The Role of AI in PPC in 2025 | Brafton

Artificial intelligence has quietly influenced PPC for years, but 2025 feels like an acceleration point. What began as background automation is now shaping how campaigns are built, managed and even displayed to users. Marketers are no longer just watching these shifts unfold, either — they’re actively adapting to them. For brands, the key is to understand AI’s increasingly prominent role in PPC and adapt to stay competitive.

The Rise of AI in PPC

Not long ago, AI in PPC was largely experimental, offering limited tools that tweaked bids here and there or flagged low-performing keywords. But fast-forward to 2025, and AI for PPC has quietly matured to offer more capabilities and ways to facilitate lead gathering.

Early Adoption: Small Steps, Big Promise

In the early 2010s, PPC strategies were mostly manual; marketers set bids and managed campaigns themselves. The introduction of Google’s Smart Bidding tools marked the first major leap in AI for PPC, enabling users to automate bid optimization in real time based on signals like device, location and conversion behavior. These tools weren’t that flashy, but they laid the foundation for AI to play a smarter role in campaign management.

AI Is Everywhere

Now, AI is shaping larger swaths of PPC, from hyper-precise targeting to dynamic creative generation to predictive performance forecasting. Platforms like Google Ads use machine learning to understand user behavior and serve the right ad at the right moment. AI-powered tools also take care of repetitive tasks — like A/B testing and budget rollout — freeing up teams to focus on strategy.

Industry Impact: Smarter Campaigns, Bigger Questions

Today’s AI tools and capabilities don’t just automate aspects of PPC — they amplify them. They speed up testing cycles, ensure budgets go further and tailor messaging to micro-audiences, often before a human can even notice a shift in behavior.

But with all that power comes a new kind of challenge: transparency and trust. As HeroConf 2025 highlighted, marketers are increasingly concerned about striking the right balance between leveraging the efficiency of AI while staying honest about how user data is used and ensuring outputs stay brand-aligned.

How Is AI Used in PPC in 2025?

All of that brings us to now: How do common PPC applications, processes and workflows currently use AI? Here are a few you might recognize, with added insight about how Brafton is leveraging and experimenting with AI for PPC from Eric Bush, Senior Director of Paid Search.

1. Google Ads Integration

In 2025, AI isn’t an add‑on — it’s at the core of Google Ads. Tools like Smart Bidding and Performance Max optimize bids in real time, considering signals such as device, location and likelihood to convert, all to boost return on ad spend (ROAS).

Moreover, Google is layering AI-driven ad creation and management features — like automatically created assets, Smart Bidding Exploration and behind-the-scenes ad generation tools such as Veo and Imagen — into its platform ecosystem. This shift is redefining user behavior and campaign dynamics, so staying ahead means embracing new capabilities.

“They upgrade it all the time,” said Eric, “so what it can do now versus six months from now, that’s the exciting bit for our clients.”

2. Creative Support for Marketers

AI’s creative capabilities have gone from supporting roles to starring in PPC workflows. Tools now automate ad copywriting, headline generation and even imagery or video output.

“Google Ads gives you access to a ChatGPT-like database when coming up with headlines, descriptions and even images,” said Eric. “The advantage is the speed at which we can create new copy to do testing with. It used to take weeks of back-and-forth copywriting; now it takes days.”

Eric says he and the team are using these features as a “think tank” of sorts, using AI to refine fewer ideas into higher quality outcomes by feeding it information on the company, audience, market, etc., instead of brainstorming 50 less-refined headlines.

This certainly speeds up delivery and experimentation, but comes with one important caveat to consider: Campaigns can start to feel generic if not closely overseen by human strategists. It’s about balancing efficiency and originality.

3. Next-Gen Predictive Analytics & Targeting

AI’s transformation of PPC is moving it from automation to anticipation. Predictive bidding algorithms forecast when, where and on which device a user is most likely to convert, enabling exceptional targeting.

Advanced analytics tools also support dynamic budget allocation, ROAS forecasting and conversion probability modeling, meaning campaigns constantly adapt to performance signals in real time, not just react to them.

What Brafton’s PPC Team Is Seeing

Eric is excited that AI is shaking up an industry he’s worked in for years — “Search campaigns are becoming more limited because search volume is dropping, he said. “People are finding things in different ways.”

AI Max for Search campaigns, a recently announced suite of enhancements for Google Ads, is one example of how Google is responding to these behavioral shifts.

“Right now, Search is very controlled and keyword-driven. PMax is very black box,” said Eric. “AI Max for Search campaigns is starting to combine the two.”

For Eric and his clients, this unification and the continued emergence of new PPC tools are compelling. “They allow scale,” he said. “And if you can use these AI tools effectively, you can quadruple what you could’ve accomplished by traditional means. We’re trying to stay ahead of the game, and this is where Google is going. It’s only going to get more expensive for traditional search targeting,” he added.

The Relationship Between AI Overviews and PPC

When Google first unveiled AI Overviews, they didn’t really intersect with paid advertising, leaving PPC mostly unaffected. However, as of mid-2025, Google began embedding Search and Shopping ads directly around and within AI Overviews across all 200+ markets where the feature is currently available. Ads can now appear above, below or even within the AI-generated summaries.

Ads now compete for visibility not only in traditional spots but also within and around AI Overviews. This shift reshapes how users see and interact with results. To throw another wrench into the mix, there is no way for marketers and PPC specialists to isolate performance metrics for ads served within AI Overviews or AI Mode. Here’s what Google says about that:

“Google Ads currently doesn’t offer segmented reporting when ads show within Search AI Overviews. Reporting features in Google Ads are always focused on what will be most actionable.

With the above in mind, Ads in AI Overviews are still in early stages. Google is still learning and actively thinking about what the future of reporting looks like for this experience and will announce when there is more to share.”

In place of isolated performance metrics, though, Google Ads AI Essentials 2.0 helps advertisers evaluate how to prioritize and leverage Google’s AI capabilities.

“AI Essentials 2.0 is the next version of Google Ads AI tools,” said Eric. “They’re showing that they’re heavily invested in this. It’s not a gimmick.”

The assessment is organized into key areas to strengthen AI readiness:

• AI data strength.
• AI content strength.
• AI Performance strength.
• Agentic capabilities.

“If you can use the dataset to create the ad copy, and then the same dataset to figure out the targeting, you marry those two, you get a much more powerful campaign,” said Eric. “We always think we know our customer — but we don’t always know.”

Experiment Carefully, But Do Experiment

AI is no longer a background player in PPC — it’s reshaping how campaigns are created, managed and even displayed to users. From Google Ads’ deeper AI integrations to the emergence of ad placements inside AI Overviews, 2025 marks a turning point.

For marketers, the takeaway is twofold: first, understanding where AI stands today is essential to making smarter campaign decisions. Second, staying ahead means keeping an eye on what’s next. To paraphrase Eric: Experiment carefully, apply AI tools sparingly and always prioritize client comfort and performance. That’s how you innovate strategically and remain trustworthy.