PPC Origins- Noah Hardy

In Episode 50 of Getting Granular, host Chris Cesar sits down with Noah Hardy to explore his nearly decade-long journey in digital marketing, his passion for paid social and creative testing, and why AI, automation, and measurement are shaping the future of PPC.

In Episode 50 of the Getting Granular podcast, host Chris Cesar sits down with Noah Hardy to explore his nearly decade-long journey through digital marketing and paid media. Noah shares how starting at a Milwaukee startup at just 19 years old led him to discover a passion for PPC, eventually taking him to VaynerMedia, e-commerce brands, agency roles, and ultimately Granular. Along the way, he discusses the evolution of paid search and social, his passion for creative testing, the importance of understanding profitability and building genuine client relationships, and why marketers should look beyond surface-level performance metrics. Noah also shares his perspective on AI, automation, and the future of PPC, including why human strategy and oversight will remain essential as platforms take on more control. He closes with a simple piece of advice shaped by his own career: find work you genuinely enjoy doing.

Show Notes

Introduction (00:23): Host Chris Cesar welcomes listeners back to Getting Granular for the 50th episode of the podcast and introduces Noah Hardy, one of Granular’s newest team members. Noah shares a bit about himself, including his nearly decade-long career in digital marketing, love of travel, video games, cooking, and life in Grafton, Wisconsin.
Getting an Early Start in Digital Marketing (03:58): Noah traces his PPC origins back to college, when he joined Milwaukee startup GenoPalate at just 19 years old. Working across everything from email and SEO to paid media and even supply chain gave him broad experience, but the speed and measurable results of PPC quickly stood out.
Why Paid Media Stuck (06:53): The ability to make a change and see tangible business results drew Noah toward paid media. He reflects on how PPC has evolved over the past decade, from granular keyword structures and easier tracking to increasingly automated platforms driven by algorithms, creative, and conversion signals.
Finding His Strength in Paid Social (09:17): Noah discusses his passion for paid social, particularly creative strategy and testing. He explains how developing new messages, formats, and creative concepts can produce significant growth when marketers find ideas that truly resonate with an audience.
From VaynerMedia to Granular (10:35): After working with e-commerce brands and major clients like Bose, Noah eventually found his way to Granular. He shares why the agency’s collaborative culture, experienced team, strong client relationships, and return to in-person work have made Granular stand out from previous roles.
Building Trust With Clients (14:32): Noah explains that strong client relationships start with understanding the business behind the campaigns. From margins and profitability to growth goals and individual communication needs, he believes good PPC management requires understanding both the numbers and the people behind them.
Reporting Beyond Surface-Level Results (17:48): When evaluating campaign performance, Noah focuses on incrementality, profitability, testing, and context rather than simply reporting that revenue went up or down. He discusses using experiments, historical comparisons, and seasonality to understand what actually drove performance and what marketers should do next.
AI and the Future of PPC (19:41): Noah sees AI as one of the biggest forces shaping paid media, but doesn’t believe PPC professionals are about to be replaced by AI agents. Instead, he’s excited about using AI to automate time-consuming tasks and tackle complex data analysis, freeing marketers to spend more time on higher-value strategic work.
Keeping Humans in Control of Automation (23:47): As Google and other platforms remove more manual levers, Noah discusses the shift from hands-on campaign management toward guiding increasingly sophisticated algorithms. While automation can improve performance, he cautions against a future of “just trust me, bro” campaigns where advertisers lose visibility and control.
The Evolution of YouTube Measurement (26:29): Noah and Chris explore the challenge of proving YouTube’s performance value, particularly for smaller advertisers without access to expensive measurement models. Noah highlights attributed branded searches as an especially promising development for connecting upper-funnel YouTube activity to measurable business results.
Words of Wisdom: Find Work You Enjoy (30:31): Noah encourages listeners not to waste years doing work they hate. After experiencing roles that weren’t the right fit, he says his first few months at Granular have reinforced the value of finding work—and a company—that makes the day-to-day genuinely enjoyable.
Wrap-Up (31:53): Chris thanks Noah for joining the podcast and helping celebrate Getting Granular’s 50th episode. Noah embraces the honor of becoming the milestone guest before Chris encourages listeners to subscribe for more PPC tips, insights, and digital marketing conversations.

