Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 91 - Power Pack

I was recently featured on the official Google Ads LinkedIn page and we're talking about it today.

Google Ads Marketing interviewed me to learn more about the Power Pack, AI Max, PMax, and Demand Gen. They wanted to use my expertise as a Google Ads coach to help educate and inform their audiences about AI features in Google Ads.

Today, we're going to be walking through this post together so I can share more detailed, in-depth information with you about how you can potentially use the Power Pack or not use the Power Pack as part of your Google Ads strategy.

I am the only Google Ads coach to ever be featured by Google like this, so it's pretty exciting!

At the end of this episode, instead of an Insider Challenge, I'm going to give you an inside look at how I got selected to be in this campaign, what that process was like collaborating with Google because I got quite a few DMs about that. So I'm pushing that to the end in case you don't care and you just want to know about the Power Pack. But if you've been tuning into this podcast or following me online for some time, you might enjoy that inside look.

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for big brands at Google, and now I work for you.

This is Inside Google Ads: Episode 91, The Power Pack.

One of the key themes that you need to keep in mind when working with Google Ads today is that Google Ads is no longer a game of controlling, it's a game of guiding.

What I said in relation to Performance Max specifically is, “While we may not be able to directly control the way we used to, you're now guiding your campaigns, focusing on the outcomes via your conversion tracking and your bid strategy, rather than what we all used to do, which was focusing on inputs.” 

If you’ve been following this podcast for some time, you've definitely heard me say that before, but this is a really key point that for some reason tends to rub a lot of Google Ads practitioners the wrong way, and it shouldn’t. Change is the only constant. We know that in Google Ads. 

The analogy I like to use is that managing Google Ads is like parenting. We were all used to the era of parenting a baby. And with the baby, you do get to control a lot. Not everything, mind you, okay? I'm the parent of two, so I know. But you can control when the baby eats and when the baby sleeps and what they wear and what activities they do. And the baby is just like this blob that's gonna follow along with you. The baby can cry sometimes or be upset sometimes or get up in the middle of the night when you don't want them to get up in the middle of the night. But at the end of the day, you are completely controlling the environment.

If you don't want your baby to eat something, they're just not going to be able to eat it. If you don't want them to wear something, they're just not gonna be able to wear it.

Now, just like my children are growing and evolving, Google Ads is also growing and evolving. And now Google Ads is like a teenager. Try as you might, you cannot control what your teenager eats because they're not with you all the time. And try as you might, you cannot control what your teenager wears because even if you force them to wear something, the minute they walk out that door, you know they're rolling up that skirt or taking off that sweatshirt or whatever the heck teenagers are doing these days.

What you can do as a parent, though, is try to guide your teenager. Sit them down to have those important conversations about your values and what you think their values should be, how to navigate difficult situations, what to do if they get into trouble. And then it's up to that teenager to go out into the world to use some of what they've learned, but also to make some of their own mistakes. 

For example, when I was a teenager, I went on this school trip to Japan, an amazing opportunity for a teenager. And a bunch of friends and I went out drinking one night and then we came back and a bunch of us threw up because we didn't know about drinking and, not surprisingly, we all got caught by our teachers. We all got suspended.

There were huge consequences in the life of teenage Jyll getting suspended in Japan. It was, like, the worst thing that could ever possibly happen and honestly, that's what it feels like when you launch a Performance Max campaign. You've set up what you think is the right way you need for your business, and then it goes and spends all your money on the Display network. Or you check the search term report and it's all brand terms, which is not what you wanted. It's not doing what you want it to do!

Now here's where most Google Ads practitioners go wrong. They say, “It's not working. Cut it off!”

And to be honest, when I came home from Japan, I was really scared at how my parents were going to react. Well, they were absolutely angry. They sat me down. They knew that I felt so horrible about the mistake I made and the consequences that they didn't need to cut me off and send me out into the street to fend for myself. They said, “We still love you. We know you're not going to make a mistake like this again. Do better next time.”

That's what your Performance Max campaigns or your AI-powered campaigns need. Okay, you made a mistake. Are there additional guide rails we need to put in place? Maybe you're suspended or grounded or something. Now let's let you go out into the world and learn from what happened so you won't make that mistake again.

