EP359 - Misreported ROAS, Account Structure Chaos & AI Mistakes ft Maddie Lightening

Anu Adegbola (00:02.189)
Hello Maddie, welcome to PPC Live the podcast.

Maddie (00:05.144)
Hello, thank you so much for having me.

Anu Adegbola (00:07.305)
It's such a delight and I've got to say that you guys are speaking to Maddie Lightening which is her actual marital name. This was not a brand employ. A year ago she became Maddie Lightening when she got married. her husband has been the one dealing with the whole really is that your name for the longest time and now she's going to be dealing with that with that. imagine.

But I feel like it's a great, it's a great, it'll be great for interviews. You know, you can use that as a lightning by name, lightning by, you know, work ethics kind of thing. We're all like, you know, fast and quick work. But no, like lightning is not just, you know, a last name that she uses as a ploy at all. Maddie is someone who has been a paid media leader for over a decade of experience. helps brands grow through like intelligence, performance driven advertising.

And she's the head of paid media at Hallam. And this was in fact, sorry, I'm also going to add that I'm just so impressed that she joined Hallam maybe like a year ago and a year in they were like, yeah, we see this talent. In fact, from the interview, they saw the talent, but it took some restructuring for her to then get to the head of paid media, paid media role. So, yeah, she's doing amazing work with them, leading strategy across a wide mix of channels from search and social to programmatic digital out of home and ABM.

always with the focus of delivering measurable commercial impact. She started her career through apprenticeship, you know, and quickly specialized in paid media and has since built a reputation for blending strategic thinking with hands-on expertise across global campaigns and platforms. She's recognized as one of the BIMA 100 and a regular conference speaker. And she's now focused on how AI and data are reshaping the future of media, really.

anyone that wants to get ahead should have that on their radar for sure. And she's always driven with a clear goal, helping brands reach the right audiences and turn investment into real growth. So yeah, that is amazing. I love your nodding along with all of that, cause you're like, yeah, I agree. That's me. That's me. I did all that amazing work. Yeah, that sounds about right. Amazing. Fun fact. know me, like sharing with our guests our fun facts. So Maddie, what's your fun fact?

Maddie (02:17.55)
Alright, that sounds about right.

Maddie (02:26.818)
well, we were just saying that when I first met Anu, it was at Brighton SEO and she was moderating the stage. And when I was asked a fun fact at that point of time, I didn't have one. So we just said that I make banana bread. but these days I'm much more into my Formula One and I've actually met both of the McLaren F1 drivers, Solando Norris and Oscar Piafstri.

Anu Adegbola (02:48.285)
amazing. How did that meet happen? was that like a, you bought a ticket specifically for it to happen or they were just walking by, you're like, my God.

Maddie (02:56.918)
No.

No, I'm not that lucky. But that being said, I'm very lucky in that my husband actually works for McLaren. So they do friends and family days and barbecues and things like that. So I just kind of tagged along. And whilst he was being really professional, I was fangirling.

Anu Adegbola (03:13.859)
I mean, sorry, I would. I I can't say I am a huge, like, you know, fun fan, but it's an institution kind of thing, right? If I was, yeah, if I was on those invites, I'd be like, my God, my God, I might turn my ring around and be like, I'm sure you are better than me. Yeah, yeah. Any guy that's working for Formula One is thinking, yeah, we're not taking Anu to Formula One Family Friends Day.

Maddie (03:35.502)
Well...

Anu Adegbola (03:40.285)
wow, that's amazing. So yeah, fantastic wide range of interests there. But you know, one thing I always have to mention is just a big gratitude to you, Maddie, you know, being able to being so eager. I asked Maddie and within minutes I got the response, yes, I want to be on the podcast. And I was like, yay, that's a kind of energy I like people to bring knowing that mistakes don't define us.

You know, we've done them, we learned from them, we can talk about them, you know, because, hey, you're now head of paid media that didn't stop you in any way. so yeah, let's, let's hope that what our listeners here is something that they can learn from so that they don't make the same mistakes. And, you know, know that even in the middle of mistakes, there's always a fix and we can always turn things around.

and be great in the industry. So Maddie, it away. I think you have a few of them for us today. So yeah, what are the F-UPS you'd like to share with us today?

Maddie (04:36.876)
I do have like, I'll start with a small one, which is just something I genuinely didn't even realise. It was like, you know, sometimes you make a mistake and you're like, I shouldn't have made that mistake. I know better. This was not one of them. I had no clue. So it was just like nice to figure it out. And luckily no real damage was done, but.

