Jan 16 2026
10 Remarketing Lists To Boost PPC Performance via @sejournal, @brookeosmundson

Remarketing lists continue to be one of the more dependable tools inside PPC accounts, especially for search campaigns. They give advertisers clearer control over who sees ads, how bids are adjusted, and how messaging aligns with prior brand interaction.

As tracking becomes more constrained and audience signals less granular, first-party data carries more weight in day-to-day performance.

Remarketing allows you to act on what users have already done, rather than relying entirely on inferred intent or broad audience definitions.

Where many accounts fall short is in how those lists are actually applied. Lists get created, added at observation, and then largely ignored.

Without a clear purpose tied to bidding, exclusions, or messaging, remarketing ends up being underutilized.

The strategies below focus on remarketing lists that directly influence PPC decisions. Each example is designed to support how users move through the funnel and how accounts are realistically managed, not how they look in theory.

Top-Of-Funnel & Awareness Remarketing Strategies

These three remarketing strategies cover the basics of top-of-funnel marketing and utilize different campaign types to help leverage your RLSAs.

1. Target Users Who Have Engaged With A Video Campaign And Encourage Them To Take Action

If you’ve tried YouTube Ads in any form and have struggled to determine or quantify success, then this strategy might be for you.

YouTube ads are a great way to gain awareness of a product, service, or brand – but how do you get a new user to take action from that first touchpoint?

Enter in remarketing lists.

Google Ads allows you to create different types of remarketing lists based on your YouTube videos. There are two key requirements for using this list type:

  • These lists can only be used in other YouTube or Search campaigns – not Display.
  • Your YouTube channel must be linked to your Google Ads account.

To set up YouTube remarketing lists, navigate to Tools > Shared Library > Audience Manager.

In Audience Manager, hit the “+” button to start segmenting your YouTube remarketing lists.

Build new YouTube remarketing lists in Google Ads platform.
Screenshot by author, January 2026

From there, Google gives a multitude of options to start leveraging your YouTube video engagement for remarketing. These options include engagement from:

  • Views to videos.
  • Subscribes to the channel.
  • Visits to the channel.
  • Likes on videos.
  • Add videos to playlist.
  • Shares of videos.

Further, you’re able to segment further to make your remarketing lists as specific as possible:

Choose between different types of user interactions for YouTube audiences.
Screenshot by author, January 2026

To leverage these newly created YouTube remarketing lists, try adding them to your existing Search campaigns as “Observation Only” at first to understand if these users are more likely to interact with your campaigns versus someone who hasn’t seen your YouTube videos.

Taking it a step further, you can create new Search campaigns that specifically target these users.

The benefit is that you can provide different messaging to these users who have already interacted with your brand.

2. Exclude Low Quality Or Irrelevant Website Traffic From Search Campaigns

If you’ve run any type of awareness campaign, you’ve likely seen a boost in traffic overall, including irrelevant webpages or low-quality visitors.

What do we constitute as low-quality or irrelevant webpages?

  • Any page that wouldn’t result in a purchase, such as:
    • Careers page.
    • Investors page.
    • Advertise with us page.
    • Customer Service page.
  • Users who stayed on the website for less than one second.

Excluding these types of website visitors from the get-go can help make your remarketing efforts more cost-efficient in the long run.

3. Create Lookalike Audiences From Your Own First-Party Data

Using Google’s affinity audiences or attributes that consider someone at the top of funnel for your product or service can be daunting, especially if you’re a small business or have a limited budget.

It may feel that you don’t have a lot of options to reach new users without paying dearly for it.

But, have you ever thought about using your most valuable assets to build awareness?

Leveraging your own first-party data to create Lookalike audiences gives you more leverage than third-party data, such as Google’s affinity audiences, to reach like-minded people of users who already love your brand.

To create an audience like this, there are a few options to consider:

  • Create a remarketing list of past purchasers using Google Ads or Google Analytics.
  • Upload a list of past purchasers to Google Ads.

Depending on the size of these lists, you’ll have the option to create a Lookalike audience and use it for either YouTube, Display, or Search.

The example below shows what a remarketing list based on a completed purchase URL looks like when created in Google Ads:

Use URL paths to create remarketing lists of past purchasers.
Screenshot by author, January 2026

I personally like to use Google Analytics when creating remarketing lists because you have many more segmentation or filtering options to be as specific as you need to be.

As a reminder, your site must be tagged and linked with either your Google Analytics property or Google Ads tag.

Consideration Stage Remarketing Strategies

These four remarketing strategies help move the user from the consideration to the purchase phase quicker using different bidding strategies and offers.

4. Increase Bids For Qualified Visitors Of Your Site Who Haven’t Made A Purchase

An easy way to leverage qualified users in your existing Search campaigns is to increase the bid on those users simply.

You don’t need to create separate campaigns for these users if you don’t want to. Segmenting these users and manipulating the bids on them keeps your account management under control.

To use this strategy, you’ll first need to create a remarketing list of users who haven’t made a purchase yet. You can use qualifications only to include people who:

  • Have made it to the cart checkout.
  • Visited a certain number of pages.
  • Spent a certain amount of time on site.
  • Visited certain categories/high-value product pages.

Once you have created those, it’s time to add them to an existing Search campaign and increase the bid.

What this means is that you’re willing to pay more for their click because they’ve already interacted with your brand in some way.

In your Search campaign, navigate to “Audiences” on the left-hand side.

In this example, I’m setting the audience at the campaign level, but you can set it at the ad group level as well.

Make sure to choose “Observation,” so you’re still able to capture other new users who are researching your brand.

Adding audiences in Google Ads as 'Observation Only'.
Screenshot by author, January 2026

Once you’ve added your qualified remarketing list, it’s time to increase your bid adjustment.

Still, in the Audiences tab, you’ll see your remarketing list added.

In the columns, you’ll see “Bid Adjustment.” Choose the “pencil” icon to change the bid as you see fit. In this example, I’m going to increase the bid by 15%.

Choose to increase bids on remarketing lists in Google Ads.
Screenshot by author, January 2026

Once you’ve implemented this change, be sure to continuously check back on the audience performance and determine if bids need to be changed based on performance.

5. Increase Bids For Users Who Have Completed A Micro-Conversion

This strategy is similar to the example above, except for the type of user you want to target.

If a user has completed a micro-conversion of any sort, they’re likely a high-qualified user to make a purchase.

What are examples of a micro-conversion? Depending on your product or service, these could include:

  • Signing up for emails or newsletters.
  • Downloading an ebook.
  • Signing up for a webinar.
  • Requesting a free sample.

These types of conversions show a user is active in research mode and seriously considering your brand.

By increasing the bid in your search campaigns for these users, you’re saying you’re willing to pay more for their clicks because they’re that much more likely to convert.

The process of setting this strategy up is the same as above, with the exception of creating a remarketing list based on the success of these micro-conversions.

6. Test Maximize Conversion Value With Cart Abandoners

This remarketing strategy would require you to create a separate campaign targeting only cart abandoners.

You may be asking, “Why not just use Maximize Conversion Value for everyone?”

If you’ve ever tested out the Maximize Conversion Value bidding strategy in Google Ads, you’ll know exactly why.

The reasons I don’t recommend using this for all campaigns include:

  • You can’t set any maximum ceiling values.
  • Not all users are ready to purchase.

By segmenting a search campaign specifically for cart abandoners, you can test this bidding strategy at a lower threshold – and with the most qualified users who are most likely to make a purchase.

Similar to the above examples, this strategy tells Google that you’re willing to be more flexible in how much you pay for someone to make a purchase.

And what better way to test this than with users who were almost ready to make that purchase?

To set this strategy into motion, you first need to create a remarketing list of “Cart Abandoners.”

This will look different for everyone, but it will likely be URL-based and able to be created in either Google Analytics or Google Ads.

After that list has been created, it’s time to set up your new search campaign.

This campaign can be a duplicate of any other search campaign. Just make sure to exclude your Cart Abandoner list from that existing campaign. We don’t want any crossover here!

When creating the new campaign, this is where you’ll set the bid strategy to “Maximize Conversion Value” in the settings.

Choosing the 'Maximize Conversion Value' bid strategy in a Google Ads campaign.
Screenshot by author, January 2026

Google Ads does give you the option to set a target return on ad spend, giving you somewhat control over campaign performance.

Depending on how much flexibility you have in your marketing budget, you can either leave that blank or set a target.

If you do set a target ROAS, make sure not to set it too high right away. Otherwise, the campaign won’t be able to effectively learn.

7. Create Offers Based On The User’s Interaction Timeline

Did you know you can create the same remarketing list of users, but segment them by the number of days?

Say you had a cart abandoner and wanted to move them toward purchase ASAP. You may be willing to give them a higher discount since the purchase was still new in their mind.

