How AI Is Revolutionising The PPC Landscape

In 2026, it’s safe to say that AI is absolutely everywhere, and PPC is no exception.

On the 9th of February 2026, OpenAI confirmed it was testing ad placements inside ChatGPT in the United States. It’s a move that’s had the digital marketing world buzzing ever since, and honestly, rightly so. 

But here’s the thing. This isn’t just a story about ads appearing inside chatbots. Google & Microsoft have both been quietly (and sometimes not so much) weaving AI deeper and deeper into their ecosystems and advertising platforms for years now. Whether it’s smarter audience targeting, automated creative generation, or predictive bidding, AI is already doing a lot of the heavy lifting in your PPC campaigns, whether you’ve noticed or not.

It’s also worth flagging the contrast that while ChatGPT is jumping into advertising, Perplexity has done the opposite and pulled out of placing Ads around the same time OpenAI started. The AI advertising landscape is still very much finding its feet, which makes a fascinating (and slightly chaotic) space to be operating in right now. 

So, what does this actually mean for your PPC campaigns? Let’s get into it. 

The Role of LLMs in PPC

LLMs (Large Language Models) like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini or Microsoft’s Copilot (to name a few) are no longer just tools you use to draft emails or summarise documents. They’re increasingly becoming advertising platforms in their own right. 

What makes this interesting from a PPC perspective is the way people search inside these tools. Instead of firing off a short keyword like “accounting software”, someone using ChatGPT might ask something along the lines of: “What’s the best accounting software for a small business with under 10 employees that integrates with Xero?”

This is a far richer signal, the intent is clever, and the context is more detailed. And for advertisers, that’s a more qualified audience. The challenge is adapting your strategy to reach them in these new environments. 

There’s also a knock-on effect on the traditional search page. Google’s AI Overviews are pushing both organic and paid results further down the page. On Bing, it varies depending on how Copilot is integrated into the experience. Either way, the prime real estate on the search results page is changing, and that’s something every PPC manager needs to be paying attention to. 

How Google Has Implemented AI Into Google Ads

Google has gone all-in on AI across its advertising platform. If you’re running campaigns in 2026, you’re already operating inside their AI-driven ecosystem; the question is whether you’re using it to your advantage or not. 

Here’s a breakdown of the key features our paid media team has been working with.

AI Max For Search

Launched globally in May 2025, AI Max is arguably the biggest shift in paid search in years. Rather than relying on fixed keyword lists, AI Max uses machine learning to match your ads to search queries based on intent, including those you’d never have though to bid on yourself. 

According to Google’s own data, advertisers enabling AI Max have seen an average 14% lift in conversions at a similar CPA, with some accounts reporting improvements well above 60% during beta. L’Oréal reportedly doubled its conversion rate while cutting cost per conversion by 31% (Google Marketing Live, May 2025) 

It is worth noting that these are Google’s own figures, so take them with a strong pinch of salt, rather than a guaranteed outcome. In our experience across client accounts, results vary quite a bit depending on campaign maturity, data quality, and sector. Newer accounts need more runway, whereas established accounts with clean conversion tracking tend to see the fastest wins. 
Key Features To Know:

• Dynamic Text Customisation: Headlines and descriptions generated by AI to match individual search intent in real time. 
• Final URL Expansion: Serving users to the most relevant landing page, not just your homepage. 
• Brand Controls: So your ads don’t appear next to competitor terms or off-brand messaging. 
• Text Guidelines: Natural language brand instructions like “emphasise sustainability” or “avoid using the word cheap”, rolling out to all advertisers through Q1 of 2026.

Our recommendation? Test AI Max alongside your existing campaigns first, rather than replacing them outright. Give it time to learn, keep a close eye on your search terms report, and make sure your negative keyword list is locked down before you switch it on. 

