The former “PPC Hero” Conference Returns
Reemerges as part of the industry-standard Brighton SEO conference
The “PPC Hero” conference on paid search advertising was an excellent digital advertising industry happening… but it didn’t quite survive the COVID-19 crisis.
After going dark during Covid, it re-emerged only once – on Monday, Jan 31 and Tuesday, Feb 1 2022 as “Hero Conf” at the downtown Hilton in Austin, Texas. We attended, enjoyed the event, and intended to become “regulars”.
But it didn’t happen. The conference vanished after Hannipan Marketing, the owner of Hero Conf, was acquired by BrainLabs in 2020. Rumors circulated about its fate.
Now it has re-emerged as part of a larger conference, under new sponsorship. One of the top SEO conferences out there, if not THE top, Brighton SEO, has included Hero Conf tracks this year. BrainLabs sponsors the Hero Conf portion.
In 2020 BrainLabs (London, UK) had purchased Hanapin Marketing, an Ohio-based PPC Agency that had skillfully established the PPC Hero Conference into the top PPC-only conference. Now, at least for 2025, it’s all merged into one big SEO-PPC conference to be held Sep 22-24 at the Grand Hyatt in downtown San Diego #brightonSEO #hannapinmarketing #heroconf
We’ll be there, of course! Right in the middle of things.
Conference Highlights
Although the conference name was changed from “PPC Hero Confeitse” to “Hero conference” in 2022, this is the second time since then that it’s sessions will focus exclusively on paid search advertising – that is, Google and Microsoft Ads.
Here are links to 3 articles and sessions Steve finds particularly interesting. He’ll be live-Tweeting summaries from these and some of the other sessions.
Optimized product data: The fuel behind AI in eCommerce
Ben Riggle will discuss how strong optimization of product feeds is the crucial underpinning for automated bidding driven performance. #heroconf #paidsearch
Unlocking success in 2025 with Microsoft Advertising
Nate Burke will discuss some of the differences between Microsoft’s Paid Search advertising platform, and methods to exploit those differences to optimize ad campaign performance. #ppchero #paidsearch
Beyond ROAS: advanced eCommerce KPIs for profitability
Paolo Vidali will discuss metrics that are equally, and even more critical than ROAS, for example, “LIFT”, which, unlike ROAS, accounts for sales volume. Many advertisers, and even paid search professionals, are confused about ROAS, which is not surprising. That’s because ROAS stands for “RETURN ON ad spend”. And ROAS does not measure that. ROAS’s very name implies it measures something that it does not measure. So this session likely will bring that fact, along with other interesting eCommerce metrics, to light.
ROAS does not even matter that much as a metric, in some circumstances. For example, when an accounbt is being turned around and it is just starting to come together, before the campaign is optimized and/or on automated bidding, it’s not the thing to watch; and it’s not that important. Similarly, when a company has a lot of capital to put to work, and sales volume is more important than marketing expenses, ROAS may actually be minimized on purpose – to drive up sales volume (to a point). There are plenty of scenarios where ROAS is useful, but it is not a blanket success/failure indicator for all conditions at all times, by any means. LIFT is a more important indicator, especially to the advertiser – the business vs the PPC manager.
For an earful on how ROAS is so widely misused, just collar Steve at the conference and tell him how long you have to discuss it. He’ll be glad to give you a walk through of how ROAS came to be misnamed, why the entire advertising industry happily misuses it, and what to use instead.
On 5th Avenue, old-school advertising agencies don’t even use ROAS. There, it’s referred to as “MER” — Marketing Efficiency Ratio.
Summary
Many other sessions at the 2025 San Diego Brighton SEO / Hero Conference appear intriguing. We’re also looking forward to the pre-conference courses. Kudos to the presenters and the conference organizers at Brainlabs and Brighton SEO for bringing a top-quality conference back to life, along with the flawless logistics we’ve been pleased to note, pre-show.
I’ll be updating this article and adding reports on other PPC and SEO sessions next week from San Diego.
Steve Bell, Director
Blastoff Ads
https://LinkedIn.com/in/sbell22
A quick overview of the topics covered in this article.
