Experts Perspective

My co-host Frances Suarez and I just dropped another episode of PPC in the Trenches, where we trade notes on what’s actually happening in our paid ads accounts each fortnight.

Frances “Ces” is a Senior Paid Ads Consultant managing close to half a million in monthly ad spend. Between us we cover Google Ads and Meta Ads, and most of the curveballs that show up in client accounts week to week.

This episode runs through Google sunsetting Dynamic Search Ads for AI Max, last week’s mass ad disapprovals, the ChatGPT-style search test in Chrome, the observer effect on AI training data, ChatGPT Ads going live, and a Google lead form win on a high-ticket e-com account.

• Watch on YouTube

DSA Is Getting Sunset for AI Max

Jeremy Yang: Frances, you’re currently managing about $450k a month in ad spend?

Frances Suarez: Yeah, 450 to 500k. About the same as you, but I’ve got a team of seven. You’re a lot better at it than me because you’re doing it solo.

Jeremy Yang: All right, let’s get this started. Let me share my screen.

Frances Suarez: With dynamic search ads, they’re being replaced by AI Max come September 2026. Personally, I’m only managing three accounts right now that are running DSA, eight campaigns total. It’s all under one client, basically sister accounts. So it’s not something that’s going to affect most of my portfolio. How are you using it?

Jeremy Yang: I’ll tell you how I’m using it and then maybe you can tell me if I’m doing it right. I use DSA because CPCs are low. I try to use it as a discovery tool for new search terms that I’m not picking up in my main search campaigns. I use exact match negatives in DSA so it doesn’t interfere with my other stuff. Have I had success with it? Mixed bag. But it’s one of those tricks I pull out when the account needs more search terms. It’s not something I build with.

Frances Suarez: Pretty much the same. Out of all the accounts I manage right now, I’m only left with three accounts that have DSA campaigns set up because it started to lose its effect after a little while. The interesting thing is, looking back over the last 6 months, the quality of the search terms report for DSA campaigns has deteriorated. It kind of makes sense now after they announced it’s going to sunset. How I set it up is pretty much how you do it. One campaign, exact match negatives, just for discovering new keywords and opportunities.

Jeremy Yang: When they say it’s going to AI Max, when I first read it I thought they were going to push AI Max into search, mandatory everywhere. Google used to do the right thing about relevance score. Now it seems very black-box. If they’re going to make us use AI Max on search, it’s going to be a huge problem.

Frances Suarez: I’ve been retesting AI Max recently. I tried it a few months back and it wasn’t working. But I’ve started testing it again in one account, and so far the results are looking positive. For now I’m just going to keep testing.

Jeremy Yang: It’s pretty much like when PMax came out. It was messy. Everyone hated it. Hopefully it’s starting to get there.

Jeremy Yang: For people listening who are dabbling in DSA, the truth is DSA is already pretty advanced. If you’re a business owner doing PMax, you’re not negating, you’re not downloading a list and putting square brackets on it. For people in the same position as us, with existing DSA campaigns, would you say it’s a worry?

Frances Suarez: They’re not going to start now because it’s getting sunset. For me, I’d be quite scared if DSA was the only thing giving me conversions and then eventually it’s going to get converted to AI Max. I think one reason Google announced it now is they want us to prepare. We can start transitioning to AI Max if we still want it, and start building data in that campaign.

Jeremy Yang: This reminds me of when standard shopping went to PMax. That was quick. One day we were laughing at “automated campaigns,” whatever they called it at the time. Next day, your standard campaign just became PMax. The thing is, they somehow programmed PMax to perform better than shopping.

Frances Suarez: As an advertiser with standard shopping, you’re very hesitant to use PMax. But then you set it up and the system starts favouring it. So you have no choice but to eventually pause your shopping campaign.

Jeremy Yang: That’s engineered from Google to make sure new stuff performs better for a while. When PMax came out, there was no search terms report. You couldn’t neg. It was crazy.

Jeremy Yang: I was talking to someone yesterday and she was explaining how when AI is your strategy, you have a problem. Someone goes, “What’s your strategy?” “Oh, we’re moving to PMax.” That’s not a strategy. That’s black box.

