In the online advertising sphere, automated campaigns have become more ubiquitous over the past few years, especially with the rise of AI-powered tools. While automation can absolutely help streamline the advertising process and make some intelligent decisions to get more out of ad spend and ROI, it’s still best to ensure campaigns have the human touch (or, at the very least, human intervention throughout).
In this blog, I’ll be taking you through a closer look at how automation works, when utilising automation is beneficial, and how to strike the right balance between automation and manual refinements.
How Automation Really Works (Beyond the Sales Pitch)
The truth is, most forms of automation rely on a range of different technologies, which can include:
- Machine learning models
- Predictive algorithms
- AI-driven optimisation systems
- Real-time behavioural data processing
- Large-scale auction and ranking systems
While the specific technologies differ between platforms (and the above terms may sound like a bunch of word salad), the end results are typically comparable. Essentially, through various forms of automation, they’re analysing massive amounts of user behaviour and ad performance data to predict who will be the most likely to convert. They then automatically adjust targeting, bidding, placements, creatives, and budgets in real-time.
These automation tools are available across most major search and social media ad platforms, making it easier for businesses to advertise more products and services with less manual input.
Human input
Generally speaking, creating new campaigns (or ad accounts) do still require manual setup at first. You’ll typically have to provide the following information to most platforms:
- Campaign objectives (sales, impressions, sign-ups, lead generation, etc.)
- Budget (how much you’re willing to spend daily and over the course of the entire campaign)
- Conversion tracking (setting up rules or tracking cookies that show when a conversion has occurred)
- Creative assets (images/graphics, videos, and copy)
- Other business-related rules (specific parameters or legal considerations depending on your type of business)
Automated tools
Once these foundational parameters have been set, many automated ad tools can handle things such as:
- Adjusting bidding (how much to bid on a specific search term or interest)
- Auction decisions (the culmination of other factors for ad visibility – alignment of ad and landing page copy, bidding amounts, conversion likelihood, amount of competition, contextual signals, etc.)
- Delivery optimisation (finding the best section to place an ad (in-feed, display ad, search result placement, etc.)
- Audience prediction (adjusting the audience based on past performance and other automated and algorithm signals)
- Asset combination (combining the right copy, images, video, etc. for better conversions)
The above is just how automation tends to be divided from actions that require human input. However, as AI-powered tools become more sophisticated and deeply ingrained in different platforms, the capabilities of automation are increasing. For example, Google Ads’ Performance Max (commonly called PMax) can auto-generate videos and audio for campaigns if you don’t upload any yourself.
In its current state, the best way to look at automation across most platforms is that it can help reduce the amount of manual labour you put into ongoing optimisations, such as bidding amounts, A/B testing different ad types, ad placement for best return, etc.
When Algorithms Outperform Human Strategy
Whether you’re talking about an algorithm or AI-powered form of automation, there are areas where they can excel and help cut down on the time required to make granular refinements.
While we wouldn’t say that algorithms outright outperform human strategy, their ability to simplify these more granular aspects of ad optimisation is an undeniable benefit. We’d say that human strategy sets the stage for success and supportive automated processes can strengthen the strategy.
Automation typically benefits efforts such as:
- Bidding optimisations
- Automatic A/B testing
- Optimises ad placement for increased conversions
- Can break down larger data sets faster for continued ad performance improvements
- Highly effective for fast-moving, large-scale campaigns that involve multiple products, countries, and various platform placements
While these automated tools are great for these granular, data-based decisions, there are still many areas where they logically fall short of human strategy – particularly when it comes to branding, understanding your business’s priorities, customer psychology, and so much more. That’s why striking a healthy balance between human input and automation is key here. Because, without this balance, you’ll encounter issues where your campaigns become over-automated.
The Warning Signs Your Campaign Is Over-Automated
As discussed, the many automated campaign tools that are available are great for leveraging data and broader audience insights, but they ultimately will work towards whatever Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) you set them. For example, if your main KPI is X number of lead generation form conversions or X number of click-throughs per day, applicable automation tools will hyper-focus on hitting those and nothing else.