If they still haven’t purchased within three days, you may choose to still give them a discount, but not as high as the first offer.

After seven days, you still want them to keep your product top-of-mind, but that discount or offer may change again because they’ve waited so long.

So, how do you go about setting up this strategy?

First, you’ll want to create three different remarketing lists (for this example only).

Create cart abandoner audiences separated out by one day, three days, and seven days.

In Google Ads, you simply change the “membership duration” for each list. An example of where to change that during list creation is below:

Choose different membership durations in remarketing lists.
Screenshot by author, January 2026

Once these lists are created, I recommend setting up different ad groups for each list. You’ll want different ad groups because the offer will be different for each list.

The last crucial piece of targeting cart abandoners is to exclude purchasers from your campaign. You will do this in the “Audiences” tab of your campaign and add your “Purchasers” remarketing list as an exclusion.

Post-Purchase Journey Remarketing Strategies

Once a user has made a purchase, that’s not necessarily the end of their journey!

These remarketing strategies enable past purchasers to become your most valuable asset and opportunities for repeat purchasers to become brand advocates.

8. Cross-Promote Other Products Based On A User’s Purchase Behavior

One of the best ways to create a repeat purchaser is to recommend complementing products based on a user’s purchase.

For example, say you’re a makeup brand, and a user just purchased their first tube of lipstick and mascara from you.

An effective remarketing strategy would include creating lists of past purchasers segmented by product category. This enables you to cross-promote other products and exclude product types they’ve just purchased.

In this example, you may create a remarketing list of users who have bought lipstick or mascara. You can then use that list to remarket products like foundation or eye shadow to encourage a repeat purchase.

These lists and strategies would work well in Dynamic Remarketing Ads or Google Shopping Ads. Because these products are much more visible, you’d want to use those campaign types to your advantage.

9. Exclude Past Purchasers To Maximize Spend Efficiency

As mentioned in strategy No. 7, you’ll want to exclude past purchasers from current acquisition campaigns to maximize spending efficiency.

An example of lazy remarketing is for a user to see an ad for a product they have already purchased.

Not only does that create a bad taste for the user, but that means you’re wasting valuable marketing money on people who have already purchased.

Now, there are certainly times when you’d not want to exclude past purchasers, especially if your product is a repeat purchase.

But, in these examples, your search campaigns are likely going after new users.

To exclude past purchasers, go to Audiences on the left-hand side of your campaign, then find the “Exclusions” table.

Excluding audience segments in Google Ads campaigns.
Screenshot by author, January 2026

10. Create Brand Advocates From Your Existing High-Value Customers

It’s true when they say that your customers are your best advocates. They have put their trust in you to deliver a high-value product or service that they have come to know and trust.

So, how do you turn them into advocates?

This remarketing strategy still includes utilizing that same past purchaser list. A few different options you could potentially offer past purchasers:

  • Create a referral program and give discounts to each person who purchases.
  • Offer discounts based on providing a positive public review.

Just because someone has purchased from you once does not mean they become a loyal customer. Sometimes it takes additional motivation to want to purchase again.

Loyalty or referral discounts are a great way to keep your existing customers coming back to you, as well as utilizing their own referral vehicles to generate new customers.

Creating referral programs is a low-cost and efficient multi-channel awareness strategy that is mutually beneficial for you – the brand and the customer.

Using Remarketing Lists With Intent, Not Just Coverage

Remarketing lists are most effective when they are built to support specific decisions inside your account. That includes how aggressively you bid, who you exclude, and where you shift budget based on user behavior.

Rather than treating remarketing as a single tactic, it works better as a system layered throughout the funnel. Lists tied to meaningful actions, like product views, cart activity, or prior purchases, tend to deliver far more value than broad, catch-all audiences.

As broader targeting becomes less reliable, remarketing offers a level of control that is increasingly hard to replace. When lists are thoughtfully segmented and actively used, they help PPC managers spend more efficiently and act with more confidence.

The real impact of remarketing does not come from how many lists you create. It comes from how intentionally those lists shape your bidding, targeting, and messaging decisions.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Tetiana Yurchenko/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jan 14 2026
Why Paid Search Foundations Still Matter In An AI-Focused World

At this point in time, AI search products such as Google and Microsoft’s PMax (and now AI Max) have firmly woven themselves into the toolkits of search marketers around the globe. But as many search marketers rush to not only test new products but also scale paid search activity, there is an increasing tendency to neglect the core elements of what makes a successful paid search account: audience, structure, and intent.

Within this article, I’ll aim to throw paid search foundations back into the limelight, placing an emphasis on why core concepts remain important and highlighting the fact that AI products don’t necessarily replace foundations but only serve to enhance them.

How We Got Here

It is, of course, important to stress that the shift towards AI prevalence has been a gradual one. From the early days of obsessing over match types and manual cost-per-click (CPCs) to Smart Bidding playing a greater role in finding customers across varying points of the user journey – we’ve come a long way to get here. With products such as PMax claiming to “do it all for you,” we can see that the “hands on” approach of yesteryear has become less active.

With every step taken towards the current climate, we have handed a little more control to the machine. While this has allowed us to scale campaigns on a much greater level, when comparing the role of a PPC manager now to 10 years ago, the day-to-day tasks look exponentially different.

But as automation has increased, so has the machines’ reliance upon clean and consistent foundations. AI features can only optimize based on what we feed it. If structure, signals, or audiences aren’t clear, the machine has no concept of what “good” looks like. Because of this, AI hasn’t removed the need for fundamentals; it’s made them more important.

Structure Is Still Integral To Success

Automated systems and products such as PMax encourage greater levels of consolidation through feeding insights to the algorithm and letting it decide what works best for us. However, in practice, structure remains one of the biggest drivers around whether AI drives success or not.

PMax is not psychic. It doesn’t have a full understanding of specific product margins your business may have, your product development lines, or your business’ full commercial realities (yet!). The only way to do this is to make those distinctions clear. This is where structure comes in! A well-structured account provides boundaries for the machine to work with. It helps by:

  • Providing clean learning environments: Grouping products and services in a logical manner helps to ensure that products such as PMax aren’t trying to learn everything all at once. Through clear separation, you increase the likelihood of more accurate outcomes.
  • Maintaining budget control: If everything is thrown into one campaign, it makes it increasingly more difficult to avoid under-performing products from cannibalizing budget.
  • Reducing conflicting intent: When campaigns mix differing intents (e.g., providing varying conversion actions that are contradictory from a user journey standpoint), the machine receives much greater volumes of noise. Through clear separation and delineation within a well-structured account, advertisers can reduce skewed data and improve performance.
Clear structure isn’t something to be ignored. It’s the backbone to improving AI performance. (Image from author, November 2025)

Audience Insight Remains AI’s Compass

When it comes to understanding people, human marketers will always hold a competitive advantage. Knowing why people convert, what motivates them, and ultimately, the understanding of human nature will always mean that human marketers have an intrinsic intuition that search features such as PMax will never have. Acknowledging this, it’s key that humans feed quality customer insights into these platforms to ensure that the machine can gain a better understanding of what makes us tick.

As an example, a family car buyer and a luxury SUV buyer may both search for [SUV cars], but their motivations and expectations differ dramatically. AI can easily cluster this behavior, but it takes human insight to translate that behavior into effective positioning.

Taking this into account, the foundational understanding of a) what makes a solid audience grouping and b) how to implement said audience is again where foundational understanding comes into play. The strongest performing PMax campaigns are the ones filled with the richest insights. CRM, loyalty information, and higher intent user signals often significantly improve PMax’s ability to drive performance. AI products can only feed off information you provide, and those signals must be rooted in real audience understanding.

When you understand your audience deeply, AI has a stronger foundation to optimize from. When you don’t, you leave the machine to guess.

Intent (And Keywords) Still Drive Everything

It could be argued that automation has accelerated the death of keywords, but what it hasn’t done is decrease the importance of intent. Search has always been (and remains!) an intent-driven channel. PMax might automate placements and assets, but it still requires queries and signals to understand what someone wants.

We might now be seeing fewer search queries (much to my annoyance!), but the system is still learning from billions of intent signals. Taking this into account, having a core, foundational understanding of intent enables you to:

Identify and prevent wasted spend. ALWAYS my ace card. Negatives and keyword exclusions remain critical in helping to guide AI products. Advertisers who refine intent signals almost always outperform those who automatically assume that ‘leaving it to the machine’ is the best approach.

Match creative with motivation. Understanding customer intent will help to ensure that you avoid over-generic ad copy and craft content that customers actually engage with.

Align landing pages with behavior. AI can send traffic to your pages, but if the content doesn’t match user intent, account efficiency will be impacted.

