Brighton SEO / Hero PPC Conference 2025 – San Diego

The former “PPC Hero” Conference Reappears… for only the 2nd time since COVID

Reemerged in 2024 as part of the industry-standard Brighton SEO conference

The “PPC Hero” conference on paid search advertising was an excellent event in the digital advertising industry… but it didn’t quite survive the COVID-19 crisis.

After going dark during Covid, it re-emerged twice – on Monday, Jan 31 and Tuesday, Feb 1 2022 as “Hero Conf” (dropping the “PPC” from the name) at the downtown Hilton in Austin, Texas. We attended, enjoyed the event, and intended to become “regulars”. Then it was added as “parallel tracks” sponsored by BrainLabs, in the same venue and as part of the Brighton SEO US conference, in 2024.

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, if not the top, Brighton SEO, has included Hero Conf tracks since last year.

In 2020, BrainLabs (London, UK) purchased Hanapin Marketing, an Ohio-based PPC Agency that had skillfully established the PPC Hero Conference as the top PPC-only conference.  Starting last year (Sept 2024), Brighton’s US/San Diego conference added the Hero conference in parallel tracks.  So now the US conference is one big SEO-PPC conference, the second of which was held Sep 22-24 at the Grand Hyatt in downtown San Diego #brightonSEO #hannapinmarketing #heroconf

We were there, of course! Right in the middle of things.

Conference Highlights

Although the conference name was changed from “PPC Hero Conference” to “Hero Conference” in 2022, this is the second time since then that its 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.

Optimized product data: The fuel behind AI in eCommerce

Ben Riggle discussed 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, CEO of Diginius (London, UK), discussed some of the differences between Microsoft’s Paid Search advertising platform and methods to exploit those differences to optimize ad campaign performance. #ppchero #paidsearch

Diginius at the Brighton SEO-PPC conference

Blastoff Labs, and now Blastoff Ads has been partnered with London superagency Diginius for three years.  We were the 300th agency chosen to participate in their Microsoft Ads agency support program.  There are now over 1,000 agencies participating.
It has been an excellent experience, as we now have access to outstanding quality support resources for Microsoft Ads PPC campaigns, both within Diginius and when needed, through them. We have enlisted assistance from some of Microsoft’s most experienced technical support professionals.  It has been a great experience!

At the conference, we were invited to join them at a dinner celebration they hosted at Callie. At this downtown Mediterranean restaurant, the 977 5-star reviews on Google barely scratch the surface. We met and enjoyed good food and conversation with several other Diginius Partners and Agency owners.  Tremendous food was served for what seemed like several hours.

This photo from the dinner shows Steve cutting a low profile.

Beyond ROAS: advanced eCommerce KPIs for profitability

Paolo Vidali discussed metrics that are equally, and even more critical than ROAS, for example, “LIFT”, which, unlike ROAS, accounts for sales volume.

Many advertisers, as well as paid search professionals, are confused about ROAS, which is understandable.  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. This session brought that fact, along with other interesting eCommerce metrics, to light.

ROAS does not matter as much as a metric in some circumstances.  For example, when an account is being turned around and is just starting to come together, before the campaign is optimized and/or on automated bidding, it’s not the most important thing to watch.  Similarly, when a company has a lot of capital to put to work, and sales volume is more critical than marketing expenses, ROAS may actually be minimized on purpose – to drive up sales volume (to a point).  There are numerous scenarios where ROAS is useful, but it is not a blanket indicator of success or failure for all conditions at all times, by any means. LIFT is a more important indicator, especially to the advertiser, as opposed to the PPC manager.

On 5th Avenue, old-school advertising agencies don’t even use ROAS.  There, it’s referred to as “MER” — Marketing Efficiency Ratio.

Summary

The sessions at the 2025 San Diego Brighton SEO / Hero Conference were outstanding, across the board, as was the pre-conference course we attended. Kudos to the presenters and the conference organizers at Brighton SEO for bringing a top-quality conference back to life for the second year, while also executing flawless logistics before, during, and after this prestigious event.  We will be there every six months, in the future, both in San Diego and Brighton, UK.

I’ll be updating this article and adding reports on other PPC and SEO sessions over the next few days, adding more session reviews and updating this summary.

Steve Bell, Director
Blastoff Ads
https://LinkedIn.com/in/sbell22