Agenda 2025

Every brand wants it all—fast results, sustained growth, hyper-aggressive KPIs, long-term profitability, scalable CAC and ROI, all expanding in a neat, predictable line. But reality? It’s never that simple. And now AI is the latest disruptor and changes everything…well, not really! Integrated Paid, Organic and Social Marketing is (has always been) the marketers’ superpower. And us marketers are best equipped to navigate AI since we’ve been using it since the dawn of digital. AI isn’t rewriting the rules; it’s just accelerating what great marketers have always done best: adapting, iterating, and executing with precision.

So get ready for a wild ride (which Marty’s keynotes always are) and learn why AI is an evolution, not a revolution. Want more good news? Ads, SEO & Social aren’t dead—they’re evolving; You can master the organic squeeze by beating the fight for free traffic with AI-driven content, vertical AI agents, and advanced user journey mapping; AI should be your Co-Pilot – using automated content drafting and multilingual strategies while keeping human creativity at the core is the key; you will thrive through change – marketing has evolved for 50+ years—this is just the next phase. The strongest brands won’t resist AI; they’ll leverage it to lead.

Topical authority is more than a buzzword—it’s a core factor shaping visibility across Google Search, Discover, AI Overviews, and even third-party systems like ChatGPT. In this tactical session, Jes Scholz breaks down how different surfaces interpret and reward signals of authority. From content clean-ups to topic hub refinement, headline tuning to publication cadence—this is a deep dive into what actually works, where, and why.

PPC marketers are constantly chasing the latest trends—AI, automation, new ad formats—hoping for incremental gains. But what if the biggest growth potential isn’t in the new and shiny stuff, but in the foundation of your account? In this strategic session, Miles will challenge you, the advanced marketers, to rethink your approach. While tweaking the latest features might give you a 20% lift, fixing the fundamentals—bidding structures, account architecture, cross-channel alignment—can unlock 80% of your growth potential.

And here’s the kicker: it’s not just about Google anymore. The biggest levers are often outside the platform—your messaging, your landing pages, your conversion paths. With AI and automation evolving rapidly, your foundation needs to evolve too.

A mindshift is needed because if you think you’ve already mastered the fundamentals, think again. The game has definitely changed. Are you ready?

PPC marketers are constantly chasing the latest trends—AI, automation, new ad formats—hoping for incremental gains. But what if the biggest growth potential isn’t in the new and shiny stuff, but in the foundation of your account? In this strategic session, Miles will challenge you, the advanced marketers, to rethink your approach. While tweaking the latest features might give you a 20% lift, fixing the fundamentals—bidding structures, account architecture, cross-channel alignment—can unlock 80% of your growth potential.

And here’s the kicker: it’s not just about Google anymore. The biggest levers are often outside the platform—your messaging, your landing pages, your conversion paths. With AI and automation evolving rapidly, your foundation needs to evolve too.

A mind shift is needed because if you think you’ve already mastered the fundamentals, think again. The game has definitely changed. Are you ready?

A lot of people are using AI in their own way nowadays. But is using ChatGPT for ad copy innovative? Or is that just using the basics of AI? Lars thinks it is the basics and this is SMX Advanced. It’s time to go further and how you can do SO MUCH more than the basics. With Cursor AI you can run your complete PPC campaign setup including ad copy, scripting, analysing, tagging and running SQL queries along the way.

People often think that doing SEO at large corporations is easier – after all, they’ve got the money and the scale to fix things quickly, right? But the reality is, big companies come with their own set of hurdles. With fragmented teams, competing priorities, and rigid compliance frameworks, scaling from “big” to “massive” takes more than budget. In this session, Jason will break down the practical strategies for embedding SEO across a complex enterprise: from building scalable governance and automation, to turning SEO into infrastructure used by product, content, UX, and legal teams. You’ll learn how to make data drive decisions beyond the SEO silo, operationalise experimentation, and create frameworks that make SEO part of onboarding, tooling, and roadmap planning. Ready to take big to massive? This is your session!

Want to regain control over Performance Max and make this campaign type work to optimize _your_ profits? 

Look no further.

Join scripting wizard Nils Roojmans as he opens up the black box of Google PMax campaigns and shares his advanced optimization strategies and script library to help you optimize performance.
You’ll learn about advanced strategies and tactics for optimizing your PMax campaigns.
Discover how to use scripts to improve the input for the PMax algorithm, monitor performance, and adjust settings when needed.

  After this session, you’ll be able to:
  • Understand the algorithms behind PMax
  • Use a set of provided tactics and scripts to optimize your campaigns with newfound efficiency
  • Manage PMax budgets to grow revenue and profits, reducing wasted ad spend

You are surrounded by fellow SEO experts and there is no better place to discuss and share our common problems – off the record, and in a small group. These are your people – they understand your situation. Often rated the best part of the event, sharing your problems with like-minded professionals is your path to answers, a little empathy, and a stronger professional network. Come prepared with an issue you are facing, a problem you are solving, or a question that needs answering. And then, be ready and willing to help others to overcome their challenges. Topics and moderators will be announced closer to the date.