A Whole New World

To quote the 1992 Disney classic “Aladdin,” it really is a whole new world (pretty sure they had PMax in mind when writing that song…). However, while the further acceleration of AI products may have changed the mechanics of search advertising, what it hasn’t done is make the fundamentals less important.

Audience insight still guides strategy. Intent still shapes relevance of content. Structure still shapes accuracy. These are not only essentials that have stood the test of time but will also provide a clear advantage to advertisers who can recognize their benefit.

The future of paid search truly isn’t a case of fighting the machine; it’s about ensuring we influence the algorithms by providing richer context and insight, in turn utilizing their ability to scale to further drive results.

More Resources:

Featured Image: N Universe/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jan 14 2026
5 Ways To Reduce CPL, Improve Conversion Rates & Capture More Demand In 2026 via @sejournal, @CallRail

The marketers who crack attribution aren’t chasing perfection; they’re layering multiple data sources to get progressively closer to the truth.

What To Do: Identify Which Marketing Efforts Are Actually Working

A starting point: add a simple “How did you hear about us?” field to your intake process, then compare those responses against your digital attribution data.

The gaps you uncover will show you exactly where your current tracking is falling short, and where your brand and word-of-mouth efforts are working harder than you realized.

Learn more about self-reported attribution and how it can transform your reporting →

Improve Conversion Rates By Learning & Implementing What Buyers Ask Before They Convert

There’s a goldmine sitting right under your nose: your customer conversations.

Most marketers hand off call data to sales and never look back. Big mistake.

Avoid This Myth: “Call Insights Are Only For Sales Teams”

Those conversations contain exactly what you need to create more personalized marketing communications and sharpen your strategy.

Literal Keys To Conversion Are Hiding In Your Sales Team’s Call Data

Think about what’s buried in your call recordings:

  • Conversion signals for better targeting. When you understand what makes callers convert, you can build lookalike audiences and refine your ad targeting around those characteristics.
  • Sentiment data for email segmentation. Callers who expressed frustration need different nurture sequences than those who were enthusiastic. Conversation intelligence can automatically score sentiment, letting you segment accordingly.
  • Caller details for personalization. Names, pain points, specific needs—these details can feed directly into personalized follow-up campaigns.
  • Term analysis for more relatable ad creation. What words do your best prospects actually use? Call transcripts reveal the language that resonates, helping you craft offers that speak directly to buyer needs.
  • Keyword clouds for SEO and PPC. The phrases your customers use on calls often differ from the keywords you’re bidding on. Mining conversations for terminology can uncover high-intent search terms you’re missing.

What To Do: Turn Customer Communication (Calls, Chats, Emails) Into Marketing Intelligence

The shift here is mindset.

Stop thinking of call data as a sales asset and start treating it as a marketing intelligence feed. When you analyze trends across hundreds of conversations (not just individual calls) you uncover patterns that can reshape your entire strategy.

Conversation Intelligence can automatically transcribe and analyze calls, surfacing these insights without requiring hours of manual listening. They can even generate aggregated summaries across campaigns, highlighting the questions prospects ask most frequently, the objections that come up repeatedly, and the language that signals buying intent.

The data is there. You just need to start using it.

Give More Attention To SMS Marketing (Open Rates Up To 98%)

Don’t Fall For Myth #4: “Texting Is Irrelevant to Marketers”

Why? Because text messages have a 98% open rate.

Compare that to email’s 20% average, and it’s clear why dismissing SMS as “not a marketing channel” is leaving conversions on the table.

What To Do: Capture More High-Intent Leads With Texting

Giving your buyers choice in how they communicate with you boosts conversion. Period.

Here are two immediate ways to put texting to work:

  1. Click-to-text from your marketing assets. Add trackable click-to-text links in your emails, ads, and website. When a prospect clicks, their native messaging app opens with a pre-populated message to your business. You capture the lead, they get instant communication, and you maintain full attribution visibility.
  2. Local Services Ad (LSA) message leads. If you’re running Google Local Services Ads, you can receive SMS leads directly through the platform. These are high-intent prospects who chose to message instead of call—often because they’re at work, in a waiting room, or simply prefer texting. Missing these leads because you’re not set up for SMS is like leaving the front door locked during business hours.

The key is tracking these text interactions with the same rigor you apply to calls and form fills. When every channel is measured, you can finally see the complete picture of what’s driving results.

The bottom line: your prospects have communication preferences, and those preferences increasingly skew toward texting. Meeting them where they are isn’t just good customer experience; it’s a competitive advantage. The businesses that make it easy to text will capture leads that competitors lose.

Reduce Missed Leads & Lower CPL With AI Voice Assistants

Let’s get personal for a second:  your leads aren’t being answered, and you should care more than anyone.

Stop Thinking “AI Voice Assistants Aren’t for Marketers”

Over 50 million customer calls go unanswered every year.

That’s not just a sales problem-that’s hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing investment generating leads that never convert because nobody picked up the phone.

Think about it.

You spend a significant budget driving calls through paid ads, SEO, and local listings. When 30% of those calls go unanswered (the current average), you’re effectively lighting a third of your budget on fire.

Image created by CallRail, January 2026

What To Do: Ensure Every Inbound Call Converts To A Lead

AI voice assistants solve this by ensuring every call gets answered, 24/7. But they do more than just pick up:

  • Never miss a lead again. Voice assistants answer, capture, and qualify inbound calls around the clock, even when your team is focused on other customers or the office is closed.
  • Drive better outcomes. You can confidently extend ad windows into evenings and weekends, knowing leads will be handled. Early adopters have seen answered calls increase by 44% and client ROI improve by up to 20%.
  • Lower your cost per lead. When every call converts to a captured lead, your CPL drops and your campaign efficiency improves. Plus, consistently answering calls helps your responsiveness scores on platforms like Google’s Local Services Ads.
  • Prioritize follow-up. AI assistants can capture caller intake details, assess intent, and score leads, so your team knows exactly which opportunities to prioritize when they return to the office.

This isn’t about replacing human connection. It’s about plugging the leaks in your funnel so the leads you worked so hard to generate actually have a chance to convert.

The combination of AI voice assistance with call tracking creates a system where every lead is captured, every conversation is logged, and every marketing dollar can be tied back to results.

Explore how Voice Assist transforms missed calls into revenue →

Moving Forward: Market With Confidence

These five myths share a common thread: they take real challenges and use them as excuses to give up.

The marketers who will win in 2026 aren’t the ones who throw their hands up, they’re the smart ones who know how to adapt.

Your 2026 Marketing Action & Attribution Plan

  1. Redefine your MQLs around behaviors that actually predict revenue.
  2. Layer self-reported attribution onto your digital tracking to capture the full buyer journey.
  3. Mine your call data for targeting, personalization, and keyword insights.
  4. Add texting as a tracked communication channel your buyers actually prefer.
  5. Deploy AI voice assistants to ensure no lead goes unanswered.

The tactics aren’t broken.

The execution just needs an upgrade.

Want the complete playbook?

Watch our webinar: 2026 Forecast—5 Expert Marketing Strategies You Need to Refine by Q2 →

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Jan 9 2026
Paid Media Marketing: 8 Changes Marketers Should Make In 2026 via @sejournal, @brookeosmundson

Paid media didn’t slow down last year. If anything, the platforms made sure we stayed busy.

Google rolled out more AI-assisted ad creation features, new Performance Max reporting updates, and continued refining how AI-influenced results shape visibility across search.

Microsoft pushed forward with its own set of AI tools inside Ads and Copilot, along with quality updates that changed how some advertisers measure performance. Meta expanded Advantage+ capabilities and tightened its recommendations for creative structure.

We also saw strong momentum from platforms that used to sit on the sidelines. TikTok introduced more search-focused ad placements. Reddit continued improving its targeting and creative tools.

Privacy shifts kept moving as well. Targeting options continued evolving, and some long-standing measurement assumptions started to feel less reliable. Marketers had to adjust how they test, track, and validate results across every channel.

As we head into 2026, the message is familiar but still true. You can’t always rely on what worked a year ago, and you can’t assume the platforms will keep things the same. This list focuses on the changes that matter most right now. These are practical adjustments that help teams stay competitive without rebuilding everything from scratch.

Let’s walk through the strategies worth prioritizing this year and why they deserve your attention.

1. Embrace The Shift To Conversational AI In Ad Creation

Conversational AI tools like Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot enable ad creation and optimization in a more fluid, interactive way.

They’re becoming essential for marketers who want to scale ad variations without exhausting creative resources.

If you’re looking to test and scale how this can work for you, start small with AI-generated ad copy tests. Use the conversational AI tools within the Google Ads platform to create a few new ad variations that differ from your standard copy.