You can't control your campaigns anymore. Leave those strategies in the past. The best thing you can do for your Google campaigns is to guide them with the right information, conversion tracking, bid strategy, excellent creative signals, all the things we talk about here. Set them out into the world. When they make mistakes, accept that mistakes happen and keep moving forward rather than punishing them and sending them out into the cold on their own.

This is still one of the most common mistakes I see practitioners make with Demand Gen. As I'm quoted here by Google Ads, “Demand Gen works on a different time horizon than I think a lot of us are used to. The most common mistake I see advertisers make with Demand Gen is they'll launch it for two weeks, they'll say, “Oh, I didn't get any conversions” and turn it off.

To bring this back to our parenting analogy, it's like you give birth and then two weeks later, “My baby doesn't know how to speak yet. What a freaking idiot.”

No! It's just learning. It's still taking everything in, testing things out. After a couple months, your baby's going to learn to crawl. They're going to be babbling. Give them some more time. They'll eventually walk, but not before they fall on their face a whole bunch of times first. They're going to say a whole bunch of intelligible nonsense before they say things that remotely sound like words, before they can eventually say things that actually sound like words and then sentences and then expressing their needs. 

Give your Demand Gen campaign time to learn, just like we need to give children time to learn. And what do you know, I give very similar advice for AI Max and for Search campaigns as well. The three main pieces of advice that I gave Google Ads to get started are:

1. Tell Google what matters most to your business. You do this in two ways via, say it with me, your bid strategy and your conversions.

2. Next, make sure you track whatever you can track. Although it could potentially make sense to launch Demand Gen on a clicks-based objective, if you're running PMax, you must have a conversion objective, and if you're using AI Max for Search campaigns, I only recommend doing that on a conversion objective. 

Your conversion can be a “purchase,” a “form fill,” a “phone call,” an “appointment booking.” But it must be something valuable to your business so that you're giving that feedback to the campaign so that it can learn.

It is just like how we talk to babies and sing to babies so that they can absorb and learn language from us. That's what conversion tracking is, providing that data back to your campaign so it can learn from that and then go out on its own and repeat the thing you want it to do.

3. And then tip number three to get started with AI Max for Search campaigns is give it time. AI needs time to learn from your data to see what works uniquely well for your business. This was the theme of Episode 84 of this podcast from September 2025, talking about how the algorithm works. A common misconception people have is that Google is a multibillion dollar company and a leader in AI. Why do they need time to learn? They should already know what works for my business.

Yes, Google does have these very sophisticated algorithms, but algorithms need training data, your data, because what works well for your business is not necessarily what works well for the millions of other advertisers on Google Ads.

To bring it back to our baby analogy, babies are born hardwired in their brains to learn language. But if you drop a baby in Japan and you drop a baby in Canada, they're going to learn very different languages because they receive completely different training data. They will both learn to speak. They will both babble. They will both make mistakes before they get things right. They will both start with individual words and nouns before they get into sentences, but one gets English input, so it's going to learn English, and the other gets Japanese input, so it's going to learn to speak Japanese.

Google's AI Powered campaigns come pre-programmed for learning, but need your input, your business data, via your conversion tracking and your bid strategy, so that it can learn how to speak your language and drive results for you.

That brings us to the million dollar question. Should you use the Power Pack and how can you make it work well for you?

While of course it depends, my general recommendation for most advertisers is to start with the basics. If you're an e-commerce advertiser, the basics are Shopping campaigns. Otherwise, your basics are Search campaigns.

In Search, I'll recommend either Exact or Broad Match keywords depending on a variety of factors. In Shopping, I'll often recommend just advertising some of your products rather than all of them, but start with that foundation, reaching people who are actively searching for what you offer. Because if you can't even convert those people, Demand Gen's not going to work for you.

Then you're going to want to expand on that either by adding more keywords or expanding your match types, or maybe turning on AI Max on the Search side, or on the Shopping side by adding more products, by optimizing or adjusting your Target ROAS and getting that to grow.

