okay audit We've not we've not been doing this. Well, can you help us with this? We'll be ready to get to talk on that. But before we get into that bit

Adam Dale (30:19)
channel.

Anu Adegbola (30:44)
What's one big takeaway you'd like to leave our audiences with in terms of that journey you guys had from going to a state of let's help our customers deal with the status quo and get back onto the status quo to then embracing the whole AI evolution, revolution?

Adam Dale (31:03)
Yeah.

Shaquira (31:03)
Yeah, so the question is what advice do we have, what takeaway?

Anu Adegbola (31:05)
What takeaway? Yeah. Yeah.

Shaquira (31:09)
Well, for anyone, I mean, if you're a tech tool, my advice would be to definitely step out of any echo chambers you're in. And yeah, I think all the answers you kind of need are with the customers and with the users. So don't be scared. Don't be embarrassed if you feel like you're off the right track. That's not the way you say it. But yeah, you know what I mean.

Anu Adegbola (31:34)
Yeah.

Shaquira (31:38)
And yeah, just get out of any echo chamber and just get your face out there, go to events like we did, like speak to the people you're building for.

Anu Adegbola (31:44)
Yeah.

Yeah. Speaking to the customers is a big thing for sure that I think we every, yeah. But people don't do it enough. That's why it's still being said. can, it things that sound like a cliche that people always say, I always like, me and my friends will say, you know, we'll talk about some advice that's still been given about on paid search You know, people are still going, yeah, don't use broad match too much or make sure it has guard rails. And, and this lady, she's an SEO senior expert. She's like,

Shaquira (31:49)
Yeah, it sounds like a cliche, but it's... yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:13)
Really? They're still giving those basic advice. And I'm like, you've got to realize that maybe the reason that advice is still being given is that people are still not adhering to it. People are forgetting. People are literally, it seems like basic to us because we're in it every day. When they're new account managers coming to the scene, they're new brands, you know, popping up, new people discovering paid search for the first time. And they're still making the stupid errors because obviously Google is going to push for the strategy.

that makes them the most money that common sense to pay such markets as we know not to do it. And yeah, it all ties in with Google trust. How do we trust Google? And some people, don't know, they don't know yet to not trust Google. That's the thing. Yeah.

Adam Dale (32:48)
Thank

Yeah,

we've seen that, I would say, overall change gradually. Of course, not thoroughly. think you touched on it. New comments to Google Ads, it's easier to... Or you've got to experience it. Google has to give you a reason maybe not to fully trust them. And I guess as you're starting out, it's so easy to believe the big authoritative figure and the power pairing of Target ROAS and PMAX and Broad match

Anu Adegbola (33:24)
right? Powerpair.

Adam Dale (33:26)
But yeah,

exactly. what I think, I keep going back to it, but it's just the guardrails, isn't it? We're not saying don't use the power pairing. It's just don't set it up and then forget about it just because your average ROAS seems to be good in the end. There are ways for you to, I guess, apply a guardrail that maybe other agencies aren't doing. And sometimes it does take looking at things from a different perspective to be able to see those guardrails.

Anu Adegbola (33:32)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, thank you guys for that. That's been a very genuinely, the most honest conversation I've had with the tech tool. I don't know whether I'll be able to do that again. In fact, I might use your episode to implore other tech tools to be a bit more honest. Cause yeah, cause it's a good, it's a good fresh perspective. It's refreshing to have that kind of conversation with, you know, a SaaS tool. But yeah, now getting to that whole like, you know,

Adam Dale (34:08)
in.

Anu Adegbola (34:21)
when sometimes new clients come on board and they're, you know, they need help with a certain area they've been doing wrong for a while. you know, what are some of like those like big errors that you feel brands are still doing managers are still doing that you're like, guys, this should be basic. Like we just said a minute ago, this should be basic. Like you shouldn't be doing this anymore. How come it's still happening? What are some of those obvious or some of your favorite ones? It might not even be something that's hard or easy. It just something that has stuck out in your head.

Shaquira, do you want to start us off?

Shaquira (34:53)
Yeah, I mean for me it's quite broad but I see it all the time. was saying to Adam, knee-jerk reactions from PPCs is something I see all the time and it manifests for me quite clearly because when PMAX came out for example, I remember chatting to loads of people and they just kept asking me, what are you guys doing for PMAX? What do you do for PMAX? They were freaking out, they'd just heard about this thing coming out and I kind of calmly asked him.