You are surrounded by fellow PPC experts and there is no better place to discuss and share our common problems – off the record, and in a small group. These are your people – they understand your situation. Often rated the best part of the event, sharing your problems with like-minded professionals is your path to answers, a little empathy, and a stronger professional network. Come prepared with an issue you are facing, a problem you are solving, or a question that needs answering. And then, be ready and willing to help others to overcome their challenges. Topics and moderators will be announced closer to the date.

In order to make good business decisions, you need sound logic and robust data – but sadly, all too often, both are in short supply. Based on his work with hundreds of companies, Russ is here to highlight the 3 most common data problems, and how to fix them. He’ll be covering: funnels and KPIs; how to manage and understand search performance in a cookie-less world; and, most importantly, how to determine which steps of your users’ journeys actually impact conversions. Whether you are a PPC or SEO expert, this session is highly relevant to everybody.

Using the power of generate AI, ads that would previously have required millions of dollars and a Hollywood studio can be created using just a laptop alongside some hard work and ingenuity. In this session, Phil will talk through how to make AI videos work as ads, the styles and approaches AI is uniquely good for, the tools used for the most creative executions and the distribution plan likely to generate the best returns.

What do a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter and a Search professional have in common? Both must continually evolve, adapt, and master new disciplines—or they risk being knocked out. Lavall Chichester knows this firsthand. As both a bare knuckle Karate fighter and a seasoned search strategist, he draws powerful parallels between the fight ring and the SERP battlefield. In a landscape transformed by AI and increasing complexity, the tactics that worked yesterday won’t win tomorrow. This keynote goes beyond inspiration. Lavall will share real-world case studies and advanced, conversion-focused strategies you can deploy immediately. If you want to dominate in search—not just survive—this is your blueprint.

How do you move beyond simply optimizing for revenue and start focusing on actual profit? Too many companies are still adding a tracking code and calling it a day—believing that CLV or revenue tells the whole story. But true profit optimization is far more complex and rooted in the realities of your business. In this session, Juliana will unpack the nuances that most teams overlook: How do you handle data gaps? What’s the right way to account for product returns? Are micro-conversions like “Add to Cart” actually meaningful, or are they distracting noise? You’ll learn how to stop relying on oversimplified metrics and start building a measurement strategy that adapts to your specific business model—and drives real results.

It’s time to uncover and eliminate the hidden barriers that prevent search engine bots from efficiently crawling enterprise websites. Gianna will guide you through a proven, hands-on framework for tackling complex infrastructure challenges—even when your engineering team isn’t exactly eager to talk SEO.

In this session, you’ll learn how to:

• Diagnose crawl issues across CDN, load balancer, and server layers
• Apply targeted, layer-specific fixes to improve bot accessibility
• Set up monitoring systems to detect and prevent future crawl roadblocks
• Whether you’re a technical SEO embedded in a large organization or working agency-side with enterprise clients, this session will equip you with the tools and tactics to stay ahead of crawl issues before they impact performance.

AI is transforming paid search advertising, but some marketing fundamentals remain the same.

Join Anu Adegbola, Paid Media Editor of Search Engine Land, as she shares a candid conversation with Ginny Marvin, Google Ads Liaison, that challenges assumptions and provides practical strategies for navigating modern ad systems.

Ginny and Anu will discuss ways AI is changing how marketers drive business outcomes, the interplay between performance and branding to influence customer journeys, and making the most of your data in today’s measurement landscape.

You’ll learn about:

• The AI paradox: While AI reshapes how we optimize campaigns, core marketing principles remain unchanged.
• Control vs. efficiency: How do advertisers strike the right balance?
• Measurement and data: Navigating confidential matching, enhanced conversions, and AI’s role in filling data gaps.
• Lead generation in the AI era: What lead gen advertisers need to know to stay ahead.

What Google’s internal documentation really reveals—and what almost no one’s talking about. The SEO industry blew it.

When Google’s internal documentation leaked, we had access to an unprecedented 14,000 attributes—raw insight into how Google stores, evaluates, and might rank information. It could have been a turning point. But instead of digging deep, most SEOs rushed to confirm their biases, cherry-picked a handful of points, and moved on.
This talk does what others didn’t. Johan will walk you through 10 detailed technical learnings from the leak—based on methodical exploration, not hype. Expect evidence, clear explanations, and a few surprises that challenge what you thought you knew.
Questions we’ll address:

• Does the position of a link affect ranking?
• How many links does Google really count, and where?
• What gets stored in the index—and why that matters more than you think.

