You always want to make sure you’re using the right person for the right job. You wouldn’t ask your tech team to write ad copy? So with AI, are you using the right platform for the job? Many people aren’t.
If you’re anything like the rest of us in PPC, you’ve got at least three AI tabs open right now and you’re not entirely sure which one to trust. ChatGPT for everything? Claude when you’re feeling fancy? Gemini because it’s already in your Google ecosystem?
Here’s the truth: they’re not interchangeable. Each one has a distinct personality, a genuine superpower, and a flaw that could genuinely embarrass you in front of a client. Used in the right context, they’re gamechangers. Used in the wrong one? You’re spending hours trying to get a good output, which may put you off using AI at all.
Let’s break it down by the tasks you’re actually doing day-to-day.
Meet Your AI Team
Before we get into the use cases, here’s how to think about each tool:
- ChatGPT: The Intern. Enthusiastic, fast, full of ideas, and will absolutely make something up rather than admit it doesn’t know.
- Claude Sonnet: The Comms Chief. Thoughtful, precise, brilliant at tone and nuance. But give it a vague brief and it’ll write you a novel.
- Claude Opus: The Complex Coder. He might be slower, but with deep problem solving and architectural coding, detail matters more than speed. He can be complex, but so are the tasks you give him.
- Gemini: The Analyst. Sits quietly in the dark with three monitors. Can read a 50-page document in seconds but don’t expect it to write your client a charming email.
- Gemini banana pro: The Head of Creative: Give it your product images and a creative brief and get back professional style photoshoots. But your brief needs to be clear and strict.
Task-by-Task Breakdown
Writing Ad Copy & Client-Facing Content
Use: Claude Sonnet
When tone matters more than speed (and in client comms, it always does) Claude is your go-to. Its superpower is empathy and writing, which means it understands the difference between “assertive” and “aggressive,” and can nail a brand voice when you brief it properly.
Perfect for:
- Responsive Search Ad copy that actually sounds human
- Rewriting copy to hit a different tone (“make this less pushy, more helpful”)
- Drafting client-facing reports or update emails that are clear and professional
- Writing difficult messages, like explaining why last month’s ROAS tanked
The golden rule: Give Claude a tight brief. It will fill in gaps with words. Lots of them.
Complex Coding & High-Stakes Problem Solving
Use: Claude Opus
Think of Claude Opus as the most senior developer you’ve ever worked with. The one you only pull in when something is genuinely complicated and getting it wrong has real consequences. It’s not your tool for quick wins. It’s your tool for the problems that have been sitting in the “too hard” pile.
In PPC, that might sound like: “I need a script that monitors impression share across 12 campaigns, cross-references it with budget pacing, and fires an alert when both drop below threshold simultaneously.” That’s not a ChatGPT job. That’s an Opus job.
Perfect for:
- Building and debugging complex Google Ads or Microsoft Ads scripts where a mistake could tank live campaigns
- Large-scale account restructures: Opus can hold an enormous amount of context (200k tokens), meaning you can feed it your entire account structure and ask it to reason through the best approach
- Analysing dense platform policy documents, contract terms, or agency agreements and pulling out what actually matters
- Multi-step problem solving, like diagnosing why a Smart Bidding strategy is behaving unexpectedly across multiple campaigns with conflicting signals
The golden rule: Don’t waste Opus on simple tasks. It will overthink a basic formula the same way a senior developer resents being asked to fix a typo. Save it for the work that genuinely needs its horsepower and use Claude Sonnet for everything else in the day-to-day.
Brainstorming & Campaign Ideation
Use: ChatGPT
This is where the intern earns its keep. Need 20 angles for a Black Friday campaign? Ten headline ideas for a lead gen push? A list of audience personas for a new client in a sector you know nothing about? ChatGPT is fast and genuinely creative in a brainstorm context.