For instance, if your current ads are heavily CTA-focused, let the AI suggest more storytelling or benefits-driven language and test these versions in a limited campaign to gauge performance.

Another tip is to start experimenting with ad personalization at scale. AI tools allow you to input audience insights, such as location or interests, to create tailored ad variations.

Create segmented ads that appeal to different demographics or psychographics and use split testing to identify which approach resonates best.

Lastly, whenever you’re using AI-generated content, make sure to set aside time to review those suggestions monthly. Take note of recurring suggestions that could highlight hidden opportunities or adjustments you may not have initially considered.

2. Refine Ad Targeting With Data Privacy In Mind

With the unreliability of third-party cookies, the upcoming year marks the need for refined targeting strategies that balance effectiveness with privacy.

Tools like Google’s enhanced privacy features and Microsoft’s predictive audience segmentation help ensure you’re reaching the right users in a compliant way.

Now’s the time to develop a robust first-party data strategy. Start by auditing your first-party data to identify gaps and potential sources for future data.

You can also utilize your customer relationship management (CRM) tools and website data collection to capture behavior-based insights and create audience segments you own.

Additionally, because both Google and Microsoft allow Customer Match solutions, it’s a great time to review those policies.

Use tools like cookie consent managers and transparency banners to build trust and ensure you’re gathering data responsibly. If you don’t, you’re at risk of not being able to use first-party data solutions by the ad platforms.

When creating a consent-based tracking strategy, it’s also a good idea to proactively share with users how you use their data and offer clear opt-out options. Transparency is key in this two-way buyer and seller relationship journey.

3. Optimize For AI-Driven Search Ad Placements

AI-generated search summaries, especially in Google’s AI Overviews, are creating new ad placements and impacting traditional ad performance. This trend requires close monitoring and proactive adjustments to stay competitive.

As these new ad placements continue to roll out, here are a few tips to make sure your PPC ads are optimized for this new wave of AI content.

  • Monitor CTRs On AI-Influenced Placements: Start tracking the click-through rates of ads appearing in AI-generated results versus traditional SERPs. This insight can help you understand whether AI-generated placements impact user engagement and identify areas for improvement.
  • Create Specialized Assets For AI Overviews: Use images, headlines, and descriptions designed for short attention spans. For instance, include a compelling image and a clear, concise CTA in your ad to boost appeal in this new placement.
  • Review Performance Max Insights Regularly: Google’s Performance Max campaigns, which include AI-driven placements, provide insights into what combinations work best across channels. Use this data to refine ads in other campaigns where similar placements are available.

4. Lean Into Multi-Channel Campaign Integration

With consumers using multiple platforms interchangeably, paid media strategies must embrace an integrated, omni-channel approach.

Platforms like TikTok and Reddit have built out more robust ad offerings, providing marketers with more cross-platform synergy.

Start by mapping out a cross-platform customer journey. Outline your audience’s touchpoints across different platforms.

For instance, if your customer typically discovers products on TikTok but purchases through Google Shopping, ensure you’re present and active on both channels with consistent messaging.

Another item to keep in mind is utilizing platform-specific metrics to refine your strategy.

Each platform has unique engagement metrics. For example, on TikTok, you can monitor completion rates and engagement (likes, comments) to assess content effectiveness.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, is a place to focus on connection and message response rates.

Tailor your content based on what performs best on each channel. Each channel should have a different content strategy, not just putting the same ads across all platforms, hoping that one of them will click with a user.

5. Optimize Creative Customization With AI Image Editing

AI-powered image editing allows for rapid customization across visuals, which is critical for multi-audience campaigns.

Canva’s integration with Google Workspace and Microsoft’s AI image generator simplifies the creative process, enabling customization without extensive design resources.

To make the most of these AI editors and integrations, start with creating templates for faster customization.

Design or download templates on Canva that match your brand guidelines, making it easy to adjust colors, fonts, and messages for different audiences with minimal effort.

The templates can help you maintain visual consistency while catering to different segments.

To take it up a notch, try running A/B tests on custom visuals. Create two or more variations of AI-edited images to test different elements.

When testing creative, make sure to test differences that are noticeable enough. Track which visual styles drive the most engagement, and use those insights to guide future designs.

If you’re targeting multiple locations in your ads, use AI tools to adjust visuals for regional appeal.

For example, if you’re running an ad in New York and California, you can use AI to create images that feature landmarks or seasonal elements relevant to each location.

6. Enhance Attribution Tracking And Adjust KPIs Accordingly

A multi-device world demands better attribution tracking to understand the entire customer journey.

Google’s Enhanced Conversions and Microsoft’s Customer Insights provide more reliable data across touchpoints, helping marketers adjust KPIs to reflect complex engagement patterns.

To start, review enhanced conversions for first-party tracking to determine if this makes sense for your account.

Enhanced Conversions capture data from form fills or purchases to match offline actions back to Google Ads. When setting this up, make sure your campaigns reflect actual conversions, not just clicks, allowing for more accurate reporting.

Additionally, if you’re still using Last Click attribution models, you will be left in the dust.

It’s time to move beyond last-click attribution to track the impact of each customer touchpoint. You can use Google Analytics or Microsoft’s attribution reports to assess the role of each ad in a customer’s journey, and allocate credit accordingly.

Lastly, when it comes to measurement, it’s time to evolve your key performance indicators (KPIs). Not every channel in your marketing mix should be measured by direct purchases.

Just last year, in North America, the average person owned 13 devices – a 63% increase from 2018.

Users leverage multiple devices during their purchase journey, accounting for more visits but fewer conversions. No wonder conversion rates are decreasing!

For example, if you’re running a brand awareness campaign on TikTok for an audience who’s never heard of you, your KPIs should not be measuring purchases.

Track meaningful metrics like engagement rates, increase in branded search queries, or time on site to understand how those platforms contribute to long-term brand growth and loyalty.

7. Make Influencers Part Of Your Marketing Model

Influencer marketing still has value. But the rules have changed. What used to feel like a side bet now needs to operate with the same discipline you apply to any other channel.

One of the biggest shifts in 2025 was the rollout of Creator Partnerships inside Google Ads. The new tool lets brands find YouTube creators who already mention or align with their products, request to link their content directly in Ads, and then promote that content as ad assets.

That matters because it addresses many of the traditional challenges of influencer marketing.

Brands no longer have to manage a separate workflow or use external tools to run creator campaigns. Everything can be done natively inside Google Ads. Finding creators, getting permission, promoting videos, building remarketing audiences, and tracking performance – it all happens in the same place as your other media.

This integration changes what influencer marketing should be. Instead of treating creator content as a loose “boost,” treat it as another media channel that you plan, test, track, and optimize.

When you find a creator whose audience overlaps yours, link their video, promote it via “Partnership Ads,” and compare performance against other video or display placements. Use the same ROI expectations, the same reporting discipline, the same budget scrutiny.

That does not mean every influencer partnership needs to run through Creator Partnerships. But for brands that want to take creator content seriously, this is now the clearest path forward.

Influencer marketing can still introduce your brand to new audiences, but only if it becomes part of a broader, data-driven media mix rather than a side experiment.

8. Invest In Brand-Owned And Emerging Media Channels

Paid platforms can shift without much warning, which is why brands need more stability built into their mix. That stability comes from channels you control and channels that offer predictable reach without relying entirely on algorithm changes.

Brand-owned channels like email, SMS, and your CRM audience lists continue to grow in value as privacy rules tighten. These channels help you stay connected with people who have already shown interest, and they support every other part of your media strategy. When your first-party data is strong, your targeting improves across search, social, and display.

At the same time, emerging media channels are becoming easier to test and measure.

Connected TV, podcasts, retail media networks, and social commerce have grown into meaningful sources of reach and intent. Many brands are now seeing that a small, well-planned investment in these channels helps lift branded search, engagement rates, and assisted conversions across their entire account.

You do not need to adopt every new channel. You only need to choose a few that match your audience and test them with clear goals.

Look for indicators like uplift in search demand, stronger remarketing pools, or improvements in cross-channel efficiency. When these channels support your paid campaigns, they earn a long-term place in your strategy.

The brands that put effort into these areas now will be less dependent on any single platform. They will also see more consistent performance as auctions change, costs fluctuate, and targeting evolves throughout the year.

Your 2026 Plan Should Be Evolving

Paid media will keep shifting this year, but the path forward does not need to feel overwhelming.

The changes outlined above reflect what marketers are running into every day across search, social, retail media, and emerging channels.

None of these updates requires a complete rebuild. They simply call for a more intentional approach to testing, measurement, creative, and channel mix.

The advertisers who stay close to the data, spend time understanding how each platform is evolving, and make steady adjustments will see the most consistent results. The year ahead is less about chasing every new feature and more about choosing the changes that actually strengthen performance.

