2026 PPC trends to get ahead of now

The PPC landscape in 2025 shifted faster than ever, with updates arriving at a pace unmatched in the industry’s 20-year history. At SMX Next, a panel of industry experts broke down what’s working, what’s failing, and what advertisers should prepare for in 2026 and beyond.

The state of PPC

The panelists agreed that 2025 marked a major shift, especially in how quickly Google responded to advertiser feedback.

Ameet Khabra, founder of Hop Skip Media, called the year “interesting” and said he was genuinely surprised by Google’s willingness to listen to advertisers, especially on channel reporting for Performance Max.

• “It was really cool to see the people who were in that room sit there and be like, this is exactly what we asked for,” she noted, referring to discussions at Google Marketing Live.

Chris Ridley, head of paid media at Evoluted, said 2025 wasn’t just about Google listening — it was the year AI and AI search truly took off.

• “Everyone is now talking about the different platforms available, like Perplexity, ChatGPT, Gemini, and they just seem to be dominating. AI Overviews have kind of taken over as well.”

Reva Minkoff, founder and president of Digital4Startups, called 2025 “the year of the max,” pointing to Performance Max, AI Max, and the growing list of “max” campaign types. She said more features launched this year than at any other time in her 20-year search career.

• “It’s just every day there’s a new thing, which is really exciting. But there’s definitely a lot happening now.”

What’s working in PPC

Back to basics: Structure and signals

All panelists stressed that success in 2025 came from returning to the fundamentals.

Minkoff stressed the importance of proper campaign structure and quality signals:

• “It’s still important to have a good search campaign with keywords that you control and ads you create that goes to an audience that you think it should be going to.”
• Minkoff noted that Performance Max is working well, but only when the signals are right — “if you’re not putting good stuff in, you won’t get good stuff out.”

She also pointed to strong results from Demand Gen (formerly Video Action campaigns), user-generated content, and influencer marketing:

• “I think people want to hear from real people.”

Khabra stressed the importance of using scripts and automation oversight to catch issues before they turn into problems.

• “We’ll have scripts in place that are like anomaly detectors, just so we know that tracking is off. The broken URL script is a lifesaver, honestly — how many times have we had a developer push a change and we didn’t even know it happened?”

The human touch in creative

Ridley underscored the need for authentic creative in an AI-driven landscape:

• “Going back with our authentic user-generated content is getting really good results compared to this slick, polished stuff, especially with AI coming out now and people questioning whether it’s real or not. Having that human touch is really working for us.”

Client communication

Beyond tactics, Ridley emphasized better client communication:

• “Making sure that we understand what their business objectives are rather than just their ROAS and CPAs” has been essential for success.

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What not working in PPC

Automatically created assets (ACAs)

The panel unanimously agreed that Automatically Created Assets are problematic, primarily from a brand safety perspective.

Khabra was particularly critical:

• “We can’t put in guidelines. We’re not allowed to approve things beforehand. So we really have to sit there and kind of just figure out what the system has created for us.”

She referenced a quote from Amy Hebdon:

• “AI is a pattern matcher, not a creator. It’s going to generate the most probable thing, not something that’s actually new or exciting, or even correct.”

Minkoff echoed these concerns:

• “A lot of clients need to be able to control their brand story and what they’re talking about, and the words that they use. I just don’t trust the automatically generated anything to reflect those guidelines.”

Minkoff noted that automatically generated content often misses business nuances, such as which products deserve budget and which items shouldn’t be advertised at all.

User interface and UX issues

Ridley voiced frustration with ongoing platform user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) changes.

• “Having to click campaign, campaign, campaign makes no sense. I’m finding everything a lot easier to do in Editor now or using tools like Optmyzr where it kind of skips that UI.”
• He apologized to Google representatives on other panels but maintained that UI changes are “counterproductive in terms of making it quicker, easier, more natural for people to find what they need.”

The problem is compounded by gaps between the UI and Editor, forcing advertisers to jump back and forth between the two.

Learning periods and flexibility

Minkoff pointed to extended learning periods as a major challenge, especially for smaller campaigns or time-sensitive moments like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

• “How do you navigate a learning period on these platforms that feel no longer designed to let you do those pushes for one day that are honestly a real part of the business calendar?”

Measurement challenges

Khabra flagged measurement as a major pain point, especially for small business owners with limited budgets and data.

• “Trying to figure out how to make that work with automation that needs a lot of it has been really, really interesting.”

Khabra warned that Google’s modeled conversions reflect a “best possible outcome” scenario that business owners may mistakenly treat as reality.