Email us at info@GranularMarketing.com

Episode Transcript

Narrator: Welcome to Getting Granular, the podcast where digital marketing experts from the agency Granular talk about the latest trends, tried and true best practices, and share their unfiltered thoughts about the industry. Whether you’re here to learn how to grow your business, improve your digital skills, or just want to hear some Midwest PPC experts rant about digital media, you’ve come to the right place.

Chris C: Hello, and thank you all once again for tuning into the Getting Granular Podcast as we continue our PPC Origins series. I have recently been informed by our extraordinary producer that this is actually the 50th Getting Granular podcast. So with that, we have a special guest today. I don’t think he knew that it was 50th because I just sprung that on him. Did

Noah: Not.

Chris C: Yeah. Noah Hardy. Noah, glad to have you here.

Noah: Thank you. Excited to introduce myself.

Chris C: Yeah. I don’t believe you’re the most recent hire at Granular, are you?

Noah: No. Second most recent. There’s one more that’s. I’m not the newbie anymore.

Chris C: How long have you been here? I’ve lost track of time. It’s

Noah: Three months now. I came out in April. Cool.

Chris C: All right. Well, we can get into that, but let’s take a step back first. Noah, why don’t you tell me about yourself?

Noah: Yeah. I’ve been in digital marketing for almost a decade, nine years now. Excited for when I can actually say a decade. Live in Grafton, so 20 minutes north of Milwaukee. Live with my wife. Been married since we were in high school, so high school sweethearts. Married for five years almost.

Chris C: You’ve been together since you were in high school. You have not been married since you were

Noah: In high school. Yes. Yeah. No, good clarification. Been together since you were in high school. Married for almost five years. Couple things about me. Love to travel outside of work that is. Big into video games. Love the witcher games. Love a little bit of everything. Then love to cook, grill, smoke. Love to make sure got some good food in the house. All

Chris C: Right. Two important follow-up questions.

Noah: Fire away.

Chris C: Favorite place you traveled?

Noah: Yep. Costa Rica. I just went there last September. We were in the Manuel Antonio area, so it’s more the rainforest area. Got to do some cool waterfall stuff right on the beach. Beautiful tree house Airbnb. So definitely favorite place we’ve gone so far, but want to do all the national parks at some point as well. So I want to do all the stuff in the US, but also want to do international. Trying to get out there.

Chris C: Okay. And this is not my second follow-up question, but this is my first follow-up to my first follow-up. How many national parks have you been to?

Noah: I think I’m on six or seven, so I got quite a ways to go. I got to do a couple out west trips where I’m going to hit a bunch of them at the same time. So I want to do a California trip where we do seven or eight all in one trip, but still early on.

Chris C: All right.

Noah: Many to go.

Chris C: Yeah, you got a lifetime ahead of you

Noah: To work there.

Chris C: All right. Adam, my second follow-up question, favorite thing that you’ve cooked, grilled, smoked?

Noah: Loving ribs right now, but I think my favorite go-to is steak sandwiches, something like that. Get a nice New York strip steak and put that on some sourdough with some pesto aioli and some arugula. Good stuff.

Chris C: Now, Noah, you’ve brought in your wife’s cookies before.

Noah: Yes, I have.

Chris C: But I have yet to have a steak sandwich for lunch from Courtesy of Noah.

Noah: If we have a grill here, I’d be happy to supply. I can run down to the public market, grab a New York strip and grill it up, but I don’t see a grill. All

Chris C: Right. All right. Right back into my core. I think we can figure that out. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, just next cookoff. We’re going to have lunch foods. Alrighty. Courtesy of Noah. I’ll vote for you to win too, to win the competition. All right. Awesome. Great. So anyway, let’s get into the real nuts and bolts of it. So again, tell us, I guess, walk us through your whole PPC story, where you started, how you got here, what you’re doing here now.

