Category: Google Ads News and Information

  • PPC Audit: A Complete Overview

    PPC Audit: A Complete Overview

    Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising allows businesses to display ads on search engines and other platforms, paying only when someone clicks on their ad. Like any marketing investment, PPC campaigns need regular evaluation to ensure they’re delivering the best possible results for your budget.

    A PPC audit is a comprehensive review of your paid advertising campaigns designed to identify opportunities for improvement and ensure your ad spend is working as efficiently as possible. Think of it as a health check for your digital advertising efforts.

    Why Your Business Needs a PPC Audit

    There are several situations when conducting a PPC audit becomes essential for maintaining effective advertising performance:

    Taking Over Existing Campaigns

    When inheriting PPC campaigns from a previous manager or agency, an audit ensures you understand what you’ve inherited and aren’t wasting budget on poorly performing elements. This prevents you from continuing ineffective strategies simply because “that’s how it’s always been done.”

    Significant Competitive Changes

    When competitors shift their advertising strategies, launch new campaigns, or enter your market space, an audit helps prevent your ads from becoming irrelevant or overpriced. The digital advertising landscape changes quickly, and what worked six months ago may no longer be effective.

    Substantial Performance Changes

    When you notice declining click-through rates, increasing costs per conversion, or other performance issues, an audit helps identify root causes before small problems become expensive ones. Early intervention can save significant advertising budget.

    Regular Maintenance Schedule

    Proactive businesses conduct audits every 6-12 months to ensure continued alignment with business goals and take advantage of new advertising features and tools. Regular audits prevent performance drift and identify optimization opportunities.

    What’s Involved in a PPC Audit

    Campaign managers with experience may have different approaches to conducting a PPC audit, but effective audits follow a systematic process that can be documented and replicated. Here’s what typically happens during a comprehensive audit:

    Goal Alignment Assessment

    The audit begins by confirming that your PPC campaigns still support your current business objectives. Marketing goals evolve, and campaigns that were perfectly aligned six months ago may no longer serve your needs. This step ensures all subsequent optimization efforts work toward the right outcomes.

    Campaign Health Review

    Next, the auditor examines how well your campaigns follow current best practices. This includes reviewing:

    • Account organization: Are campaigns and ad groups logically structured?
    • Creative alignment: Do your ad copy, images, and videos match what people are searching for?
    • Active management: Is someone regularly optimizing performance and making necessary adjustments?
    • Tracking setup: Are you measuring the actions that matter most to your business?

    This step reveals the current state of your advertising efforts and identifies immediate improvement opportunities.

    Change Recommendations

    Based on the findings, the auditor determines what modifications are needed. These can range from minor tweaks to complete account restructuring, depending on what the review uncovers.

    If your PPC goals are significantly misaligned with your business objectives, you may need to restart the planning process entirely. This involves researching relevant search terms, analyzing competition, and creating new campaigns with updated optimization targets.

    More commonly, audits result in tactical improvements like updating ad copy, refreshing images, adjusting targeting parameters, or modifying conversion tracking. When PPC programs receive regular attention, realigning them typically involves refinements rather than overhauls.

    Common Issues Discovered in PPC Audits

    While some advertising accounts require complete rebuilding, most audits uncover these typical problems:

    Outdated Creative Content

    • Ad copy that no longer reflects your brand voice or current messaging
    • Images that look dated or don’t showcase your latest products/services
    • Landing pages that don’t match ad promises

    Stale Targeting Lists

    • Lists of irrelevant search terms haven’t been updated to block unwanted traffic
    • Audience targeting hasn’t evolved with your customer base
    • Geographic targeting doesn’t reflect current service areas

    Missed Feature Opportunities

    • Not utilizing the latest advertising tools and features effectively
    • Missing out on new ad formats that could improve performance
    • Failing to take advantage of automated bidding improvements

    The rapid pace of change in digital advertising platforms means this last category often has the biggest impact on performance. Unlike obvious problems that show up in declining metrics, missed opportunities for improvement aren’t always visible until someone specifically looks for them.

    Expected Outcomes and Timeline

    Audit Duration

    A thorough PPC audit typically takes 2-3 weeks to complete, depending on account complexity and the number of campaigns being reviewed.

    Implementation Timeline

    Implementing audit recommendations usually occurs in phases over 4-6 weeks, allowing time to monitor results and make adjustments.

    What to Look for in a PPC Audit Provider

    When selecting someone to conduct your PPC audit, consider these qualifications:

    • Documented process: They should follow a systematic approach and provide clear documentation of findings
    • Platform expertise: Experience with the specific advertising platforms you use (Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Facebook, etc.)
    • Industry knowledge: Understanding of your business type and typical customer journey
    • Actionable recommendations: Ability to provide specific, prioritized suggestions rather than just identifying problems
    • Performance tracking: Methods for measuring improvement after implementing changes

    A quality PPC audit serves as both a diagnostic tool and a roadmap for improving your advertising performance. By understanding what’s involved and what outcomes to expect, you can make informed decisions about optimizing your paid advertising investments.

  • Google Ads Tracking Offline Conversions

    Google Ads Tracking Offline Conversions

    Google Ads provides various tracking methods, from online e-commerce to offline, with CRMs or Google’s API. Setting up API integrations can be challenging for small to midsize businesses. The next best option is to use a CRM that integrates with Google Ads…Google recently announced the expansion of CRM partners to include ZOHO. 

    Beyond automated tracking methods, Google Ads allows users to upload conversion data manually, which is more time-consuming. Using the manual process, either the Google Click ID, or gclid, is used, or enabling Enhanced Conversion tracking can be implemented.

    Setting up an offline conversion for Google Ads

    Google has several different types of Goals, one of which is “Converted Lead.” This type of goal allows advertisers to upload data and assign the data source to the Goal. 

