What I Learned At The PPC Summit 2026 In Lisbon (And What It Means For Your Google Ads)

Last month, 300 Google Ads specialists filled an old factory hall under a bridge in Lisbon. I was one of them. The event was the PPC Summit 2026, and I spent three days there.

The first day was the one I had looked forward to most. It was a one-day mastermind with Mike Rhodes, with around 15 of us in the room. The next two days were the summit itself.

I have run Google Ads for clients for many years. I still came home with a long list of things to change. This post covers what happened, who spoke and what it means for you if you pay for Google Ads.

What Is The PPC Summit?

The PPC Summit is a two-day conference for people who manage Google Ads for a living. PPC stands for pay per click, the kind of advertising where you pay each time someone clicks your ad. Google Ads is the biggest example.

Two companies host it. One is PPC Mastery, run by Bob Meijer and Miles McNair. The other is ProfitMetrics, led by Frederik Boysen.

The first edition took place in Copenhagen in September 2025. This year it moved to LX Factory in Lisbon on 24 and 25 September 2026. LX Factory is a set of old industrial buildings that now houses shops, studios and restaurants.

The organisers publish the numbers on their website. There were 300 specialists in the room, from more than 190 agencies, brands and freelance businesses. The two days held 14 talks, workshops and case studies. The earliest tickets sold out in 48 hours.

Three things make it different from most marketing events I have attended. There is one track, so everyone hears the same talks in the same order. Nobody sells from the stage. And the workshops run on your own accounts, with a workbook you take home.

Day One: Fifteen People, One Room And A Lot Of AI

The summit started for me a day early. On 23 September I joined a one-day mastermind led by Mike Rhodes.

A mastermind is a small working group. Everyone brings a real problem, and the room helps solve it. Ours had around 15 people, all of whom run or work in Google Ads agencies.

We spent the day on our AI automations. That means the small systems each of us is building so that AI handles the routine work in an ad account. Think of checking budgets, spotting wasted spend and drafting reports.

Each person showed what they had built and where they were stuck. Then the group pulled it apart and improved it. I saw ideas I would never have reached alone, and I shared a few of my own.

The size of the room made the day. In a hall of 300 you listen. In a room of 15 you work. Nobody could hide at the back, and every question got a real answer from someone who had already solved it.

I left inspired, which is not a word I use often about a day spent looking at spreadsheets and code. I also left with a clear list of what to build next for our clients.

Who Is Mike Rhodes, And Why Did I Fly To Lisbon To Learn From Him?

Mike Rhodes is one of the most respected Google Ads teachers in the world. He has run Google Ads since 2004, before the product even had that name.

He built and sold WebSavvy, an agency in Australia. The summit website describes it as a Google Top 18 agency. It also says his guide to AdWords has sold more than 140,000 copies.

Mike was one of my first mentors. A day in a small room with him was an easy decision.

These days he focuses on one thing. He helps Google Ads professionals add AI to their daily work. He does that through a paid community called Ads2AI.

Members get his scripts for Performance Max campaigns, a course on scripts and Google Sheets, monthly masterclasses and weekly videos. They also get what he calls the brain, an AI system that holds the knowledge of your business.

If you manage Google Ads for a living and want to build real AI skills, I recommend it.

• Join Mike Rhodes' Ads2AI community

Days Two And Three: 300 Specialists At LX Factory

The main event ran in a tall stone hall with a stage at one end and long rows of desks. Almost everyone had a laptop open. This was a room of people who came to work.

The single track mattered more than I expected. Each talk built on the one before it. By the second afternoon, the whole room shared the same ideas and the same language.

One slide stayed with me. It read: "You can't iterate until it's written down." That is the simplest AI lesson I heard all week. You cannot ask a machine to improve a process that only lives in your head.

Lunch was at long shared tables, and that was where the second half of the learning happened. I compared notes with other agency owners. Most of them face the same questions I do.

Those questions are worth naming. How much of the work should AI do? What should a person still check by hand? And how do you prove to a client that the account is in good hands? Nobody claimed to have the final answer, and I trusted the room more for it.

Why Should You Care What Happens At A PPC Conference?

You may never attend an event like this, and you should not have to. But if you pay someone to run your Google Ads, what they learn decides how well your money works.

Google Ads changes every few months. New campaign types arrive. Old settings disappear. Google now makes more decisions by itself inside your account than ever before.

AI has added a second wave of change. Tasks that took an account manager half a day can now take minutes. That frees up time, and the question is what your agency does with it.

A good agency spends that time on thinking. It looks harder at your offer, your landing page and your profit. A poor agency keeps doing the same manual checks it did in 2019 and bills you the same fee.

Here is a simple scenario. Two plumbers each spend £1,500 a month on Google Ads. One account gets a quick look once a month. The other has automated checks every day that flag wasted clicks the same morning. Over a year, that difference adds up to thousands of pounds.

So the next time you speak to whoever runs your ads, ask one question. What have you learned this year, and what did you change in my account because of it? The answer will tell you a lot.

