We have reached the level of maturity in the world of PPC where, for many verticals, almost all aspects of a search campaigns can now be automated – at least in theory. It’s just a matter of time until this becomes reality. And for many, the time is now.

Everything from set up to keyword selection to targeting to management to optimization and reporting can be automated using taxonomies, templates, data integration and various software and algorithms.

This is great news for most advertisers, but for sophisticated PPC professionals on the other hand, there may be a fear that the more automation grows, the less control they will have over a campaign’s direction, but also the less in demand their skills for ad management and optimization will become.

Whether automating PPC is a good or a bad thing depends on who you ask.

Ask the SMBs

If you ask a small business if automation is a good thing, they’ll say the more automation the better. SMBs want simple ad campaigns that don’t involve much decision making on their part yet deliver results in terms of ad clicks, phone calls and sales.

SMBs don’t want to pay for advanced campaign strategies or creative solutions that would bust their budget. SMBs want to pay a reasonable amount (read hundreds, not thousands of dollars per month) for ad campaigns that run off best practices, including a tried and true taxonomy of keywords for their respected field, proven ad templates, generic bid and budget management techniques and so on. SMBs want to feel that their advertising budget is going straight to improve their sales.

With solutions like AdWords Express, or those offered by third party vendors, SMBs can set up campaigns with almost no input besides their name, website and budget. Behind the scenes are automatically generated keywords, ad templates, and automatic bid changes which require little to no human intervention and generate reasonably good results. Some solutions even automatically generate a conversion orientated mobile-ready landing page, complete with call to action, call tracking numbers and stock imagery, designed to trigger phone calls.

Of course, the problem with this approach is that you run the risk of having dozens of SMBs in the same region, all bidding on the same keywords, with the same ad templates, and the same landing page. But there are multiple creative and effective solutions to this type of problem which are implemented by the more advanced solution providers and platforms.

Ask Retailers

If you ask online retailers if automation is a good or a bad thing they’ll say automation is the best thing that’s happened to their ad campaigns thus far. Retail stores want up-to-date campaigns that accurately represent the inventory they sell.

This can be done with third party software vendors who can automatically generate and manage campaigns solely based on a product feed and ad templates. Keywords and account structure are created automatically based on product information found in the feed. The benefit of course is scale, and knowing that ads can be set to run only when products are available in stock, and only when running the ad can turn a profit, minimizing waste and increasing ROI.

Google’s new shopping campaigns sync to retailers’ Merchant Centers and automatically launch product listing ads for products in a store’s inventory feed when a person searches for an item in stock. These ads are keywordless and are generated purely from inventory feeds, meaning there is no risk of having ads appear for out of stock products or for irrelevant search terms.

This is great news for retailers. Product ads are as simple as they can be and they have typically been generating great results. Anyone with a modest budget can run them, and soon the market will explode with new stores running these easy and effective ad, at which point the cost of winning bids will increase and the ads effectiveness will take a dive.

An even bigger issue with automated shopping campaigns is that PLAs open the floodgates for more keywordless campaigns.

Down the road Google will likely take control of keywords for all ad types, and this means advertisers will be helpless to make changes to campaigns that don’t involve bid changes. By dumbing down or getting rid of the keyword landscape, the PPC environment will change so advertisers will have to bid heavily to appear for search terms. But this doomsday scenario is still a fair distance away, so no need to worry just yet.

What about the rest of us?

If you’re not an SMB or a small retailer, then partial automation on bid and budget management, data integration, reporting, alerts and other tasks that are better managed by robots and systems designed especially for these menial tasks are more and more important for success.

By automating and dumbing down these tasks, PPC professionals can handle heavier loads and moderate more accounts and countless campaigns with ease.

Of course there is a distant threat of the extinction of keywords, inspired by successful keywordless ads we see already in place, but with companies spending hundreds of thousands or even millions on advertising, we’re not yet ready to hand it all over to the machines.

Although we can expect many more automation improvements and additions to come in order to open up the advertising market to SMBs and retailers with lower budgets and less know-how, for the rest of us there is still a need for PPC professionals.

Phew!