    Perhaps the easiest way to do this is to set up a Google Spreadsheet linked to the account in the Ads data sources under “Data manager.” Once set up, it is just a matter of adding records to the sheet. Google Ad will import the data at regular intervals.

    The offline data can be set up for gclid or Enhanced Conversions. 

    Tracking With GCLID

    When “Auto Tagging” is enabled at the account level, the gclid is a unique parameter/value appended to the query string for every click on Google Ads. When a form is submitted, the gclid must be passed along with the user information (name, email, phone, etc.). Typically, this is done through a hidden form field and a bit of JavaScript to capture the value and add it to the form field.

    As the lead progresses through the sales process, the gclid stays with the record. When the lead reaches a critical point, perhaps a Marketing Qualified Lead or a Sales Qualified Lead, the gclid, along with the conversion date and value (if applicable), is added to the Google Spreadsheet. 

    Depending on the process, you can also add the sale information. However, for many B2B and high-value B2C companies, the actual sale may take months to close. To provide Google with timely data, it may be advantageous to upload MQLs or SQLs. The sales and marketing teams need to make this decision.

    Tracking with Enhanced Conversion With First-Party Data

    Google Ad provides an option to enable “Enhanced Conversions.” When Enhanced Conversions is set up, Google tracks not only when a form is submitted but also reads the user inputs from the field and stores hashed data versions. This allows Google to better understand the users who submit forms. 

    When an offline conversion occurs, the first-party data (email, date, value – if applicable) is uploaded to Google just as the gclid data would be. Google then matches this to the Enhanced Conversion data to connect the value to the users. The uploaded data has to be encrypted using SHA-256 to hash it before uploading.

    Google has a couple of options for setting up Enhanced Conversions. Sometimes, Google can auto-detect the appropriate fields, which is pretty straightforward. Alternatively, you may need to “tell” Google which form field matches up to email, name, zip code, etc. The latter requires a bit of site work or the use of Google Tag Manager.

    Optimizing Google Ads with Offline Conversions

    Google Ad has two levels of Goals: “Primary” and “Secondary.” 

    The primary goals are used to optimize campaigns. They are the default conversions for optimizing, but can be opted out at the campaign level. 

    Secondary Goals are more observational. Google Ads does not use them to optimize the programs, but campaign managers can use them to run reports and see how changes to the campaign impact other important events.

    When setting up offline conversions, managers must decide if the form submission should be a primary or secondary conversion point. For the most part, the initial form fill should be secondary, and the offline should be primary. If there is a high form-fill-to-sale conversion rate, leaving the form submit as a primary conversion may be acceptable. This is another decision for campaign managers.

    With the offline conversion add to Google Ads, you can begin to manage your campaigns based on optimization targets. Setting the targets allows Google Ads’ AI to get the most value for you.

    Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

    The CPA is set based on the target value of the lead at the particular stage of the sales process. If you set your MQL as the offline conversion, you can estimate the lead value based on the likelihood that the MQL will become a sale. 

    For example, if an average sale is worth $1,000 and your MQLs convert to a sale at 75%, the math is simply: $1,000 * 0.75 = $750 target CPA.

    Of course, you must also incorporate your actual margin per sale, lifetime value, etc. So, your actual target CPA is usually a bit more complicated than the sale value times the close rate. 

    Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)

    The target ROAS is the best option. It requires that Google Ads receive the actual sale value of each conversion. This allows you to set the amount of sales you want vs the ad spend. 

    If the goal is to generate $4 in sales for every $1 ad spend, the target ROAS is 4. 

    Rather than basing targets on averages and conversion rate assumptions, the ROAS method uses the actual sales and advertising dollars to optimize the campaigns.

    For a more in-depth discussion on Ad Optimization, we have this article.

    Reporting Conversions In Google Ads

    Google Ads provides many different metrics related to Conversion Value and Costs. From All conversions to “just” conversions, you can see the value of the results, the ROAS, or the cost per conversion. 

    While there are many ways to slice and dice conversions, selecting a method you will use consistently is key. Changing how you assess conversions makes it challenging to assess improvements over time. So, pick a method and stick with it unless it proves problematic.

    The best way to improve Google Ads performance is to dial in the conversion metrics as close to the sale as possible, using the actual sale and sale value as the best metrics. 

  • What Is A Google Ads Quality Score and Why Does It Matter?

    What Is A Google Ads Quality Score and Why Does It Matter?

    What is a Google Ads Quality Score?

    First things first: what is a Google Ads Quality Score?

    In a search campaign, Google will assign a quality score at the keyword level between 1-10. This score is an indicator of how well your ad ranks compared to other advertisers. The more relevant google deems your ad and landing page to the keyword, the higher the quality score.

    How Quality Score Is Calculated:

    There are three main components to calculating the quality score

    1. Expected Click through rate: This is Google’s estimate of how likely they think someone will click on your ad. Google pulls this number from your ads past performance.
    2. Ad Relevance: How well your ad matches a user’s search intent. Does it match the question or need of the user? The more relevant your ad, the higher the quality score.
    3. Landing page experience: Once someone clicks on your ad, what kind of experience do they have on your website? Google evaluates how helpful, relevant, and user-friendly your landing page is. Pages that are clear, fast-loading, and directly related to the ad’s message will earn higher marks.

    Google assigns each component a status of “Above Average”, “average”, and “below average” to create a quality score. Your rankings are based on how your ads have performed compared to other advertisers using the same keywords over the past 90 days. In other words, it’s not just about how well you’re doing, it’s about how you stack up against the competition. 

