Sticking to the Point in PPC: Lessons from Alexa, Coldplay, and Broad Match

Phil Taylor

Here’s an actual conversation I had not long ago:

Me: “Alexa, set a 13-minute timer.”
Alexa: “Timer started – 13 minutes. By the way, Coldplay released new music. Would you like to hear it?”

Now, I’ve got nothing against Coldplay, Alexa… but there’s a time and a place.

I’ve just made a specific request, what I want is a specific outcome – not a nudge towards someone else’s agenda.

Intent Still Wins

This cheeky mission creep from Alexa carries a key lesson for Google Ads. It’s one of the most common ways for PPC activity to go off course.

When someone makes a search, they’re signalling intent.

And Google Ads works best when the ad is maximally relevant to that intent.

Back in my Google days, we often repeated:
“It’s a direct response channel – not a broadcast one.”

Much has changed in the platform since then (I cover this in my mini-course, How Google Ads Has Changed — a quick catch-up for anyone whose PPC foundations were laid a while back).

But the principle of meeting the user where they are still holds true for search.

Google today is right to highlight that there are many signals of user intent beyond search terms… But we still need a tight match between:

🔍 What the user wants
💡 What you’re offering

And ‘sticking to the point’ isn’t the strong suit of AI.

Why Broad Match Struggles

Last year, I ran emergency dentist campaigns. Broad Match couldn’t handle it. It wouldn’t learn that “emergency” wasn’t an optional extra – it was necessary. (If only there were some symbol we could place in front of a word to indicate that necessity .)

So going ‘broader than broad’ – as AI Max promises to do – will have its place, but it’s a dangerous proposition, for reasons that have been true since the early days of PPC.

Because, as Alexa’s mistimed offer shows, pushing more only has value when it meets the right user at the right moment.