EP365 - The Toggles That Cost Thousands ft Menachem Ani

Anu Adegbola (00:01.642)
Hello, Menachem Welcome to PPC Live, the podcast.

Menachem Ani (00:05.57)
Great to be here.

Anu Adegbola (00:07.038)
I'm so delighted that we finally got this, this date in the calendar. did one before months ago, the tech was not having its way at all. So yeah, we've had some, I'm glad our, our calendars aligned, the stars aligned and we're doing this and we've done all the testing, you know, like Riverside was also even a little bit misbehaving a few minutes ago, but we've got it. We are, we're here to do this. So let me introduce you to my lovely guest today. Menachem Ani is the founder.

of JXT group that I've been long standing Google partner and that even got renewed again this year, right? Your Google premier partner, correct? Amazing. Yeah. So he's also very much a digital marketing veteran and you'll see how much when he shares his fun fact. yeah. He's got over 20 years of experience in multi-channel.

Menachem Ani (00:44.354)
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. 10 years running.

Anu Adegbola (00:59.56)
advertising and growth strategy. And he's known for his expertise in Google ads, automation and paid media innovation. And he's also a respected speaker and contributor to industry events and publications. that's including the SMX, Brighton SEO, search engine land, PPC live. So you'll see his name. The latest article that seriously everyone should check out because I'm not him on his team. We're one of the lucky few.

Menachem Ani (01:18.126)
There you go.

Anu Adegbola (01:26.876)
early adopters of chat GPT ads, I've been able to set a campaign up. especially for our UK folks who like, you're still waiting, we're still waiting to get access to that. At least you can see a walkthrough of how to set a campaign up and what the settings are going to be. So after listening to Menachem, go, go check out that article of his that he wrote on PPC live. so yeah, let's go into your fun fact. What's your fun fact Menachem?

Menachem Ani (01:52.59)
So my fun fact is I set up my first Google Ads campaign in 2003. So it's been a minute.

Anu Adegbola (01:59.708)
It's been a minute, been a long time ago and like, you know, just a little, like, you know, not too deep because the, you know, we know all these conversations about talking about mistakes, but what's was, what's different, how easy, how quickly was it for you to set up that campaign compared to, especially how easy it is to set up a campaign now.

Menachem Ani (02:19.16)
So I feel like everything is different, but everything is the same. think easier than to not make mistakes today, there's so many little toggles that you can get wrong and will completely mess up your goals. So back then it was just pick a keyword, put the ad copy and let's go.

Anu Adegbola (02:22.186)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (02:30.484)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (02:38.728)
And said life said they said the thing live and it was very much about like you have the more money you get the higher position, right? Yeah.

Menachem Ani (02:46.222)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, Google had page rank from the beginning. So it wasn't, it wasn't only about the cost per click. There was this de facto relevance. And I think that's really why Google took off the way it took off. But it was, it was so something very pure about it. Just pick a keyword, write your ad copy, put your bid and done.

Anu Adegbola (02:57.77)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (03:05.204)
Yeah, absolutely. And those were the times I remember where like the ads were on the right hand side of the bar wasn't near. was like, I was like at the top. gosh, those were the days. Yeah, that's true in my age as well. Anyway, but again, thank you so much, Menachem, you know, for joining us and being willing to share some of the mistakes. mean,

Menachem Ani (03:11.765)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (03:30.42)
You know what? I'll admit that like, look, as a Google Premier partner, you probably don't make too many mistakes or you catch them really quickly. know, we, Manahe and I, we're like chatting and he was really digging deep for a mistake that would really, you know, we could really sink our teeth into that. We'll get our listeners really excited, but there are a few that he's come up with because the best of us make mistakes and it's about learning from them, not panicking about them, you know, knowing that that's where the best learnings.

come from, but also we share them so that you don't have to make the same mistakes so that you can make your own new brand of mistakes for yourself.

Menachem Ani (03:59.214)
sure

Exactly.

Exactly. I try to learn from other people's mistakes, but the reality is we're human world going to make mistakes. think like what we do with it. Do we learn from it? Do we add it to our checklist? Make sure to look out for in the future. That's really what sets us apart from the next person.