    Why Quality Scores Matter

    Quality Score might seem like just another metric in the dashboard, but it’s much more than that. Every time your ad is eligible to be shown, it is put into an auction against other advertisers. Your quality score indicates how your ads perform in the Google ads auction and can make or break the efficiency and success of your advertising. Here are the top five ways a high quality score affects your ads:

    1. Lower Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
      • Google rewards high-quality ads with lower CPCs. A higher Quality Score means you pay less for each click while maintaining or improving your ad position.
    2. Better Position
      • Even if your competitors are bidding more, your ad can still outrank theirs if your Quality Score is better. Ads with higher Quality Scores are more likely to appear in top positions on the search results page, increasing visibility and click-through rates.
    3. Higher ROI
      • When you’re paying less per click and getting better placements, your return on investment should improve.  You’re getting more value for every dollar spent, which is the ultimate goal in any marketing campaign. That said, a better Quality Score isn’t a guarantee of improved ROI; other factors like landing page performance, seasonality, and audience targeting also play a significant role in ROI.
    4. Increased Click-Through Rate (CTR)
      • Quality Score is partially based on expected CTR, and better ad relevance often means more people click. A higher CTR feeds back into improving the Quality Score.
    5. Relevance to Searchers
      • High scores indicate that your ads are well-matched to what users are searching for, which often means higher engagement and better user experience. You want to make sure that both keyword and landing page are relevant to searchers to improve down stream metrics.

    How to Improve your Google Ads Quality Score:

    Since Google’s evaluation is done behind the scenes, your quality score can sometimes feel like a mystery, but have no fear, there are ways to improve it! We can break down our changes into three categories: improving keyword relevance, improving ad quality, and improving landing page experience. 

    Improving Keyword relevance 

    Improving keyword relevance can be a bit of a balancing act, especially now that Google is heavily promoting its AI tools and encouraging advertisers to adopt broad match keywords. If you’re currently running campaigns with phrase or exact match types, you’ve likely seen suggestions nudging you to switch to broad match.

    While Google’s AI-driven recommendations can be helpful, they’re not foolproof. It’s still up to advertisers to monitor their search terms and ensure ads are showing for relevant queries. Fortunately, enhancing keyword quality doesn’t have to be overwhelming—start with these three actionable steps:

    1. Adjust Match Types: If broad match is pulling in irrelevant traffic, consider switching to phrase or exact, or pausing underperforming keywords to improve CTR.
    2. Use Negative Keywords: Your search term report is a super useful tool. Advertisers can use it to monitor and block irrelevant searches to improve CTR and ad relevance.
    3. Group Keywords Smartly: Keep ad groups tightly themed so your ads and landing pages stay aligned with user intent. Again, this is a bit of a balancing act with google suggestions but use your best judgment based on your knowledge of your account! 

    Improving Ad Quality

    Boosting your ad quality is a key step in improving CTR and, in turn, your Quality Score. Google rewards ads that are closely aligned with user intent, so the more relevant, engaging, and clear your ads are, the better they’ll perform. 

    Here are three simple but effective ways to improve ad quality:

    1. Match your ad copy to your keywords: seems simple and it is! But this can be something that slips through the cracks, so it is important to audit your ads and make sure your headlines and descriptions use your keywords.
    2. Use all available ad extensions. Don’t forget the bells and whistles! Sitelinks, callouts, and structured snippets add relevance and improve CTR.
    3. Test multiple ad variations. Run A/B tests to find the messaging that resonates most with your audience. Your findings might surprise you!

    Improving Landing Page Quality

    Landing page experience is one of the key factors of Google’s Quality Score and it’s one that often gets overlooked. Even if your ad and keywords are well-aligned, a poor landing page can drag down your score and your overall campaign performance. To improve landing page experience follow these helpful steps:

    1. Match the Message: Make sure the content on your landing page clearly reflects your ad and keywords. That might sound like a “no duh” moment, but it’s surprisingly common for advertisers to link to their homepage instead of directing users to a more relevant page. For example, if your ad promotes “Custom Office Desks,” the landing page should prominently feature that product, not just general office furniture.

    Depending on how built out your website is, this could be as simple as switching the destination URL or might require more effort to create new pages or update existing content to better align with your ad messaging.

    1. Optimize Your Landing Page: Google values landing pages that offer a smooth, user-friendly experience. Two key factors here are load speed and mobile usability.

    Slow-loading pages lead to higher bounce rates and a lower Quality Score. It is important to find and fix common issues like large images, unoptimized code, or slow server response times.

    Mobile-friendliness is equally important. Since most searches happen on mobile devices, your landing page should be responsive, easy to navigate, and quick to load on smaller screens. A clean, mobile-optimized design keeps users engaged and improves both ad performance and conversions.

    Final Quality Score Thoughts

    Quality Score isn’t just another metric, it directly impacts how much you pay and how often your ads show. A better score means lower CPCs, higher ad positions, and stronger performance overall.

    Focus on keyword relevance, ad quality, and landing page experience to move the needle. You don’t need a perfect 10, just consistent improvements that make your ads more useful to the people searching for what you offer.

  • Google Ads – Build Your Funnel as Goals

    Google Ads – Build Your Funnel as Goals

    Improve your Google Ads Conversion by more than 50%

    Google Ads keeps getting better at optimizing programs toward your Goals. The trouble is, too many companies use the wrong goal to optimize their campaigns and get leads that don’t convert to sales. Building the right goals within Google Ads will make all the difference in your performance.

    This is straightforward for e-commerce sites. Most of the widely used e-commerce platforms connect directly to your Google Ads account, sharing conversion and sales data. But if, for some reason, your e-commerce site is not directly connected to Google Ads, rectify that as soon as possible.

    Lead Form as A Conversion

    Things get tricky when there are multiple steps in the conversion process following the initial lead form submission or call. Most advertisers count the first form fill as the conversion and calculate the target Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) based on assumptions about how many form fills make it from the submission to become an actual customer (close rate) and the average customer value.

    The problem with this approach is that Google assumes every initial lead has the same close rate and therefore the same value. We tell it so when we set the target CPA. But that is not the case. The close rate can differ based on many factors, such as time of day, device being used, geography, partner site, search term (different than keyword), etc. 