On account currencies. So I work with a few clients that are based in Australia, but they work with me in the UK. They have a UK business even, but it's just running off of like an Australian card, for example, doing the billing. So when you set up a account like that with Google ads, for example, it actually translates that currency for the conversion value as well. So that obviously plays into like the ROAS metric and everything. And the Australian dollar is more or less about double what the Great British

pounders so I was actually halfing what I was reporting to them when actually it was accurate so I ended up massively under reporting we finally figured it out when I looked at their CRM data and was like no we're running at double the ROAS and value that I'm actually telling you

Anu Adegbola (05:41.079)
Yeah. Yeah. So like a nice turnaround, you know, that that's, but still you don't want to be, you know, under reporting for too long. It just makes it look like, you know, you're not necessarily, you know, you don't know what you're doing. didn't, you didn't, didn't look at that properly, but yeah, it's, it's always nice when like a little bit of that kind of mistake actually means that, you know, yeah, you can, you can go to them with like better data. was, were there any like people that were annoyed by you by that happening?

Maddie (06:12.334)
don't think so because it was genuinely quite an honest mistake and obviously we came out with double the performance with no optimisations even needed which is sort the dream. But also I guess just like in this scenario it's quite easy to work out GBP to AUD because it is just times it by two or divide it by two. Whereas if it had been like I don't know like...

Anu Adegbola (06:22.307)
Yeah.

Maddie (06:34.786)
barter like a different currency euro even it's not quite as clear of a sort of in head metric i'd have to like look up currency converter and all of that so

Anu Adegbola (06:41.099)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. Okay, so yeah, let's go to the next. Yeah, F up you'd like to share.

Maddie (06:51.382)
Yes. So I actually got bit by this one so recently and it was just like, you know, sometimes

Like things go wrong in like generally in performance and this one actually ties to seasonality. So a lot of the time you can't do anything about the season and different businesses react differently to different seasons. But it's just when these things happen and like all eyes are on paid media and it feels like like a panic and you kind of can feel flustered to make a lot of changes all in once. So that's what this story relates to, which is one of my travel clients in January. They weren't having the strongest performing month. We couldn't really identify why because like nothing

Anu Adegbola (07:04.418)
Yeah.

Maddie (07:27.312)
massive had changed in their paid media account. Other things like we knew organic was down. We knew that demand was slightly down. But generally speaking, like CPCs were double what they were the year before and which couldn't really find one definitive reason. It was like one of those, there's like five small reasons or working together against us. So yeah, we in this account, I just want to go for a bit of their account structure.

Anu Adegbola (07:29.027)
you

Anu Adegbola (07:38.531)
Right.

Anu Adegbola (07:45.001)
Right...

Maddie (07:52.492)
They are running the perfect 2026 structure. like a legacy structure. It's super granular. It's kind of like single keyword ad group vibes, but it's also for a massive travel company. So we're at like 2000 campaigns and like way more ad groups.

Anu Adegbola (08:08.098)
Just quickly, you said it's running the perfect 2026. Do you mean the 2016?

Maddie (08:13.806)
Oh, I did. Sorry. Yeah. They're running on 2016 structure. So yeah, sort of old school. And then obviously to move them to more 2026, I'd say it's all about like this data consolidation, having all of the data like working together in a smaller sort of array, especially with things like broad match AI max keywords, meaning that like, I don't know if a lot of people are still big fans of the scag structure.

Anu Adegbola (08:15.51)
No worries.

Anu Adegbola (08:37.379)
Hmm.

Maddie (08:38.634)
I'm personally not a big user of it these days. So yeah, a lot of consolidation went through that account in a short amount of time, loads of different bid strategy testings. And like, to be fair, probably what I would go against saying is best practice to run so many tests at once, but you know when performance is bad and you just need all hands on deck. So yeah, we did that. We're making loads of changes.

Anu Adegbola (08:58.583)
Yeah. Yeah.

Maddie (09:03.49)
but just that like performance had, I think it's fair to say, fallen off a cliff, which isn't pleasant. And just like that sense of panic and to do so much at once, but also needing to take that step back and prioritize what you're doing still to get the best wins.

Anu Adegbola (09:08.333)
No.

Anu Adegbola (09:19.285)
Absolutely. how long ago was this?

Maddie (09:23.17)
This was in January. We've just moved.

Anu Adegbola (09:24.779)
gosh. This is in January. And was that, I hope you don't get into trouble for it. Was it a structure you inherited or was it a structure that you guys won this client and you your strategy went, yep, this is how the campaign structure should be. okay. Okay.