Noah: Yeah. I actually got my start early when I was in college. I started working at a startup here in Milwaukee called Genopalet. They were a DNA testing company that kind of told you how to eat. Granule was actually an agency for them for a little while. That’s actually where I found Granular in the first place. But anyhow, got started there when I was 19 years old doing a whole bunch of stuff to the startup, website, email, paid media, SEO, all sorts of good stuff that sounds insane to trust a 19-year-old with, but learned a lot and really found out that I loved the PPC side of it. Just loved the speed at which you can work with, learn, and implement changes. Kind of moved that into and kind of doubled down on that and got a job out in New York at VaynerMedia. Moved out there for a few years and then bounced around between a few different e-comm brands after that and different agencies and kind of continue honing the skills, but that’s the one minute overview of the last 10 years of work.

Chris C: Yes. Cool. Okay. So obviously VaynerMedia is the big noticeable name there. I want to know more about this genome palette. Yeah. So is it like a 23andMe and then they’re like, based off your genetic makeup, you’re eating lettuce to you might be much more beneficial than someone else. Is that.

Noah: Yes, exactly. So I wasn’t the science guy behind it, but it was just different gen ed markers would be like, “Hey, you need more protein than maybe the average person or need more vitamin B and that might change.” And you get a whole list of those recommendations. And then that would ultimately go into a food list based on like, “Hey, here’s where your macro and micro needs are versus the average person. So these are the types of foods you eat.” So it was a really cool product at the time. 23andMe and all the chaos that went on with them kind of killed the whole overall genetics industry or people lost trust in it, but they’re still kicking today. They’re still running here in Milwaukee.

Chris C: That’s cool. I guess my last question is, I hate to go off on this tangent, but I’m very interested in this. Did you get a subscription

Noah: As an employee?

Yeah, I did. I actually ran the supply chain for a little while as well when I first got started. So in addition to all the other marketing stuff, I was sourcing all the DNA kit, so I had to test a whole bunch of different ones. But yes, I did get one. I forget what the results were. I haven’t looked at it in a few years, but there’s also some cool stuff and you’d find out gluten sensitivity and how well you handle alcohol and stuff like that. So I think that’s more of the stuff I remember because I could handle alcohol well, which explains things. So I had an explanation for some of my college activities.

Chris C: That’s the most Wisconsin thing I’ve ever heard. I don’t remember any of the results except that I handle alcohol well.

Noah: Yep. Yep. That sounds about exactly right.

Chris C: Very cool. Very cool. So I guess what was it about paid media? And you sort of talked about it already with the quick changes and whatnot. What was it that made you want to stick with it?

Noah: I feel like it was the ability to see tangible results from your work. There was a lot of other things that I was doing at the time. Email marketing was very similar in that sense. So I always kind of gravitated towards both paid media and email versus things like website or SEO or things like that or supply chain where it just felt like there was a lot of time in between the things you were doing and then the actual results you would see from said work. So just felt very rewarding and gratifying in that respect of like, Hey, I made these changes, made the decisions and yielded X amount of revenue or this many people saw it and delivered X value into the business. So I always appreciated that aspect of the paid media side.

Chris C: The tangible results.

Noah: Sure.

Chris C: So I guess what did the landscape sort of look like when you first started? And I guess to take that into how has it evolved ever since?

Noah: Yeah. A lot different than it is now when I first got into it. iOS 14 wasn’t a thing. Tracking was a lot easier. I mean, it’s gotten easier since then, but that was definitely a groundbreaker. When I first got in, Google looked a lot different, a lot more focused on match types and single keyword ad groups and stuff like that versus now it’s more let Dialgo do its thing and keep it in check. On the paid social side, it was a lot more ton of creative variation. And that necessarily hasn’t changed, but it used to be more like, hey, put 10 different headlines on this image

And you could actually see some pretty substantial differences in results. Now it’s more about diversity and having things look different. So not necessarily using the same image 10 different times, but maybe using 10 different images. So yeah, a lot of things have changed since in the last eight, nine years of paid social, paid search. And now most of the focus is on creative and conversion signals on the paid social side. And there’s still plenty of work to do on the search side in terms of keywords and ad copy and all that good stuff, but not quite the same structure as it used to be.