    Google distributes ads across different websites. These are Google Ad Partners.  The calculation table below shows how Google Ad Partners generating the exact front-end conversion CPA can create leads with significantly different values. For Sales Qualify CPAs, the difference is 2-3x, and the ROAS can also be very different.

    • From Google’s perspective, leads from all partners will be given equal weight when optimized to Step 1. 
    • However, if you can move the optimization conversion point to Step 2, Google will recognize the significant difference in leads that get to Step 2 from Step 1,  and maximize Partners A and C over the rest. 
    • Better yet, feed sales data back and optimize to ROAS rather than CPA, and Google will know to maximize Partner C above all others.
    Google CPA SubmitMake it toMake it to
    Campaign Chanel PartnerSpendLeads- Step 1CPAStep 2 – Sales QualifiedStep 2 CPAStep 3 – SaleCost Per SaleRevenueAvg Order ValueROAS
    Partner A$3,37545$7535$9620$169$9,100$4552.70
    Partner B$5,62575$7531$18115$375$6,345$4231.13
    Partner C$1,72523$7521$8218$96$8,406$4674.87
    Partner E$4,87565$7532$15228$174$9,940$3552.04
    Partner F$6,67589$7531$21522$303$9,504$4321.42
    Google Campaign$22,275297$75150$149103$216$43,295$4201.94

    Pushing the optimization conversion point (Goal) in Google Ads allows Google to weed out more of the waste between the steps.  This will improve the Return On Ad Spend.

    Creating the Funnel In Google Ads

    Since you can add multiple conversions as Primary to your Google Ads account, you can set different points in the conversion funnel as Goals. 

    While you will set the Campaign optimization as the furthest in the funnel, all Primary Goals can be viewed in the report Results column. Though unnecessary, it helps us data geeks keep an eye on performance. 

    It also allows us to see if we are driving a lot of non-viable leads. This indicates that we have a messaging or a UX issue. Because of the time it takes to move through the funnel, only long-term views will yield relevant results. 

    In this example of one campaign, the “Converted leads” are the actual sales from the website leads. This can take place days or weeks after the initial lead, which is “Submit lead forms.”

     This current week, one-week view has all the Submit lead forms count for the week, but so far, only a small number of the “Sign-ups” as they won’t happen for a few more days or weeks after this time period.

    As time stretches, or we look back further in time, the Sales grow closer to the Submit lead forms.

    For this client, we also added a Sales Qualified Lead goal called “Sign-ups”. This step is between the Submit Lead and the Sale.  This allows us to keep track of the lead flow and see where we might have an opportunity to improve messaging and UX.

    How We Create Offline Conversion Goals In Google Ads

    Setting up online conversions for Google Ads is pretty straightforward. Google makes it easy. 

    But, offline conversions are more challenging, especially for small businesses that don’t have developer resources to create and manage the tools. But there are other ways to achieve this without automation.

    Core to achieving this is the Google Click ID (gclid) that Google Ads passes to the website when a user clicks on the ad. This will happen automatically when the Google Ads Account settings have “Auto Tagging”  enabled. 

    When the lead is submitted, we capture the gclid and pass it along with the user information and store it in the CRM. 

    We have Google Sheets connected to Google Ads goals and set to refresh each evening. This provides a regular flow of updated lead information.

    In the sheet, we have the unique transaction ID, the gclid, the sale timestamp, and the sale amount. When all is properly formatted, Google pulls it in and attributes the sales based on the gclid and value. The client adds to the sales records in the spreadsheet periodically.

    This just covers the surface of better Google Ads optimization. Advertising programs can see tremendous results when we combine our knowledge with Google’s AI. 

    Is your Google Ads account optimized for actual sales or just initial leads? We can audit your current setup and show you exactly where you’re losing money in your funnel. Contact us for a free 15-minute conversion tracking assessment.

  • Why Don’t I See My Remarketing Ads

    Why Don’t I See My Remarketing Ads

    “Why don’t I see my remarketing ads?” is a question we get asked. Or, some variation like, “Our CEO isn’t seeing our remarketing ads, how come?”, “Employees are always on our site but don’t see remarketing ads. What’s wrong?”

    Often, the correct but unsatisfactory answer is “because they shouldn’t.”

    The Purpose of Remarketing Ads

    Before we get into why you may not see your remarketing ads, we should talk about why we are running them in the first place. The short answer is to drive more business. But, we need to understand the role the website has in driving that business.

    For most remarketing, we are trying to encourage a specific action—E-commerce sales, lead form submission, app download, newsletter sign-up, etc. Remarketing ads are intended to nurture the prospect to take action. When the action is taken, we consider the campaign a success.

    Who Are We Targeting with Remarketing Ads

    Our target is people likely to convert and take the desired action. 

    While many people may visit the website, only a subset of visitors are good prospects and should see our remarketing ads. An efficient and effective remarketing program targets the best prospect, not everyone who visits the website.

    Past Methods to Hone in on the Remarketing Targets

    To eliminate wasted impressions, we were limited to a few tactics to narrow down the people who saw our ads. These were ‘best guesses’ weeding out those less likely to convert.

    Time-based Audience Filter

    One approach is to look at the time lag from the first visit (or most recent visit) to the conversion and use that (or something close) as the window during which a visitor would remain in the remarketing audience. The idea is that the time to decide was relatively the same regardless of who the person bought from (or contacted, downloaded, etc.) Once outside the time window, they’d be removed from the remarketing list.

    Frequency-base Audience Filter

    How often does someone have to see your message before deciding to buy? Frequency can be a number of times per day, week, month, or max exposure. At some point, we have to know that they don’t want our product or service, and we need to remove them from the remarketing audience. That frequency will vary by industry, product, or even company. It’s not the same for all campaigns, so advertisers have to make the assessment for themselves.

    Counter Action Audience Filter

    This is challenging, but identifying actions that indicate a user is not really interested (or serious) can filter them out of a remarketing audience or switch them to a different one. 

    Car dealerships selling sports cars and minivans may have two different lists, one for sports cars and another for minivans.