The “Power Pack”: AI Max, Demand Gen & Performance Max

At Google Marketing Live in May 2025, Google introduced the concept of the “Power Pack”, positioning three campaign types to work together as a fluid ecosystem rather than in isolation: 

• Demand Gen: Builds awareness and interest at the top of the funnel. 
• AI Max: Captures and converts high-intent search traffic in the middle
• Performance Max: Orchestrates full-funnel performance across all Google channels at scale. 

For clients with the budget and conversion volume to support it, running these as a combined structure rather than a separate three-pronged approach is the direction Google is pushing. It’s worth exploring if you’re not already thinking about your campaigns this way. 

Smart Bidding, Now With Exploration Mode

Smart Bidding has been around for a minute now, but it keeps getting more sophisticated. Smart Bidding Exploration, launched to the public in 2025, allows tROAS campaigns to temporarily ease their return targets to discover new converting query categories they wouldn’t normally reach.

Google reports accounts using this feature are seeing 18% more unique converting search query categories and 19% more conversions on average. In practice, we’ve found it particularly useful for accounts that have plateaued under traditional bidding constraints, though it does need careful monitoring in the early stages, as efficiency can dip before it starts to improve.

Ads Advisor & Automated Asset Creation

Google’s Ads Advisor is an agentic AI assistant built directly into the platform. It doesn’t just suggest improvements; it can actually implement them. It generates keyword recommendations, creates ad assets, and learns from the decisions made in your account over time. 

For agency work, this is changing, where time is best spent. The platform is handling more of the tactical day-to-day execution, which shifts our focus toward strategy, oversight and making sure the AI is working within the right parameters. 

On the creative side of things, Asset Studio (which is powered by Google’s Imagen 4 model) now lets you generate images and animated video assets from text prompts, directly inside the Google Ads interface. Ads are also now appearing within AI Overviews on model and desktop globally, and within AI Mode in the US, new placements that simply didn’t exist 19 months ago. 

Copilot’s Role in Microsoft Advertising

Microsoft might not have Google’s search volume, but its CPCs typically run around 30-70% cheaper, and when you factor in Copilots integration with LinkedIn’s B2B audience signals, it becomes a genuinely compelling channel that a lot of advertisers still underestimate or simply overlook.

Microsofts own research (Covering November of 2024 to May 2025) found that Copilot generates 73% higher CTRs and 16% stronger conversion rates when compared to traditional search, with customer journeys 33% shorter on average. Like before it’s worth noting that these statistics are coming directly from the figurative horses mouth (Microsoft), but the current direction trend is aligning with what we’ve been seeing across client accounts. 

The Copilot assistant built into the Microsoft Advertising dashboard is also genuinely useful as a day-to-day tool. You can ask it to diagnose campaign issues, compare performance periods, generate ad copy variations, and build creative assets through natural language. Tasks that used to take around half an hour can now take a couple of minutes.

Two of the newer forms that are worth keeping an eye on are: 

• Showroom Ads: Interactively give ad experiences that allow users to ask questions within the ad itself, rather than having to click through to find answers
  
• Copilot Checkout: Allows shoppers to move from discovery to purchase without leaving the Copilot interface. Microsoft’s data suggests journeys involving Copilot are 194% more likely to result in a purchase when shopping intent is present.

For e-commerce clients especially, Copilot is a channel we’d encourage you not to write off.

Hyper-Personalisation: The Shift From Segments To Individuals

One of the most significant things AI has been enabling in PPC is the move away from broad audience segments toward a more genuine one-to-one personalisation, and it’s happening a lot quicker than a lot of PPC experts realise. 

Traditionally, targeting meant grouping users into buckets like: age range, location & interest category. AI now makes it possible to adapt the message, the creative, and the landing page destination to each individual based on their real-time intent, behaviour, and context. 

In practice, this looks like: 

• Dynamic ad copy that changes based on what someone searched and where they are in the buying journey.
• AI-generated landing page variations served to different audience signals.
• Retargeting powered by zero-party and first-party data, rather than third-party cookies.
  