Anu Adegbola (04:21.726)
Absolutely. That says so as apart from the person who doesn't try and the person who's not, you know, that yeah, shouldn't be running accounts. Yeah, honestly. I think someone has once said that if you've never made a mistake, actually, I argue that you've not tried hard enough. You've not done the best for your client actually, because you'll test something, you'll make a mistake and you'll learn what's the right thing to do from moving on. So anyway.

Menachem Ani (04:29.642)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (04:37.75)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (04:47.326)
That's, that's, that's the, this is, we're already doing the last two minutes of the episode. Like if this is, we've come to the end of the chat already, but no, let's, this is, this is the start of the conversation. So let's get into it. What's the effort that you'd like to share with us today?

Menachem Ani (04:54.433)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (05:02.317)
So doing this as long as I have, have my fair share of mistakes, but I think like, you know, starting out, not being careful enough to set bids right. Like there are times where I accidentally, you know, put $10 instead of a dollar as the bid or, or, you know, put the budget at 500 instead of 50 and just kind of blows through those kinds of things. I'll always make me nervous because you know, we are responsible for the client's money. And so that's something I'll take very seriously. And yeah, it's.

Anu Adegbola (05:20.873)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (05:31.638)
It happens though.

Anu Adegbola (05:32.924)
Yeah, so you've had the incident of blowing through the budget in an hour that should actually have a budget that should have lasted like a whole day. Is that one of the things that you caught quickly or did the client find out about it? What were they like?

Menachem Ani (05:42.419)
Exactly.

Menachem Ani (05:52.628)
Yeah, I mean, so, you know, we caught it pretty quickly, but it was, it was definitely a rough conversation with the client. Like you're starting off a new campaign, trying to get off, off on a good footing with a client and then boom, now you, now you kind of look like, you know, do you even know what you're doing? And so it's a rough conversation, tough to navigate, but like, you know, thankfully we caught it pretty quickly and reverted it, but you know, it only affected about 24 hours of spend, but I've, I've seen cases where stuff like that were done.

Anu Adegbola (06:01.098)
and

Menachem Ani (06:21.067)
before a weekend, let's say, and then you don't even catch it till till Monday and it's like, so.

Anu Adegbola (06:22.89)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (06:26.94)
nothing spend or the budget ended after an hour and was supposed to spend all through the weekend. And you're literally looking at it saying that, yes, nothing's been and how you, how you actually have to explain that. Yeah.

Menachem Ani (06:33.087)
Yeah... Yeah...

Menachem Ani (06:38.669)
Yeah, I mean, that's something that I've also learned is never launch anything new before a weekend.

Anu Adegbola (06:43.74)
Yeah, we cannot say that enough. Like legit, if we give that as a lesson for every single episode, that will not be too much. Never launch stuff on a Friday people. Like seriously.

Menachem Ani (06:51.018)
Yeah.

Thankfully, that one wasn't my screw up, but there was a time when I was working in-house a bunch of years ago and we had hired an agency. They paused every single campaign, launched a complete new setup on a Friday morning, and then they walked out for the weekend.

Anu Adegbola (07:01.642)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (07:09.719)
my god. And they probably left early because that's what we all do is Friday, you know, you know, you have a drink with lunch and then you don't necessarily come back to the desk after lunch.

Menachem Ani (07:13.933)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (07:20.555)
Yeah, yeah. And so it's like my nature is to be overly cautious, but like, you know, like I try to learn from other people's mistakes, but I think as humans, we learn better from our own mistakes. And so like even my own, which, you know, may not have been as bad was still pretty bad. And it's kind of blew through the whole budget in a couple of hours, but like you learn very quickly now, double check everything, make sure you got it right. And a lot of people get annoyed when you change a budget in Google. Now you've got to do two factor authentication.

Anu Adegbola (07:25.151)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (07:31.946)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (07:49.376)
Okay.

Menachem Ani (07:49.801)
Every time one of those pop up, if you change your budget too much, I'm kind of like, okay, slow down. got this.

Anu Adegbola (07:55.092)
Right, right. Okay. Okay. So even Google is putting, has put like, like measures in place that if it feels like you're changing your budget too much, it kind of.