Maddie (09:46.73)
No, so we did inherit it from another agency, but that being said, it's not to throw shade on anyone's work because I think if it's working, don't change it, right? But I just say that there was a time where that was perfect and it's just like as accounts grow, you add more and you continue what you've got. But then I just think

Anu Adegbola (09:55.777)
Right.

Anu Adegbola (10:05.005)
Yeah.

Maddie (10:07.114)
It's only recently that I'd really doubled down on this need to consolidate. And that's all with like the AI max and all of the AI things really needing that data to be grouped together rather than split out over loads of ad groups.

Anu Adegbola (10:11.052)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (10:19.341)
Okay, and who was, so you said that, know, really great phrase though, of if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And so you guys saw this structure that was very granular and you know, you're like, okay, performance is well, clients are happy, so let's not talk the structure just yet. But it then took, what would you guys have done differently? Like in terms of before that, hitting the Christmas time of it being, yeah, non-perform.

bad performance, how, how would you now have approached that process differently?

Maddie (10:53.484)
I love this question because actually it's one that we instantly answered in like the next QBR. We were like, okay, well this happened. We all know that this happened. Let's not go over the performance anymore. But saying like, this is why it happened and this is what we should have done. And to be fair, when we pitched for this client, which was like back in November, so we'd only had them for a couple months.

Anu Adegbola (11:11.245)
Sure.

Maddie (11:11.884)
When we pitched the whole backbone of our pitch was to say like, we need to restructure your account. And it's just that they had such a, we had such a big restructure on our hands that we were like, let's wait until we get out of the peak period, which is now to start rolling out the restructure. it's just that people started panicking. We started consolidating. Actually we got to the end of it. but yeah, I think what I would have done is maybe not been so strict on like that scale approach because we could have.

Anu Adegbola (11:16.259)
Sure.

Anu Adegbola (11:23.478)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:30.53)
Yeah.

Maddie (11:40.664)
To be fair, just started the restructure in November. And I think it's that sense of risk aversion, isn't it? Where like, well, it was a risk to delay in this case, but it was equally, it would have been a risk to move it forward to November.

Anu Adegbola (11:43.776)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:52.951)
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it might have been a risk that would have paid off a lot better, especially, yeah, coming to like, it's a travel, it was a travel client kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. A lot of people doing holiday bookings. And that's the thing. It's terms of like thinking about when you do those things based on who the client is, what the brand is, will actually, what's important, what kind of stretching needs to be live at a certain season of time. Okay. Okay. So it sounded like

Maddie (12:03.032)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (12:23.061)
Everyone got on board, got on board with it. There weren't, there weren't people who were a bit of a stickler of like, why are you guys doing this now? This performance where the, what would the client like? Were they really upset?

Maddie (12:35.478)
Upset isn't the word. think like I've worked with some clients in the past that you know could be rude in this situation and they were not rude. They were...

scared, I think is the best way to explain it. when you're at like your busiest two months of the year, and like that's where you know, like 80 % of their ad spend goes across the whole 12 months, just all of a sudden not see like green on our reports year on year was I think the nerve wrecking thing. But that is probably like the one of the biggest challenges I've been in my career so far, like having external agencies or running audits on the account at the same time to see if they could find anything that I was just kind

Anu Adegbola (12:46.157)
So.

Anu Adegbola (12:59.896)
Yeah.

Maddie (13:14.498)
oblivious to. So like that's scary in its own having like loads of people mark your work.

Anu Adegbola (13:15.415)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what, very purple, I was thinking of the question and I was like, and you actually even kind of like skirted around it saying about how is there anything that you had missed or anything that you weren't let know? Did you, do you feel that there was any information that you weren't aware of till the performance happened that made you think, think if I'd known this, we would have implemented that structure a lot quicker.

Maddie (13:44.29)
There was like a few things at play. like there was a day where like the forms weren't working on their mobile site, for example, which like doesn't help. then I like, you know, if I had known immediately, I could have added that data exclusion, but the time kind of passed. I'd

Anu Adegbola (13:57.047)
Yeah.

Maddie (13:59.062)
like that never got added, for example. But there's also things like on the CPCs rising. I was looking at the search terms year on year, and I was looking at the competition year on year. I was looking at the match type year on year. was looking at literally everything I could look at and bearing in mind in this such granular accounts that was taking like an entire day. And like, so just looking at the CPCs and I'm like...

Anu Adegbola (14:12.885)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (14:19.084)
Yeah.

Maddie (14:23.808)
I can't see a reason they've increased. then obviously we know that these ad platforms will put up the CPCs kind of at will. Like they could turn around and triple them tomorrow. And if that was the way it was going to be, I couldn't necessarily change it. So I was just like, I think we just need to accept these higher CPCs. And that

Anu Adegbola (14:30.69)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (14:41.293)
Yeah.

