Why AI in PPC for events will be game-changing in 2026
2025 saw rapid evolution of AI in pay-per-click (PPC) platforms, particularly Google Ads.
New AI features, AI settings, AI-driven ad placements and generative AI mark Google’s latest effort to streamline its ad offering. These will be game-changing in 2026, and we predict that ad placements in AI Overviews - delivering highly relevant, contextual and detailed search results - will also move the dial far and fast for marketers who can harness the potential here.
Here is how Google AI Overviews describes itself:
These significant changes in how AI plays a role in PPC are a threat for B2B event marketers - but only if they don’t understand the implications.
For event marketers who are able to understand the implications of the latest developments and have partnered with skilled, trusted PPC specialists - a huge opportunity awaits.
In this blog we’ve laid out 5 things you need to know about AI in PPC to help you:
- Avoid wasting a lot of money on PPC that has been hijacked unhelpfully and ineffectively by AI, and
- Make the most of the huge opportunity that AI presents in well optimised PPC campaigns - including data-driven precision based on a complete and accurate analytics set up.
Be advised: the core concepts shared below on how to think about AI will remain true for a long time to come, but the specifics of features and settings are very likely to change rapidly (and here the devil is in the detail!).
5 things you need to know about AI in PPC:
1. AI-driven targeting and placements will help you hit more of the right people more often
For a long time, Google Ads has been powered by a machine learning algorithm that aims to connect the right user to the right ad, at the right time. What’s new is the sophistication of the machine learning at play, which we are now calling artificial intelligence.
AI-driven targeting and placements in PPC made a huge leap in 2025. Highlights include:
- Google Ads Performance Max: a relatively new campaign type that is powered by AI targeting and is extremely effective for lead and registrant generation.
- Google Search recently added AI Max, a targeting setting that allows Google to inject more AI-powered targeting into your Search campaigns. MPG’s testing of this setting has shown it can perform very well for B2B events, when set up and managed in the right way for events.
To make sure you are benefitting from this AI targeting, use the campaign types Performance Max, Search (with AI Max switched on) and Demand Gen.
These campaign types will also give you access to AI Overview ad placements - when these are launched. Potential customers searching for and finding your event via the Google search console are likely to find themselves immersed in Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. We predict that strategically placing your event as a solution to the more specific and nuanced questions users are now asking via Google Search will be an important way to draw your most valuable customers to your event website and build a strong event brand overall.
CONTACT US FOR HIGH PERFORMANCE PPC
2. Without conscientious, careful human direction, AI is definitely a threat to PPC in event marketing
Despite the intelligence of AI targeting settings, they still require human input. Without consistent and regular direction from a human who has strong, technical PPC knowledge combined with a good understanding of how events and event marketing works, campaigns are likely to go down the wrong track and burn money targeting the wrong people, or presenting the wrong message.
Think of AI as a means of scaling the work that your PPC experts already do. If you see AI as a means of replacing ‘humans in the chain’ who understand events, understand your event, understand event marketing & your campaign specifically, and understand your audience - you’re likely to lose money.
To ensure that the human input you have present is sufficiently skilled and resourced (whether you work with an agency or PPC specialists based internally) - we recommend you ask these questions:
- Where have we spent the most money? Why? What results have we got? Can we be confident in these results? Why?
- How do we know that the people who are clicking on our ads - and costing us money - are the right people?
- How are we consistently monitoring the quality and relevance of customers and leads coming from PPC campaigns? How is important insight gained from this monitoring being fed into the setup of our campaigns?
- What are we doing to ensure the messaging and creatives we’re pushing out are the best they can be? How are we avoiding AI-slop from entering our ads - causing long term damage to our brand and losing us money?
3. It is important to know how to control and steer the AI in your campaigns
AI is now fully built into PPC platforms and campaigns. The algorithms in our PPC campaigns are now running on AI jet fuel, and we have no choice in this matter. So it is critical humans are constantly monitoring and guiding the algorithms to point our PPC in the right direction - otherwise they are likely to go rogue.
The AI features you should be controlling carefully are AI-generated creative, particularly images and videos. These features are simply not (yet) reliable, especially for B2B events. Ad platforms do not truly understand events and won’t understand your event. Event marketers know that promoting a certain speaker - for example - will ignite excitement in their audience, but AI does not.
It is likely to become possible at some point in future to rely on AI-driven generative assets in PPC campaigns - but relevance and quality needs to improve a great deal before this can happen.
The world is increasingly saturated with AI content - and much of it is AI-slop like the above. You certainly won’t stand out or get a good ROI on your campaigns if you jump on this AI feature!
Bottom-line: use your own visual content as much as possible. Don’t leave blanks for the platforms to fill in with low-quality AI assets.
4. Accurate and complete conversion tracking is no longer optional
Essential signals you need to send to ad platforms are who is converting to a lead or registrant, and who is most relevant so that Google, LinkedIn, etc. can find more of these people.
This won’t work if there are gaps or inaccuracies in your conversion tracking. Simple.
The latest AI built into algorithms makes full and accurate conversion tracking more important than ever - applying not only to targeting but also AI-generated copy, as strong conversion tracking enables AI to learn which messaging works best.
In 2026, as AI placements in AI Search Overviews and ChatGPT Ads emerge and grow in importance, we will need to use more data-led steering of platforms to come up with targeting and ads that are tailored to the user. The data collected by accurate and complete conversion tracking is the single most important thing to have in place NOW to make this work.
REQUEST A CONVERSION TRACKING AUDIT
5. Take extra care if your events sit alongside other products on your website
One of the key sources of information for AI is your website. This is where AI looks for data on your offering and your audience, and will then use this data to formulate targeting and messaging to match.
This is a risk if most of your event promotion is placed on the same web pages as your other products, such as subscriptions, memberships, intelligence offerings, or even other events. In these scenarios, the AI could combine these to form a picture of some kind of Frankenstein offering, producing ads that mix up products and messages.
To avoid this, make use of topic exclusion settings within campaigns, and/or switch off AI features to minimise the risk. Make sure someone is keeping a close eye on the ads that are actually being pushed, and making adjustments as needed.
A well structured event-specific website with its own sub pages and user-friendly navigation is essential for AI to understand your event is its own product.
In addition to the well-structured and well-optimised dedicated event website, landing pages specifically for your PPC ads can work well as these provide focused signals to the ad platform, and can usually improve conversion rates (when implemented well) - especially if you’re using ads to re-engage past attendees and website visitors.
If you found these points useful and would like to tap into the deep knowledge and insights from MPG’s event marketing PPC specialists, you can:
Buy MPG’s PPC services for your events so that you get the very best minds, skills and processes applied to your event marketing campaigns for a strong ROI. To find out more, request a call back by completing this form.
AND/OR
Attend one of our upcoming online MPG Expert Briefings - focused on PPC strategies for event marketing. These are each 60 minutes long and designed for event marketing strategists and generalist campaign managers who need a good enough understanding of PPC to manage your PPC agency or an internal PPC specialist effectively. Complete this form and request our latest schedule of Expert Briefings to find out what we have planned and to be invited to upcoming events.