Menachem Ani (08:03.694)
Yeah. Yeah. So now if, if for example, you change your bid from $1 to $10, it'll ask you twice like, Hey, that looks like a big increase. Do you want to save it? Um, but then there are other ones where it's more for security in case an account gets hacked. If you change your budget, you know, pretty drastically, it'll, it'll ask you for two factor.

Anu Adegbola (08:19.998)
you know what I could have done with that. Cause I have made the miss I know like every once in a while I share my stories and I'm like, I have made the mistake of where the bid was supposed to be 20 pence, 20 P or like 20 cents. And I made it 20 pounds or like 22. And it was just like, yeah. And then it was, this was a company where I'd already handed in like my notice. So like I was leaving and I was going.

Menachem Ani (08:30.156)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (08:35.136)
Yeah. Yeah, well, we've all done that.

Anu Adegbola (08:45.216)
I had to leave in the next few weeks. So my manager was like, oh, so you're leaving. So you're just, you're just doing whatever with the accounts. I was like, no, was an honest mistake. I felt so bad, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you, there was another, there was another kind of mistake that you were going to share, right?

Menachem Ani (08:51.646)
God. Yeah.

Menachem Ani (09:03.278)
I mean, I've made so many mistakes. I think like another one that I think about...

Anu Adegbola (09:06.88)
Yeah, because you know, we're only 10 minutes in. can't, we can't leave. We can't say that that's the only one we're going to share now.

Menachem Ani (09:12.556)
Yeah, I think like there's certain ones that kind of stick with you. They, you know, they're like another one, for example, as a client had launched a promotion and then the sale ended and we were supposed to update all the ad copy. And like we went through all the campaigns, cleaned it all out. But like, you know, there's different toggles. It's like, there's RSA ads back in the day. There was ETAs also, we missed one and like it still had, you know, the client's like, why is this still there? I'm like, oops, you know, like again, it's not a huge.

Anu Adegbola (09:31.465)
Yes!

Anu Adegbola (09:36.828)
Oops. Yeah.

Menachem Ani (09:40.078)
world-ending mistake, but like it makes us look like we don't know what we're doing. And all these kinds of things, like they kind of stack up in my brain to be a little more cautious and more thorough checklists. But yeah.

Anu Adegbola (09:41.535)
No.

Anu Adegbola (09:45.278)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (09:52.254)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (09:56.318)
Yeah, yeah. The sales one is, I definitely think that it is an important one because they're all this place that you've always worked with, retail clients, e-commerce clients, mostly, haven't you?

Menachem Ani (10:06.484)
Yeah, I mean, we do both. do e-commerce and lead gen, but yeah, it's, it's always like important to get that piece right because otherwise then he has customers like, Hey, it says you have a sale come to the website. There's no sale. So.

Anu Adegbola (10:18.688)
Right. Yeah. So knock on effect on conversion rate, revenue, trust with your customers of what's happening. Those things, those things are very, very important. And like, what are the things that, what are maybe even especially like with like the CPCs, because that's very interesting. The fact that, yeah, the Google thing now stops you from making

Menachem Ani (10:25.504)
everything.

Anu Adegbola (10:47.296)
too high a budget change or too high a bid change or at least alerts you beforehand. But what are like some of the signs that you'd say that you missed beforehand that made you go, if I picked up on that, well, you picked on them quite early, but if you picked up via, you hadn't done those things, those mistakes, what could have prevented the mistakes from happening? That's really just what I'm trying to get to.

Menachem Ani (11:08.078)
So I think really just double checking your work, having very thorough checklists of, you know, like don't make certain changes, double check your changes, you know, those kinds of things really, you know, it's attention to detail more than anything, but I think the other piece that I think about a lot is slow down. Like go slow to go fast. Like if you move too fast, do too many things in one shot, it's much easier to make mistakes. So like, if you feel like you're overwhelmed, your workload's too much, it's like.

Anu Adegbola (11:13.503)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:26.08)
Mm-mm.

Menachem Ani (11:35.424)
If you try to do it faster, you're to make more mistakes than you have even more work to deal with. So it's better to just kind of slow down, double check everything and try not to make those mistakes.

Anu Adegbola (11:37.214)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (11:47.304)
Yeah. Yeah. And it looks like you've had some, good clients. Like talk, talk about that. Like, like what's, what makes for a client that even when they hear about mistakes, they don't leave, they don't get too angry and they don't leave. What's, what have you done to cultivate that kind of good relationship?