If you focus on the areas that matter, you’ll be in a strong position to keep improving your campaigns as the platforms continue to evolve.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Anton Vierietin/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Dec 4 2025
2026 Marketing Forecast for PPC Leaders [Webinar] via @sejournal, @hethr_campbell

The strategies that worked in 2025 will not carry your campaigns through the new year.

Buyer behavior is evolving, budgets demand tighter discipline, and channels like calls, text, and voice agents are becoming essential conversion paths. As the marketing landscape shifts, the question is no longer whether you should adapt but how fast.

The Strategic Shifts Every Marketer Needs To Refine By Q2

Join Emily Popson, VP of Marketing at CallRail, for a clear and data-driven look at the five marketing priorities that will shape performance in 2026 and what PPC teams must adjust now to stay competitive.

You’ll Learn How To

  • Allocate marketing and advertising budgets in ways that drive measurable revenue
  • Use your audience’s real words to build stronger ads and landing pages
  • Create campaigns that meet buyers where they are in 2026
  • Evaluate text, call, and voice channels within your optimization mix
  • Build operational confidence that supports scale into Q2

Why Attend?

This session gives you a grounded view of what top-performing marketers are doing differently and where outdated assumptions are slowing teams down.

You will gain practical frameworks, real-world examples, and data-backed insights to refine your PPC strategy and prepare for the months ahead.

Register now to secure your seat and strengthen your 2026 marketing strategy.

🛑 Cannot make it live? Register anyway and the full recording will be sent to you after the event.

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Dec 1 2025
Should Your PPC Strategy Focus On The Lead Pipeline Or Revenue? via @sejournal, @brookeosmundson

Marketing leaders often believe they have a performance problem when, in reality, they have a goal problem.

A PPC strategy built around generating leads behaves very differently than one optimized for revenue.

The campaigns you choose, how you measure success, and even how your sales team operates all depend on which objective governs the budget.

For B2B organizations, this choice defines the relationship between marketing and sales. This decision moves past traffic metrics and focuses on defining whether PPC’s role is to build opportunity or generate revenue impact.

The Tradeoff Behind Pipeline And Revenue Goals

Focusing on pipeline means optimizing for potential deals. The intent is to create qualified conversations, fill sales calendars, and give teams more at-bats. The success metric is typically cost per qualified lead or cost per opportunity.

Focusing on revenue means optimizing for outcome. The intent is to turn opportunities into booked business and prove marketing’s direct impact on the bottom line. The metric is return on ad spend or cost per acquisition.

Neither is wrong. But, treating them as interchangeable creates confusion.

Pipeline growth without strong sales follow-up inflates cost and hides inefficiency. Revenue-only optimization without top-funnel activity stifles learning and can lead to short-term thinking.

Each goal exposes a different bottleneck. Pipeline focus reveals whether you can attract quality interest. Revenue focus reveals whether you can close it. The right answer depends on where your business struggles most.

Pipeline Metrics Often Hide Sales Inefficiency

Marketers often celebrate growing lead volumes.

On the surface, increased lead volume looks like success. But when those leads stall in the CRM or die in early qualification, pipeline efficiency is exposed as illusion.

If PPC campaigns are judged by form fills alone, marketing gets rewarded for quantity, not quality. This disconnect fuels friction between teams: sales claims the leads are weak, and marketing insists the follow-up is slow.

Both can be true.

Healthy pipeline strategies require alignment on the following:

  • What “qualified” means for leads.
  • How fast leads must be contacted.
  • How performance is measured after the click.

Without that rigor, pipeline-focused PPC becomes a reporting exercise, not a growth driver.

The fix isn’t more leads. It requires better accountability.

Audit how many paid leads convert into sales-accepted opportunities and how long it takes to reach them. If it takes more than 24 hours to follow up, the bottleneck isn’t the ad platform. It’s the underlying sales process.

Revenue Targets Expose What The Business Really Values

Optimizing for revenue forces a company to define value clearly. It requires clean CRM data, accurate conversion imports, and disciplined attribution practices.

Revenue-centric marketers must work with finance to determine what a closed deal is worth and with sales to ensure those values reflect reality.

This approach usually reveals operational truth. It shows which campaigns truly impact profit and which only create activity.

But, it also makes experimentation harder. When every dollar is tied to short-term return on investment (ROI), the incentive to test new audiences or messaging weakens.

The strength of a revenue goal is accountability. The weakness is tunnel vision. Leaders must guard against starving early-stage demand just because it doesn’t pay back this quarter.

The best teams track revenue, but they also understand that sustainable growth requires a healthy flow of qualified leads entering the system. Without it, future quarters run dry.

Your PPC Strategy Should Mirror Business Maturity, Not Ambition

Early-stage or growth-phase companies benefit from pipeline goals. They need to identify who their buyers are, what messaging resonates, and how long sales cycles actually take.

At this stage, the objective is learning: understanding your buyer’s behavior, sales cycles, and message fit.

Mature organizations with stable win rates and predictable close processes can afford to optimize for revenue. They typically have enough historical data to assign accurate value to each lead and to let algorithms bid toward true profit.

The problem arises when leadership chooses a revenue goal before the business infrastructure is ready for it.

Without reliable data, automated bidding and attribution models will chase signals that don’t represent real revenue.

The reverse is also true. If you continue to stick with pipeline goals after sales maturity, it could mean you’re leaving efficiency on the table.

Your PPC strategy must evolve as the company evolves. Ambition without readiness is expensive.

Choosing Platforms And Campaign Types That Match The Goal

Pipeline-focused PPC leans on platforms that build awareness and nurture intent.

Search campaigns that target problem-focused queries, LinkedIn lead gen ads for mid-funnel education, or YouTube video campaigns that spark curiosity. The goal is to drive qualified hand-raisers, not instant conversions.

Revenue-focused PPC leans on channels closer to purchase intent.

These include exact match search targeting competitor or solution terms, or Performance Max campaigns tied to bottom-funnel content, and remarketing strategies that capture existing demand.

Mixing both goals in the same campaign infrastructure could lead to confusing machine learning. For example, if your conversion actions mix “ebook downloads” with “booked demos,” the system doesn’t know what success looks like.

Separate campaigns by goal. Let each optimize toward its true signal.

The Metrics That Matter When You Pick A Side

Pipeline-driven PPC programs should live and die by downstream metrics: lead-to-opportunity conversion rate, cost per qualified meeting, and time to first contact. Reporting should start in the ad platform but end in the CRM.

Revenue-driven PPC programs should focus on cost per acquisition, return on ad spend, and contribution margin. These numbers link directly to the income statement, not the lead dashboard.

Blending both in one key performance indicator (KPI) report creates false comfort. When leadership sees total leads up but revenue flat, it’s not a mystery; it’s mixed measurement. Align metrics with the goal and accept that fewer, cleaner numbers are better than an overstuffed dashboard.

When Is It Time To Shift Gears?

If we, PPC marketers, know anything, it’s that nothing ever stays the same for long.

Markets change. Sales teams grow or shrink. Financial pressure shifts quarterly targets. Knowing when to pivot between pipeline and revenue is what separates reactive marketers from strategic ones.

If lead volume is high but win rates are stagnant, it’s time to transition to a revenue goal. The company has awareness, but now it needs conversion discipline.

If close rates are strong but opportunity flow is inconsistent, the bottleneck is likely at the top of funnel. Revert to pipeline focus until sales capacity stabilizes.

No strategy should stay fixed forever. PPC performance must mirror business conditions, not personal preference.

Great Teams Measure Progress Alongside Output

Effective teams approach PPC with the discipline of an investment program, focused on long-term gain rather than quick wins.

They know some campaigns exist to generate qualified opportunities that pay off in future quarters, while others are designed to drive revenue right now.

They hold themselves accountable to both sets of numbers, but they know which KPI or goal is steering the ship. They challenge their own assumptions.

If paid media performance looks good but sales growth lags, they dig deeper. If campaigns drive profit but new logo acquisition stalls, they test top-funnel messaging again.

This mindset separates tactical advertisers from strategic marketers. The former chase metrics. The latter tie PPC to business health.

Stronger leaders align their marketing systems to shift focus between pipeline and revenue with clear intent and timing.

They know that PPC cannot fix a broken sales process or replace disciplined follow-up. But, it can magnify what already works and identify what doesn’t, faster than any other channel.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Remo_Designer/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 24 2025
The Behaviors And Mindset Of Marketers Who Win With Performance Max via @sejournal, @MenachemAni

Performance Max (like the more upper-funnel Demand Gen) is different enough from other Google Ads campaigns that it requires a different approach, even if the underlying search behavior and marketing principles are the same as they’ve always been.

