Aaron Young Define Digital Academy

Ads are coming to ChatGpt… is this the beginning of the end?

🚨🚨This is why AI won’t be taking your advertising job anytime soon 🚨🚨

Your Google Ads dashboard is lying to you!

Well, not lying exactly. But it is only telling you half the story, and that half could cost you your business.

Let me show you what I mean 👇🏼

This is the results for one of our “DDA: On Demand” members inside of Google Ads and it looks like an absolute disaster.

In fact, if an agency or freelancer did a review of this account to try and win the client, they would pull it apart in about thirty seconds flat.

And here is why:
👉🏻Conversions dropped from around 670 a month down to roughly 270
👉🏻Cost went up from $13,000 a month to $21,000 a month
👉🏻 Conversion rate slid backwards over the same period

Brutal, right? Spending more, getting less.

But here is the big disconnect, and this is where most business owners get burned.

It is not about what Google Ads is saying. It is about what is actually happening inside the business.

From the start we worked with this business to track the real business numbers. Not the dashboard vanity metrics.

Inquiries versus conversions. People reaching out versus people actually paying for the service.

And the picture flips completely:
😀 May this year: 156 conversions. May last year: 68
😀 April this year: 113 conversions. April last year: 69

Since they started with us in the On Demand program last September, the weekly trend line has been climbing.

This account is going up, not down.

The Google Ads dashboard told one story. The business bank account told the truth.

So if you are a business owner, ask yourself one simple question...

Is your agency, your freelancer or your in house team asking you every single week or month what is really happening inside your business?

Not impressions. Not clicks.
Real leads. Real sales. Real revenue.
If the answer is no, you need to find someone else to run your ads. Full stop.

It is always about what is happening inside of your business, and inside of your business bank account 🤑

Ps: if your business needs results like this apply for our “DDA: On Demand” program. Check out the link in our bio

The biggest mistake I see business owners make with Google Ads?

Judging their results on a single day.

One day you spend $117. The next it jumps to $400. Conversions bounce from 6 down to 1 and back up to 5. If you watch it day by day, you’ll drive yourself crazy.

But zoom out and look at the full month, and the real story shows up.

This account added 13 extra conversions month on month. Conversion rate up 1%. Cost per conversion down.

All while the business was scaling.

So here’s my one bit of advice: don’t get too excited about a great day, and don’t get too annoyed about a bad day.

Look at the trends. Week on week, then month on month.

Play the long game.

How many Google Ads campaigns should you actually be running?

Here’s the truth: more campaigns does not mean more results. It just means more complexity, and more chances for things to go wrong.

At Define Digital Academy we run on one principle: less is more.
Our starting point is always ONE campaign and ONE ad group.
We almost always end up needing more, but starting there forces every new campaign or ad group to earn its place.

Add a new ad group when the ad copy and landing page no longer match the search term (think running shoes vs trail shoes).

Add a new campaign when you need to control budget separately, target different locations or networks (search vs shopping vs YouTube), or when something is performing well but Google isn’t spending there.

The golden rule: every campaign and every ad group needs a specific strategic reason to exist.
No reason? Don’t create it.
Less is more in 2026.

Stop writing boring ad copy. 🛑

The biggest mistake I see in Google Ads? Keyword-stuffed headlines that completely ignore the human doing the search.

Remember: every person searching has one of two things going on. A problem they want to solve, or a goal they want to achieve. Speak directly to that and your results change fast.

And in the age of AI, don’t forget that humans are still the best at communicating to other humans. Ditch the AI slop and write copy that actually connects.

Ads are coming to AI Mode for Google Ads, and this is the reason most businesses will eventually need to move across to AI Max 👇🏻

[Full disclosure] As of June 2026, I’m not actively using AI Max yet. We’re still doing internal testing, because right now ads in AI Mode are only showing on a very small percentage of searches. When we run manual searches, we’re just not seeing them active yet.

BUT that’s going to change very, very quickly.

Here’s what a lot of the never AI Max crowd are missing...
You can’t rely on pinned headlines or 30 character headlines to stay relevant to an AI conversation that might open with 30 or 40 words and then carry three or four follow up questions.

Think about one product, say a coffee machine. You could have 20 or 30 different types of enquiries coming in. One person cares about the colour. Another wants the dimensions. Someone else is deep in the technical specs. How do you know which headlines will best match that conversational enquiry when there are five different questions on the table?

That’s exactly where AI generated ad formats like highlighted answers and conversational discovery ads become so important.

The message is PLEASE don’t go and change everything in your account today! This is not lived reality just yet. But it is coming fast, and now is the time to start thinking about how AI Max fits into your strategy.

Are you using AI Max right now?