The Mass Ad Disapprovals Last Week

Jeremy Yang: Mass ad disapprovals last week. Did it hit you?

Frances Suarez: I did not feel it. I was not aware until I read the news. None of my ads got disapproved.

Jeremy Yang: We definitely got hit. We have a lot of accounts where there’s a legacy website or landing page sitting there. So it’s not active ads, but we got heaps of emails. We came up with a canned response.

Jeremy Yang: For anyone listening: there’s a canned response you can create. When you get the notification, your client most likely gets it too, so you better jump on top of it. Otherwise they’ll forward it to you. It was for old ads that didn’t have the right URLs anymore. We had 500 disapprovals on one account, 300 on another, but it wasn’t active ads.

Google’s ChatGPT-Style Search Test

Jeremy Yang: For people not looking at the screen, Google Chrome is doing a split test where you type prompts on the left side, and the right side becomes the actual answer, like a website response. You can keep prompting on the left.

Frances Suarez: Is it going to be a problem for paid ads?

Jeremy Yang: I think so. Before, when LinkedIn ads first came out, they used to charge one click to open an expansion, like to open the text, then another click to go to the website. Those clicks used to be $27 every time someone went to the website. What if it happens here?

Frances Suarez: I think SEO and organic search is going to be more affected here. I’ve got a slightly different view. It might still affect paid ads negatively, but I’m being optimistic.

If this type of search helps people get the information they want during the research phase, then by the time they’re ready to make a decision, purchase or take an action, that’s when we’re going to get clicks on our ads. Hopefully they’re at the bottom of the funnel.

Jeremy Yang: I feel you. I don’t know much about SEO. I talk to people who do. I think this amplifies the zero-click environment. They’re really not going to click. Your site’s displayed on the side already. We’ll see how it goes.

The Observer Effect on AI

Frances Suarez: Another one is that cool tool where you can reverse-prompt. You paste in what AI wrote and it tells you what prompt likely came up with it. Do you think this is useful?

Jeremy Yang: Definitely. I’m just thinking how we can fit it to the paid ads side, like creating ads.

Frances Suarez: Maybe for competitor research?

Jeremy Yang: Competitor research, definitely. If they wrote something on a blog, you can reverse-engineer the prompt.

Jeremy Yang: The reason I brought it up is I was talking to another guy on the podcast the other day and he called it the observer effect. For you to reverse-engineer that, you have to prompt it tens of thousands of times. Same passage. AI is doing that.

You keep pumping until you refine the prompt and reach a consensus. Eventually you go, “Ah, 80% of the output is this particular prompt.”

Jeremy Yang: Stay with me on this. If you’re pumping the engine 10,000 to 20,000 times, you’ve effectively changed what the engine thinks humans are doing. The next person who researches this topic is impacted by it. Imagine 1,000 people doing this. 10,000 people doing this.

Now they’re all prompting some NFL game to see how it was written. Now this NFL terminology is cooked. It’s not true anymore. Whatever SEMrush you’re using to research, it’s all polluted data.

Frances Suarez: Polluted.

Jeremy Yang: He explained it another way. If you’re sitting there pumping the engine like crazy, just typing in “digital marketing Australia” over and over again to see where you’re ranking, now the machine doesn’t know what you’re looking for.

Clients Googling Themselves

Jeremy Yang: Have you ever had that experience where a client keeps looking for their ads?

Frances Suarez: All the time.

Jeremy Yang: And then suddenly they start seeing their own ads because they keep searching for it. I have to preempt it now. I tell them, “Don’t look for it.” And they don’t believe me.

Jeremy Yang: Real talk, this is going to offend some people. If someone has never done ads and they come to you or me, it’s not a great engagement. What we manage is too much for them. We handle more advanced, veteran-type accounts with big spend. Those clients have usually been burned by other agencies before they come here.

They’re not Googling themselves. But sometimes I take on referrals and they’ve never done it. You know they’re doing it. They go to their friends and ask, “Can you do it on your phone, see what comes up?”

Jeremy Yang: One thing that always makes my clients perk up in our monthly meetings, every single one’s consistent. Can you guess what it is?