Perfect for:
- Campaign concept generation
- Audience persona planning
- Keyword theme brainstorming
- Coming up to speed fast on a new client’s industry
The golden rule: Never let the output go directly to a client. Treat it as a first draft from a junior and review everything.
Anything Involving Numbers or Factual Data
Do not use: ChatGPT
This is the big one. ChatGPT will invent statistics, fabricate benchmarks, and present made-up numbers with complete confidence. In PPC, where data is everything, this is genuinely dangerous. Quoting a hallucinated industry CTR average in a client presentation is not a vibe.
For data-backed insights, use Claude or Gemini instead. Even then, verify independently.
Market Research & Competitor Analysis
Use: Gemini
Gemini was built for this. Feeding it a dense brief, a competitor’s website, or a chunky industry report and asking for the key insights? It thrives. Its ability to process large documents quickly makes it ideal for the research phase of a new client onboarding or a campaign audit.
Perfect for:
- Competitor landscape summaries
- Industry trend analysis
- Summarising lengthy documents (think platform policy updates, research papers)
- Market sizing or sector overviews before a new business pitch
The golden rule: Use Gemini for heavy lifting and research, not for writing the actual deliverable. Its “flaw” is that it’s not a natural conversationalist and the output can feel flat.
Scripts, Bulk Changes & Technical Tasks
Use: Claude Opus & Sonnet
Need a Google Ads script to automate bid adjustments? Want to build a bulk upload sheet with complex logic? Claude Opus and sonnet handles coding and scripting with real competence. It thinks analytically and methodically, which makes it far more reliable for technical tasks than ChatGPT’s “sounds right, might be wrong” approach.
Perfect for:
- Google Ads scripts
- Excel/Sheets formulas for reporting
- Automating repetitive bulk changes
- Building campaign templates with conditional logic
Quick Everyday Tasks & Internal Comms
Use: ChatGPT
For anything quick, low-stakes and internal tasks like summarising a long email thread, drafting a quick Slack update, listing action points from a meeting. ChatGPT is fast and perfectly adequate. Speed is the superpower here.
Perfect for:
- “Summarise this email chain in 5 bullet points”
- “List 10 questions I should ask in a discovery call”
- “Tidy up these meeting notes”
Image Generation
Don’t use: Claude Opus or ChatGPT for serious creative work
Both have image generation limitations. If you genuinely need AI-generated visuals for ads, social creative, pitch decks then use Gemini’s AI banana tool. I have been testing the AI image generation tools in the Google ads platform and got some hyper-realistic and professional looking product images that would have cost thousands and taken days to produce in real life.
The Cheat Sheet
| Task | Best AI | Avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Writing ad copy & client comms | Claude Sonnet | Gemini |
| Campaign brainstorming & ideation | ChatGPT | Claude Opus |
| Data, statistics, factual claims | Claude, Gemini | ChatGPT |
| Market & competitor research | Gemini | ChatGPT |
| Scripts, code, complex problem solving & bulk technical work | Claude Opus | ChatGPT |
| Quick internal tasks & summaries | ChatGPT | Claude Opus |
| Large document analysis | Gemini | ChatGPT |
| Image generation | Gemini banana pro | Claude Opus |
The Bottom Line
The agencies that are getting the most out of AI aren’t just using one tool, they’re treating them like a team with different roles. ChatGPT is your ideas guy. Claude is your comms and coding pro. Gemini is your analyst. Gemini banana pro is your creative asset creator.
The biggest mistake we see in PPC right now? Treating ChatGPT as the default for everything, including the stuff it’s genuinely bad at, like numbers, factual accuracy, and anything that needs to leave your desk and land in a client’s inbox.
Know your team. Play to their strengths. And please, for the love of Quality Score, stop sending AI-generated copy to clients without reading it first.
If you need a hand figuring out the best way to use AI for your marketing, or if you just want to chat through the pro’s and con’s of AI tools, then get in touch. I love a chat, especially when it’s about AI!