Chris C: Sure. So it seems like you’ve had a wide breadth of everything from tracking to social to search to. Yeah. What would you sort of say is, and these may be the same answer, maybe different answers, but what would you say are the things you’re best at and the things you most enjoy working with?

Noah: Yeah. I think for me, I most enjoy the paid social side. And mostly on the creative direction and creative strategy side in sense of looking at what’s been running in an accounts or what’s been going on or what formats or types of creative other people are using that are working or what competitors are doing. Developing all of that into a brief, ultimately getting that into the platform. Creative testing essentially. What I most enjoy because I feel like that’s where I’ve seen the most substantial impacts on businesses where you can two or three X revenue over the course of six to eight months if you really find an idea or a message that resonates with people. I’ve seen an app in the past. Takes a lot of work to get there and a lot of testing. But it definitely can be rewarding once you start to see those learnings pile up and revenue starts to come in after that.

Chris C: Sure. What about specific verticals that you’ve, again, worked in or have enjoyed working in?

Noah: I mainly worked in e-comm most of my career. I’ve most enjoyed, I would say, the electronic space. When I was a veiner, I worked for Bose for a while and that was a ton of fun because I got to work with NFL content. So

Chris C: Then my next question, did you get free Bowes?

Noah: Free Bows? No, I got a discount. I wish I got free Bowes. Actually, I take that back. I got one free pair of headphones. But now I got a whole bunch of Bose stuff. I got a 20% partner discount, which was awesome. But anyhow, that was probably favorite vertical I’ve worked in. Otherwise, home and garden was pretty cool too. So I’ve worked with a couple different furniture brands or home design brands. It’s always a good time because I bought a house a couple years ago. So it was nice to be able to work in that type of stuff when you’re also working on your home and stuff like that.

Chris C: As someone who just bought a home, are your services available for.

Noah: I’m still improving my home improvement skills, but I can definitely help out. I’m most dangerous in the landscaping part. Working on some stuff right now, like putting in brick edging. So digging trenches in 85 degree weather is a ton of fun.

Chris C: Yeah. I don’t even want to cut the grass when it’s over 80 degrees.

Noah: Yeah. So that’s been my evening for the last two weeks is just digging a trench around all my flower beds to put bricks in it.

Chris C: You do know it’s been the hottest two weeks of the year,

Noah: Right? Yep. Yep. I want to get it done so I have the rest of the summer to enjoy it. I started two weeks ago when it wasn’t crazy hot. It was in the mid sixties or low seventies and I just couldn’t finish it in time. And then it got crazy hot. So now it’s –

Chris C: That’s tough.

Noah: Now it’s just half.

Chris C: Tough. Real tough.

Noah: Yeah.

Chris C: Okay. So then let’s focus a little bit more on Granular specifically. Yeah. Why don’t you talk about, again, how you got here, what you like about it?

Noah: Yeah. The thing I love the most is culture of people. That absolutely is by far and away. I’ve been working remote for so many years, so it’s been very nice to get back in person, be around people. Also, the clients that we work with are fantastic. Super, super friendly. I’ve worked in a couple agencies in the past where it’s been more high pressure, which is a different type of fun and not that we don’t have those types of client or work here. But just feel like there’s a great team effort, both internally, but then also the relationship that Granular has with clients in that respect of like, hey, even though Granular is the agency and external partners, feels like in many cases we’re an extension of the internal team, which is kind of a nice relationship to have with clients. And then also everyone here just knows their stuff when it comes particularly to paid search, but also paid social.

So it’s been awesome to be around other senior talent as opposed to constantly managing interns, which I’ve had in some roles, which has been. It’s a different type of thing. It’s roaring in different aspects, but can be a little more challenging on the day-to-day sometimes. So I’ve been enjoying not having to do quite as much of that type of work. If

Chris C: You’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room, right?

