AI is a capable driver, but the direction depends on you. In this episode of AI Ads and Beyond, Lisa Raehsler talks with Joel Miller of The Sky Floor about when Google's AI features multiply your results and when they work against you. If you run a budget, you'll leave knowing what to turn on and what to keep in your own hands. They cover auto apply and the visibility you lose with it, AI overviews absorbing low-intent searches, why platform recommendations optimize for spend velocity over your margin, and how to combine human judgment with AI instead of handing over the wheel. Joel also shares how he turned 30 hours of sales calls into a custom GPT that feeds real objections back into ad copy.

Joel Miller runs The Sky Floor, a boutique agency he co-founded with his identical twin brother Alan. For 17 years they've managed live ad accounts with zero employees, working hands-on with AI tooling every day.

Host Lisa Raehsler is the founder of Big Click Co., a Microsoft MVP, and a paid media strategist with more than 20 years in digital advertising.

• (00:00:00) - AI Ads: How They're Changing Paid Advertising
• (00:01:03) - In the Elevator With My Identical Twin
• (00:01:49) - How PayPal got into Payment Media
• (00:02:56) - Google's Search and Algorithms
• (00:05:08) - Google's Search for Advertisers
• (00:05:57) - On Google's Strategic Calls
• (00:09:14) - What Auto-Apply Does To Signals
• (00:11:46) - Google Search: Keyword Intent, Collapse and AI
• (00:14:47) - PPC: AI's Place in the Future
• (00:21:39) - Peakdad Takes the Sales Calls With AI
• (00:24:55) - Google AdWords: AI Max for Search
• (00:28:07) - Paid Search: AI Ad Placement
• (00:30:15) - AI Ad Tech