Frances Suarez: About their ads? Like if they’re showing on top?

Jeremy Yang: No. It’s competitors. The competitor report. Their blood boils. They know everything about it. “Oh, I know that guy.” They concentrate more on that than their own ads. It ties back to the searching thing. As they’re Googling and typing those words, they see competitors come up. “20% off. Oh, why aren’t we doing that?”

Frances Suarez: Now that you mention it, yeah, it happens all the time. They keep sending screenshots: “Look, your competitor is doing this.”

Jeremy Yang: So now I preempt it. I send them official documentation. “Look, every Google isn’t the same. My Google when I search is different from yours.” Then they ask, “So if I clicked on that guy’s ad, does that mean I’m burning his budget?” Like the first guy that came up. I try to stay away from that as much as I can.

CAPI One-Click and Meta Lead Forms

Jeremy Yang: CAPI was a thing about 4 months ago. The conversations around CAPI, how we’re using it, what the next steps are.

Frances Suarez: I’d always suggest CAPI for clients, especially if there are forms on the website, to avoid spam.

Jeremy Yang: Almost all of mine did it. It was a big mission to get CAPI set up before. I’m reading the article from Bram on this. He’s my authority when it comes to Facebook ads, him and Jon Loomer. The one-click CAPI isn’t out yet, and he’s saying don’t touch it yet, so I won’t.

Jeremy Yang: But if this one-click really works, it’s going to change the industry. There are operators charging $1,000 USD to install CAPI. The best price I ever had was $400 USD to set one up. It’s going to affect a lot of businesses if this works. I’m skeptical for now. Let’s keep following it.

Frances Suarez: Another one is Meta lead forms. There used to be that weird thing where you could never edit an instant form once it was finished. If you look at the back end of my account, you’d see forms labelled “version one, version two.”

Every time you’d finish and show the client, they’d have feedback, then the form was released, and you’d already zapped it to their CRM. You’d have to redo everything because the automation had to attach a different form.

Jeremy Yang: I’m told it’s editable now. I went back to the back end and my forms aren’t editable, so maybe it’s editable until it gets a lead. Once it’s published and getting leads attached to an ad, then it’s locked. This is good news. It was a weird inflexible thing they were doing.

ChatGPT Ads Is Out: Underwhelming First Look

Jeremy Yang: Big one. ChatGPT Ads is out with a user-friendly interface. Thoughts?

Frances Suarez: From what I know recently, they weren’t really open to everyone yet. To run ads on the platform you’d need to work with big holding companies like Omnicom or Dentsu. The system would require around $200k budget.

Jeremy Yang: Huge mess.

Frances Suarez: From my research yesterday, they now have a sign-up URL for individual advertisers, but I’m not sure what the actual update is. Are they really open now?

Jeremy Yang: I think they’re close. Glenn Gavin or his crew got it. They’re at the top of the food chain. If they got it, it’s not long before we all get it. What do you think of the interface?

Frances Suarez: Very similar to something we’ve been using for a long time.

Jeremy Yang: I was so disappointed when I saw it. I thought it would be revolutionary. I don’t know what I was imagining. I wanted to react like, “Oh man, that makes sense.” Like a that’s smart moment. And it was mission objective, reach, conversion.

Stripped-down Pinterest-style. Setting up bids was manual bidding, $3, $5 a click. Not revolutionary.

Frances Suarez: My other thought: there are still a lot of people using ChatGPT as individual users. Around me, peers are jumping into Claude. Companies are giving access to their employees. I’m sure plenty are still using ChatGPT. But will they have people to advertise to eventually now that people are jumping ship?

Jeremy Yang: This is my ignorant view. I was talking to my tech friend about convergence of tools. It’s too widespread right now. Everybody has their own thing. He explained that’s how YouTube was. There were so many video tools.

They needed websites to aggregate them. Eventually it became Vimeo and YouTube, then just YouTube. I think Claude is heading in that direction.

Jeremy Yang: But they’re also predicting $21 billion in revenue from ChatGPT ads. So I look at this and I go, “Is it a freemium model?” I pay for ChatGPT premium. Does that mean we don’t see ads?