Noah: That is always the case.

Chris C: Yeah. So you mentioned you like working with everybody here. Everybody’s nice and friendly whatever. Who’s your favorite coworker?

Noah: Oh, you’re putting me in a trap right now.

Chris C: See, I ask everyone that question and there’s usually just that awkward pause, which means it’s not me, which that’s a trick question.

Noah: We don’t work on any accounts.

Chris C: Exactly. So you never have to deal with my BS.

Noah: That’s true. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Yep. All

Chris C: Right. So who’s your favorite coworker?

Noah: You, Chris.

Chris C: Oh, look at that. You’re the first one to pass. You got to correct. Excellent. All right. Noah, if it was up to me, get a raise right now. Yep.

Noah: Steve, if you’re listening.

Chris C: Yeah. Steve, Jordon, anybody? Yep. Yeah. Great. Anyway, so I guess again, you talked about working with the clients and you enjoy your relationships with them and overall friendly and warm, great relationships with them. What’s your personal approach to, again, growing those relationships? Obviously you’re working very closely with these people. What’s your sort of personal approach as it comes to, again, building trust, growing relationships as you work with them day by day?

Noah: Yeah. I mean, I feel like it goes in two things. A, they need to feel comfortable with you doing the work because at the end of the day, you’re managing, in some cases, fairly large ad budgets. They got to feel like you know what you’re doing with it and that you understand their business. So that’s always step one for me is particularly when working in e-comm, which most of my clients are, it’s like, okay, getting in, understanding the full frame of the business, understanding the margins and profitability and what profitable growth looks like.Because 30 days down the line or two months down the line when I’m recommending like, “Hey, we should increase budget by this amount because I think it’ll drive this much more sales.” I also need to understand, hey, if we drive that much extra revenue, is that also still profitable for them?

So just understanding the nuts and bolts so when I make recommendations or talk with them about performance, that they feel like I have their best interest at hearts and also that I know what I’m talking about in that respect. So just kind of entering any client relationship, that’s step A for me. Step B is also just getting to know the person a little bit more. At the end of the day, we’re all people and wanting to get to know them better is always important. Just what’s going on in their lives. Got kids, what’s going on outside of work, vacations, that type of stuff.

Chris C: I think that easily gets lost too because

Noah: We’re

Chris C: All just so usually just narrow-minded and not narrow-minded.

Noah: Get the to-do list done.

Chris C: What’s the word? We all have tunnel vision done. Yeah. The to-do list. Boom, boom, this task, this task, this task, this task, this task. And then you completely forget that, oh, this is just another person who they show up every day and then go home and live their lives doing. They don’t live the business that they work

Noah: In. Yeah,

Chris C: Exactly. So yeah, that’s always super important too and easily forgotten sometimes. So that’s great that you have that focus.

Noah: Yeah. Yeah. And at the end of the day too, even they’re a person that’s also working. So it’s understanding what’s important to them because some people are like, “Hey, I don’t really care what goes on as long as revenue comes in and performance is good.” Other people are like, “Hey, I need to know what’s going on and I need talking points for this meeting.” So just understanding that type of stuff is also really important for client relationships. What’s important to them beyond managing a campaign and stuff like that.

Chris C: And some of it is just relationship management too where it’s. I don’t want to say I’ve ever had anybody say, “I don’t care what the numbers are, but you’re fun to talk to.” But I’m sure there are cases in the past history, here, everywhere else where it’s like, “Oh, I enjoy working with you where maybe there’s someone out there that I might have to pay more or whatever. I could do a little better, but I have that rapport built up where making that switch would be much more difficult and painstaking, especially in the short term of, I know you, I like you, we work well together.”

Noah: Totally.

Chris C: So yeah, for sure. Great. So then as you work through that from just that one-to-one approach, how do you then leverage that as you report out on your campaign performance, your reporting, your ROI metrics, things like that?

