in short, no.
Or at least, not good account managers anyway. Between automated rules, conversion optimiser, product listing ads, ad rotation settings and now dynamic search ads, some PPC account managers could be forgiven for fearing all this automation threatens to leave them redundant in their job. Some could also be forgiven for championing the belief that this was always Google’s intention – to claim back that 10-20% of the client’s PPC budget that goes to agencies instead of on more clicks. In reality though, we’d be dangerously missing the point of our role as the intermediary between our clients and PPC. Regardless of the changes that occur in the tools we use, the level of competition will always stay constant and it’s maintaining a competitive advantage on behalf of our clients that we’re really tasked with.
don’t be evil
In terms of Google’s intentions, it’s immediately pretty clear they would never want to push agencies out of their roles just to claim back that 10-20%. Bringing an agency in to manage a PPC account can massively increase its efficiency and the budgets, and Google owes a huge amount of its success to understanding what the agency needs to grow the account, and help make PPC a lucrative and appealing industry for talented individuals to stay in.
driving value for everyone
For a start, the future is very bright for everyone involved. The advertiser, agency and supplier ménage-a-trois that the search engines have carefully nurtured benefits all parties involved and, most importantly also the end user whose buying habits drive the revenue. It’s easy to look at Google cynically as a gatekeeper to the internet that has managed to win the race to monopolise it and so charges a tax on online purchases, but what Google has actually done is provide an incredibly useful shopping tool that cuts out a huge amount of the wasted time and effort that used to plague commercial endeavours, and it’s from these measures to improve efficiencies that Google takes their cut.
the end of PPC
PPC is not dead and as it continues to evolve I don’t think it ever really will ‘die’. There’s no doubt that PPC is becoming more and more competitive for advertisers, but this means it’s maturing into a more valuable service for the end user. Google’s constant reinvestment in improving their service and automating the basics is providing a new landscape for advertisers to compete on, giving good advertisers the opportunity to really excel in both their sales and the paid search service they offer their customers.
