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Can AI run your Google Ads? It already does. Turn on Google's defaults and its AI sets your bids, writes your headlines and picks which searches you show up for.

What it can't do is know what a good job is worth to you, or notice when it's chasing the wrong number. It will spend your budget very efficiently on whatever you told it to want. Checking that is the part you either learn or hire.

What Google's AI already does

  • Bidding. Smart Bidding uses Google AI to bid for conversions or conversion value in each auction. Target CPA, target ROAS, maximise conversions and maximise conversion value are all Smart Bidding.
  • Writing ads. In Performance Max, with text customisation on, Google writes headlines and descriptions from your landing page, your domain and your current ads. AI Max for Search does the same for Search campaigns.
  • Choosing searches and pages. AI Max can match your ads to searches beyond your keywords, and send people to a different page on your site than the one you picked. Performance Max spreads one budget across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps.
  • Changing your account. If automatically applied recommendations are on, Google applies its own suggestions on a regular schedule. You can review the queue or switch it off.

So "can you do Google Ads with AI?" is mostly answered already. If you take the defaults, you're using it.

What it can't do for you

Google's own help pages hand a few jobs back to you.

  • Tell it what counts. Smart Bidding needs conversion tracking switched on, and Google says some strategies work best with a minimum amount of conversion history. If a "conversion" is a page view or a tap that isn't a real enquiry, the AI chases the wrong thing very efficiently.
  • Keep the pages right. When Google picks the landing page for you, it says you're still responsible for reviewing that page for accuracy. If an ad lands someone on an old price, that's yours to fix.
  • Set the limits. You choose the budget, the locations, the brands you don't want to appear beside and the pages it may never use. In AI Max you can turn off the ad writing and the page picking separately.
  • Judge the result. Google says advertisers using AI Max typically see 14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar cost, from its own 2025 data for non-retail advertisers. That's Google's average, not a forecast for your business.

Do you need to hire someone? Five questions

If you can answer yes to most of these, you can probably run it yourself. If you can't, that's the work worth paying for, whether it's us or someone else.

  • Do you know roughly what an enquiry is worth to you, and how many turn into jobs?
  • Is your conversion tracking counting real calls, forms and bookings, and nothing else?
  • Do the pages your ads land on say what the ad says, with current prices and services?
  • Do you look at the searches your ads actually showed for, and exclude the ones you don't want?
  • Do you check what automatically applied recommendations changed, or have you switched them off?

Using ChatGPT or Claude to write ad copy is fine for a first draft. It can't see your account's searches or results unless you paste them in, so on its own it's guessing at what works.

How we handle it

For clients whose ads we run, the Google Ads mod on their PlainBlack dashboard shows what they spent, the clicks, the enquiries it brought and the cost of each one. The owner reads it in plain numbers, without ever logging in to Google Ads.

The Google Ads page of a PlainBlack dashboard, showing spend, clicks, enquiries from ads, cost per enquiry and a list of campaigns with their daily budgets.
The Google Ads mod on our demo dashboard. Sample figures.

A cost per lead or a number of jobs can only be estimated honestly once we've looked at your tracking, your pages and your market. That's where we start.

The rest of the AI on the dashboard is on our tools page.

Sources

Taggedgoogle-adsai-toolssmall-business