Menachem Ani (12:01.72)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (12:05.206)
So I think that that relationship, that's really the most important piece. Like, look, at the end of the day, we're responsible for clients money. It's a big responsibility to take that to heart and make sure it performs in the way it needs to perform. Performance is key. But I client relationships is probably more important than anything in choosing which clients you work with, know, picking good people. I like to say we do good work with good people. Like I don't want to work with a client that has an amazing business, but

Anu Adegbola (12:09.918)
Hmm.

Anu Adegbola (12:23.657)
mm. yeah.

Anu Adegbola (12:29.919)
Yes.

Menachem Ani (12:33.88)
they're not fun to work with or, you know, they're not a nice person. And so really just taking the time to build a relationship. And in today's world, it's like, go to their office, shake their hand. It's a lot different than just being on video. It's not as easy to do, but those kinds of things really make a difference when you have like a connection with someone and you make a mistake, like they're a lot more forgiving of it. You know, the hope is we don't make too many mistakes, but you know, it's inevitable.

Anu Adegbola (12:35.368)
Yeah. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (12:47.945)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (12:57.426)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. It's inevitable. The thing that you really need to be big on is that good client relationship and building that trust so that even they themselves, they fully aware of like, this is not the usual, this is a mistake. I'm sure they'll turn it around.

Menachem Ani (13:09.326)
for sure.

Menachem Ani (13:15.358)
Exactly, exactly. And they do see that we go above and beyond to make sure there are no mistakes. You know, so when it does happen, it's few and far between. It's like, okay. It's like,

Anu Adegbola (13:26.378)
Yeah, yeah, we know them, we know them and we trust them.

Menachem Ani (13:30.242)
And exactly, the trust is the biggest piece for sure.

Anu Adegbola (13:34.302)
Yeah, absolutely. And like if someone has just made a mistake of like literally, yeah, that's, that's, let's, go with the example of CPC has skyrocketed. They put the wrong CPC in the budget. The daily budget has been spending an hour and they're just watching it and they're scared to what their client, what the client is going to say. What's your advice to them?

Menachem Ani (13:58.329)
think for me, the biggest thing is get ahead of it. Don't try to act like it didn't happen. Don't try to cover it up. Just be real. You know, like, hey, we made a mistake. This happened. We caught it right away. We fixed it. Here's what we're doing to make sure it doesn't happen in the future. know, people don't, people like when you take responsibility and accountability. You know, and especially if you are working with good people, people that enjoy working with you, they'll be a lot quicker to understand and move forward if they see that you're.

Anu Adegbola (14:16.735)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (14:27.298)
you know, you're being responsible and accountable for it.

Anu Adegbola (14:30.676)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, honesty has always been like a common thread in all the conversation with people like get it here. Just yeah, don't try to be all like, you know, you don't know what happened or try to blame something else. Take ownership. Get do the fix. Yeah.

Menachem Ani (14:38.976)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (14:45.073)
Right.

For sure.

Anu Adegbola (14:52.032)
Okay, to be fair, you've given us so much insights for that one and there's so much else to even talk about in our industry. yeah, let's go on to talking to like our next segment now, talking about mistakes that you've maybe seen or perceived when, let's say, auditing accounts, you've got a new client and what are some of the first, some of the common mistakes that keep reoccurring that you're really surprised by?

Menachem Ani (15:15.896)
think like a lot of times I see campaigns that are not built around the business goals. Like it just almost seems like they launch a strategy for the sake of launching a strategy, but it doesn't really make sense with the business goal. And a lot of times that could be the wrong bid strategy, maybe going after a target CPA when the client's interested in ROAS or things like a lot of times you'll just have campaigns set up.

Anu Adegbola (15:23.474)
Okay.

Menachem Ani (15:41.495)
which are really just milking bottom funnel traffic, not really driving new customers. I mean, there's so much of that, or I see people using campaigns that are meant to work one way in a completely different way. Like for example, I see people launch a PMAX retargeting campaign. It's not possible to build a retargeting campaign with PMAX. It's just, that's not how the campaign is built. It's just not, but people like they set it up in that way. They'll call it that they'll think it's an, just doesn't work.

