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the anxiety is real but i think the framing of “will ppc be automated away” misses what’s actually happening
the button-clicking part of ppc is already mostly gone — bid management, ad scheduling, match type obsession. that’s automated. what’s not automated is knowing when the algorithm is wrong, why performance dropped when nothing “changed,” or how to structure an account so smart bidding actually has something useful to learn from
the skills i’d double down on: conversion tracking and measurement (this is getting harder, not easier, with privacy changes), feed management and data quality for shopping, and being able to read what automated systems are actually doing vs what they report doing
the people getting displaced are the ones who were just executing tasks inside the platform. the ones who understand the logic behind the automation, can QA it, and can explain it to a client — those roles are getting more valuable not less
personally i’ve been leaning into scripting and automation specifically because it lets you work with the platform programmatically rather than just through the UI. feels more durable than memorizing where buttons are in google ads
