5 best Google Ads conferences worth the investment in 2026 and 2027

It is surprisingly difficult to find a serious Google Ads conference.

Search for one and you will meet the usual conference-list problem: general marketing expos with one paid-search session, event pages still promoting last year’s date, and roundups that treat a platform keynote, a 200-person practitioner conference and a 40,000-person trade show as if they were interchangeable.

They are not.

A good PPC conference should tell you something you can use in a live account. It should get beyond “AI is changing advertising,” because anybody entrusted with an advertising budget has noticed. The valuable sessions show the data, the campaign structure, the commercial trade-off, what failed and what the speaker would do differently next time.

Search Engine Watch has some history in these rooms. The first Search Engine Strategies event took place in San Francisco in November 1999, and the series grew into an international meeting place for both organic and paid search. SEW was publishing about advanced paid-search tactics when Google Ads was still called AdWords.

I have also personally attended SMX Advanced and SMX Next. That does not make every SMX edition an automatic recommendation, but it does mean I know the difference between the reputation of the brand and the experience it is supposed to deliver.

As we put Search Engine Watch back into the industry it covers, I intend to attend more of these events, question the platforms, meet the practitioners doing the work and find the people whose knowledge deserves a wider audience. This guide is part of that involvement. It is not a directory assembled from event listings.

We checked the official dates, locations, programmes, ticket pages and access rules on August 27, 2026. We decided to mention 5 event brands that made the ranked list. If we could not explain why a paid-search professional might spend real time or money on an event, we left it out.

If your work leans organic, use our broader guide to the best SEO conferences in 2026 and 2027. If AI-mediated discovery is the priority, we maintain a separate list of GEO, AEO and AI-search conferences.

The short answer: our top 5 Google Ads and PPC conferences

The PPC conference circuit is narrow enough that a ranked shortlist is more useful than another calendar containing everything with “performance” on the homepage. Number one means the strongest overall proposition based on the evidence available today. It does not mean the same event is right for a Canadian freelancer, a European ecommerce team and a US enterprise advertiser.

Prices exclude travel and accommodation. “From” refers to the cheapest relevant ticket we could verify, not an old early-bird price kept alive for decoration. Ticket batches can change within hours, so treat the organiser’s checkout as the final authority.

The best PPC conference depends on what you need

1. ADworld Experience

October 15–16, 2026 | Bologna, Italy + live streaming | From €519 + VAT in person or €349 streaming for two days

ADworld Experience is our number-one overall choice because its format is built around evidence.

The 2026 programme contains 24 real PPC and CRO cases, 14 advanced seminars and two live clinics using participants’ Google Ads and Meta Ads accounts. The in-person edition also adds thematic focus groups capped at 12 people. Instead of putting a famous speaker on stage for 45 minutes and hoping something useful happens, the event asks practitioners to show what they did, what happened and how they interpreted the result.

That sounds like an obvious standard for a performance-marketing conference. It is not.

The first day is built around advanced training and live clinics. The second is devoted to real cases, generally presented in 20 minutes followed by ten minutes of questions. Google Ads and Meta Ads are the main platforms, with Amazon, Microsoft, LinkedIn, TikTok and other networks also represented. Two sessions run at once, with real-time translation into English.

The organiser says the event has completed 13 previous editions and attracted 4,920 participants in total. Those are organiser-reported figures, but the depth of the public programme and the archive of past editions give us more to judge than a slogan and a speaker wall.

There is also a sensible remote option. When checked, a two-day streaming ticket was €349, or €449 with recordings. In-person two-day access was €519 plus 22% Italian VAT, or €619 plus VAT with the full recording package. If you know you will miss one of the parallel sessions, the recordings are not a trivial add-on.

Best for: PPC specialists, ecommerce advertisers, agencies and in-house teams with enough account experience to interrogate a case rather than copy its settings.

Skip it if: you are completely new to paid advertising, want an executive-level overview or need a conference devoted only to Google Ads.

SEW verdict: The combination of track record, public programme, real cases and remote access makes this the strongest all-round PPC event left in 2026. The case-study promise still has to be earned on stage, but at least the conference has chosen the right test.

2. Hero Conf

September 15–16, 2026 | San Diego, US
April 15–16, 2027 | Brighton, UK

Hero Conf is the scale choice. The organiser calls it the world’s largest conference dedicated to PPC and paid social, with multiple stages, training options, an expo and hundreds of attendees.