The problem with this is that the automation tools you have at your disposal can then become blind to other opportunities along the way. So, if you want as many leads as possible for as little spend as possible, that’s where the focus will go. But while you may gain cheap leads because of this, are those leads actually going on to make a purchase that results in a positive return on ad spend (ROAS)?
Without human intervention, you could be raking in cheap leads thanks to automation, but in the end you’re ultimately wasting money because those leads aren’t actually closing. A person can identify this and adjust the ads (bidding, keywords, target audience, etc.) to seek out more qualified leads that may cost more to gain but then actually go on to make a purchase and drive true profit for your business.
Similarly, if you have a ROAS objective and set automated tools to focus on pure ROAS numbers, you may see a good return on your ad spend but then realise the products or services being promoted aren’t high-margin enough to drive actual bottom-line profit. And, again, this is where human intervention is necessary.
Over-automating any campaign has its drawbacks. And while newer AI tools may be able to identify potential gaps, associated keywords, or expressed interests to expand your prospective base of leads or customers, it can only reach its full potential when combined with human input.
Automation tools cannot understand the emotion behind ads, nor can they comprehend the broader business strategy or how to make your branding pop. They can help you with some of the more time-consuming aspects of revising and refining budgets and expanding your reach, but they’re not a substitute for the human component of effective advertising and marketing content.
If you’re simply creating set-and-forget campaigns and never analysing the performance data of all the automation tools you have, then your ad campaigns will become excessively automated.
Finding the Balance: Human Input vs Machine Efficiency
Automation tools across different platforms are undoubtedly getting smarter. One such example is the introduction of AI Max for Search in Google Ads. This enhanced AI tool brings an additional layer of AI optimisation in the form of broadened keyword matching, dynamically tailored ad copy, and altering landing pages that match user intent.
While it may be more sophisticated than previous forms of automation, it has also encountered some notable issues. These include brand cannibalisation (when excessive ad targeting of branded keywords impacts organic branded results), pushing users to poorly-aligned landing pages, and even notable increases in cost-per-click pricing.
This speaks to the continued importance of balancing your automation with proper human input. So, when running ads that utilise any degree of automation or AI, take the following into account:
- Define your business goals clearly: Your goal shouldn’t just be earning cheap conversions, but by setting meaningful KPIs for AI and automation to focus on, such as profit, qualified leads, ROAS or Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER), and Lifetime Value (LTV)
- Use AI for micro-optimisations: Many automated tools are best suited for tasks such as bidding, budget pacing, placement optimisation, and audience discovery.
- Have humans define the strategy: The people in your business should be handling the positioning, offers, campaign structure, seasonality, and customer psychology components of campaigns.
- Focus on testing strong creative: Strong ad creative remains one of the biggest performance drivers. While AI and automation distributes ads well, it’s humans who create the angles and hooks.
- Provide high-quality data to all platforms: Accurate conversion tracking and CRM feedback is critical. After all, automation will only be as good as the signals it receives.
- Maintain human oversight and refinements: Make sure to regularly review search terms, lead quality, attribution, spend allocation, and creative fatigue (e.g. outdated ad copy, imagery, etc.).
- Automation should assist people, not replace them: The best results come when humans design the system and AI makes optimisations within it.
- Run proper tests before scaling at large: Don’t blindly trust recommendations or auto-applied settings that automation puts forward. Validate its performance against business outcomes first before expanding.
- Balance scale through automation with human control: Fully automated campaigns can scale quite quickly, so it’s important to retain some manual control in order to prevent wasted spend and poor optimisation paths.
If you’re looking to implement automation into your online ad campaigns but are uncertain about how to strike the right balance for optimal performance and ROI, the team at Reform Digital can help.
Our PPC management and social advertising experts can help set up your advertising campaigns for short- and long-term success with the perfect blend of human strategy and automated optimisations. Get in touch with us today to learn more.