Anu Adegbola (35:00)
Yeah.

you

Shaquira (35:19)
what do you want? What do you want to optimize for PMAX? What are you currently doing manually that you want a tool to help with?" And they had nothing to say, they had no answer. They didn't really know what they were asking. And so I still see that, well, I have seen that historically and I expect to keep seeing it where people have really knee-jerk reactions to new stuff that drops. And it'd be nice if people took a calm, measured approach when new stuff drops in.

Anu Adegbola (35:27)
nothing.

Yeah.

Mmm!

Yeah.

Shaquira (35:48)
and

just see if there's an exciting opportunity to explore something new instead of scary.

Anu Adegbola (35:51)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. How about you, Adam? What are your like favorites? my God.

Adam Dale (35:58)
So

if I try and get back to a recent sample size, I would say the way that I've seen some users interacting with Opteo's AI, I haven't had a chance to touch on it yet, but we've introduced our own AI chat integration throughout the whole of Opteo in the new update. And it's essentially a standalone chat feature which can tap into your Google Ads account, our database code base.

Anu Adegbola (36:07)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Adam Dale (36:25)
various web searches and you can, I we've seen some good use cases for the users that are willing or not willing or understand that AI and LLMs can't always give you a perfect answer after a very short and brief prompt. I've seen some users work with it to the point where they've essentially replicated them daily month, weekly monthly to-do lists for all clients in Opteo.

Anu Adegbola (36:37)
Mm.

Yeah.

Adam Dale (36:49)
to the point

where they save the prompt, return next week, click all the buttons and all the answers are given to you already because everything's like pre-prompted and given the context, it needs to just go straight to relevant parts of the account. So my recent example of this sort of frustration would be just trying to maybe expect too much too soon from whatever AI, LNM that you guys are using, work with it a little bit.

Anu Adegbola (37:13)
Yeah, yeah, those for sure. if people like, especially for, yes, again, this is for those who are new. We should never forget that the industry is always involving the people we're speaking to might be people who just joined the industry maybe two, three years ago, because it's the people who've been in this for a long time that we know, you know, give it a while, give it a while to learn. then,

newbies they're like yeah the first results is exactly what it's going to do i'm like no no it's not give it a give it time to learn so yeah now also even going into like how how ai what the ai frontier is going to be about like do you guys have any advice in terms of for the future for 2026 what's what's what people should prepare for or just

What are your predictions for this year of how the industry, what's going to be like our biggest challenge to really face in terms of the world of AI?

Adam Dale (38:08)
Hmm.

Shaquira (38:08)
I think we're going to see this move into this fully agentic future backfire. think people are going to... Yeah, I mean... We're super interested in the idea that it can do even more heavy lifting for you, but I worry that there's a bit of a gap between just fundamental knowledge of...

Anu Adegbola (38:14)
So you think it's going to backfire.

Adam Dale (38:18)
Strong words.

Anu Adegbola (38:21)
Love

it.

Shaquira (38:33)
PPC and also just you know businesses your clients your brand like what the important parts of that. ⁓ If you don't have those fundamentals in place and you're relying on some AI agent to actually push the buttons and do the thinking I can see that backfiring massively.

Anu Adegbola (38:39)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I agree. I agree. How about you, Adam?

Adam Dale (38:55)
Well, I think the big taboo, whether it's taboo or not is AI Max. Like I think it's, I think the warnings are, mean, Shaquira touched on it just before, like this idea of like knee-jerk reactions and panic. Like I don't really see it being as impactful as like the introduction of performance Max was. Like it doesn't seem to be a new, to be fair, mean, PMAX originally was an evolution of smart shopping, wasn't it? So it was.

Anu Adegbola (39:01)
Mmm.

Adam Dale (39:22)
And then all of a sudden Google removed smart shopping and like transitioned everything over to P max. If I don't know, if Google started to do the same thing with getting inventory to appear in like the AI searches on the Google search page, then there may be. But I think I saw a I think it was, it was a talk at your PPC live was last November or October when you did one. I think I can't remember the name of the gentleman, but he was talking about like market share of all the LLMs. And I think I still think he predicted like.