Noah: Yeah. I always try to get back to. In terms of understanding profitability, it’s also understanding the incrementality. So if we’re going to spend more or if we’re going to make these changes, what’s the increase in performance that we drove as opposed to like, “Hey, things are doing well. Revenue is up 5%. Okay, revenue is up 5%. How much do we increase spend to accomplish those types of things?” So try to ground a lot of my reporting around incrementality. And sometimes that comes in the form of incrementality testing. So focusing on certain deal holdouts and things like that or running conversion lift tests in Meta. So there’s different types of things. Also, I like to focus a lot of my reporting around testing. So we have a hunch that this landing page is going to increase the performance of this search campaign or this Meta ad and focusing reporting around what were the changes, what were the results of those changes?

And ultimately what does that mean for us going forward is typically how I structure reporting and how we move forward with PPC campaigns. But then again, it’s also kind of having one eye forward, one eye back is like, okay, making sure that you understand the context of these results versus what’s been in the past. So whether that’s year over year or month over month is always important too beyond just like, “Hey, we made these changes, what are the results?” And making sure we keep seasonality in mind and what else has happened over the last three to six months that might’ve influenced the results we’re seeing today.

Chris C: Sure. So we talked about the past. Now you got here. We’ve talked about the present. I think there’s only one more place to go. Big shocker, the future. I guess from your perspective, what does the future of PPC look like? What are you excited about? What are you nervous about? Or just what do you envision the landscape becoming?

Noah: Yeah. It’s going to sound super corny and I’m sure a bunch of people have said it, but I think AI is always kind of the big behemoth on the horizon of how does it impact PPC? I think there’s doomsday people of like, “Hey, PPC is basically going to be just run by an AI agent.” I don’t think we are close to that yet. I think it still struggles to do long form decision making. Most people know that if they work with ChatGPT or Claude talking with it and you realize a mistake and you’re like, “Hey, you made this mistake.” And

Noah: Like, “Oh yeah, I did make that mistake. Go back.” But I do think it’s important to continue experimenting with it from two standpoints. The first one is helping with just some of the mediocre, menial tasks that don’t take a lot of brainpower, but still take a lot of time and automating some of that work on just everyday tasks. So I’ve been doing a lot of work with that over the last three to six months to just try to make more efficient and more time of the day to do more impactful things. Then the other one is just using AI to do larger data analysis that would take weeks at a time. So good example is that is like three or four months ago I was working on an LTV analysis. So just drop in all of the Shopify order data that a store has ever had and then like, okay, find me the LTV byproduct, like a 12 month LTV byproduct.

Use email as an identifier across all these to identify when the first order was and calculate LTV and pulls in 50,000 orders, does that within two to three hours versus might take me a week or two of putzing around and doing research on Google of what formulas I need to do or cleaning the data and all that good stuff. Whereas a Claude or a ChatGPT can do that in a few hours with a good amount of prompting if you’re using some of the more high functioning models that are out there now. So in terms of what I’m excited for, I think those are the big ones.

Chris C: Yeah. Sure. Yeah. I can relate with you on that. I just did a similar thing where it was take these hundreds or thousands, I don’t remember how many were, but it was tons of different ad creative. Find the consistencies across what was working well, what was working bad. Obviously uploaded a bunch of the stats associated with each one of them. And it was okay, you find this for me. Where if I was manually pulling that and trying to find those similarities all myself, like you said, that would’ve taken me two weeks. And I clogged ChatGPT. Wherever I’d uploaded it to, it took an hour.

Noah: Yep, exactly.

Chris C: So yeah, full on there. And I think the other point that you made goes back to your client relationships too, of once you can start to automate these more menial tasks and these tools are getting better at saying, “Hey, here’s your ROAS.” Whatever it is, you make this account change. Once they can start doing that and doing that automation for the account performance, it comes down to then just that relationship of they need to know that someone else is looking out over this for them who understands things better and is going to take that responsibility to say, “Hey, yes, this is a good idea.” Or no, there’s this error here where again, if someone was just letting everyone automate it, yeah, sure, whatever. But then if again, one of these channels, Google, Meta, LinkedIn, whatever, it’s like, oh yeah, do this. It’ll help you improve your performance and it completely tanks.