Anu Adegbola (15:46.197)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (15:54.24)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (15:59.037)
Okay.

Menachem Ani (16:11.246)
and mine.

Anu Adegbola (16:11.632)
Lord!

Menachem Ani (16:14.52)
So, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (16:16.479)
That's so interesting. so is there a, but that's such like an interesting idea, like P max using it for retargeting. How come you can't use it for retargeting? Is there just a lack of understanding what P max does?

Menachem Ani (16:26.414)
So the way audiences are built in PMAX is that you can only use an audience as a signal to the algorithm. if let's say I say, here's all my website visitors and email subscribers and give it as an audience to PMAX, it's using that as a signal to find similar buyers, maybe to retarget some of them, maybe not all of them. It's really completely up to the algorithm what it does with it. And so I've seen so many times where people will set up a PMAX.

Anu Adegbola (16:34.932)
Yes.

Anu Adegbola (16:50.451)
Okay.

Menachem Ani (16:54.712)
They'll put all the first party audiences, website visitors, email subscribers, all that. And like they'll even title it like PMAX retargeting. like, that's not now. Yeah. And, and, and the flip side as well, like a lot of times people will set up a PMAX to go after new customers. but, know, PMAX by default will start at the bottom of the funnel and then start moving up. So.

Anu Adegbola (17:01.536)
That's not what it does!

Anu Adegbola (17:15.935)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (17:17.568)
It's not really going to be a pure prospecting campaign unless you add in very, very heavy exclusions, which truth is some of them only came out in the last six weeks. Like there is now an ability to block website visitors from P max. You know, so I think really just understanding what each tool does and make sure you're using it in the right way. I've seen so many agencies who don't seem to understand that. And it's, it's, yeah, it's crazy.

Anu Adegbola (17:20.66)
No.

Sure.

Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (17:30.504)
Okay.

Anu Adegbola (17:34.761)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (17:39.87)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. I, as you see some agencies, you know, not understanding that, but I'm actually so not surprised because it's just that whole, you know, yeah. P max. You just slap it together and set it. I know, you know, and it's like, guys, you need to understand what these tools are for and what's what's, you know, what's

Menachem Ani (17:56.322)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (18:02.668)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (18:04.744)
What did they, the thing is trying to do and, you know, whether that matches for your goals and what your business is doing. There's some people like as much as P max should be a tool that should be, you know, well explored. won't be necessary for every business type. It wouldn't be necessary for every kind of goal that you've got. And like, yeah, there's just this whole like with AI and automation, new, new people going, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's, let's do Google ads for whatever you're doing on P max. And you do all the AI stuff.

Menachem Ani (18:07.363)
Right.

Anu Adegbola (18:34.622)
And it's annoying. It's annoying.

Menachem Ani (18:35.084)
Right. And I think like the biggest thing is like each, let's say PMAX is a good example, but really any campaign type is it can be set up in a bunch of different ways to achieve very different goals and perform very differently. And so you're right. You can't just slap it together. It's like people say it's a black box. You just set it and forget it. It's really not like that. You can set it a hundred different ways and you can optimize it a hundred different ways, but you have to know what to look for. It's very different than, you know, a search campaign or something else.

Anu Adegbola (18:44.554)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (18:55.42)
anymore

Anu Adegbola (19:04.99)
Yeah, it's, it's, it's very, now they used to talk more about PMAX. I remember like, again, another shameless plug. Menachem is one of those that has written so much about performance max, especially for search engine land. Like, Lujey, if you just even just search for performance max in on search engine land, most of those, maybe like 80, 90 % of our articles are from Menachem. I'm not even kidding. It's so great.

Menachem Ani (19:27.434)
but yeah, I've definitely put a lot of information together and to give Google credit, they've come out with so many new features and reports and insights. like when it first launched, it was kind of a black box, but there's so much data you can get from it and so many different toggles you can use to push it in a completely different direction that like people should use that.

Anu Adegbola (19:30.858)
Nah.

Anu Adegbola (19:39.05)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (19:47.148)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I know we're talking about mistakes, but we'll definitely get back on that. But like just a little tiny tangent, we're talking about performance max. I'm always, always like pulled into talking about AI max as well. And just especially about how, especially we talk about how like early P max was a bit of a mess and then they improved it. AI max, you feel it's a bit of a mess, you tested it?

