01Three depths of "AI"
| Depth | Examples | What is left for you |
|---|---|---|
| Suggests | Opteo (from US$129 a month), Adzooma (free to US$179), Optmyzr (by spend) | Knowing Google Ads, and the time to act on the list |
| Adjusts | Google Smart Bidding (free), Ryze AI (US$89 a month) | Building the campaigns, writing the ads, choosing the searches, judging the leads |
| Runs the job | Adducta (from US$39 a month, never more than a fifth of ad spend) | Approving the plan, and calling the people it says are worth calling |
02What an agent should do
- Start from your business, not from the account. What you sell, where, what a good customer looks like, and what a lead may cost before it stops being worth it.
- Show you the plan before it spends. Where the money goes, what the ads say, which searches it buys and which it blocks.
- Block the wrong searches. Most wasted money on small accounts is clicks from people who were never going to buy.
- Judge the enquiries, not just the clicks. A form fill from a job seeker counts as a conversion unless something says otherwise. The agent should grade each one and teach Google's bidding which clicks became customers.
- Log every change with its reason, so you can read what it did and why.
03What it should never do
- Spend past a limit you can see. Google may spend up to twice a daily budget on a busy day. An agent should have its own hard stop on top; Adducta's stops everything if a day passes 2.3 times your limit, and checks every 5 minutes.
- Depend on the AI to stop the money. The checks that guard spending should be plain code that keeps working on a day the AI does not. Adducta's are.
- Keep your account. The advertising account and its history should be yours to take away. Adducta's terms move it onto your own billing within five working days, at no charge.
- Take a share of your ad money. Adducta's fee is separate and every cent of the ad budget goes to Google.
04How to check one before it spends
Ask it for the plan first. If an agent cannot tell you, before a dollar is spent, which searches it will buy, which it will block and what a lead should cost, it will not know later either. Adducta writes that plan free from six questions, with no account and no card, so you can read it before deciding.
Comparing tools on price? See AI tools to run Google Ads for a small business.