There’s no accountability on that side.

Noah: Yeah. And I mean, I feel like that’s already been kind of what’s changed over the last five years. Maybe not in the sense of AI in that sense, but more from an algorithm standpoint of Google, with the launch of Performance Max, they removed a lot of the levers. So it kind of became, while us as PPC marketers, we’re still adjusting images and headlines and looking at asset level performance and all that good stuff. So we still have that ability. They do remove some levers. So we still are more often than not in day-to-day is just more guiding in that respect and keeping things in check as opposed to as it used to be where you would go in and adjust the CPC bid for this specific keyword. I don’t find myself doing that at all anymore. Mainly because you don’t have to because the algorithms are better than you at doing it.

Again, there’s certain cases where that’s not true, like brand search or competitor campaigns. But

Nonetheless, that’s I would say my one, I would say fear or concern for the future is that if we keep moving in that direction where it’s just like, “Hey, give us 20 images and your website and we’ll run all your campaigns for you.” And it’s just like kind of trust me bro campaigns, as Steve likes to say. We saw Google heading in that direction for a few years and I think they’ve started to dial it back a little bit where they’ve kind of opened up some more reporting and some more control overs versus what they used to do even two years ago. So that gives me a little more hope that we’re not so far down that road. But my hope is that we don’t get too far in that direction. I think as long as there’s enough social platforms out there and other alternative options for people to use, these platforms are still incentivized to give advertisers the best experience if they have options to go elsewhere.

I still feel like Google and Meta are going to be mainstays for forever. They’re not going anywhere. But nonetheless, force them to stay competitive if there’s still other options out there.

Chris C: I’m sure that’s probably what people said about Myspace too.

Noah: You

Chris C: Never know. Yeah. I don’t remember where I saw this, but Gen Alpha or Gen Z, whatever, I’m not sure exactly where the cutoff is, but a very small percentage of them even have a Facebook account.

Noah: Yeah. And Meta isn’t going to stay because of Facebook forever. It’s Instagram. People are still using Instagram, but Instagram’s usage is also down relative

Chris C: To TikTok. That was sort of where I was getting where now TikTok’s taken over and now maybe people stop signing up for Instagram and then it all becomes a TikTok. And then 10 years from now, there’s something else that takes over TikTok.

Noah: Yeah. Google does have the Trump card in YouTube. Yeah. I feel like everybody still uses that. Google’s built their empire out pretty well on that front. Although I still feel like advertisers struggle to find performance marketing value out of YouTube. It’s still in progress.

Narrator: And

Noah: You see them making a ton of changes on that this year from Google Marketing Live. They’re trying to get more and more focus around driving revenue and proving revenue out of YouTube.

Chris C: And that’s almost sort of like trying to prove revenue off of a TV commercial.

Noah: Exactly.

Chris C: Where you know it works because otherwise nobody would be buying these commercials, but it’s what’s the exact ROAS? Whereas with a search ad and a click, it’s a lot more traceable and trackable.

Noah: Correct. So it gets more back into MMM models and when I invest this much in YouTube or see this many impressions into this bid objective, this is the increase in revenue I see. So it’s more getting into incrementality testing, I feel like. Although YouTube, again, I feel like is realizing the reality that they need to be able to actually show a platform, like a number in platform in order for the masses to be able to trust that because, or at least some of these smaller to mid-level advertisers, because Fortune 500 and these big advertisers are spending a million dollars a month. They have access to spend the budget on an MM model that can prove out the value of YouTube versus an e-comm store that just got started in the last two years

Narrator: And might

Noah: Be spending 20 or 30K on advertising a month. Doesn’t have the money to spend seven grand a month on an MMN model to be maintained. It just doesn’t math out. It doesn’t make sense.