Menachem Ani (20:00.942)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (20:07.842)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (20:12.37)
we've definitely tested it. think it's a little bit less of a mess as you might've considered P max in the beginning. And the reason why is because AI max is, I'd say it's like a lot of similar components to P max that are related to search. they've kind of taken this algorithmic targeting piece of P max and layered it on top of search as like an expansion. And so it's pretty good. mean, my philosophy with it is only use it where you have revenue coming into Google ads.

Anu Adegbola (20:33.909)
sure.

Menachem Ani (20:41.11)
So if you're running a low volume lead gen campaign and you're not using let's say broad match keywords, you probably don't want to use AI max. But if you're running an e-commerce campaign where it sees the revenue and it knows the target ROAS, it's safer to use it because the system knows what's working and what's not. So it really, it's again, it's a tool in the toolbox and you got to know when to use it and how to use it.

Anu Adegbola (20:41.152)
Mmm.

Anu Adegbola (20:57.45)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:02.482)
Okay, I'm going by the theme of the podcast. So let's say, a big mistake would be to try to use it even when you have no revenue coming in your Google ads.

Menachem Ani (21:07.915)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (21:11.54)
Exactly. Exactly. if you're running a, a lead gen campaign is a good example because it's only measuring forms and phone calls. And you set it to run after a specific keyword and then you turn on AI max, it will go very far from the intent of your keyword and start bringing you random traffic that will convert into a form or a phone call, but that you can't do business with that person. So yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:18.718)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:26.399)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (21:32.99)
Yeah. Yeah.

Menachem Ani (21:35.116)
And we've tested that. So I don't know if that's a mistake or not, but we've tested it. It didn't work in that way, but it works well for e-commerce or where you have offline revenue data coming in for lead gen.

Anu Adegbola (21:46.89)
Absolutely, absolutely. Love that. Love that insight. And in a way, we've already started talking about the whole AI, know, AI and mistakes working with AI, but specifically, and this is something that, you know, we said we talk about Claude, bringing Claude in to work within, you know, within Google ads. Do you think that's a mistake? Like, have you tested it? What, how have you gone with that?

Menachem Ani (22:11.584)
Yeah. So like I mentioned before, I take the responsibility of managing our clients' budgets very seriously. I'm not willing to connect Claude to my Google ads account directly right now. For that reason, what we do is like, we use Claude a lot, both for creative, for ad copy ideation, things of that nature, but also like we'll take data from Google ads and put it in and do research and analysis on it. I don't know, I'm afraid to connect it. We're starting to...

Anu Adegbola (22:40.063)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (22:41.196)
Think about testing like the Facebook MCP because that is like an authorized connection, but I'm still just getting up to that.

Anu Adegbola (22:47.07)
Yeah.

Okay, okay. So even like the Facebook one, you're not sure, like, as well, but the clued one, not sure about about being in it.

Menachem Ani (22:58.302)
Yeah, I'm conscious to connect something directly to the ad account right now.

Anu Adegbola (23:03.25)
Yeah, yeah. But like, yeah, another shameless plug, like we've got Benjamin Wenner, who is going to be joining our Slack group. So the PPC live Slack and yeah, who's going to be showing us because he feels like it's the best way, know, Claude is the best one to do that to be able to run your PPC accounts autonomously. But he also does warn about the fact that, know, with, with, especially with

All this access that we're giving it. think one thing that was pointed out at a previous PPC live event was the fact that, you you're giving all this access to Google ads, your Google ads account, meaning you're letting, you're allowing Google to be able to say that that mistake that happened, that's overspend of a budget. That's kind of thing that optimization that was put in place, not our fault, that bad result, not our fault because you're giving access to an outside tool.

Menachem Ani (23:52.121)
Right.

Anu Adegbola (23:58.644)
to now manage your campaign. so, yeah, it could cause a little bit of dangerous stuff. Maybe Google might start thinking, you know, depending on how advanced the AI, the co-working thing that you're doing is being brought into, it might see that as a little bit of a security issue, don't you think?

Menachem Ani (23:58.666)
Right.