Now, once your Search-based campaigns are growing, that's the time to then add in something like Demand Gen to reach people who are not actively searching right now. 

I have a Getting Started with Demand Gen framework that I've shared with my Inside Google Ads course members. So drop a comment wherever you're watching or listening if you want me to dive into that on an episode. But Demand Gen then fills in to start to, I don't even want to say create demand, but just reach people who aren't actively searching but might be interested in what you offer. 

Now you're running Demand Gen and Search, and you can leave it as is, or you might think , these are the building blocks of Performance Max. So, if these pieces are all working well for me individually and now I want to grow, adding Performance Max on top of that could be just the ticket.

In the last episode, Episode 90, I spoke about running PMax alongside other campaigns versus instead of other campaigns. So scroll back one for more details about that.

But at the end of the day, Performance Max is end game. In my opinion, that's where Google Ads is going. That's where all the innovation is happening. That's what the largest, most successful advertisers are doing. So if you can have a few Performance Max campaigns in your account and they're working well, that is goals!

But that's like a grownup who's gone out into the world and, obviously, still wants the love and affection of their parents, but just doesn't need as much guidance anymore.

Start with your babies, your Search or Shopping. Grow them into toddlers by letting them expand. Hit that finicky teenager stage by adding Demand Gen into the mix. And then if your campaigns are ready to graduate into PMax, go for it. If not, I don't know, keep them close to home in a community college? My analogy is running out here!

As I told Google Ads, there are so many different factors that can influence the success of your campaigns. But because of that, Google Ads has become so much more creative. And that's what I personally find so invigorating as someone who lives, breathes, and sleeps Google Ads every day with my clients.

There's no one way to do it. There's no one right answer. And that makes it challenging, but also exciting.

That’s our in-depth look at the Power Pack for today. If you'd like to see this full LinkedIn post from Google Ads about me, I've dropped that link in the episode description.

Now, Jyll, how the heck did you get lucky enough to be featured on the Google Ads LinkedIn page? 

You would think this is because I worked at Google, but that's actually not the case.

By consistently sharing a unique perspective across channels online over the last couple of years, I've gotten onto the radar of the Google Ads marketing and PR teams.

That's why I was invited to attend Google Marketing Live in person. I'm regularly invited to roundtables with product managers to get a sneak peek at new features before they're released.

For example, before AI Max for Search campaigns was announced in May 2025, a couple days earlier, I was on a Google Meet with a handful of other Google Ads influencers, and we were told what was happening under NDA so that we could ask questions and get ready to share that news with our audience.

And so this opportunity here was born out of that. They reached out to me. It's my understanding that there are other people who are going to be featured as part of this campaign as well. And they want to highlight thought leaders and influencers in this space to share their different perspectives on different aspects of Google Ads.

I had about a half hour conversation with this person who works in Google marketing. She interviewed me about all different aspects of my experience and my clients' experiences with Google Ads. And then based on that, took some of the key quotes and put it together into the story about the Power Pack. So I wasn't asked to talk about the Power Pack. I was asked about my experiences and observations and advice around Google Ads and AI features, and this is how it landed.

I also want to say that you don't need to be someone who always says nice things about Google in order to be featured by Google. On the scale of Google Ads influencers, am I someone who's more Google friendly? Yes, but I think that's a function of the fact that I worked at Google, I understand how Google works, and so when I criticize Google, I offer what I think are fair criticisms and suggestions for improvement. I don't like the messaging about, “Here's a hack Google doesn't want you to know,” or “Google just wants to get your money.” Because I know from first-hand experience, that's just not how Google works and frankly not how the world works. I also don't think those narratives are helpful to you becoming a Google Ads expert, which at the end of the day is what you want.

You want to get great results from Google Ads. Google wants you to get great results from Google Ads. And so my job here is to help that happen.

Thanks so much for tuning in. Again, I'll drop the link to this LinkedIn post in the episode description. If you have any further questions at all about this or anything Google Ads related, feel free to drop a comment if you're watching or listening on Spotify or YouTube, or you can comment on any of my social media posts. I'll add your question to my list to answer in an upcoming episode. 

I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time Inside Google Ads.