Maddie (14:42.732)
wasn't the case and I think that's on me to be like well maybe you should like have that more probing instinct to be like well why is that way that way and why is it increased and why can't we bring it down whereas I think maybe I just not defeatism but obviously if if Google sets a CPC that's that's what you've got to pay for the CPC sometimes

Anu Adegbola (14:53.719)
that.

Anu Adegbola (15:00.577)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sometimes it is like that. I'm actually taking things a little bit in terms of like personally for you because like, know, right at beginning of this, we, we shared the really lovely news of like you, you enter into the role of being head of paid media. That must have been around the time of this happening.

Maddie (15:19.426)
Yes. I was so worried. was interviewing and I was like, no.

Anu Adegbola (15:25.023)
wow, yeah, well, thankfully that didn't affect how, in fact, know, yeah, yeah, clearly you're getting the role. So yeah, there was a bit of like being nervous. Did you guys just speak about it even during the interview process? Or you were just like, let's focus on, you know, your, your, your past, like what's, what you've done amazingly. How did that affect the conversation?

Maddie (15:44.3)
I did think that in the interview process, it would come up like what is one of the biggest challenges you've ever faced. But I think the team that I was speaking to, which is our CEO, our growth manager and my director, I think they had just seen me going through it. So they were like, don't even ask her. But to be fair, like the Hallam team are so supportive. like the whole time I felt like I had people to work through my thoughts with. like, basically our whole paid media team was on this restructure and looking

Anu Adegbola (16:01.027)
No.

Anu Adegbola (16:05.175)
Mm.

Maddie (16:14.294)
at bugs and trying to do anything literally that would help and I think like there were times like we got on a call with the owners of this client and like that can be really nerve-wrecking and I like at all points was like well it's nerve-wrecking to the point where I'm scared or like not scared but like I want this problem fixed and like it feels big and it does feel like overwhelming but actually

Anu Adegbola (16:16.715)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (16:36.183)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (16:39.841)
Yeah.

Maddie (16:41.248)
I think turning that on its head is that was why like the way I felt about it. actually I should have maybe just felt open to having the conversation. I had so much help around me and like going into it really solution orientated rather than like bogged down in the reality is going to happen. like it is paid media. We can get through it. So yeah, maybe not trying to take the whole weight of the world on.

Anu Adegbola (16:51.043)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (17:05.313)
Yeah, absolutely. That's a brilliant anecdote for people to remember that, know, because we all talk about, yeah, mistake doesn't mean that you're not going to, you know, make a greater, you know, gain a greater opportunity in the distant future. But to think that something was going wrong, literally right around the time where you were going for an opportunity and you still made the opportunity because people see the right companies, the right employers will see you beyond your latest immediate mistake. And, you know, and

how you actually led people out of that mistake is also like an important note. You said there was one more like kind of mistake that you'd like to share. So let's not hog all the time with just those two. But that was, I feel that was a very important one because account structure is a big deal that we talk about in terms of AI. So yeah, thank you so much for sharing that Maddie's. But yeah, what else would you like to share?

Maddie (17:56.334)
So I've got one small one and then maybe a bigger one, but it's not a mistake I've made. It's actually, think a common mistake in general. So just to tag onto my last one with this small sort of tidbit is that when I was saying about those CPC increases, I think something that can often go unappreciated or unknown even is that in Google ads, even if you're using a target ROAS bid strategy or like max conversion value side of that, you can still maintain some control over your CPCs.

Anu Adegbola (18:02.828)
Okay.

Anu Adegbola (18:15.203)
Mm.

Maddie (18:26.288)
So what we did actually was bungle of these campaigns into portfolio bidding structures and you can apply a max CPC cap on that, which I think.

A lot of people say isn't best practice because you know, you've got this bid strategy that is meant to have the freedom to go and bid as aggressively as it seems fit to get you that goal. But actually so many things are at play, especially an account that was so large. so implementing the CPC cap, we literally halved the CPC we were getting to match the year before. And we've not seen any performance decline from it. So I think, you know, AI is great and smart bidding. I'm a massive advocate for it, but

Anu Adegbola (18:45.112)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (18:51.213)
Mmm.

Anu Adegbola (18:57.442)
Nice.

Maddie (19:05.6)
I think a lot of PPCers are feeling stretched for what control they have over these platforms anymore. And this was just like a nice way that I reclaimed some of that control and actually didn't see any sort of fallback for it.