So they don’t have the tools to be able to adequately measure what YouTube or some of these more upper funnel platforms can do for them. So interested to see what they do. I know they’re adding in the attributed branded searches, which is probably the most interesting thing I think that came out from that of like, “Hey, when I run a YouTube campaign, this is how many branded searches became as a result from that.” Because you can go and look at your branded search campaign and see, “Hey, this is the row ask for that.” So you can kind of put two and two together if you’re able to say how much these upper funnel campaigns in Google were driving attributed branded searches, which they’ve always had with search lift study, but if they actually have that available in platform without needing to run a study and have a minimum investment around it will be pretty nice in my opinion.

Chris C: Is that a new feature? I don’t know that I’ve heard about that, but it’s also something that I would find incredibly valuable.

Noah: I think it’s in beta right now, so it’s only on select accounts. I’ve seen it a couple times. They’ve definitely pushed it. So unless they cancel it out of beta, it’s definitely on the horizon. So that’s probably one of the things I’m most excited for when it comes to YouTube measurement here in the next few months as it rolls out to more and more accounts.

Chris C: Cool. I’ve decided that whoever launches a campaign type called Just Trust Me, Bro, I’m going to – I

Noah: Have to try it.

Chris C: Yeah, I have to try it.That’s the best campaign name ever.

Noah: And ever

Chris C: Since Steve started saying that, I’ve loved that name.

Noah: Yep, exactly.

Chris C: Because I mean, that’s kind of what it is.

Noah: Yeah. It’s gotten better. I will say even demand gen, that used to be the ultimate trust, even more so than Performance Max, in my opinion. But even then, in the last year, they rolled out the ability to dedicate ads to. If you want to upload a YouTube video that’s in vertical, you can say, “I only want this to serve on shorts.” So they’ve added more control for how things serve and how you can run these campaigns where you can do Do video only Demand Gen Z. You don’t need to add images, so you can basically run a YouTube campaign in demand gen. I’ll give Google a little bit of credit in that respect. As page search marketers, we’re always keeping an eye on it and making sure that they’re not doing anything shady.

Chris C: Everyone is always ready to criticize Google. So when they do something that deserves credit –

Noah: I’ll pony it up. I’ll give credit where it’s due. They find one once in a while.

Chris C: Awesome. So then as we wrap up, I always like to ask everybody if they have any sort of words of wisdom, be it about paid media, about just life in general, anything that you would like to give the audience as a walking away point?

Noah: Yeah. For me, just for life in general, just find something you like doing. Don’t waste time doing something you hate. It’s not worth it. I know it’s easy to say because I enjoy what I do. I’ve always been very passionate about it. Hasn’t been difficult for me to wake up and go to work every day. But I’ve had certain roles where it hasn’t been quite as enjoyable and I’ve spent more time there than I should have. And honestly, in the last three months, it’s probably the happiest I’ve been at any role. So Steve, I’m not just saying that. I actually promised that is 100% true. I am incredibly happy since I got started here. Just really has shown me, hey, find something you enjoy to do. Find a company you enjoy working for and stick it out there. And yeah, just do what makes you happy because it’s not worth not enjoying your day to day.

If you’re going to be spending eight hours at work, it’s 30% of your life. Find something you enjoy doing.

Chris C: So then just to clarify, you do or do not enjoy landscaping?

Noah: Depends what it is. All

Chris C: Right.

Noah: We’ll

Chris C: Talk. We’ll talk.

Noah: We’ll talk.

Chris C: All right. Noah, well, thanks for joining us today. We’d be glad to have you back sometime if there’s anything you feel you need to talk about and rant about or just educate everyone else about. And yeah, thanks for joining us for the big 50th podcast. So we’re halfway to a hundred. We’ll hopefully have you back before we hit a hundred.

Noah: Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Honor to be the 50th.

Chris C: Didn’t even know it until 10 minutes ago. And to everyone else, thank you for listening to the Getting Granular podcast. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on any PPC tips, tricks, or news in the digital marketing world. I’ve been your host, Chris Caesar. Thanks for getting granular with us today.