{"id":4208,"date":"2026-07-27T18:01:24","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T15:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ivitskiy.com\/blog\/ranked-6-most-influential-ppc-expert-2026\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T16:17:38","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T13:17:38","slug":"ranked-6-most-influential-ppc-expert-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ivitskiy.com\/blog\/en\/ranked-6-most-influential-ppc-expert-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Igor Ivitskiy ranked #6 in the PPC Survey Top 50 of 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The PPC Survey ranked Igor Ivitskiy sixth in The Top 50 Most Influential PPC Experts of 2026.<\/strong> The ranking combines votes from 1,306 PPC professionals with ten other scored factors, among them speaking engagements, guest posts in trade publications, a published book, podcast and YouTube presence, and LinkedIn data. Ivitskiy is the one entry listed under Ukraine on the survey’s Top 100 shortlist. The ranking, the shortlist and the full scoring rules are published by the survey at ppcsurvey.com<\/a>.<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n\n

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What The PPC Survey is<\/h2>\n\n

The PPC Survey runs the annual State of PPC global report. The 2026 edition collected answers from 1,306 paid advertising professionals about platforms, budgets, tooling and AI adoption. The Top 50 Most Influential PPC Experts is one output of that survey: respondents vote for the practitioners they consider most influential, and those votes are then combined with public, checkable activity data.<\/p>\n\n

The list has a lineage. Between 2012 and 2021 the trade publication PPC Hero published a yearly Top 25 Most Influential PPC Experts. PPCsurvey.com says it is carrying on that legacy, and it has expanded the format to fifty names. The survey is run as an industry initiative with partners including Hero Conf, Optmyzr, DataFeedWatch and TrueClicks.<\/p>\n\n

How the 2026 ranking is scored<\/h2>\n\n

The survey publishes its factor definitions, its weights and its scoring rules, and states the intent plainly: apply the same methodology and you should get the same ranking. Few industry lists disclose that much. The table below summarises all eleven factors, the maximum weight of each, and how each one actually scores. It is a condensed restatement of the survey’s published methodology, not a replacement for it.<\/p>\n\n

Ranking factor<\/th>Max weight<\/th>How it scores<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Valid votes<\/td>20%<\/td>Up to five votes per respondent. Duplicate entries and obvious friends-and-family voting patterns are discarded. Log-transformed. An expert needs at least ten valid votes to be eligible for the Top 50 at all.<\/td><\/tr>
Speaking engagements<\/td>15%<\/td>Engagements in English during 2025, in person or virtual. Company webinars and small local events do not count. Each qualifying engagement scores 25% of the factor, so four or more reach the full weight.<\/td><\/tr>
Hosting a podcast<\/td>10%<\/td>The podcast must have released new episodes during Q4 2025. Apple and Spotify rating counts are summed and log-transformed. If the podcast largely duplicates the expert’s YouTube content, only the higher-scoring platform counts.<\/td><\/tr>
Hosting a YouTube channel<\/td>10%<\/td>Subscriber snapshot taken in December 2025, log-transformed. A channel shared by two eligible experts is split 50% each.<\/td><\/tr>
LinkedIn engagement<\/td>10%<\/td>Likes, comments and reposts on original 2025 posts, collected for experts with at least ten votes. Log-transformed.<\/td><\/tr>
Guest posts on Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, PPC Hero and other relevant publications<\/td>7%<\/td>Guest posts published during 2025. Posts on the expert’s own company website do not count. Scored in steps between 25% and 100% of the factor depending on volume.<\/td><\/tr>
Published a book<\/td>7%<\/td>A relevant book in English, for sale on Amazon with an ISBN. Company ebooks do not count. Full credit if published in 2023 or later by a sole author, half credit if older or co-authored.<\/td><\/tr>
LinkedIn followers<\/td>7%<\/td>Follower snapshot taken in December 2025, log-transformed.<\/td><\/tr>
Guest appearances on podcasts<\/td>6%<\/td>Guest appearances on relevant podcasts during 2025, scored in steps between 25% and 100% of the factor depending on volume.<\/td><\/tr>
Newsletter<\/td>4%<\/td>An active newsletter, on LinkedIn or through a sign-up form on the expert’s site. Full weight, or 2% each if the newsletter is shared by two experts.<\/td><\/tr>
Course<\/td>4%<\/td>An on-demand PPC course in English. A course on CXL or LinkedIn Learning scores the full 4%; a self-sold course scores 3%.<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>
Condensed from the PPC Survey ranking methodology<\/a>, which is the authoritative source.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

Read the weights as the survey’s working definition of influence. Peer votes carry the largest single weight at 20%, but they are log-transformed and gated: ten valid votes to be eligible, and each additional vote adds less than the one before. Audience measures carry 27% between YouTube subscribers (10%), podcast ratings (10%) and LinkedIn followers (7%), and all three are log-transformed as well, which compresses the distance between a good audience and a very large one.<\/p>\n\n

The largest block, 38%, is explicitly tied to what an expert did during 2025: speaking engagements (15%), LinkedIn engagement on 2025 posts (10%), guest posts published in 2025 (7%) and podcast guest appearances in 2025 (6%). A further 15% sits on assets that can predate 2025: a book (7%), a newsletter (4%) and a course (4%). The weighting treats a year of activity and an accumulated audience as separate inputs, and it gives the activity more room.<\/p>\n\n