Johan is known for going deeper than most. With a career spanning dozens of industries and business models, he brings a pragmatic mindset and a hunger to understand how things truly work, not just how they’re blogged about. This talk is for advanced SEOs ready to ditch hot takes and start learning like engineers.

The role of the PPC expert is evolving—fast. In an age where AI is no longer optional and automation is rewriting how we work, staying ahead means more than just keeping up with trends. This session dives into how PPC professionals can future-proof their skillset in 2025 and beyond. Julia will give you hands-on insights into what’s possible when cutting-edge AI tools, autonomous agents, custom scripts, and smart workflows come together—transforming how PPC teams research, build, automate, and scale their work. You’ll walk away with scripts, workflows, and examples that you’ll want to implement as soon as possible. Ready to trade routine tasks for strategic impact, with some geek knowledge along the way? This is your session!

AI is foundational to how advanced marketers build, automate, and scale their operations. In this session, Will will provide a structured overview of AI tools for content creation, process deployment, and performance tracking. Attendees will learn how to select, implement, and measure AI-driven outputs to support workflows and (human and agent) client interactions.

You will learn how to:

• Identify AI tools for content creation, workflow deployment, and performance tracking.
• Integrate AI outputs into structured agent workflows.
• Measure AI-driven activities to optimize responsiveness and results.

For years, search marketers have defaulted to a Google-first (or Google-only) strategy. But, once synonymous only with Bing, IT-controlled corporate desktops, and those who didn’t know how to change their default search engine, Microsoft has made some bold strides in recent years, spotlighting Microsoft Advertising as a reinvigorated contender for Search budgets. In an era of rapid AI advancements, shifting user behaviors, and unpredictable platform changes, relying too heavily on one ecosystem is a risk advanced marketers can’t afford. In this session Niki will focus on Microsoft’s evolving search and advertising landscape—fueled by AI-powered Copilot, deep integrations across its ecosystem, and data-rich acquisitions like Activision Blizzard. Join us for a deep dive into the opportunities (and challenges) of expanding your advanced search marketing playbook. We’ll explore how Microsoft’s latest developments impact search, where early adopters are gaining an edge, and what you need to do to stay competitive in a multi-engine world.

What does it really take to grow a website across architecture, traffic, and authority—especially when you’re operating in multiple languages, markets, and high-competition spaces? In this session, Luke shares firsthand lessons from growing large, complex websites, focusing on the real-world challenges that arise when scaling a website. You’ll walk through building flexible site architecture, improving crawl efficiency, and driving sustainable traffic across regions. Expect practical insights on international SEO, user experience at scale, and theadvanced technical stackessential for competing in crowded SERPs.

Are you an expert in PMax and Shopping campaigns at scale, with a solid understanding of product feeds, custom labels, and campaign structures? Then it’s time to go beyond performance monitoring and into predictive strategy.

In this session, Inderpaul will show you:

• How to map and analyse shared and unique search term coverage across Search and PMax campaigns.
• A practical framework to score products based on historical performance and predictive potential.
• How to use that scoring to adjust feed inputs, prioritise bidding, and inform landing page testing.

Inderpaul will share case studies showing how these methods have improved ROI across B2B and B2C verticals. If you’re ready to stop the guesswork and start predicting performance based on reliable data, this is the session not to miss.

Large language models (LLMs) have made search more conversational and focused on natural language. But marketers still rely on the same tools, methods, and keyword data — and when AI writing tools are added to the mix, it creates a self-reinforcing echo chamber where everyone repeats what’s already been said.

One way out of this cycle is conversation analysis — a linguistic method used to study the structure and patterns of real human interaction. It helps uncover how mutual understanding is built in dialogue. Data sources can include customer reviews, forums, support chats, or recorded client meetings.

Erica, a trained linguist, will show how her team at Trustmary uses conversation analysis to extract insights from sales and support calls, build data-driven customer profiles, refine messaging for different segments, and create content using the exact language customers use — resulting in greater visibility in organic search.

If you want to apply a scientific lens to content strategy and create original, customer-aligned content, this session is for you.

When was the last time you benchmarked your competitors? Probably when you landed that new client. Any benchmarking after that? Nope? We thought so. Everyone is too busy—and while it’s critical, traditional competitor benchmarking methods are just too time-consuming.

But now we have AI agents to automate most of it. Think landing pages, search copy, and more! In this session, Rémi will show you AI and automation tools that transform data collection and PPC benchmarking; how to generate real-time insights from your competitors’ strategies and produce gap analysis at scale effortlessly; and how to adjust your strategy on the fly with highly relevant, contextual data.

Join this session to equip yourself with the knowledge and tools to get ahead of your competitors.