Anu Adegbola (19:09.911)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (19:16.567)
Yeah, no, that's amazing. I mean, we talk about it like every year, a lot of the articles I write every like, there's always like in the new year, and like saying Q1, there's someone has done a report saying CPC has increased CPCs and there's never been one year I wrote it's like, CPC is like stable now, like literally for the past maybe like 10 years or so CPCs have been increasing. know, make. Yeah.

Maddie (19:37.922)
I that's why I just accepted it and I was just like, well, this is what's going to happen.

Anu Adegbola (19:42.081)
Yeah, yeah, but no, you don't you don't need to and look at those controls that you can have. It's not about going to Google all the time. I think sometimes we're just like, Google, I just shoved an AI down our throat. Yeah. Pay attention. Stop. Stop getting, getting all excited with the flashing lights of the major news. New thing, new AI thing. Still look at what's available for you in your account for what's applicable for your client and implement those controls that.

that you can have before they take them all away. I know that there's always a fear that they will take it away, but you've still got something to control your account with. So use them. And maybe sometimes, I think Google also has this thing of like, which is natural for most any like SaaS tool or like any business tool. If you don't use a feature, they will take that away. So if you think the feature to control is not there and nobody uses it, they will take it away. So maybe to stop Google from taking it away, use it. guys, so there's one tidbit from.

Maddie (20:39.789)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (20:42.294)
us. Go on Maddie, you said you have something else to share.

Maddie (20:44.598)
Yes. So I think it kind of ties into what we were just saying, that it does feel that AI is being kind of shoved in our faces and that we're not going to have the choice whether to use it or not. And I appreciate that mindset. you know, I've felt that way in the past, but I think being opportunistic and looking for ways to break the system is something I love to do. I've actually managed and I don't want to go into it because I think it's such a small thing that I've done in my

Anu Adegbola (20:55.779)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:05.569)
Yeah, great.

Maddie (21:12.288)
entire career but I found a way for example to run a PMAX campaign with only shopping placements and it ran really well it basically runs like a smart shopping campaign before they got retired so like always finding ways to not conform to what you're told but yeah I've worked at an agency previously that had a full AI ban and that was across everything and and I that one I think is a mistake I feel like that's long term just kind of setting yourself up for failure

Anu Adegbola (21:17.604)
Anu Adegbola (21:21.249)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:40.407)
Say that bit again, like you, you, for people just implementing AI across everything.

Maddie (21:46.082)
Yes. Yeah. So a ban on like using chat GPT, I use chat GPT to help me write, like set me up for like a blog structure. Or if I'm giving a webinar, for example, I'll say like, tell me what order to put these slides in. Even to like the most minimal extent, like smart bidding relies on AI to put your bids in the right place. And I've been using that since it was rolled out. So I think putting a ban on that side of things could be really dangerous for like, for a media agency that is specializing in paid.

Anu Adegbola (21:59.34)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (22:06.689)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (22:15.319)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're going to get to talking, you know, about all of that, but just coming back to especially those, know, those two mistakes that you made about you mentioned about the account structure. I'm sorry, remind me of the first one was about.

Maddie (22:30.414)
the account currency

Anu Adegbola (22:33.731)
The concurrency, that's it. Like someone has made that mistake. What's your advice to them of literally someone else that they found it, someone else about to find it. It's their time to tell their manager and they're up for a promotion. Do they tell or do they wait till after the promotion? No, no, no, let's not give them that advice. But like, what's your advice to someone who's just feeling a little bit nervous to finding out a mistake that they've just seen in terms of like.

doing the currency stuff and as well the counter structure mistake.

Maddie (23:05.94)
I think I'm, I'm one for like very much over dramatizing things that I do like, and probably more so on the mistakes than the wins to be honest. actually recently I sent a classic mistake, sent client monthly report attached to the wrong report. Luckily the report I attached didn't have any sort of like sensitive information in it or anything. And, you know, it is as simple as sending another email and saying, sorry, that was the wrong attachment, disregard it, here's the right one. But at the time I was like, I'm losing my

Anu Adegbola (23:14.306)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (23:21.571)
god.

Anu Adegbola (23:25.453)
Ciao!

Anu Adegbola (23:29.805)
Yeah.

Maddie (23:35.776)
job, this is is the worst. I was like, you know, you can say things in your head, I was like, Oh, what an idea and things like that. But actually, you know, grand scheme of things, delete the email, they've they've got what they needed. So I think it's always important to, I think, I think, accountability is really important. yes, saying, I made this mistake, and I shouldn't have but I'm a human, but also

Anu Adegbola (23:45.452)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (24:00.791)
Yeah.