The San Diego edition runs at the San Diego Convention Center alongside BrightonSEO on September 15 and 16. A Hero Conf ticket also gives access to the BrightonSEO programme, which makes the trip unusually practical for a team whose responsibilities cross paid and organic search. It can also become a distraction. A large combined agenda rewards preparation and punishes anyone who decides where to go while standing in the corridor.

The US ticket page offered a complimentary one-day pass by request and a guaranteed two-day “Friend” pass for $950 when checked. It also said paid prices would rise on August 27, the day of our manual review. Check the live amount rather than relying on ours.

The more interesting head start is Hero Conf UK 2027. For the first time, the UK edition is moving into its own dedicated venue at the Hilton Brighton Metropole instead of operating simply as the PPC component of BrightonSEO. The organiser is promising two days devoted to PPC, paid social and performance marketing, with a dedicated expo and training available around the main event.

The launch price was only £150 for both days when checked. That is extremely aggressive for a specialist conference, even before the 2027 agenda is published. It is also a limited introductory rate, so it should not be treated as the event’s permanent price.

Hero Conf covers Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, Amazon Advertising, Apple Ads and other paid channels. That breadth is a feature for a head of paid media and a compromise for somebody seeking two uninterrupted days of advanced Search campaigns.

Best for: paid-media teams, agency leads, practitioners who value networking scale and mixed teams that can use the BrightonSEO access in San Diego.

Skip it if: you dislike multi-track choice, want a small operator room or need every session to be about Google Ads.

SEW verdict: Hero Conf is the safest large specialist recommendation. The standalone UK venue in 2027 could make Brighton more focused than previous editions, but the programme still needs to prove that promise.

3. SMX Advanced

September 29–October 1, 2026 | Berlin, Germany
March 17–19, 2027 | San Diego, US
September 20–22, 2027 | Boston, US

SMX Advanced ranks third because it is not a pure PPC conference, but it is one of the few broad search events that can still justify the word “advanced.”

I have attended both SMX Advanced and SMX Next. My reason for keeping SMX high is not nostalgia. It is that the better editions assume the audience already understands the vocabulary, which allows speakers and attendees to spend more time on decisions and less time defining the channel.

SMX Advanced Europe runs two conference days in Berlin on September 29 and 30, followed by a Deep Dive Day on October 1. The organiser describes the event as vendor-agnostic and designed for experienced search marketers. The public programme supports that positioning: advanced bidding, Google Ads scripts, incrementality, measurement, automation, creative intelligence and the relationship among PPC, SEO, GEO and AI search.

The Deep Dive Day includes full-day sessions on Google Ads scripting and AI and on advertising beyond Search. That is the sort of topic where several uninterrupted hours can be worth more than six conference talks, provided the workshop matches an active problem in your account.

The substantial caveat is price. Two conference days cost €1,695 plus 19% German VAT when checked. All three days cost €2,495 plus VAT. At that level, “we should stay current” is not a business case. Identify the exact sessions, speakers and peers that justify the spend before booking.

The US series has already announced two 2027 editions: San Diego from March 17 to 19 and Boston from September 20 to 22. That is genuinely useful planning information, but rates and programmes were not yet public. Treat both as confirmed dates, not finished purchasing decisions.

Best for: experienced paid-search leads, enterprise teams, technical advertisers and people responsible for bringing paid, organic, analytics and AI-search work into one strategy.

Skip it if: you need an inexpensive introduction, a PPC-only programme or cannot identify a direct use for the premium workshops.

SEW verdict: Expensive, broad and credible. SMX Advanced earns its place when the complexity around the account matters as much as the controls inside it.

4. The PPC Summit

September 24–25, 2026 | LX Factory, Lisbon, Portugal | Last-chance ticket €750 when checked

The PPC Summit has chosen a much narrower thesis for 2026: what becomes of the Google Ads specialist when AI absorbs more of the routine execution?

That is more specific than a conference that simply adds “AI” to every track. Day one examines the future of Google Ads management, including judgement, profitability, creative work and the changing commercial value of a specialist. Day two turns that argument into workshops: auditing how time is used, delegating work to AI, systemising tasks and reconsidering how an agency or consultant prices the value it creates.

The room is also intentionally small. The organiser reported more than 200 attendees and limited ticket inventory when we checked. Earlier allocations at €395, €495 and €595 were sold out; seven €750 last-chance tickets remained. Lunch, drinks, workshops and post-event networking were included.