Frances Suarez: Last I read, they promised premium users wouldn’t see ads. But we don’t know until when. Look what happened with Netflix. You’d go premium and not see ads, but now some premium users see ads.

Jeremy Yang: I have mixed emotions here. I registered gptads.au. My company is called GPT Ads. I’m sitting around doing SEO for it waiting for this to pop off. I want it to be wild west again where everyone can make money from it.

I look at this and I go, “Oh my god, nobody’s making money from this.” It’s no nuance. Freelancers can do it. There’s no edge.

Jeremy Yang: I’m a second mover. I don’t like going in with the early wave. We’ll be the second wave in. Real money is moving around, accounts getting disabled. Probably not a good idea to be first.

A Win With Google Lead Forms on High-Ticket E-Com

Jeremy Yang: You had a win with lead forms and high-ticket e-com. Tell us about it.

Frances Suarez: Client is selling swim spas online. They wanted to expand beyond Meta ads into Google. On Meta they were purely doing lead forms, just awareness, and getting a lot of inquiries.

They wanted to expand into Google but couldn’t fully commit to an e-commerce setup because their products are high-ticket and they didn’t have the time to set up Merchant Center with all the products.

Frances Suarez: The agreement was to start with a lead gen approach. We agreed on starting search campaigns, generic keywords and brand, doing the usual weekly negatives. But after a month, zero conversions.

Jeremy Yang: It’s crazy.

Frances Suarez: Continuously doing negative keywords because there were a lot of generic terms like “spas near me.” But Meta was doing really well. So I tested setting up lead form assets in Google Ads. I’m not a fan of that, to be honest, but I thought I’d try.

Right after setting it up, leads came in. We’re still checking the quality with the client, but we’re getting the numbers. Cost per lead is just $20. At least we have something to discuss now in terms of numbers, and we can work on it.

Jeremy Yang: Big win. I’m not a fan of lead ads either. One reason I’m biased: Zapier and all those moving parts to get leads into the CRM and making sure they call within 10 minutes. A lot is relying on the client side to do the thing.

But it sounds like they’ve got their game down because they’re already doing Meta ads, so the system is the same attack. And there’s no way Google lead ads is going to be worse than Meta’s lead ads.

Always Set Up GMC, Even Without Running Ads

Jeremy Yang: I’ll leave you with this. You can do whatever you want with your clients, but my two cents: we’ve had success setting up GMC without running ads. They still get the organic effect. GMC has much better reporting now. There are graphs in there where you go, “Oh, I got 53 impressions and three clicks here.”

Jeremy Yang: I think AI pulls from every angle it can. If GMC has more description fields, more space, more product info than your website, it doesn’t have to spam your SEO content. You have your colour, title, size fields. GMC has so many fields. If I were a business owner, I’d say “Set it up when you have time.”

Frances Suarez: That’s a good idea. Setting up GMC even without ads, just to serve organically. I could pitch that in. Thanks for that.

Jeremy Yang: That’s PPC in the Trenches, 24th of April 2026. I’m Jeremy Yang, the Online Ads Guy. You can find me at digitalgoliath.com.au.

Frances Suarez: You can find me on LinkedIn. Look for Frances PPC.

Key Takeaways

• DSA is sunsetting. Start preparing now. Google’s replacing Dynamic Search Ads with AI Max in September 2026. If DSA is doing real work in your account, transition to AI Max now so you can build campaign data ahead of the forced switch.
• Have a canned response ready for ad disapprovals. Last week’s mass disapproval wave hit accounts with legacy URLs even when the ads weren’t active. Your clients get the same notification you do, so prep a template that explains the issue before they forward it to you.
• Stop your clients Googling themselves. Repeated searches pollute their own results and surface competitors, which then becomes the entire monthly meeting. Preempt this with documentation that explains how personalised search works.
• Set up GMC even when you’re not running shopping ads. Google Merchant Center gives products organic visibility and feeds Google’s AI ranking signals through extra description and product fields. Pitch it to clients as a low-effort setup that pays off whether or not they ever turn on ads.

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This conversation is from PPC in the Trenches, where Jeremy Yang and Frances Suarez break down what’s actually working in paid media right now. Available on YouTube.