For what it’s worth, Performance Max is typically not the first campaign to launch in any account. We typically start with Search and/or Shopping before layering on Performance Max when it makes sense, e.g., testing and scaling.

But when the time comes to make it work, it takes a specific mindset. And if your Google Ads methods and principles are still stuck in 2015, you’re not going to get very far.

Here’s how to tailor your approach and become a mentality monster for Performance Max.

Performance Max At Its Most Basic Level

A strong mindset for modern PPC begins with knowledge and education. If you still don’t understand the fundamental differences between Performance Max and legacy campaign types (like Search and Shopping), that’s step one.

The TL;DR is simple: Performance Max is driven by algorithms, not inputs or controls. There’s a certain degree of surrendering to the system that goes with it, and trying to exert control when there’s none to claim will only end up with a large chunk of wasted spend.

If you think you can be the exception to the rule and force Performance Max into traditional campaign structures, all you’ll do is choke the algorithm and spend money on poor-quality conversions. This has a compounding effect where the system then believes those are valid conversions and will try to bring you more of the same.

Here are five core truths to keep in mind:

1. You don’t control targeting. Performance Max simply does not go where you tell it to. At best, you can provide initial direction in the form of audience signals. But it will eventually start to make its own decisions about which channels to show your ads on and which audiences to pursue. Even keywords are more about guidance than a guideline to be followed strictly.

2. You don’t decide which headlines get paired with which creatives. With Performance Max, you’ll still need to build all the pieces of your ads: responsive search ads, video and static creatives, product feeds with robust descriptors, and so on. But how those get mixed and matched isn’t up to you. Google’s system will test different combinations with different audiences before settling on what works best.

3. You don’t get full visibility into every query or placement. There’s no question that Performance Max is capable of delivering great results. If you want that, then you simply have to accept that you must give up a certain degree of visibility into where your ads show and why. You may not like it, but this campaign only works when you set things up properly and trust the system (while still supervising and verifying its output).

4. Data, not content, is king. Performance Max runs on data, and Google expects you to provide far more data than it will. Accounts with more conversion data will perform better because Google has more user signals to decode. With clearer first-party inputs, Performance Max is more likely to deliver the conversions you want. The clearer your audience signals are, the easier it is to quickly move out of the learning phase. And a more complete and accurate product feed will go a long way in getting your products in front of people who want them.

5. That being said, reporting is getting better but can still be frustrating. We only recently got access to things like asset group reporting, search terms reports and negative keywords for Performance Max. It’s far more visibility than we had a few years ago, but Google is still some distance off the ideal balance. I’d advise you to make peace with the fact that reporting won’t be perfect and attribution will be even murkier than usual.

Fortunately, there’s plenty that you can control. Those factors just happen to be broader marketing principles and strategic direction:

  • Positioning, offer, and messaging strategy.
  • Quality and depth of your product feed.
  • Strength of your audience signals.
  • Depth of your first-party data inputs, e.g., conversion tracking, customer lists, data feeds.
  • Relevance of your ad copy, creatives, and landing pages.
  • Bidding strategy and goals.
  • Campaign and asset group structure at a high level.

Screenshot from X (Twitter), November 2025

Read more: Should Advertisers Rethink The ‘For Vs. Against’ Stance On Performance Max?

Traits Of PPC Managers Who Struggle With Performance Max

I see PPC managers every day who are so set in their ways that all they can do is complain about some part of Google’s machine learning. While it’s perfectly fine to stick with Search and Shopping, what’s not okay is bringing that mindset to Performance Max and expecting results anyway. And there are some behaviors that show up most frequently.

  • They require granular control over everything. Wanting to dictate exactly how the system should operate is a red flag when managing Performance Max. These managers have a natural distrust of all things machine learning and want to deploy perfect Exact Match keywords, complicated manual bidding strategies, and specific traffic sculpting techniques.
  • They believe their experience is a guarantee of success. But they don’t put in the effort to stay up-to-date on market and technological developments. These are typically old school marketers (like me) who haven’t kept up with the modern pace of Google Ads or feel entitled to success because of their tenure (unlike me).
  • They specialize in Google Ads account management and little else. Modern PPC demands that account managers have a basic level of skill in areas like copywriting, landing page theory, conversion rate optimization, product feed management, market and audience research, and offer positioning. People who refuse to treat Google Ads as one piece of a wider marketing puzzle are learning this the hard way.
  • They don’t have the diamond hands needed to trust their strategy. “Eyes on, hands off” is our approach. People who push back at the first sign of below-average output tend to make changes that reset the learning period, which only delays Google’s ability to start delivering good conversions. Since it can take three to six weeks (in my experience) to get to a good position with Performance Max, you need to know when not to make changes. Get early buy-in from clients (and the budget needed to ride it out) as you work through this early period.
  • They take a “set it and forget it” approach to automation and machine learning. Part of exiting the learning period in Performance Max quickly is keeping an eye on early results and providing data inputs so the system learns what you want more/less of. Don’t just ride out the post-launch period without tracking what Google’s bringing to the plate.
  • They expect the system to magically understand what the client wants. One of the toughest parts of modern PPC is persuading clients to provide access to data that Google needs in order to understand what success looks like on the business side. The flipside is that without this input, Google will simply make guesses until it finds something you like. This is especially true for lead-gen brands like plumbers and contractors.

Quick disclaimer: Some industries require a granular level of control, either due to regulatory and compliance mandates or because Google simply doesn’t have enough search and user volume to make informed decisions in that niche. Accounts operating in areas like pharmaceuticals, legal services, and similar niches need a higher level of control than mass market verticals like apparel or beverages.

The PPC Manager Who Wins With Performance Max

Algorithmic campaigns aren’t suitable for every account. Sometimes, it’s just better to stick to Search and Shopping. But when there is an opportunity to scale with Performance Max, there’s a specific type of person you want in charge of the process.

  • They know where they’re more useful. Marketers who are willing to hand over control of ad operations to the system are able to focus on impactful areas where machines still struggle to create differentiated output: creative, ad copy, landing pages, and their UX, strategy, data sourcing and interpretation, etc.
  • They accept that they’re only as good as their last campaign. Good PPC managers in the modern era don’t just treat Performance Max as its own campaign. They understand that just because one campaign worked a certain way doesn’t mean the next one will, too. What you want is someone who’s ready and willing to learn with every new project and iteration.
  • They understand the value of data and how to source it. Marketers who focus on building an ecosystem of data inputs and learning get better results with Performance Max because they give Google more information to base its decisions on. Someone who knows where to find those and how to convince clients that they’re mission-critical is worth their weight in gold.
  • They know how to stick to the plan. When you put in work only for a campaign to return poor results in the first week, it’s tempting to burn everything down and try something new. Marketers who build a plan for those first weeks and stick to it have the patience and confidence needed to eventually get Performance Max to a position of power.
  • They excel at client communication. A lead-gen client that refuses to share its customer data is never going to get good results from Performance Max. Good marketers can see that and will recommend traditional Search instead of creating additional friction by pushing for CRM access. Another underrated trait is proactively setting expectations with clients and communicating with them throughout the campaign.
Screenshot from X (Twitter), November 2025

PPC-Adjacent Skills To Develop For Performance Max Success

With Google Ads demanding a more holistic marketing approach, so much of your success with Performance Max begins outside of the ad account. With the system taking over much of the button-pushing that we used to do, here’s where you should be upskilling in order to cement your future in PPC.

Why I’m Bullish: Performance Max Is The Start Of The Future

Added balance between machine learning and human control is Google telling us that we only have one choice: learn to work together on these algorithmic campaigns. Performance Max has changed significantly from when it was first released, and so has Google’s attitude.

Newer features in Performance Max, like negative keywords and improved reports, help refine campaigns and offer advertisers more of what we’ve been asking for. But this can be dangerous if you don’t make the right decisions – you might see that video ads are not performing as well and remove them, only to find that their role is to push certain conversions down the line.

As it stands, Performance Max today is perfectly viable for virtually any type of business – a far cry from its early use case being limited to big-budget ecommerce and retail (how viable it is for a specific business still depends on factors such as budget, expertise, risk tolerance, and data availability).

So, while you may not necessarily need it today or every day, you should be adapting to this new direction if your top priority is to protect your business, career, and clients.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Master1305/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Nov 10 2025
Black Friday 2025: Tips To Boost Your Holiday PPC Performance (Get Ready Now) via @sejournal, @brookeosmundson

Black Friday doesn’t sneak up on anyone, yet somehow it still catches advertisers off guard every year.

Campaigns launch at the last minute, budgets aren’t ready, and tracking issues surface once performance starts to spike.