Maddie (24:02.326)
like on the flip side of accountability, also giving yourself some grace, you know, we aren't surgeons, the mistakes we make, I've never been in a situation where one of the mistakes I've made has been sort of life threatening to anyone. And so like kind of giving it, give it the gravity that it deserves, but don't give it more gravity than it deserves.

Anu Adegbola (24:05.635)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (24:12.684)
No.

Anu Adegbola (24:17.197)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's the great balance. And that's what we said at previous conversations. think, yeah, I say this a lot and I just don't want people to take away from what we're saying here that mistakes don't matter. You'll always recover from a mistake. Take the gravity of what you're dealing with as your client that are entrusting their budget with you as opposed to loads of other agencies that they could have gone through. So have that care.

but also in the same way, don't, you know, you make a mistake. It's not the end of the world. We're not heart surgeons here. We are just, yeah, we're trying to do the best with technology and updates always changing. So yeah, focus on the solution and get it back on track is the really important thing. So yeah, we're gonna come back to some of the previous things that you've just talked about in terms of like, you know, how people use AI and the tips for max CPCs. But before we get into that, what's like one thing you wanna leave people with?

about, you know, those stories in terms of mistake making.

Maddie (25:22.282)
So when I was interviewing for the head of paid media position at Hallam, I had to basically say what I think like the values of a PPC team should be. And I came up with three, but I have a favourite and like, I don't know if it does have a swear word in it. okay, cool. So this value that I do think is genuinely should be sort of.

the bread and butter of any PPC team and it's FAFO. So like FOMO, but FAFO and it stands for fuck around and find out. So yeah, I think like there's an element of even tests that do awful even these experiments that you run, they get 50 % of the budget most of the time, even if it sucked and you had awful performance, you've learned something, you've got those learnings that you can take on with you. And I don't think any experiment, even the ones that go badly should be ruled out if...

Anu Adegbola (25:53.443)
YEEEE

Anu Adegbola (26:00.504)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (26:08.034)
Yeah.

Maddie (26:15.329)
It gives you no information.

Anu Adegbola (26:16.579)
Yeah, as long as it gives you new information and don't even necessarily rule it out completely. Come back to it, come back to that test, because it might just be timing as the issue for that test. So yeah, no, that's amazing. FAFO, I love that phrase. I mean, it's been used, it's used, I've seen a lot like social media and I'm like, yeah, some people messed about and they found out.

Maddie (26:26.691)
Yeah.

Maddie (26:30.989)
Yeah.

Maddie (26:39.062)
Yeah, and I love it. And there's also something I used to say is like the best research skill you can have is just being nosy and wanting to find out. And that kind of goes hand in hand is that like if you don't know what will happen from an experiment, run the experiment and then at least you know.

Anu Adegbola (26:54.467)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Knowledge is power, knowledge is power. And then going into other mistakes that people make, you did mention, yeah, it's more even like for tips, maybe we don't use our controls as much in terms of know, CPCs, but what else? Anything else that you, like when you audit accounts, when you guys have one new account.

I'd say even account structure is like, you know, being granular. was like, like, that's a big one to, to definitely, note anything else that you feel like, you know, 2026 people are still doing and that you're still shocked by.

Maddie (27:32.782)
A good one that like kind of always trips me up is I think I'm more sensitive to seeing ads than anyone I've ever met. So I will watch the YouTube ads. I genuinely enjoy seeing ads. And then it kind of puts me in a frame of mind like, why did I see that ad specifically? Like what in market audience have I fallen into that I've been put into this ads targeted audience? So things like remarketing, I've had some recently specifically relating to that travel client actually where I was doing sort of

Anu Adegbola (27:40.257)
Yeah? Right?

Anu Adegbola (27:52.333)
Mm-mm.

Maddie (28:02.746)
competitor research over like their peak season and out of date ad, like I update sales copy or like in January I'm still getting ads like the perfect Christmas present and I was like no I was like you need to pause this and you need to change your messaging immediately because it just annoys me so much.

Anu Adegbola (28:09.091)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (28:18.094)
Yeah, Yeah, yeah. You don't want to your customers, especially someone who has, who is like, thinks of you as a great brand and all of a sudden, yeah, they're seeing, they're seeing an ad, they're like, you guys should have changed this. And especially for the fact that a lot of advertisers are advertising to advertisers. Like we are, we, like, I don't think we, we just think.

where I just add, yeah, most of the public are just, you know, doctors or nurses or, you know, the salesperson like, or like a general Joe, but like some of the people that see your ads are also marketers and they're going to be like, I know what could have fixed this and I'm annoyed with you for being lazy. Like, yeah, we're the, we're the worst in terms of like seeing it, seeing our ads. Lord, I've seen that.