    A visitor may spend a few minutes on the sports car page and be tagged for the sports car remarketing campaign. 

    But, then, they spend much more time on the minivan pages, diving deep into options and the configurator. The minivan remarketing list is the better match based on their actions. 

    The user should be dropped from the sports car remarketing list and added to the minivan list.

    AI and Managing Remarketing

    While we can still place our filters on remarketing, AI has rendered our input redundant, if not counter-productive. With access to information we can’t imagine and could never process, AI is far better at remarketing (and other campaign types). 

    While our past efforts have been to weed out as much waste as possible (and likely do it poorly), AI goes at it from the other side. AI is finding the best prospects and actively nurturing them to a conversion. 

    AI uses on-site and off-site behavior, matches profiles to past converters, and dynamically delivers messaging in a way humans cannot. 

    How does AI Managed Remarketing work

    With an AI-managed remarketing campaign, we set objectives, and the AI strives to achieve them.

    Common AI Managed Campaign objectives are based on the following:

    • Target Cost Per Acquisition
    • Target Return on Ad Spend
    • Maximize Conversions
    • Maximize Value

    The AI will manage the campaigns to hit the targets within the budget. 

    Why You Won’t See Your Remarketing Ads

    In the past, our best efforts would still result in every visitor seeing remarketing ads. It was just a matter of how long/how often.  

    But, with AI, the delivery is more selective. Ask yourself: 

    “If I had limited funds, would I spend them delivering ads to myself or someone else who visited my site?”

    With an AI-driven remarketing campaign, you very likely won’t see your ads. You simply do not match with the most likely-to-convert profile (or even remotely-likely-to-conver profile.) 

    How Do I Show Remarketing Ads to Everyone Anyway

    Don’t trust the AI and want everyone on your site to see your ads? You can do that.

    Use impression-based bidding, set high viewable CPMs, and ensure your budget is big enough to cover the size of your remarketing audience. Since your goal is to be seen, you want to be sure you are not capping your frequency too low. Multiply your audience by the desired frequency, and you have your target impressions level for which you should budget. The budget depends on the CPM estimate from the channel you are advertising.

    Manage your Remarketing to Achieve Your Goal

    Not being able to see our ads can be unnerving at times. We have to trust the results. In a world where seeing is believing, not seeing the ads leaves a gap hard to reconcile. “If I don’t see it, how do I know someone else did?” With AI, that is the world we live in now. We provide the inputs and have to wait for the results. What comes in between is often unseen.

    Trying to keep up with SEM? A good PPC info source is https://searchengineland.com/.

  • Amazon Prime Days and Google PMAX Shopping

    Amazon Prime Days and Google PMAX Shopping

    October Amazon Prime Days ran 10/8-10/9, and they were promoted for weeks prior. Since August, Oct Prime Days have been carried in the press and supported with mailers, emails, and ads.  Whether real or perceived, price reductions have a significant impact on shopping behavior.

    How Are PMax Shopping Ads Affected by Amazon Prime Days?

    We have clients running PMax Shopping campaigns, and they all changed significantly during the week of Prime Day and the days around it. Usually, suffering lower ROAS or higher CPAs.

    Why does PMax performance change during Prime Days

    PMax are AI campaigns, and they respond to data. With enough data, they learn to optimize campaigns to maximize ROAS, minimize CPA, or hit specific targets. Over time, they are very effective at optimizing programs. 

    What PMax is not good at is quickly adapting to changes in the stream of data. With big enough changes, the campaigns may enter a learning phase. Sometimes, they simply don’t perform well. Prime Days introduced a short-term shift in shopping behavior. 

    In some cases, the lower prices in Amazon for a category moved purchases away from the site and onto Amazon. So, clicks that usually converted did not. The people expected lower prices and went to Amazon. 

    Delayed purchases in the days leading up to Prime Days may also create changes in the data. Like Black Friday/Cyber Monday, people hold off until they purchase on the sale day. Unlike BF/CM, Amazon is the only place for the Prime Days sale and was heavily promoted.

    Normally,  competitor sales may have some impact on each other. However, when it’s Amazon, the scale of the sale, the expectations set by Amazon promotions, and the resources Amazon puts behind them have a significant impact on other sales outlets.

    PMax Options During Prime Days

    There are a few approaches to handling the impact of Prime Days on your Google PMax Shopping campaigns. From trying to compete head-on to shutting down for the time being and some steps in between, advertisers can take steps to leverage or mitigate Prime Days.

    Make no Changes to PMax

    Letting the PMax campaign run as usual is an option. You can accept the lower performance over the week or so during Prime Days and allow PMax to adjust when things return to normal. 

    Compete With (leverage) Prime Days

    If you sell on Amazon, you don’t want to, and you are likely not allowed to promote lower prices on your site. But if you don’t sell on Amazon, can you compete? 

    Amazon Prime Days spurs more shopping. But people are looking for deals. Can you compete on price? Does obtaining a new customer create a lifetime value that warrants low or no margin on a sale driven by the Prime Days frenzy? If so, it may be worth lowering prices to entice purchasers. This is a business decision many struggle to work out.

    Shut Down PMax

    Alternatively, you can pause the PMax campaign. This will prevent spending, obviously. The hope is that when you restart, it will not take as long to hit its stride. But keep in mind that shutting it down and unpausing it can launch a learning phase.

    Unlike the holiday season, when almost all channels and categories carry sales/promotions, Prime Days is a one-sided event. It speaks volumes that one channel carries so much influence that it has a material impact across categories in other channels. You can’t escape it, so choose the path and plan accordingly.

    PMax: Why AI & Data-driven Optimization Can Be Fragile

    Over the long run, AI optimization will generally outperform manual optimization. There are exceptions, and I suspect those exceptions will become fewer as AI improves. For all the long-term benefits, advertisers must accept some short-term heartburn.