If you’ve managed PPC through Q4, you know how quickly small mistakes can turn into costly ones. CPCs rise, competition intensifies, and ad inventory becomes harder to win. By the time the weekend hits, there’s little room left for major fixes.

That’s why the most successful advertisers treat preparation as their advantage. They plan budgets before the rush, stabilize feeds early, and set guardrails around automation before the system starts making aggressive bids.

This article walks through the key areas worth reviewing now so you can step into the busiest retail period of the year with fewer surprises and a plan that holds up under pressure.

Let’s start with what to revisit from last year.

Take The Time To Audit Last Year’s Wins And Pitfalls

Before building anything new, it’s worth taking a closer look at last year’s performance.

The strategy here isn’t about copying old campaigns; it’s about understanding where they overdelivered, where they stalled out, and how the landscape might have changed since then.

In Google Ads, start with the attribution reports. Look beyond just last-click conversions and examine how various campaign types contributed throughout the funnel.

If Performance Max campaigns played more of an assist role, that should inform how you structure them this year.

If Standard Shopping capped out early or certain product categories were underrepresented, those are fixable issues.

You can also use auction insights to see when competitors ramped up spend, or whether you lost impression share due to budget or rank. These reports offer useful context if you’re planning to scale this year but didn’t last year.

If you’re using Microsoft Ads, review audience and device performance to see where volume shifted.

Holiday behavior isn’t always the same across platforms. What worked well on Google may not have translated to Bing or Meta, and vice versa.

The goal is to identify specific opportunities, not just assume last year’s playbook will hold up.

Build Early, Even If You’re Not Launching Yet

There’s value in building out your campaigns well in advance of Black Friday, even if you don’t plan to activate them until closer to the sale.

Whether you’re launching new campaigns or just updating ads in existing ones, getting ahead on structure gives you time to QA creative, troubleshoot disapprovals, and coordinate across teams.

If you’re planning to reuse existing campaigns, you can still stay organized using labels. For example:

  • Apply labels to new Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) that include holiday-specific copy or promotions.
  • Label sitelinks, callouts, or promo assets that reference Black Friday offers.
  • Tag ad groups or asset groups that are tied to limited-time sale messaging.

Using a clear naming convention makes it easier to filter, review, and schedule changes across campaigns without confusion.

If you want to automate this even further, you can create automated rules based on labels.

For example, you can set a rule to enable all ads with your Black Friday label at 12:01 a.m. on November 28. You can also set up rules to pause those same ads at the end of the promotion, reducing the chance that outdated messaging stays live.

You’d also want to create an automated rule to run to pause all non-Black Friday ads at the same time. This ensures that only your promo ads are running during Black Friday season.

If you end up creating Black Friday-specific campaigns, you can easily set start and end dates on them to ensure they only run during the allotted time.

While you don’t have complete scheduling control at the ad or asset level across platforms, you can use a combination of labels, automated rules, or campaign/ad group start and end dates. These give you enough flexibility to manage most scenarios without scrambling the morning of your launch.

If you’re running Meta Ads, be sure to upload your Black Friday creative and audience setups well in advance. Platforms are slower to review and approve ads during peak periods, and early delivery data will help the algorithm optimize once you start increasing budgets.

Give Smart Bidding Better Direction

Most advertisers are using some sort of Smart Bidding for their campaigns, especially around Black Friday. That doesn’t mean you should take a hands-off approach, though.

If you’re using Google Ads, consider seasonality adjustments if you’re planning for a short-term sale or expect a sudden fluctuation in conversion rates. These adjustments tell Google to expect better-than-usual performance during a specific window, and can help avoid underspending during flash sales.

Seasonality adjustments are currently available for these campaign types that use either a Target ROAS or Target CPA bid strategy:

  • Search.
  • Shopping.
  • Display.

If you’re using seasonality adjustments for conversion rates, then you can choose between these campaign types:

  • Search.
  • Display.
  • Shopping.
  • Performance Max.
  • App (in beta).

That said, they’re not suited for every situation. If you’re running a longer sale or have limited historical volume, the adjustment could cause more volatility than good.

For broader holiday performance, make sure your campaigns have enough data to support Smart Bidding decisions. Review the “Bid Strategy Report” and watch for signs of limited learning or constrained budgets.

Pushing into a critical promo window without stabilized bidding can lead to inefficient spend, especially with newer campaigns.

Check Your Product Feed Before It Becomes A Problem

It’s easy to focus on campaign settings and forget that your product feed is powering everything from standard Shopping campaigns to Performance Max. If it’s not accurate or timely, your best offers might not show up correctly.

In Google Merchant Center, navigate to the Diagnostics tab and resolve any disapprovals or mismatched pricing issues. These often spike around holidays when sale prices don’t sync correctly or out-of-stock products remain active.

Make sure your feed includes items like:

  • Up-to-date GTINs and product identifiers.
  • Attributes like ‘sale_price’ and ‘sale_price_effective_date’ for promotions.
  • High-quality images that meet platform guidelines.
  • Clear shipping and availability details.

If you’re running Performance Max campaigns, review the Listing Groups report to ensure your most valuable products are getting served. Many advertisers find that certain SKUs get minimal impressions due to budget spread or structural issues.

This is also a good time to upload holiday-themed creative assets, including lifestyle images and product videos. These can improve performance in placements like YouTube and Discover, which tend to ramp during PMax campaigns in Q4.

The more you control the feed and asset side, the less you have to worry about automation making subpar choices when competition is highest.

Expect Things To Break, And Plan Around That

Black Friday campaigns don’t always go according to plan.

Promo pages fail to update. Budgets cap out early. Tracking drops off mid-day. It’s worth thinking through what could go wrong now, while you still have time to build a backup plan.

Start with some of the basics in campaign planning:

  • Double-check conversion actions in Google Ads and Google Analytics 4. Make sure no duplicate events are being counted, and key actions like purchases, add-to-cart, and email sign-ups are being tracked.
  • Test final URLs on mobile and desktop. If you’re using promo pages, confirm they’re live and loading quickly. A slow checkout experience during Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) will almost always tank performance.
  • Pre-schedule creative updates where possible. You don’t want to be manually swapping sitelinks or headlines in the middle of a surge.
  • Double-check your automated rules. If you’re using rules to enable sale ads and pausing evergreen ads, make sure to have the platform(s) email you with any changes so you can confirm with confidence the right ads are being shown at the right time.
  • Set up alerts for unusual activities. If campaigns showcase a sudden ROAS drop, zero conversions, or unusual spend, you’ll want to be alerted in real-time. Even something as simple as a budget cap hitting before 10 a.m. can throw off the day if it goes unnoticed.

The more you can troubleshoot before launch week, the fewer fires you’ll need to put out when things are moving fast.

Don’t Shut Down Campaigns The Minute Cyber Monday Ends

It’s common for brands to ramp hard through Cyber Monday, then pause everything until January. But, many shoppers are still active well into December, especially those looking for last-minute gifts or deals that weren’t available earlier.

Based on previous personal experience, Google Ads auction data may show that competition could dip after Cyber Monday and shopping intent doesn’t disappear. Conversion rates often stay steady through the first two weeks of December, particularly for brands with fast shipping or digital products.

Rather than winding down completely, consider updating your messaging to reflect the urgency. Swap out “Black Friday” language for “Still Time to Save” or “Guaranteed Delivery Before Christmas.” Countdown ads and shipping deadline assets work well here.

If you’re running remarketing campaigns, exclude recent purchasers and focus on users who visited key pages but didn’t convert. These audiences tend to convert at lower cost-per-acquisition (CPA) during post-Cyber sales, especially if you’ve got gift cards or bundled offers to promote.

December also gives you a chance to build audience pools for Q1. Visitors from BFCM campaigns can be remarketed to in January for loyalty or cross-sell efforts. Just make sure your campaign structure allows for clean audience segmentation.

Planning Ahead Is Still Your Best Defense

Once your campaigns are running, focus on maintaining performance instead of overhauling what’s already working. Black Friday weekend tends to amplify everything, good or bad.

A stable structure, clean data, and smart pacing decisions matter more than any last-minute bid change.

This shopping season isn’t a one-day sprint anymore. It stretches across weeks of demand shifts, extended promotions, and changing intent signals. Advertisers who treat it as a cycle rather than a moment gain the clearest insights for what comes next.

Keep a close eye on pacing and creative fatigue, but trust the groundwork you’ve built. Review performance daily, document what drives the strongest returns, and note what didn’t hold up under pressure.

When your campaigns are ready before the chaos begins, the season stops being stressful and starts being strategic.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

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Oct 3 2025
New Report Reveals An 8% Mobile Landing Page Conversion Gap via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

A report from Unbounce shows that unoptimized mobile landing pages are costly, finding 83% of visits come from mobile devices, yet desktop pages convert 8% better.