Menachem Ani (24:19.232)
Yeah, I think it definitely can be a security issue. Like what if Claude just raises your budget and spends way more than you intended? What are the backstops they have to like prevent such things? I don't know. I think the other thing also is like, I love AI to help us be more efficient and all that, but I can't trust everything it outputs. Like it hallucinates, it makes stuff up. And so like, do I trust that to manage a client budget? Not really. And so like,

Anu Adegbola (24:40.457)
No.

Menachem Ani (24:48.854)
anything that we get from AI, got to double check it, make sure it's real. So I think that's a mistake that is very easy to make is just trust, but not verify.

Anu Adegbola (25:00.382)
Yeah, yeah. Well, you just trust it and not just leave it, just setting it and forgetting it. mean, those kinds of principles have never changed because even when we would, you know, you'd have ad customizations and even coming to that example of like the sales ad, you know, that went off, you know, you just set things and if you don't double check what was supposed to go off, what's, know, what the automation was supposed to pick up. yeah, yeah, you just, you just never know.

Menachem Ani (25:20.952)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (25:25.294)
Yeah. You're making me think of another one. we, we accidentally, like, you know, a lot of times people launch competitor campaigns. It's like we want, we launched a competitor campaign by duplicating some of the ads from an existing and we had dynamic insertion in there and it was putting the competitor name in the ad. he's like, why? Like, Oh shoot. But thankfully we caught it quickly and took it out.

Anu Adegbola (25:32.201)
Yes!

Anu Adegbola (25:39.732)
Yes.

my gosh. Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (25:47.892)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. That whole copying and pasting campaigns. Got to be really careful because there'll be some setting in the original world that you don't want copied, that kind of stuff. Absolutely.

Menachem Ani (25:51.491)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Menachem Ani (25:57.697)
Exactly. And so like now most, most of the time we'll either launch a new campaign or do it in Google ads editor where we double check everything before publishing. so, yeah, again, like these are all, all mistakes we learned from.

Anu Adegbola (26:09.52)
Amazing. Well, you know what? don't think I can't think of a better person to ask this question to as well in terms of like, you know, you've got a you've got a great team you've been with that, that, you know, building your team for 10 years, you guys are Google Premier Partner. And, you know, you talk about you're being very, very open here talking about mistakes. And I think sometimes you need to hit some other man worked with some managers who are like, No, no, no, we don't make mistakes. We can't, there's no room for that.

Menachem Ani (26:37.388)
Try to minimize.

Anu Adegbola (26:37.412)
Why? I found that very weird and I've seen like people like, you know, juniors being scared away from the whole industry because of that. They're like, wow, if I make a mistake and I get fired and you get so scared and people leave. But, like, tell us why is it important that we actually share about mistakes and how should managers be with their, with their staff and their employees when it comes to speaking out about mistakes.

Menachem Ani (27:02.488)
So I think like, look, I don't like when we make mistakes. I think like, is it a preventable mistake? Like, is it a mistake that we could have avoided by following the process better? In that case, like it's upsetting when we make a mistake, but if it's like, you know, human error, like something, you know, that's not usual or like, you know, we all make mistakes. We are human, but I think like as a manager, do, yeah.

Anu Adegbola (27:13.641)
Mm.

Menachem Ani (27:27.618)
team's gonna have to follow the checklist, sure, you know, make sure to double check everything, make sure not to move too fast. But at the same time, like when a mistake does happen is I try to treat it with grace and, you know, be kind about it because I know I've done the same thing as long as it becomes a learning experience. That's the biggest thing for me is like, what do we take away from it? If the answer is like, you know, like too bad, I made a mistake or the person's not learning from it, that's not good. But if their response is like,

Anu Adegbola (27:43.7)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (27:55.235)
I totally see what I did wrong there. see why I did it and I'm going to try to do better in the future. Then, you know, that's the best you can ask for.

Anu Adegbola (28:01.984)
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's best thing I've asked for and managers just need to be a bit just giving, yeah, giving your team grace. I mean, obviously it's not about seeing the same person making the same mistake over and over again. I just, you know, sweeping it off of the rug. That's not okay. If someone is clearly not trying to learn from their mistake. Yeah. Yeah.

Menachem Ani (28:13.278)
Exactly, exactly. That's not okay.