     Among other things is the AI’s sensitivity to changes in data inputs. Prime Days is an example of an indirect event having a direct effect.

    PMax campaigns optimize based on all the traditional inputs (though it controls them), like budget allocation, bidding, and targeting. These used to be (and, to some degree, still can be) controlled by the campaign manager. But for PMax they are controlled by the AI.

    This works well because the data inputs also include buyer behavior throughout, and even tangential to, the purchase process. The AI sees patterns that let it know when to bid on what inventory (Search, GDN, YouTube, Gmail, etc), how much to bid, and what the user might do next. The AI can nurture a person through the buying process. 

    The very thing that makes AI so good at optimization also makes it fragile to changes in data input. If buyer behavior suddenly changes, AI bidding based on past behavior does not drive the same anticipated action. 

    AI has to see the new behavior repetitively to adjust. If the change is short-term (like Prime Days), it applies old information to the new behavior. Then, as the behavior changes back to normal, the AI is trying to adapt to the recent behavior of Prime Days. It can take a couple of weeks to re-learn based on the data changes. 

    Plan and Manage the PMax Strategy

    PMax is about strategy, which is a long-term view. Fluctuations in the PMax performance are normal and managers should not attempt to make changes based on short-term changes. While a given week or two may be up or down, it is the long-run optimization that makes PMax powerful.

  • Evolution of a PPC Agency

    Evolution of a PPC Agency

    There is a lot of talk about artificial intelligence in digital marketing and its impact on us as an agency, specifically in PPC advertising. For over twenty years, I have seen a lot of changes in the search engines.  We’ve gone from managing the minutia to strategizing with AI.

    Some of the changes in the PPC world and where it lands us as a PPC agency:

    The Search Engine Competitors

    In the early years, the change was about the players. As the different search engines competed for PPC marketing dollars, the number of paid search engine options faded over time. Yahoo! and Ask had dedicated sales teams, then eventually stopped selling and simply incorporated competing search engines into their search tools. Google and Microsoft are the last two (viable) PPC search engines. 

    Through all this time, Google set the standards that the others tried to emulate. From consumer-facing features to ad management UI, most tried to copy Google. We are at a point where Microsoft simply says to import your Google Ads or Google Merchant data directly. 

    As an agency, it is easier to deal with a few players, but it seems restrictive in the search space.

    Google Ads: From complete control to black-box

    Focusing on Google which set the stage for all search engines, Google tried to provide the PPC managers as much information and control as possible. The search management landscape is unrecognizable in today’s environment. Take these examples:

    Long-Tail Search Term

    When Google reps visited our agency, one of the first strategies they encouraged was an exceptionally well-built-out keyword list with well-structured ad groups. Having five- or more-word search term targets was very common. Creating ad groups focused on very finite terms created a competitive advantage. 

    You could find terms on which very few competitors were bidding, thus creating very low-cost CPC programs. While everyone was bidding on head terms, only those who did a great deal of work built out long-tail programs. 

    Google effectively killed long-tail PPC programs by implementing “low volume” barriers to creating a search auction. Now, Google has forced us to compete with head terms (or very close), inflating the cost for any advertiser who managed long-tail terms.

    SKAG – Single Keyword Ad Group

    One strategy implemented by many PPC agencies and managers is the SKAG. It was very targeted, with very tight ad copy and landing pages. Running the SKAG was a lot of work, as was managing the ad groups and the negative match type to funnel the correct ad to the best search.

    Google effectively killed this strategy by no longer honoring match types. When your ad group ad can show for searches that Google deems “mean the same” and seems to grow the list of “qualifying searches” as you increase your negative keyword list, the SKAG loses its validity.

    CPC Max Bid – still available, lease valuable

    From Enhanced bidding to CPA to ROAS, CPC Max Bid has all but lost its meaning. You can absolutely do this. But, with the advent of AI, manual bidding is highly inefficient and perhaps even detrimental to a PPC ad program’s success. 

    With the advent of PMax campaigns and CPA/ROAS targeting, the CPC quickly becomes irrelevant. This is where AI is making itself felt.

    What Does AI Mean for a PPC Agency?

    For any agency or in-house PPC manager, the direction of Google Ads will greatly reduce the time spent on tactical implementation and increase the focus on strategy. 

    This is a difficult switch for larger agencies or any PPC agency that built a team dedicated to managing the tactical implementation of paid search, which almost all have. I have seen recent PPC agency recommendations that make it clear that the agency is still clinging to the old tactics (old being just a couple of years). To shift from tactics to strategy, agencies have to reduce staff at the lower to mid levels and hire/promote staff at upper-mid levels to work with clients.

    It makes managing the client relationship more challenging on two fronts. 

    One is that helping clients transition from the tactically focused account structure to a more strategic/AI-centric approach is difficult. Clients are used to seeing very detailed campaign builds and reporting. As one agency put it, manually managing the program gives you more control… but not better results. Clients feel better with the control. As an agency, we have to help them look past the lack of direct control and see the results.

    Two, fee structures are based on the old paradigm. With hours baked into tactical actions that are no longer needed, agencies must reevaluate their fees with current and new clients. These hours and the agency’s profit based on them are going away. It can be challenging to take steps to reduce the agency billings. It’s a bit frightening to give up the revenue, and let’s face it, a bit of an ego hit. But our industry is changing, and we need to adapt and be fair.

    The pace of change in the pay-per-click industry is accelerating. Agencies should be leading their clients down this path with a result-centric, strategic approach. Waiting until you have no choice when Google and other channels force the use of their AI, will leave the agency and the clients behind.

  • 5 Common Mistakes in Google Ads

    5 Common Mistakes in Google Ads

    Maximize the Effectiveness of You Ad Spend

    Maximizing the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaigns starts with avoiding common pitfalls. From improper conversion tracking to overlooking vital ad assets, each step can significantly impact your campaign’s success. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore five critical mistakes to steer clear of and provide actionable tips to ensure your ads drive results. Let’s dive in and optimize your advertising strategy for maximum impact and ROI.