Based on over 57 million conversions and 41,000 pages, the study highlights the need for the industry to adapt as mobile traffic increases but underperforms.

Highlights From The Report

Mobile Optimization: The Overlooked Priority

Unbounce’s Conversion Benchmark Report has a clear message:

“If you’re still building your landing pages for desktop first, with the mobile version being just a quick box to check before publishing, chances are you’re missing out big time.”

While mobile accounted for the vast majority of landing page visits, desktop pages outperformed by a notable margin.

The report asserts:

“An 8% gap in conversion rates is significant, but it gets even worse when you look at the number of conversions lost. If all industries optimized their pages, we might have reported over 1.3 million more conversions.”

Industry-Wide Benchmarks

Unbounce’s research indicates that the median conversion rate across all industries is 6.6 percent, with specific verticals varying from 3.8 percent to 12.3 percent.

Marketers can use this benchmark as a reference point, the report notes:

“Higher than the median? Your page is converting better than most. Lower than the median? Your page is converting worse than most.”

It warns that benchmarks only measure how often conversions happen, not their value or quality. This is especially important for campaigns aimed at high-value leads or sales, where just the raw conversion rate might not provide the full picture.

Simple Copy Converts

The research highlights that simpler language on landing pages tends to perform better.

Pages written at a 5th to 7th grade level see an 11 percent conversion rate, which is 56 percent higher than pages at an 8th to 9th grade level, and more than twice as effective as professional-level writing.

Unbounce warns:

“There’s a high likelihood that your conversion rate will drop as you add more difficult words to the page.”

Complex words with three or more syllables have a negative impact, showing a 24.3 percent decrease in connection with conversion rates.

As Unbounce puts it:

“Simple copy converts.”

Email & Paid Social Lead

Analyzing conversion performance across paid and organic channels, the report reveals that email is the top performer with an average conversion rate of 19.3 percent.

Paid social platforms such as Instagram (17.9 percent) and Facebook (13 percent) also perform well, surpassing paid search channels like Google Ads.

Why This Matters

As digital marketing evolves to prioritize mobile users and attention spans become shorter, maintaining fresh and optimized landing pages is key to ensuring your campaigns succeed.

These findings align with industry trends toward minimal UX, more A/B testing, and re-evaluating marketing channels.

Looking Ahead

Unbounce’s study serves as a reminder to examine landing pages more closely, particularly on mobile devices, and benchmark results against industry standards.

The full report provides practical advice, including optimizing for various devices, simplifying landing page messaging, and implementing A/B testing. Acting on these insights could help recover lost conversions.

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
Aug 22 2025
Tips For Running Competitor Campaigns In Paid Search via @sejournal, @timothyjjensen

Paid search professionals constantly debate the merits of running paid search campaigns bidding on competitor brand names. Questions such as the following may arise:

  • Is bidding on your competitors ethical?
  • Are the high costs-per-click (CPCs) worth spending the budget on?
  • Are you actually reaching people with buying intent?

In this article, I’ll talk through answers to these questions and more to help you understand if a competitor search campaign might be right for your brand.

Competitor Bidding Ethics

Google and Microsoft allow you to bid on your competitor’s name within keywords (and this right has even been tested in the courts here and here.), but you cannot directly mention a trademarked brand name (that you don’t have the rights to use) in ad copy.

In addition, even if you don’t include their name, you should not write your ad copy in a way that a user thinks they may be going to your competitor’s site instead of yours.

For instance, you might use the headline “Official Site” (without mentioning whose official site you’re pointing to). When a user sees that in conjunction with having searched for the competitor’s name, they may naturally think they’re going to that company’s site.

Finally, the landing page should also clearly feature your brand’s name and logo in order to avoid deception.

Cost-Benefit Analysis Of Competitor Bidding

Let’s face it: competitor keywords can have expensive CPCs. High competition around these keywords in many industries drives up cost.

You’ll also generally struggle to achieve a decent quality score due to other companies’ brand keywords naturally being deemed less relevant to your ads and landing pages, which can also impact cost.

Because of the high potential cost, competitor bidding does not make sense for all industries or brands.

For instance, if you’re selling products with a low profit margin, bidding on these pricy keywords may not work. Generally, this tactic works best for higher cost, higher margin products and services, as it’s easier to still yield a return on investment (ROI) after higher costs-per-acquisition (CPAs) and lower conversion rates.

Be careful also about entering competitor bidding “wars” for the sole reason that other brands are bidding on your name. This action can quickly lead to rising CPCs for all with little payoff.

One scenario where I’ve seen competitor bidding work best is when a company offers a very specific, complex service that’s difficult to sum up in a search query but has established brands that the right prospects would be familiar with.

For instance, if you’re promoting software for a particular type of industrial machine, niche buyers may be aware of companies that already provide that software.

Once you’ve established a use case for competitor bidding, you should establish a list of brands to use.

Determining Competitors To Bid On

When figuring out which competitor brands to bid on, you should rely on a combination of both internal company data as well as ad platform data.

First of all, talk with key stakeholders in marketing and sales to determine who the brand considers to be top competitors.

Who has similar products and services? Which brands target similar prospects (whether by location, demographic, or company traits)?

Note that this list may not and likely will not contain all potential competitors.

If you have established paid search campaigns already, use auction insights to see the top brands showing up for the same queries as yours. Of course, these may not all be completely relevant and will require some vetting through.

Once you’ve compiled a list, it’s time to think through the keywords you’ll bid on.

Who Is (And Isn’t) Your Audience

Be careful about going unnecessarily broad in the keywords you’re using in competitor campaigns.

Generally, if you’re just bidding on the brand name alone, you’re likely reaching a lot of existing customers looking to log in, place online orders, or find a nearby location without giving a second thought to anything else.

For instance, Apple isn’t going to sell many MacBooks by bidding on the word “Microsoft.”

Ideally, you want to reach people who are in a research phase, indicated by wording in their search query:

  • [Brand name] + cost/pricing
  • [Brand name] + compare/vs
  • [Brand name] + reviews
  • [Brand name] + pros/cons
  • [Brand name] + alternatives
  • [Brand name] + features

While a potentially riskier strategy, as people may be in a heated moment, you could also test targeting people experiencing issues and potentially in the market to switch:

  • [Brand name] + support
  • [Brand name] + troubleshoot
  • [Brand name] + cancel

Create Your Ads

Now, think through the ad copy you’ll put in front of prospects searching for competitors. Take some time to review competitor ads and offers, considering how your calls-to-action (CTAs) will stack up.

Think through areas where you “win” against certain competitors and highlight those. Remember that these may vary based on the brand you’re bidding against.

For instance, you may have lower costs than a certain competitor and highlight pricing for those searches, while you may have higher costs than another competitor but have unique features to highlight.

Also, look at how your offers compare. If one competitor offers a seven-day demo and you offer a 30-day demo, feature that in your ad.

This also should be an area you regularly monitor and adjust CTAs based on how competitors tweak their ads and offers.

What Happens After The Ad?

One maxim applicable to any paid search campaign is that what happens on the search engine results page up to the ad click is only one portion of the user experience.

A significant portion of the decision process happens after reaching the landing page, beyond what you can control in keywords and ad copy.

Think through what your prospect is seeing based on the context that they were researching a competitor. Your homepage probably isn’t the best place to land them, and the same sales landing page you use for more general keywords may not be ideal either.

Assuming a user is comparison shopping, placing some content on your landing page positioning your brand against others will likely help.

For instance, you could create a table showing how your features and pricing stack up vs. competitors (either mentioning specific names or providing industry averages).

You could also hone in on trust signals that set your brand apart. Highlight industry awards you’ve won. Mention the number of accounts serviced. Talk about how many integrations you have with commonly used products.

If you need to establish a baseline for comparing against other companies, prompt a large language model (LLM) to put together a list of features for your brand and a list of top competitors.

Provide the URLs for pages that would contain products/services to flesh this out.

Launch And Monitor Results

Once you have your competitor campaigns fleshed out, it’s time to get them off the ground and see what performance looks like.

In addition to ensuring proper conversion tracking and watching for lead/sale quality, you’ll also want to keep an eye out for both how current competitors change up their offers and new competitors entering the space that may be worth targeting.

With a carefully thought-out setup and proper monitoring, you may find that competitor search campaigns allow you to capture leads or sales from queries you were not previously reaching.

On the other hand, you may discover that for your industry, the CPAs and conversion rates aren’t worthwhile, but as with anything in PPC, you ran a test and learned the results.

At the very least, take stock of potential competitors in your field and consider testing if you are looking to expand your reach in paid search.

More Resources:

Featured Image: SvetaZi/Shutterstock

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