Headed to SMX Advanced: Why This Week Matters for Predictive PPC, Learning, and Community
Tomorrow morning, I’m heading to Boston for SMX Advanced and this year I get to go in person. I wasn’t able to go last year because of the travel, and my kids schedules but this year I wanted to make time to get out and teach and network. But I also feel we are in a moment as an industry.
I’m leading a mastermind session on predictive PPC, and it’s one of the things I’m most energized about right now.
This session grew out of a post I published on this blog about how Google has shifted from matching intent to matching predicted outcomes which I feel is a a structural change that’s reshaping everything from query mapping to control surfaces to how we diagnose performance.
In Boston, I’ll be walking through the diagnostic framework I use to understand influence and control inside the algorithms and I’ll be sharing a case study that shows the shift happening in the data itself. It’s one thing to feel the change. It’s another to see it quantified.
If you want to revisit the foundation behind this talk, here’s the original post: Predictive PPC and the New Era of Algorithmic Behavior
Why SMX Still Feels Like Home
As much as I love the work, the real magic of SMX is the people who I will get to connect with.
I get to reconnect with friends and colleagues I haven’t seen in years and people who shaped my early career, challenged my thinking, and continue to push the industry forward.
I can’t wait to see:
My former Hanapin teammate who’s speaking on AI Max, Matt Umbro
Brittany Sagar, who I just saw at GML
Aaron Levy from Optmyzr who was also at GML a few weeks ago
Navah Hopkins and Perna Virji both legends in our industry
Danny Gavin owner at Optidge
Greg Keller from ServiceMaster
Anthony Hickman one of my absolute favorites
Jeremy Krantz the VP of Paid Search Association
And that’s just the start.
When I look across the agenda, it’s stacked with some of the brightest minds in PPC, SEO, and analytics. It feels like a reunion of the people who make this industry what it is.
The Sessions I’m Most Excited For
Even though I’m speaking on predictive PPC and algorithmic influence, I’ll be spending a surprising amount of time in the SEO track this year partly for my own business, partly because the frameworks translate beautifully into PPC’s predictive era.
A few sessions I’m planning to catch:
Winning on Organic: Frameworks for Surviving the Shift
Control Shift and First‑Party Data
Surface Sinking: What Pixel Depth Reveals About Visibility
Predicting and Influencing AI Citations
I’ll also be popping into sessions with Barry Schwartz, Greg Finn, Brad Geddes, and the Search Engine Land editorial team — including meeting Anu Adegbola ( in person for the first time).
Why This Week Matters
This trip isn’t just about the mastermind for me this year. It’s about learning, documenting, and reconnecting with the people who make this industry feel like a community.
It’s about sharpening my thinking so I can bring better diagnostics, better protection, and better clarity back to the founders and teams I support with Google Ads.
It’s about staying close to the shifts, predictive modeling, AI‑driven surfaces, organic volatility, data loss, and the new control layers emerging across platforms.
And honestly, it’s about joy. I love this work. I love these people. I love the energy of a room full of practitioners who care deeply about doing things the right way.
I can’t wait to get there.
See you in Boston!