    1. Improper Conversion Tracking

    One of the most important things when first setting up Google ads is to make sure you have proper conversion tracking set up. Without conversions tracking a couple of things will happen. First, Google won’t know what to optimize. Secondly, the absence of accurate data hinders your ability to assess the effectiveness of your strategies.

    So, let’s jump into a few things to check when setting up conversion tracking:

    1. Primary Vs. secondary conversions. Google will automatically track and optimize to your primary conversion and only track your secondary conversions. So, if submitting a lead or a sale are the most important conversion actions for you, then make sure these are set as primary and not secondary conversions. 
    2. Don’t over clutter your conversion actions. We like to say “if everything is important then nothing is important”. We recommend choosing the most important conversion actions and tracking those. This might seem simple, however, sometimes Google will recommend many conversion events, including individual page views and link clicks which most likely are less valuable to you than a purchase, call or lead form submission.
    3. Tracking conversion value. Once a user has landed on your website and made a purchase or closed a deal, it’s important to send that purchase value back into google. This way you can track your return on investment instead of just the number of conversions.  

    2. Not Setting an Ad Schedule 

    Google allows you to set an ad schedule based on the day or the hour. You could hypothetically run ads at a different time every day, though we can think of many reasons you’d need to do that. 

    Creating an ad schedule that suits your company is key. This can be done right off the bat or once you have more data. 

    For instance if you are a B2B organization, running ads Mon-Fri is most likely the way to go. Why waste your money on the weekends when people aren’t at work. In the same vine you might run ads from 9am-5pm to coincide with the average work schedule. 

    When you are setting up your campaigns you might have no idea when your consumers are most active. No worries! You can always run your campaigns 24/7, and after a couple of weeks and enough data, you can assess when conversions are coming in, and cost/conversion then adjust accordingly. 

    Running ads on a schedule doesn’t have to be an all or nothing either! You might notice that for some reason on Wednesdays, your conversions and ROI are down but you still want ads to appear on Wednesdays. If you are setting manual bids you can adjust the maximum bid based on the time and day. So on Wednesdays you can set your max bid to 50% of what your normal max bid is to lower spend. 

    3. Blindly Accepting All of Google’s Recommendations

    Don’t get us wrong, Google can have great recommendations but sometimes they can be overzealous and it can lead you down a path you definitely don’t want to go down. For instance, Google will often make recommendations that include a budget increase, which you might not have. It’s okay to tell Google no even if your optimization score goes down a bit. 

    Another recommendation you should keep an eye on is the key word changes. Google will frequently recommend broad match keywords and we have noticed sometimes they aren’t afraid to add +150 broad match keywords to one ad group. For some, this may be okay, but for others this can lead to irrelevant search terms and messy keyword data. 

    Not all of Google’s Recommendations are bad, some can be very helpful but make sure to not blindly accept all of their suggestions without thinking about how it will affect your business. 

    4. Not setting up location targeting

    Don’t forget to set up Location targeting for your ads based on your company’s needs. Google allows advertisers to select what countries, states, or zip codes their ads appear in. Google also allows you to set areas that you don’t want to advertise in. 

    No one likes wasted ad spend and the quickest way to lose money is to advertise in areas where your business is less or not relevant. For instance, if you run a brick and mortar store you should set up location targeting based on the area around your store. No need to be advertising in Texas if your store front is in Chicago, IL. 

    Location targeting is relevant if you have an online store too. Let’s say your company sells snow blowers. Well, once again advertising in Texas might not be the biggest bang for your buck.

    Sure over 5 years I’m sure someone will buy a snowblower in Texas for some reason or another but you’d be better off concentrating your ad spend on places like Wisconsin, Michigan or New Hampshire. 

    5. Lack of Ad Assets

    Our final mistake we see advertisers make is not utilizing assets! Advertisers should use assets in Google Ads because they play a crucial role in creating compelling and effective advertisements that increase ad relevance and increase ad quality score. 

    When creating an ad it’s hard to miss the basics like headlines and descriptions because they are required, but don’t forget about the optional ones. You used to have to add the optional assets to an ad after the ad was created in the asset tab.

    Now Google has made it easier and gives advertisers the option of adding assets and extensions to the ad while making the ad itself. Some of these assets are:

    • Sitelink extensions
    • Call outs
    • Structured snippets
    • Photos
    • Location extension
    • Lead form extension
    • Call extension
    • Price extensions
    • Image extensions

    These different assets allow you to link to relevant  pages on your site, highlight important details about your company, and provide contact information up front. Overall assets can be used to provide more information and make your ad more attractive to potential customers. 

    That being said, not all assets are relevant to every business. For example, you might not take calls or you might sell products solely online and not have a location. That’s okay! Use all that pertains to your business to maximize ad quality score. 

    Wrapping Up 

    In conclusion, mastering Google Ads requires diligence and strategic planning to avoid common pitfalls that can hinder your campaign’s performance.

    By ensuring proper conversion tracking, setting up ad schedules tailored to your target audience’s behavior, critically evaluating Google’s recommendations, implementing precise location targeting, and leveraging ad assets effectively, you can maximize the effectiveness of your advertising strategy.

    With these insights and actionable tips, you’re equipped to optimize your campaigns for maximum impact and ROI. Here’s to your success in the dynamic world of digital advertising!

  • Are You Starving Your Google Ads PMax Campaign?

    Are You Starving Your Google Ads PMax Campaign?

    Google Ads is in a transition, and while this may initially feel unsettling for PPC ad managers, it’s important to remember that this change is designed to enhance our strategies. The world of Performance Max (PMax) campaigns is an AI and ML-driven approach, promising greater efficiency and results. 

    This world requires a great deal of trust. With PMax, we provide Google with assets and data; users provide the data through behavior and signals, and Google pulls information about behaviors from all over. AI optimizes the campaigns in ways that are challenging to comprehend. 