Anu Adegbola (39:36)
Yeah.

October.

Adam Dale (39:51)
compared to like paid like search engines. Yeah, Neil, and it was Neil, yeah, good memory. And he was saying that the percentage of market share is still like absolutely negligible, but clearly it's going nowhere. So like it's a case of yet maybe get in testing early, but don't expect to see the same efficiencies as you would like.

Anu Adegbola (39:54)
This was, yeah, this was a tug. Wait, wait, we're in shortage. yeah, was Neil Baker from Tug, yeah.

Okay

Yeah

Adam Dale (40:18)
traditionally in like a bottom funnel search campaign, it's testing budget. As we know, PMAX didn't perform well for a couple of years after that was released and yeah, it's similarly, but I don't think the scale, the potential risk or the waves that will be dropped in the water will be quite as big with AIMAX in my limited opinion.

Anu Adegbola (40:20)
Yes. Yes. Yeah.

No. Yeah.

Yeah, to be fair, like, you know, I know some people are going like, yeah, it's working. It's, you know, and all of these things, it depends. Some people are saying that it's totally trash kind of thing. but yeah, it's, it's all about thinking that any, any new, new, new, new feature and, you know, I'll be

remiss not to mention shout out to chat GPT ads and people who have had their eyes on like, okay, when is it gonna come to the UK? Who knows? Like I'm very intrigued to just say the word of people who have had the opportunity to test it in the US. To start off with like, yeah, in the beginning stages are not going to be reflective of how it actually will work.

on a long term when they actually, you know, then see results and what advertisers complain about and what did they decide to, you know, give control, you know, of to, for that, to advertisers to be able to do. So yeah, that's very interesting. You guys, the two of you have been a fantastic pair to talk to today. Adam and Shaquira, thank you so much. Before we go, before we do our final sign off, a nice fun non-PPC non-word question.

What if your PPC career were a movie? What would the title be? It could be a movie that is already out there. You could come out with a brand new title. It doesn't matter. Either way works. ⁓ Shaquira, do want to go first?

Shaquira (41:57)
Oh, this is tricky one that I'm not prepared for, but you said the famous phrase a second ago and I was thinking it's a phrase I use probably every single day, which is it depends. I'm going to, every, I a lot of questions, a lot of advice. What do I do? Whether it's in Google Ads or an Opteo. I'm like, it depends, let's talk.

Anu Adegbola (42:06)
They'd be fine.

It mate.

It depends, there should keep her moving. I love it, I love it, let's do it. How about you Adam? You can't say it depends now, sorry, that's taken.

Shaquira (42:19)
Thank

Adam Dale (42:21)
If

Well,

it always depends. That's the honest answer. No, no, no. think because my PPC career equals my career with Opteo, I think it'd be sensible here for me to link it somehow back to the change which is happening here in the product where we're evolving. So I was thinking about this before the quote, because spoiler alert, everyone, Annie might have suggested that she was going to ask this question.

Anu Adegbola (42:33)
Okay.

you

Adam Dale (42:50)
And I was thinking

about, you know, it's a next level, it's a new phase, maybe some of the best sequels, sequel movies that are going to be made, in my opinion, Godfather Part II, which got Lord of the Rings, Episode II and III, course, Two Towers Return of the King. ⁓ But again, going extra linking it back to AI and automation, I think the most fitting answer here would be Terminator 2, Rise of the Machines. There we are.

Anu Adegbola (42:59)
Mmm.

Yeah?

Oh, okay. Okay.

Terminator 2 rise of the machines. I love that. I love that. And I love the explanation. We don't need to say more about that. That's absolutely fantastic. Yeah, the machines are coming. Although as Shaquira said, it might backfire. The whole agentic world might backfire. So you never know. We'll see. We'll see.

Adam Dale (43:19)
Ha ha ha!

Shaquira (43:33)
We'll see how it plays out.

Adam Dale (43:35)
Yeah. Just make

sure you're saying please and thank you to ChatGPT

Anu Adegbola (43:40)
right? Yes, there's a whole conversation about that. gosh. bless you guys.

It's been so great chatting with you. Where can we where's the best way to get, you know, the updates of what Opteo are doing?