The brands seeing the strongest results from AI-driven campaigns right now are the ones that invested in their first-party data infrastructure 12-18 months ago. The technology is ready; what it needs to fully succeed is high-quality data to work with. If you haven’t already got a plan for collecting and activating first-party data, that’s the conversation to be having. 

How To Adjust Your PPC Keyword Strategy For AI

If you’ve read our piece on GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation), some of this will sound familiar, because the same shift in search behaviour is playing out across paid as well as organic. 

People aren’t just searching “legal services Nottingham” anymore. They’re asking AI models, “What’s the best employment solicitor for an unfair dismissal case in the East Midlands?” AI-driven matching tools like AI Max and Copilot are built to catch that expanded intent, meaning your campaigns can reach relevant users even if they don’t use your exact keywords.

Now, this doesn’t mean that keyword strategy is dead. If anything, negative keyword management becomes all the more important, not less. AI casts a wider net, so that net needs guardrails. We spend considerably more time on negative keyword reviews and search term analysis than we did a couple of years ago, and it’s one of the first things we look at when auditing an account.

The other big shift is that structured first-party data is the new keyword. The better the signals you feed the platform, conversion events, audience lists, and CRM integrations, the better AI-driven campaigns tend to perform. 

The Challenges & Drawbacks of AI in PPC

We’d be doing you a disservice if we just painted AI in PPC as one long highlight reel. There are real challenges here, and as a team that works with these tools day in, day out. It’s important to be straight with you about them.

You Can’t See Everything

As automation increases, visibility decreases. Search term transparency has been declining for a while. Audience insights are increasingly modelled rather than reported. Performance Max historically made it near-impossible to know which channels were pulling their weight. Google has improved this with channel-level reporting, but the trend of AI making more decisions behind the curtain is an ongoing tension. Our approach is to focus on the business metrics that matter (such as: Revenue, ROAS & CPA) rather than over-indexing on platform metrics we have less control over. It’s not a perfect solution, but it keeps decisions grounded in what actually counts. 

Brand Safety & Creative Consistency

When AI is generating your ad copy in real time, maintaining brand voice is a genuine challenge. Google’s text guidelines feature, where you can give natural language brand instructions, is a step in the right direction. But it needs active management. For every client where we’ve enabled AI-generated assets, we run regular creative audits to catch anything that’s drifted. Handing creative control to an algorithm without proper guardrails risks diluting your brand’s identity, especially for premium or niche businesses where tone matters enormously. 

Privacy & Data Compliance

More personalisation requires more data, and with that comes real UK GDPR obligations. Consent Mode & enhanced Conversions are now table stakes for anyone running Google Ads in the UK & EU. If these aren’t set up correctly on your account, it’s one of the first things we’ll flag in an audit. 

AI Is Only As Good As The Strategy Behind It

This is probably the most important one, and one I think everyone can relate to who’s worked with any form of LLM in the last few years. AI is an amplifier, not a strategist. It can bid, test, target and even generate at a scale that no human can match, but it cannot define what success looks like for your business, understand the nuances of your market or even make judgment calls about brand values. 

The businesses getting the most from AI in PPC are the ones that bring strong strategy, clean data, and a clear creative direction. After all that, then you can let the AI operate within that structure at scale. That’s the approach we take at Repeat, and it’s the reason we don’t treat AI as a set-and-forget solution. 

So, Where Does This Leave You?

AI in PPC isn’t something that’s coming; it’s already here and has been for a hot minute now. It’s reshaping everything from how ads are matched to user intent, to where they appear (and yes, including inside ChatGPT), to how creative is generated and tested. 

The good news is that for businesses willing to adapt, there’s a real opportunity to get ahead. The key is treating AI as a tool that works best when it’s guided, with quality data, a clear strategy, and human expertise making the calls that automation simply cannot. 

If you’re not sure how the changes covered in this post apply to your campaigns specifically, that’s exactly what our FREE PPC Audit is for. It’s not just a generic PDF that you get sent, its a proper account review by a real member of our team, with clear, actionable recommendations on where you can improve. 

Claim your FREE PPC Audit Today!