    This is challenging partly because of the opaque nature of the PMax campaigns. Google will adjust bids, create ads in real time, and select placements without managers seeing any detail. Even when the campaigns meet or exceed the goals, we are troubled by our lack of knowing how. 

    PMax Needs Data

    The power of AI lies in its ability to sift through vast volumes of data and establish connections at a scale that surpasses our traditional ‘if-then’ logic. AI/ML continually assimilates data, identifying patterns and enhancing performance. This underscores the importance of our campaigns acquiring as much information as possible, a crucial step in the PMax journey. 

    How We Siphon Data From PMax Campaigns

    Campaign managers are used to tactical actions, and it is tempting to maintain tactical control of some aspects of the Google Ads campaigns. Whether keeping a pure search campaign going, creating multiple PMax campaigns to segment messaging, or creating several asset groups,  having some level of tactical control is common. 

    However, each separate campaign isolates data, removing it from the aggregate data collection that helps AI improve campaign performance.

    There are legitimate reasons to create different campaigns. As managers, it is important to ensure each campaign serves a unique purpose—every campaign siphons activity (data) from the PMax campaign. Reducing the number of campaigns should help the overall account performance.

    If unique campaigns are maintained, consider applying portfolio management. This allows Google to optimize budgets across campaigns.

    The PMax Journey

    A common strategy (broadly speaking) is to segment campaigns into prospecting (people who have never been to your site or searched your brand) and remarketing (messaging people who have visited your site or provided their information). For manually managed campaigns, this makes sense. Gaining the first visit and guiding a person through the lower funnel require different messaging.

    But, when we do this manually, we are guessing at budget allocation and optimal cost per action. 

    A PMax campaign monitors users throughout the journey and optimizes their experience at each step. Ads are created in real-time and targeted for context/placement and the person’s journey process. AI adjusts the bids across the Google ecosystem to maximize the end result. 

    So, while we may manually create a prospecting campaign that gets the most users to our site (let’s say), AI can identify those most likely to convert and adjust the bid accordingly. Rather than getting 100 visitors for $1 each, the AI may find the best ten prospects and pay $10 each—a classic case of quality over quantity.

    However, the PMax campaign must see the entire conversion journey to gather the right data. If we siphon prospecting data from remarketing data, the PMax campaign cannot make the connections. It essentially mirrors your manual optimization. 

    Steps To Moving to PMax

    Google Ads provides many tools to help ad programs move to PMax. Some convert existing campaigns, others implement experiments, and others make it easy to build a PMax campaign from scratch.

    Before implementing new PMax campaigns, consider the scope of existing campaigns in the account. The more campaigns running, the less data the PMax campaign can receive. So, start scaling back if there are many campaigns. 

    Setting goals will help determine which campaigns can be shut down and is necessary to establish a PMax campaign. You can target several types of goals, from CPA to Max value to ROAS, even max traffic. The more data you can feed back to Google, the more successful your campaign will be.

    There are technical aspects to implementing PMax outlined in Google Ads as you implement the program. Follow the steps they show, and you should be good.

    So, are you starving your PMax campaign? If you are just starting one, will you feed it enough data? Keep your PMax campaigns healthy with a steady flow of data and assets to leverage what AI/ML can do.

  • Google Tag for Ads

    Google Tag for Ads

    Google Ads’ latest tag is simply called “Google Tag.” This code allows Google Ads and other Google tools to track activity on your website and return information to the respective Google Tools.

    Why you need to implement Google Tag

    Browser security has been changing, tightening restrictions on third-party Cookies. 

    If you’re unfamiliar with browser cookies, they are simple text files saved to your computer that store information. The information varies depending on what the author of the cookie wants to track. As a site owner, you may want to save a user’s preferences to the cookie, then when they return, set their browser experience accordingly. It could be language, layout, or some IDs that indicate who they are (non-PII-based). 

    Third-party Browser Cookies

    Third-party cookies, as the name suggests, are created by and transmit the information from these text files to another domain. However, due to security and privacy concerns, this cross-domain access to cookies is being phased out from most browsers, requiring a shift in tracking methods.

    Until recently, most tracking tools, including Google’s, relied on third-party cookies to save and share information with services like Google Ads. Safari restricted this a while back. Google Chrome will be in early 2025 (perhaps; the time keeps getting pushed back). Eventually, however, browsers will no longer support these.

    The Google Tag is a tracking method that does not rely on third-party cookies. When cookies are blocked, the Google Tag will be the only way to provide data back to Google Ads to track conversions and help optimize the advertising.

    Enhanced Conversions with Google Tag

    Google Tag is part of a toolset that combines ad data with site data and AI/ML to optimize advertising programs. To fully leverage the capabilities available, advertisers need to implement Enhanced Conversions as part of the Google Ads program. Enhanced Conversions collects user-provided data from forms and checkouts back to Google Ads to provide the AI with value and user data. This is used to improve the campaign performance.

    Automated Detection

    Google Tag can detect form fills and read the user-provided data automatically. Google Tage is the quickest way to implement Enhanced Conversions. But, it is also dependent on Google correctly picking up the signals.

    Manual Implementation

    You can manually implement form data transmission through Google Tag Manager(GTM). This requires familiarity with HTML elements, Javascript, and GTM configuration. With GTM, you can test the process to see what is sent to the Google Tag.

    Privacy Policy for Enhanced Conversions 

    Implementing Google Ads Enhance Conversions requires sites to conform to privacy disclosure policies. When implemented, check the latest Google Requirements for user notification. A link will be shown to you during the setup process.

    Two trends are converging with the implementation of Google Tag. First, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are replacing manual optimization. Second, browser privacy concerns are pushing us into new methods of measuring ad performance and collecting information. Combined, these have the potential to increase ROAS significantly while reducing time spent in the weeds of managing ad programs.