This is not a neutral survey of the advertising market. The event is co-hosted by PPC Mastery and ProfitMetrics.io, and its thesis sits naturally beside their educational, community and commercial interests. That does not invalidate the programme. It does mean attendees should separate a useful operating model from the idea that one model fits every company, account or career.

The agenda appears particularly relevant to agency owners, consultants and senior specialists whose value can no longer be explained as the number of manual changes they make in an account. It is less obviously useful to a junior practitioner who still needs to learn the fundamentals that AI is supposedly taking over.

Best for: experienced Google Ads specialists, consultants and agency owners rethinking delivery, automation and pricing.

Skip it if: you want a broad paid-media programme, platform-neutral research or a low-cost entry ticket.

SEW verdict: One of the sharpest event propositions in the category. It ranks below the established leaders because the thesis is narrow and commercially situated, not because the room is small.

5. Inside Google Ads Live

October 29, 2026 | Maple Leaf Cinema at the CN Tower, Toronto | CA$199 including HST

If the query is interpreted literally, Inside Google Ads Live is the cleanest answer on this page.

The new full-day event is 100% about Google Ads. There is no SEO track, no paid-social detour and no need to study a huge agenda to find the four relevant sessions. Founder Jyll Saskin Gales has announced 12 Canadian speakers, including practitioners and brand leaders, with a rule that sponsored talks are not permitted.

The published lineup includes Duane Brown, Dana DiTomaso, Ameet Khabra, Julia Vyse, Esma Odobasic, Waqas Khokhar, Whit Norrad and Raihan Masroor alongside Saskin Gales. The event runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the CN Tower, and the public ticket price was CA$199 with HST included.

That is a strong value proposition for somebody already in Toronto. The organiser’s own line, “Don’t book a flight. Just take the TTC,” is also good advice. This is a first edition with no attendee track record, and a focused regional conference should not be turned into an expensive international trip merely because the platform fit is perfect.

The event is organised around Saskin Gales’ Inside Google Ads education and media business. Her six years working at Google provide useful context, but ex-platform experience should be a starting point for scrutiny, not a substitute for it. The most useful day will combine platform understanding with practitioners willing to challenge what automation hides, not simply explain what Google wants advertisers to adopt next.

The ticket policy says purchases are final and non-refundable. Check whether transfer options exist before paying if your schedule is uncertain.

Best for: Canadian in-house advertisers, agencies and experienced Google Ads practitioners who want a full day on one platform.

Skip it if: you need an established event history, a cross-platform paid-media programme or would be travelling internationally only for this day.

SEW verdict: The purest Google Ads conference on the confirmed 2026 calendar. We are rewarding its focus while being honest that the first edition still has to deliver.

Why Google Marketing Live is not ranked as a conference

Google Marketing Live is the most consequential Google Ads product event of the year. It is not the best independent conference for learning how those products behave in the hands of advertisers.

Google controls the stage, the access and the story. The event is designed to announce and explain Google’s advertising direction across Search, YouTube, measurement, commerce, apps and creative tools. That makes the keynote essential viewing. It does not make it a substitute for practitioners comparing what automation gained, what visibility it removed and where the platform’s incentives differ from the advertiser’s.

The 2026 edition has already taken place and the official recordings and product summaries are available. Google had not announced a 2027 date when this guide was checked. We will add it to the calendar when it does, but we will keep it outside the independent ranking.

The useful sequence is simple:

1. Watch Google Marketing Live to understand what Google is launching and how Google frames it.
2. Read independent reporting to identify what was not answered.
3. Use practitioner conferences and your own accounts to test what the changes actually do.

Platform information is necessary. Platform distance is necessary too.

How we will maintain this guide

Search Engine Watch has covered paid search, its platforms and its conference circuit for decades. That history gives us authority, but it also gives us a responsibility not to publish a long list simply because a long list looks comprehensive.

We will recheck organiser pages, replace expired prices, move unconfirmed events to the watchlist and change the ranking when the evidence changes. New events do not need to flatter us to be included. Established ones do not receive permanent positions because of their names.

I expect to attend several search and PPC events as we rebuild SEW’s direct involvement with the industry. If you will be in one of these rooms, connect with me on LinkedIn and tell me where. I want to meet the practitioners doing unusually good work, hear what the platforms are not explaining clearly and understand what Search Engine Watch should investigate next.

Event details change. Before purchasing a ticket or non-refundable travel, verify the current date, venue, price, access rules and cancellation policy on the linked organiser page.

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