The Speakers On Stage In Lisbon

These are the eight speakers listed for the Lisbon edition, with a link to each. The short descriptions come from the summit's own website.

• Bob Meijer. Co-founder of PPC Mastery and co-host of the summit. He has managed more than €100 million of Google Ads spend and specialises in lead generation and software companies.
• Mike Rhodes. Founder of Ads2AI and the 8020Brain. He built and sold the agency WebSavvy and led the mastermind I joined on day one.
• Miles McNair. Co-founder of PPC Mastery and co-host of the summit. He has helped more than 100 online shops grow around the world.
• Frederik Boysen. Chief executive of ProfitMetrics and co-host of the summit. His platform helps online shops bid on profit instead of revenue.
• Cindy Ebner. Head of Paid Search at Kosch Klink Performance in Germany. She built the agency's search team from nothing and works with finance and insurance firms.
• Alfred Simon. AI architect at Adwise and founder of Pitcocy. He spent a decade inside Google Ads accounts and now builds AI systems.
• Danique Bras. Founder of Adspells. She grows brands on Meta, TikTok and Pinterest and turns data into ads people stop to watch.
• Geert Hidding. Performance coach and author of the Dutch management book "Het Schakelpunt". He teaches focus and consistency.

That last name may surprise you at a Google Ads event. I thought it was a smart choice. Tools change every year, but focus is what gets the work done.

You can read more about the event on the official website.

• The PPC Summit official website

Three Case Studies With Real Numbers

My favourite session did not come from a speaker. Three attendees shared their best client result on stage, and the room voted for a winner. The figures below are the ones the summit published.

Ramial Aqeel showed how a clinic grew from one rented room into a £2 million business. The ads brought in £7 of invoiced revenue for every £1 spent.

Violeta Balbae cut a client's cost per lead to a third. She found people who wanted to sell hiding inside search terms that looked like buyer searches. On paper those keywords looked wrong. In practice they worked.

Quint van der Meer won the room vote. His client gained 35% more lifetime value per customer and 19% more new customers. That came after a year in which the business grew by 118%.

None of these wins came from a secret trick. Each one came from someone who looked closely at the numbers and questioned what everyone else assumed. Small business owners can take heart from that. Careful work still beats a big budget.

Five Things I Brought Home

I took a lot of notes over the three days. These are the five ideas I keep coming back to.

1. Write the process down first. AI cannot improve a job that only lives in your head. Before we automate a task at SF Digital, the first job is to write out each step in plain English. That step alone exposes most of the problems.

2. Let AI do the checking and let people do the thinking. A machine can check 50 accounts for overspend before breakfast. It cannot sit with a business owner and work out why the phone has gone quiet. We are building our systems around that split.

3. Judge your ads on profit. Revenue looks good in a report. Profit pays the wages. An ad that sells a product with no margin loses money, however good the report looks.

4. Small rooms beat big rooms. The mastermind day gave me more usable ideas than any keynote I have seen. If you want to learn something properly, find 15 people who are working on the same problem.

5. Nobody has finished working this out. Some of the sharpest people in the industry were in that hall, and all of them are still testing. Be wary of anyone who says they have AI and advertising completely solved.

Each of these points works outside Google Ads too. If you run any small business, try the first one this week. Pick one task you repeat every month and write down every step.

How To Get Real Value From Any Business Event

Conferences cost money and time away from work, and it is easy to waste both. These are the rules I follow, and they apply to any industry.

1. Go with one question. Decide before you travel what you want answered. One clear question gives every talk and every chat a purpose.
2. Sit at a different table for every meal. Some of the best ideas come over lunch from people you have never met.
3. Write three actions on the way home. Leave the other 30 for later. Three finished actions beat a long list you never open.
4. Book the work into your diary before you land. An idea without a date fades by Wednesday.
5. Tell your team or your clients what you learned. Writing this post made me sort my own notes, which is half the reason it exists.

Frequently asked questions

Photos From Lisbon

A few more photos from the three days. Select any photo to see it larger.

Keep Reading

If this post was useful, these SF Digital articles go further into the same themes.

• AI Marketing Explained: Why You Can’t Afford To Ignore It In 2025
• Why Your Customers Are Asking ChatGPT About You (And How To Win That Conversation)
• How To Set Up Automated Rules In Google Ads
• Everything We Know About Google Ads Performance Max Campaigns
• Affiliate World Dubai 2024: A Game-Changing Experience For Affiliate Marketers

The first four cover AI and automation in your marketing. The last one is another event I attended and wrote up.

Three Days Well Spent

I went to Lisbon to learn, and I did. I also came back surer of the direction SF Digital is taking. AI will do more of the routine work in every ad account. People will do more of the thinking.

My thanks go to Mike Rhodes for the mastermind day. They also go to Bob, Miles and Frederik for an event that respected everyone's time.

If you pay for Google Ads and want to know whether your account is keeping up, we can help. Book a free call with us on Google Meet and we will talk it through.

Written by Uzair Kharawala

Partner at SF Digital Studios, a Google Premier Partner agency. Uzair has been helping businesses grow with Google Ads since 2002 and teaches it every week on YouTube.