The methodology is unusually transparent. The underlying scored dataset and the full calculation detail are not public, so an outsider cannot independently reproduce every individual position from the published material alone.<\/p>\n\n

The 2026 top ten<\/h2>\n\n
  1. Jyll Saskin Gales, Google Ads Coach, Inside Google Ads<\/li>
  2. Frederick Vallaeys, Co-founder and CEO, Optmyzr<\/li>
  3. AJ Wilcox, Founder, B2Linked<\/li>
  4. Kirk Williams, Owner, ZATO<\/li>
  5. Nils Rooijmans, Google Ads Performance Architect<\/li>
  6. Igor Ivitskiy, Founder, Ivitskiy Ads Lab<\/strong><\/li>
  7. Mike Rhodes, Founder, Mike Rhodes Ideas<\/li>
  8. Mike Ryan, Head of Ecommerce Insights, Smarter Ecommerce<\/li>
  9. Brad Geddes, Co-founder, Adalysis<\/li>
  10. Aaron Young, Managing Director, Define Digital Academy<\/li><\/ol>\n\n

    Names and titles above are transcribed from the survey’s published ranking graphic, read on 29 June 2026. The survey page is authoritative for any correction. Positions 11 to 50 appear on that same graphic; the alphabetical Top 100 shortlist and the full scoring rules are published there as text: The Top 50 Most Influential PPC Experts of 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    One Ukrainian on a list of 100<\/h2>\n\n

    Counted from the country field of the survey’s Top 100 table, read on 16 June 2026, the hundred names carry 17 country labels. Forty-five entries are listed under the United States, fifteen under the United Kingdom, thirteen under the Netherlands. Ukraine appears once, and that row is ranked sixth in the Top 50. The survey updates that table regularly, so the linked source remains authoritative for current values.<\/p>\n\n

    Those country counts describe the composition of the shortlist, not the global distribution of PPC expertise. Three factors carry an explicit English-language condition in the published rules: speaking engagements (15%), the book (7%) and the course (4%), which is 26% of the total score. The guest post factor (7%) names English-language trade publications by title. The remaining factors carry no published language condition, so the instrument is not English-only, but a quarter of the score is reachable only through English-language venues.<\/p>\n\n

    That language scope matters when reading the geographic pattern in the shortlist. Poland, Brazil, Spain, Turkey and India all run large paid advertising economies, and none of them appears anywhere on the Top 100 table. A practitioner can run substantial accounts and be influential in Polish or Portuguese, yet would not score on those particular factors unless they also speak, publish or teach in English. Scoring on those factors requires maintaining English-language public output alongside client work, which is a separate investment of time and effort.<\/p>\n\n

    What the survey table records<\/h2>\n\n

    The survey records the underlying assets for every listed expert, so the inputs are visible rather than assumed. Against Igor Ivitskiy’s row, the survey’s table records the English book 19 Google Ads Secrets<\/em> (2023, sole author, ISBN), the English-language YouTube channel @IgorDoctorAds<\/a>, and a LinkedIn following of 3,730. The book title and year are reproduced from the survey’s own table. The other factors his profile can score on are speaking engagements at English-language industry conferences, guest posts in trade publications, an on-demand course in English, and peer votes.<\/p>\n\n

    The other side of the same table: Ivitskiy has the smallest LinkedIn following of anyone in the top ten, 3,730 against a top-ten range that runs past 54,000, and no newsletter is recorded against his name; the newsletter factor carries 4%. The survey does not publish per-person component scores, so those fields do not explain why he placed sixth. What they do show is that a top-ten place was reachable without a large LinkedIn base. That outcome is consistent with LinkedIn followers carrying 7% of the total and being log-transformed. Reading this list as a pure follower ranking ignores the published weights.<\/p>\n\n

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    About Igor Ivitskiy<\/h2>\n\n

    Igor Ivitskiy is a Google Ads expert known as «The Google Ads Scientist», a PhD mathematician who applies mathematical modeling to Google and YouTube Ads. He holds a PhD in mathematical modeling, has authored more than 200 scientific publications and three monographs, and holds over 50 patents. He has applied mathematics to paid advertising since 2006. His campaign work took «Europe’s Best PPC Case» at ADworld Experience, and he has spoken at Hero Conf, ADworld Experience, the International Search Summit and the Definitive Traffic Seminar. Over his career, ad budgets under his management have exceeded $770 million. He is the founder of the forensic Google Ads consultancy Doctor Ads<\/a> and the creator of Profit Forensics. The survey lists him under Ivitskiy Ads Lab, his Google Ads school.<\/p>\n\n

    Full biography, credentials and profiles: About Igor Ivitskiy<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

    How to cite this ranking<\/h2>\n\n

    The PPC Survey. «The Top 50 Most Influential PPC Experts of 2026.» Igor Ivitskiy, position 6. Accessed 29 June 2026. https:\/\/www.ppcsurvey.com\/top-50-most-influential-ppc-experts-2026<\/p>\n\n\n