Maddie (29:05.121)
Something I do do is like, I'll take a screenshot of an ad and I have been known to like post about it on LinkedIn before, like not in a mean way, but just to be like, here's my two cents. And like genuinely I've given myself this anxiety that someone's going to do that with one of my ads.

Anu Adegbola (29:14.539)
Right?

Anu Adegbola (29:20.547)
Well, it makes you check. We must make you check your ads a lot more carefully. literally what? Let me make sure my remarketing and audience targeting is properly so that I'm not showing it to the wrong person before they talk about it on LinkedIn. Like, yeah, yeah, I don't know. I think I hear people talk about that and I feel like it can be a bit of a, it's a marketing brain that we have. I don't think necessarily people are care. People are just gonna be annoyed with it and go, I won't yet use that brand again.

Maddie (29:33.676)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (29:47.223)
But if you're a LinkedIn personality and you will like push those other people, they get a little bit paranoid that you may do the right, the wrong thing about you. Also like, yeah, well, and you kind of mentioned on it, but like you've given even more drilling down in terms of like mistakes when it comes to AI. What are some of like the big ones that you find people doing?

Maddie (30:07.256)
Mm.

Maddie (30:13.004)
I think this is gonna be the first answer that would spring to mind if you asked anyone this question, but giving...

it enough information, whether you're using sort of an in-platform AI or an AI specific tool, or if you're using sort of an LLM like ChatGPT, making sure that you're giving it as much as you're trying to take from it. You know, I couldn't go to ChatGPT and go, write me a paid media blog and it give me something helpful. Like it would be probably the worst paid media blog in the world. Whereas if I go to it and say, I'm going to write this blog that is about creative advertising and B2B marketing.

Anu Adegbola (30:33.08)
now.

Maddie (30:49.836)
for example, then it knows what we're talking about at least then you tell it a bit about why you need the help. You know, I am the head of paid media at Hallam. So I need to make this content so that we get listed in like search results. So I need it to have these keywords. And I know that I want to talk about these specific things like brand versus performance marketing, for example, then it's got this full arsenal of a checklist to walk like walk itself through. And then the output in my point of view, probably still wouldn't be perfect, but it's given me

Anu Adegbola (31:18.733)
No.

Maddie (31:19.746)
this framework that I can then go and add some sort of like human elements and personal like personality to it and everything like that.

Anu Adegbola (31:27.319)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's definitely important as to adding the data to it. Yeah, because if you're just letting AI just pull its research from wherever you're gonna, there's so much nonsense out there on the internet. you're using, if you're gonna just tell, know, with you or Claude, like use that nonsense as my resource. Yeah, you're gonna be burned for that one.

But there was also one that remember you, you mentioned like, cause I'd like to dig in a little bit more into that, that about an agency you said that literally banned AI? Like what? Nonsense.

Maddie (32:02.572)
Yes, have. Yeah, I have worked at an agency that banned all AI use and like even sort of I would I see the merit in not using AI to write your content because then you've just got loads of content that looks the same as all the other content out there. So I'm completely on board with that. But even things like not using AI within Google Ads, it's like we kind of don't have a choice.

Anu Adegbola (32:14.849)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:24.419)
yeah yeah and they banned bed strategies was it because it was too oh god why

Maddie (32:30.678)
Yeah, so using like, as of like a couple years ago as well, still using fully like manual CPCs and it's like, generally just like terrible practice, I think, because you know, humans can't guess what bit it should be every second of the day. It feels like a time waster.

Anu Adegbola (32:41.74)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (32:46.989)
No, yes, it's absolutely a big time waster and who knows maybe, maybe like for people who want to pitch for other clients, say that we will use automation. We will use it for everything, but we'll use it because you need to be using it. any agencies just, yeah, any agency that is literally going, yeah, ban AI, ban any automation. That will worry me. That will worry me. If they said that, if I figure that out at the interview,

I would be pulling out from my application going, no, I'm good. I'm good. I'm go somewhere else because yeah.

Maddie (33:19.22)
I think you can do anything right. It's just like telling the world that you're not willing to try anything new and I guess getting outdated very quickly in this year at least.

Anu Adegbola (33:26.134)
writes.

Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah, don't be, get outdated. Cause seriously, we just need to learn how it's going to work. I keep saying like with other marketers that, you know, for people who are just going to stick their head in the sand and going, I don't like this. I'm not going to test it. Just going to stick. Yeah. You're everything's going to, yeah, it's going to the advancement, the technology is going to run by you. You're going to miss it.

with head stuck in the sand, you're going to lose your clients and you're not, yeah, you're not going to win in this industry. So if you've made your millions and you're ready to retire, fine, you can be that kind of person, but you still want to need to grow with this industry and learn how the AI works and make sure you're giving it the right inputs to ensure that, yeah, it does what it needs to do for you.

Maddie (34:17.164)
And also the longer you put it off, like the bigger your task list is going to get. Because like if I hadn't tested smart bidding by this point, for example, we're way behind on testing things like new landing pages or different forms or like different types of content. And I think, you know, the more you put it off, the more you've just got to do in the long run.

Anu Adegbola (34:20.022)
Yes!

Anu Adegbola (34:35.445)
Absolutely. And I even think like, you know, Google came out with P max and there's a lot of, we learned how P max, we saw how P max was developed. was a bit of a mess at the beginning. They made it better. And then, you know, they, yeah, it's now they're now giving us, you know, the controls, visibility channel reporting, that kind of thing. And now that we have ai max, because we paid attention.

to what we kind of like, okay, AI Max is not really working well. And we are like, yeah, we get it. We see, we've been through this story. We've been through this pathway. We've gone through down this journey. We know that there's gotta be a bit of a mess at the beginning. They're probably gonna improve it. Maybe they're gonna give us some more visibility with it through AI Max. You never know. But we kind of get what the story is and you come part of the conversation and Google starts paying attention to what you need and what you request for instead of just going, the people are just gonna go, I don't like it, it's all AI, I hate it.

No one's going to listen to you either. So yeah.

Maddie (35:32.992)
No, think if you want to slate a tool for not being good enough, at least use it and get good feedback to give the tool on like, like PMAX. Like I personally did test it before they had all of this sort of new insights that you can now surface. But even before that, there were scripts that could pull that in. It was like getting blood from a stone, but you could get the information.

Anu Adegbola (35:41.078)
Why?

Anu Adegbola (35:46.509)
Sure.

Anu Adegbola (35:54.199)
Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. Well, that has been fantastic conversation. We've gone back through this so quickly. Maddie, thank you for that great insight on account structure and like bidding, making sure you're checking your currency guys. Cause yeah, it's not always going to work out that you are underreporting. You might find out currencies work so different. The pound is very strong. You might find yourself that you're actually overreporting and then you get yourself in a

and like hot water, make sure you're doing that correctly. So yeah, thank you so much for all those insights, Maddie. Before we leave a nice, fun, non-PPC related question, although there's a bit of a string attached there, if your PPC career were a movie, what would the title be?

Maddie (36:39.82)
Wow, that's such a beautiful shit.

Anu Adegbola (36:42.595)
The question wasn't the plan. It was in the planning doc So I hope it's not too much of a surprise, but yeah. It can be a movie that you've watched or you can just come up with a brand new title of just what comes to mind. It can be anything.

Maddie (36:47.982)
Maddie (36:58.822)
I'll go with, something fast paced to ring true to my Formula One fact. So let's go with rush. Not cause I'm rushing, just because PPC moves so fast pace.

Anu Adegbola (37:10.071)
With Rush,

That is a fantastic, yeah, that fantastically makes sense. Yeah, Rush the movie. Yeah, yeah, no, I have to love it. If you guys haven't watched it, I'm not like a huge F1 Formula One fan, but I actually really, really enjoyed that one. So yeah, Rush, because the industry moves at a very fast pace. yeah, feel Google always seems to be rushing out with something. Like I feel like because of chat GPT, they might have rushed out or...

they should have, what all the experts have said, they should have come out with their AI with Gemini, but Chai GP to kind of make them rush to the gate of their deadline, but they could have come out with it, because they have all the data and they have it there. Anyway, I could talk about all the different ways as to what AI means for our industry. But yeah, thank you so much Maddie for joining us today. Where can people find you if they want to hear you slating other ad copies, people.

or just in general, sharing your great ideas about how to do paid search properly.

Maddie (38:16.064)
I am very active on LinkedIn so that's probably the best place to find me, Maddie Lightening.

Anu Adegbola (38:20.981)
Amazing, amazing. Thank you so much, Maddie. yeah, hopefully we'll see you at a conference soon. Because yeah, you do a lot of speaking engagements as well. But yeah, until then, speak to later. Thank you, Maddie. Bye.

Maddie (38:33.954)
Thank you so much. Bye.

Anu Adegbola (38:36.387)
me just give it a sec.