This April, Optimyzd’s Managing Director, Dez, will be heading to Brighton to deliver not one but two specialist talks as part of the highly anticipated Hero Conf and BrightonSEO event. Bringing together some of the most experienced names in digital advertising and search marketing, the conference is a major date in the calendar for PPC, paid social and all digital marketing professionals.
Hero Conf is recognised as the world’s largest event dedicated entirely to PPC and paid social. Now partnered with BrightonSEO, it’s become an even bigger draw for marketers looking to stay ahead of the curve. The event takes place at the Brighton Centre across 10th and 11th April 2025 and promises to deliver two packed days of expert talks, networking and hands-on training.
Dez will be speaking on both days. On Thursday, he’ll be leading a deep-dive BrightonSEO Masterclass focused on negative keyword strategies. On Friday, he’ll return to the stage as part of the Hero Conf line-up with a talk exploring targeting strategies within Google Demand Generation Ads.
Thursday: BrightonSEO Masterclass
The Thursday morning session is part of the BrightonSEO Masterclass series. These masterclasses are more than just extended talks. They are 70 minute, interactive sessions delivered in a classroom-style format, designed to help marketers go deeper into specific areas of digital and search marketing.
Dez’s session, titled “Proactively Manage Negative Keywords for Efficient Google Ads Performance”, addresses a growing challenge in paid search: wasted spend due to Google’s evolving match types and reduced search term visibility. The session is aimed at PPC executives and up and focuses on how to identify and apply negative keywords proactively before they begin to drain campaign budgets.
Attendees can expect an engaging and practical session, packed with real-world insights, research techniques and workflows they can implement straight away. The aim is to give performance marketers tangible tools they can use to improve campaign efficiency while cutting unnecessary spend.
The masterclass takes place at 11:10am on Thursday 10th April in Meeting Room 15 at the Brighton Centre. Seating for these sessions is deliberately limited to allow for more direct interaction between speaker and audience, so anyone planning to attend is advised to arrive early. Attendees are also encouraged to bring their laptops to make the most of the hands-on format.
Friday: Hero Conf Talk
Dez will be back on stage the following day for a more traditional conference talk, this time as part of the Hero Conf programme. The Friday session, titled “Advanced Targeting Strategies with Google Demand Generation Ads”, is designed for experienced PPC professionals and in-house marketing leads looking to get more from Google’s newer campaign formats.
The talk will explore the increasingly powerful targeting capabilities of Demand Gen ads, including the use of custom segments, lookalikes, first-party data and optimised targeting. Dez will be sharing insights into what’s working well right now, what to test and how to scale campaigns with greater control and effectiveness.
With Demand Gen continuing to evolve rapidly, the session offers a timely look at how advertisers can stay ahead by adapting their targeting strategies to suit these newer formats. It takes place on Friday 11th April at 3:20pm in Syndicate Rooms 3 and 4.
See You in Brighton?
Whether you are attending BrightonSEO, Hero Conf or both, this is shaping up to be one of the most exciting search and performance marketing events of the year. Dez is looking forward to connecting with other advertisers, catching up with familiar faces and sharing ideas on how to make campaigns work harder.
Tickets for Hero Conf can be purchased via the PPC Hero website:
https://www.ppchero.com/hero-conf-april-2025-uk/register/
If you are planning to attend either session, feel free to come and say hello. Dez will be around both days and always welcomes a good chat about PPC over coffee between sessions.
