Robert Evans

Performance Max, Broad Match, and now AI Max are steadily stripping away the keyword-level control Paid Search practitioners have relied on for years. For lead-gen accounts, this is a bigger problem than it looks: a single generic conversion action, a form fill or a phone call, can hide wildly different customer values, and Google's bidding algorithms have no way of knowing the difference unless you explicitly tell them.

Drawing on real account data from home care, fertility, and funeral lead-gen clients, this session shows what happens when the dashboard says one thing and the underlying numbers say another, and what practitioners can actually do to keep control of value once they've lost control of targeting.

Key takeaways

• Understand why PMax, Broad Match, and AI Max are removing keyword-level visibility faster than most accounts are adapting to it, and why lead-gen is hit harder by this than ecommerce.
• Apply a practical way to price conversions by real business value rather than just tracking them, so smart bidding optimises toward profit instead of raw volume.
• Question the headline results of any PMax or AI Max test before scaling it, and know exactly where to look (the actual search terms, not the dashboard) to catch a false win early.