The rise of Google and the changing culture of the industry
Google didn’t firmly establish itself as a recognized industry leader until 2006 or 2007, and advertisers initially disliked its complex system. Google introduced the concept of the “ad team,” which forced advertisers to transition from spending a few hours a year on traditional advertising to managing digital campaigns every week.
Ultimately, marketers adopted Google’s platform only because its superior, user-centric search engine attracted the majority of Internet traffic. When Search Engine Land was launched in 2006, the culture of the search industry was rapidly changing from a casual, sub-corporate one into a business-as-usual environment fueled by venture capital, huge salaries, and private yacht parties.
Additionally, the earlier days of the industry saw greater knowledge sharing among professionals because there were fewer company closures and NDAs compared to today.
Major events that changed PPC forever
Geddes points to two major points that forever changed the paid search landscape. First, Google’s organic algorithm updates—Panda, Penguin, and Pigeon—made organic search more difficult, forcing marketers to realize that they can no longer be generalists and must focus on SEO or paid search.
The second milestone was the successful implementation of automated bidding. Before this technology, bidding required tedious, ad hoc work using Excel formulas. Automation has freed up more time for marketers to focus on strategic account creation and management.
In addition, Geddes highlights a major change in 2005 when Google decided to allow only one ad per domain on the search results page, which forced affiliate marketers to create dedicated landing pages and add real value to the user experience in order to survive.
Outdated tactics and missed platform features
Reflecting on past practices, Geddes expresses a strong dislike of Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs), an over-segmentation strategy that once forced advertisers to create thousands of campaigns due to early platform limitations.
However, you miss out on a few features that are no longer available, such as the original Enhanced Cost-Per-Click (ECPC) that allowed advertisers to specify the exact amount they wanted to pay for each click and have Google do the math.
He also misses out on hyper-specific geo-targeting tools that allow advertisers to map custom radius points to specific locations, as well as features that allow for custom ad adjustments for individual business locations.
AI misconceptions and the next 20 years of search
Looking to the future, Geddes cautions against the widespread misconception that artificial intelligence can completely take over advertising. He argues that just as advertisers shouldn’t automatically hit “accept all” on Google’s automated recommendations, they shouldn’t give full control to AI because it can write both good and bad ads.
In the next two decades, he predicts that the industry will reward creativity, strategic tactics, and business excellence rather than basic “button pushing.” Because marketing depends so much on interacting with people—who often make irrational decisions that run counter to how AI thinks—human intelligence will always be critical.
Rapid-fire retrospective
When asked about the industry’s immediate thoughts, Geddes noted that the big forecaster we got wrong was thinking that mobile adoption would happen much faster than it did.
On the contrary, he correctly predicted that voice search was overpowered and would become part of the general search queries rather than a completely separate channel. He realized that Google rarely acknowledges how the world really works, preferring to sell ideal future scenarios based on vast amounts of data that most marketers don’t have.
In addition, he believes that PPC experts rarely evaluate their campaigns as they say. Finally, if he could give his child one piece of advice from 10 to 15 years ago, it would be to buy more Google stock.
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