That is not okay.

Yeah, I'm not saying we should make mistakes all day, but if it does happen few and far between, we need to be kind about it for sure. And again, making sure we're learning from it.

Anu Adegbola (28:34.144)
Absolutely, absolutely. Learning from the mistakes is the biggest thing. I think that's what we really need to be fully aware of as we go into this, as we're very much within this AI world, about realizing the mistakes will happen, as you said, because there's so many, as said at the beginning, there's so many more toggles that you can get wrong before when you started our first campaign, 2003, keywords, ad copy. Now there's so many different kind of toggles. There's so many different kind of like...

Menachem Ani (28:45.719)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (28:55.33)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (29:02.918)
AI and, and, know, targeting that you could get right or you get, you get wrong. So yeah, keep an eye on them as we go into this brave new, like, you know, AI world, use it, use it, but also be aware of the mistakes that you could make. yeah. And be honest about them. Menachem that has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for bringing those like several stories. Like we had two mistakes. We went off, you came back with a third mistake.

Menachem Ani (29:04.802)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (29:15.074)
Yeah.

Yeah, 100%.

Anu Adegbola (29:31.486)
I love it. just, we need that lovely kind of honesty in our industry right now where on LinkedIn, everybody's just sharing about, I won this new client, 10 million in revenue. Everything is going well, you think on LinkedIn. We need a different perspective.

Menachem Ani (29:44.717)
Yeah.

Yeah, listen, we get, thankfully, we get a lot more right than we get wrong. you know, doing this as long as we've been doing it, there's definitely our fair share of mistakes. And, you know, just I think everybody makes mistakes. That's it.

Anu Adegbola (30:00.894)
Yeah, yeah. What I'm even excited for is that Ginny Marvin, you know, we're going to do it in a way of like, the mistakes she did make, made in a previous career that didn't stop her. But Ginny Marvin is going to be on the podcast. Like I am so like, yes! Like if Ginny can come on and be honest about making mistakes, anyone can. I can't wait for the amount of people who start going, I want to be in the podcast. If Ginny is going to talk about it, why shouldn't I? That'll be fun.

Menachem Ani (30:12.392)
Yeah, she's amazing.

Menachem Ani (30:19.277)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (30:26.261)
Exactly, there you go.

Anu Adegbola (30:28.796)
Anyway, before we leave you one final question, if your PPC career were a movie, what would the title be?

Menachem Ani (30:36.142)
I think right now I would go with heat. It's like me versus the AI.

Anu Adegbola (30:40.636)
Yeah, think someone else, I literally the previous episode that someone also said he does. I love it. Two people can be he. can be, yeah, this industry raises the temperature on our day to day, on a daily basis, right?

Menachem Ani (30:47.47)
yeah? Okay.

Menachem Ani (30:56.684)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (31:00.726)
Yeah, I mean, it's like we're just constantly trying to make sure it comes back to a lot of those toggles, a lot of those features, you the ad platforms want to push us forward and do this, do more of that. And like, I always have to ask myself, is that what's going to get the best results from my client? And so I feel like it's a constant game of push and pull. And but at the same time, it's like, you got to think forward, you got to be AI forward. You have to be technology forward. Otherwise, you just get left behind.

Anu Adegbola (31:19.221)
Yeah.

Anu Adegbola (31:27.112)
Yes, yes, yes, you will. You've got to get into the kitchen. You've got to face the heat. You've got to get in there unless, you know, might as well not be in this industry at all. Like loads of things are changing. That's great. So Menachem, I know we've shared several actually platforms that you're on, but what's your favourite to share to people if people want to really like, you know, follow what you're doing? What's your favourite platform that you're on?

Menachem Ani (31:33.152)
Yeah.

Menachem Ani (31:52.974)
I'm really most active on LinkedIn and Twitter, so feel free to connect with me there. I'm always happy to chat.

Anu Adegbola (31:56.413)
Okay.

Amazing, amazing. We'll share all the links to that in the show notes. so yeah, people can definitely connect with you. But yeah, that's been a great conversation. yeah, thanks again for that, Menachem and Catch you later. Bye bye. Amazing.

Menachem Ani (32:09.228)
Yes, thank you. Thank you for having me. Always great chatting.