Shaquira (43:55)
Yeah, mean, so we have an early access program that we're rolling out for the new version of the app right now. So if you go to opteo.com/ppclive then you can register for early access and you can see everything we've been up to and get into a free trial for the new stuff.

Anu Adegbola (44:12)
Amazing. I don't like any other places like, like maybe LinkedIn.

Adam Dale (44:17)
Yeah, I mean,

we were getting a bit active again on LinkedIn, aren't we? On the Opteo account Shaquira, we've been posting some announcements on, I guess, the Early Access program, the new agency growth partnership. have, I mean, feel free to connect with both of us, Adam, Shaquira, our teammates Ben and James as well. We, if anyone has any questions about what we've been up to, what we've got planned, we would just be, it's our favorite thing to do really is talk to people.

Anu Adegbola (44:32)
Yeah.

Adam Dale (44:47)
Give us an opportunity. We'll answer everything you've got.

Anu Adegbola (44:50)
I can attest for that. They absolutely love chatting. I'll have them at the events and I'll be like, yep, they're chatting away with some new people, some about their service. And it's great. It's what makes the event so lovely. And so, you know, I have that great community feel.

Adam Dale (44:57)
Ha

Anu Adegbola (45:06)
So yeah, for those who would love to meet Adam and Shaquira at any future events, our next one is April 29th, that's gonna be at Brighton. But we're gonna be back in London on like July 31st, I think it is. It's the last Thursday of July, whichever that date that is, we'll be back in London. So yeah, you'll get to have a chat with the fun PPC Live community, including Adam, Shaquira. But yeah, for now, thank you both for.

joining the podcast today and sharing so many great learnings with our listeners. Thank you guys.

Adam Dale (45:37)
Thanks for having us.

Shaquira (45:37)
Thank you very much, Anu. Yeah, I appreciate

it. Thank you.

Anu Adegbola (45:42)
Thank you so much Shaquira. Thank you so much Adam for sharing that very insightful behind the scenes of what happens with a SaaS tool when you know changes in the market happens where you have to redirect course. I love that advice, especially from Shaquira about making sure that you're not sitting in an echo chamber of what you feel that you know the customer should do or what you feel like you, you know, you've created the tool for. You should not just create the tool for what you think.

in your head, should create a tool for what customers need. So speak to your customers so that they can help you lead the direction of where, what, you know, releases that you should make to ensure that you keep having customers, you know, you need customers to ensure that you, you, you thrive and survive in, in, in the, you know, B2B SaaS world. So if you're not listening to them, if you're not creating something that they are going to need, how are you going to survive? So always keep that in mind. So yeah.

for more information and the full transcript and show notes and all those resources and links that we shared on that episode, please go to podcast.ppc.live to get all those details. Yes, PPC live events, we had a fantastic PPC in-person event.

But our next event is going to be our in-person event is going to be in April, April 29th in Brighton just before brightonSEO So we're really excited for that. already got speakers lined up. Tickets are going to go to sell on sale very soon. So look out for that. But yeah, keep in mind to join us on April 29th. actually, tickets sales might already be live already. So go to ppc.live.

to figure out, find out whether you can get your early birth ticket sale. And we're going to be doing three stages of ticket sales this time. We're going to do early birth sale. We're going to do first ticket sale release and final sale release on the week of. So because we really, it really helps to plan to have people buy their tickets ⁓ in advance, as advanced as possible. So if you're buying your ticket at the last minute, it's going to cost you the most. yeah, make sure you're one of the first to get your ticket so that you can get it for the cheapest possible price.

Before I leave you, I'm also delighted to share that I am taking on coaching clients. And so, yeah, just to help people with their confidence to really get involved in the industry and know how to navigate it, whether it's from, you know, a client working with a client or working with a manager or working with, you know, an agency, if you're the manager of an in-house brand. Yeah. So let me know. I've dealt with, I've worked in all those situations, whether it's about matter of, you know,

asking for that promotion or asking for that salary increase, I can help you do that. So yeah, go to themarketinganu.com to book a discovery call with me. It's going to be a free 15 minute call with me for us to figure out what it is that you need so that I can plan our conversations around the specifics, areas of interest that matter to you. So yeah, so I hope you've enjoyed the show and I look forward.

to bringing more PPC F-ups and Triumph next week. Thank you, bye.