Biggest surprises of 2025

Google Marketing Live announcements

Ridley said Google Marketing Live was his biggest surprise, noting that Google “announced loads of new things for small and medium businesses, but also big things we’ve been asking for.” Key announcements included:

• A/B testing on product feeds in Merchant Center
• Reducing customer list size requirements for search from 1,000 to just 100 approved users

He called the changes “game-changing” for small businesses.

Performance Max channel reporting

Minkoff was caught off guard by channel reporting for Performance Max:

• “I did not see that coming. I think it’s very exciting, although the next step is going to be being able to do something about it, which is kind of what I’m hoping for come soon.”

Waze pins in Performance Max

Khabra’s biggest surprise was the most recent: Waze pins as a placement in Performance Max.

• “That was definitely not on my bingo card. I would’ve never, ever in a million years thought the Waze pins would be a placement in PMax.”

The speed of AI/LLM rollout

Minkoff was struck by how quickly AI Overviews and LLMs became ubiquitous.

• “It felt like overnight in a way. It was kind of coming out and then it was out and it’s there a good chunk of the time. The cat is out of the bag and it is very out of the bag and not coming back.”

The channel reporting debate

The Performance Max channel reporting discussion exposed tension between what advertisers want and what the platform was built to do.

The problem

Minkoff explained that many campaigns now see 95% or more of their budget flowing into a single placement, usually display:

• “I just don’t think that was the point of PMax. The thing that I’ve always liked about PMax is that it can fill the whole funnel, that it can fill these different placements, that it wasn’t gonna be completely overrun by one.”

The fence-sitting position

Khabra acknowledged sitting on the fence:

• “It was meant to be a black box this entire time. Although I’m really happy about the channel reporting, there was a little piece of you that was like, were we supposed to — should this have actually happened?”

She worried that everyone is now trying to manipulate the system in ways that defeat its purpose:

• “We’re supposed to put in clean data, we’re supposed to put in good signals, and it’s supposed to do its job.”

Potential solutions

Ridley raised an intriguing idea: What if Google offered media mix controls that let advertisers suggest percentage splits — like 20% search and 30% display — as guidance rather than hard limits?

Minkoff suggested bid adjustments as a middle ground:

• “Bid up, bid down. I want more of this, I want less of this. I’m not even necessarily asking for me to figure it out because if I was right, I would just run them in the other campaign. But more a matter of like, do a little more of this, do a little less of this.”

The consensus was clear: until better controls exist, advertisers should focus on sending the right signals so Google can make smarter decisions on the backend.

Biggest struggles right now

Controlling automated AI features

Ridley called the automatic rollout of AI recommendations and features the biggest challenge:

• “Even sometimes after you turn it off and you go through the whole review, the campaign setup, you see it turned back on.”

He pointed to Matt Beswick’s recent experience, where forgetting to disable search partners led to most of the budget being spent on wasted traffic.

The challenge goes further with hidden toggles and hard-to-find settings, creating constant stress for advertisers trying to stay in control.

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Finding hidden settings

Minkoff echoed this concern:

• “A lot of the boxes are hidden, so it’s hard to even find where it was turned on or turned off, or the option that you can adjust it.”

Measurement for small businesses

Khabra’s biggest concern remains measurement challenges, especially with privacy concerns making tracking increasingly difficult:

• “I think that’s just gonna continually become more of an issue.”

What we’ll be talking about in 2026

The unknown unknown

Minkoff offered a fascinating perspective: “My favorite thing about this question is that I honestly don’t know. And I feel like this is the first time I can say that—the first time where I felt like things were changing that quickly.”

She emphasized that the biggest thing we’ll discuss in a year probably hasn’t even been released yet:

• “We have to make sure that we have budget, we have flexibility to factor that into our planning. I really think it’ll be something completely new, which is super exciting, but also kind of crazy.”

The antitrust trial

Khabra is watching the Google antitrust trial closely:

• “They lost the first part of it. They’re appealing it. I’m really curious just to see what happens on that front and what the implications are.”

Ads within AI platforms

Ridley expects AI to remain the focus a year from now, but with ads running inside AI platforms.

• “Ads within each of the AI platforms as well, and probably Google and other platforms integrating them as network partners as well.”

The only certainty in PPC is uncertainty

PPC changed at an unprecedented pace in 2025. Google finally listened to advertisers while pushing deeper into AI-driven automation. The advertisers who performed best embraced automation without giving up strategic control, prioritized quality signals over volume, and stayed agile enough to adapt to changes that seemed to come weekly, rather than quarterly.

As 2026 approaches, platforms are evolving faster than ever, and the biggest changes likely haven’t even been announced yet. Advertisers who build flexibility into their strategies, stick to strong fundamentals, and feed high-quality signals into automated systems will be best positioned to succeed — whatever 2026 brings.

Watch: 2026 PPC trends to get ahead of now + Live Q&A

Here is the full panel discussion from SMX Next 2025: