Act Now: Your Ads Measurement & Privacy Readiness Plan For 2024 & Beyond via @sejournal, @adsliaison

The PPC ecosystem is about to undergo significant changes driven by regulation.

With regulation updates such as regional consent requirements and Chrome’s deprecation of third-party cookies later this year (see the timeline from Chrome), as well as other shifts such as Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) policy and cross-device customer journeys, the amount of visible data available to marketers is on the decline.

With that, Google’s ad measurement products and the ecosystem as a whole must evolve to meet this moment and be positioned for the next era.

So much change can feel overwhelming, but with a solid plan, you’ll be ready.

When I joined Google in early 2021, it was clear that regulatory and privacy changes and AI advancements would be key focus areas for marketers over the next several years. Fast-forward three years, and we’re now at the inflection point.

In this article, we’ll walk through the big pieces to put in place to ensure your measurement capabilities continue now and in the years ahead.

Preparation Is Key

AI has been playing a critical role by enabling predictive and analytical capabilities and filling measurement gaps where data is not available.

AI-powered conversion modeling, for example, is essential for maintaining measurement, campaign optimization, and improved bidding capabilities.

As I wrote last year about GA4, for example, these shifts were a major driver for developing a measurement platform that can account for less observable data via third-party cookies and more data being aggregated to protect user anonymity.

Many marketers are still deeply reliant on third-party cookies.

As our products have evolved, there are important actions you should take now to ensure you’re taking advantage of new capabilities designed to help you maintain ad measurement in 2024 and beyond.

Let’s dive in.

Sitewide Tagging

This may sound basic, but the very first step you should take is to implement sitewide tagging with either the Google Tag or Google Tag Manager.

And if you have tagging set up, do a double-check to ensure it’s implemented correctly and collecting the data you need to measure conversions. Here’s how to get started with conversion tracking.

To check that you are tracking conversions correctly, check the “Status” column for each of your conversion actions in the summary table (Goals > Conversions > Summary). You can then troubleshoot if you think there may be problems – Tag Assistant is also a helpful tool for this.

Once your tagging is implemented fully, you have your measurement foundation in place and can start building on top of it. Which leads me to…

First-party Data

For years, discussions have been going on about the growing importance of first-party data – consented information you have collected directly from your visitors and customers – as a key part of building a durable measurement plan.

The need to focus on building your first-party data strategy may still have felt abstract, but with the deprecation of third-party cookies and less observable data, first-party data is what will power your advertising strategy in this new landscape.

Of course, better ads measurement is just one reason to have a first-party data strategy. When thinking about your first-party data plan, it’s important to start with a customer-centric point of view.

What’s the value exchange you’ll be able to deliver for your customers?

It could be early access to new products or services, special discounts, bonus content, loyalty rewards, or other offers that can help you build stronger customer relationships, improve customer lifetime value, and grow your customer base.

We’ve discussed how enhanced conversions for leads uses first-party data.

Additionally, you can connect CRM and customer data platform (CDP) platforms with Google Ads, Google Analytics 4, Campaign Manager 360, and Search Ads 360.

First-party audience lists like Customer Match can help improve audience modeling, expansion, and remarketing. Working with a Customer Match partner can make this process simpler.

Additionally, we introduced Google Ads Data Manager last year to make it much easier to connect and use your first-party data, including Customer Match lists, offline conversions and leads, store sales, and app data.

It’s continuing to roll out and will reach general availability this quarter. You’ll be able to access it in a new “Data manager” section within “Tools” when it becomes available in your account.

When you connect your customer and product data to Google’s advertising and measurement tools, you’ll have a more holistic view of the impact of your advertising.

This is also where AI comes in to enable conversion modeling, predictive targeting, and analytics solutions, even when user-level data isn’t available.

Enhanced Conversions

Enhanced conversions is an increasingly important feature as the privacy landscape evolves.

It can help provide a more accurate, aggregated view of how people convert after engaging with your ads, including post-view and cross-device conversions than is possible with site tagging alone.

Enhanced conversions work by sending hashed, user-provided data from your website to Google, which is then matched to signed-in Google accounts. Sales originating from Google Search and YouTube can then be attributed to ads in a privacy-safe way.

Supplementing your existing conversion tags with more observable data also strengthens conversion modeling and provides more comprehensive data to be able to measure conversion lift from your advertising, understand the incremental impact of your advertising, and help better inform Smart Bidding.

There are two flavors of enhanced conversions:

Enhanced Conversions For Web In Google Ads And GA4

Already available in Google Ads, we recently rolled out support for enhanced conversions for web in GA4 as well.

An advantage of implementing enhanced conversions in GA4 rather than only in Google Ads is that user-provided data can be used for additional purposes (such as demographics and interests, as well as paid and organic measurement).

Wondering if you should set up enhanced conversions in one or both? Here’s some guidance:

  • If you are using Google Ads conversion actions, you should use Google Ads enhanced conversions.
  • If you’re using GA4 for cross-channel conversion measurement, you should use Google Analytics-enhanced conversions.
  • If you’re doing both, you can opt to set them both up on the same property. However, you need to be aware of which one you are bidding to and including in the Conversion counts to avoid double counting conversions. Be sure your Google Ads conversion tracking setup only includes the appropriate conversions in the Conversions column. In other words, be sure you’re not including the same action from both Ads and GA4.

You’ll find details on setting up enhanced conversions in GA4 and/or Google Ads here.

Enhanced Conversions For Leads

If you’re tracking offline conversions, enhanced conversions for leads in Google Ads enable you to upload or import conversion data into Google Ads using first-party customer data from your website lead forms.

If you’re using offline conversion imports to measure offline leads (i.e., Lead-gen), we recommend upgrading to Enhanced conversions for leads.

Unlike OCI, with enhanced conversions for leads, you don’t need to modify your lead forms or CRM to receive a Google Click ID (GCLID).

Instead, enhanced conversions for leads uses information already captured about your leads – like email addresses – to measure conversions in a way that protects user privacy.

It’s also easy to set up with Google Tag, Google Tag Manager, or via that API if you want additional flexibility. It can then be configured right from within your Google Ads account.

Learn more about enhanced conversions for leads here. Note there are policy requirements and restrictions for using enhanced conversions.

Consent Mode

The accuracy of conversion measurement can also be improved with consent mode.

Consent choice requirements are part of regulatory changes and evolving privacy expectations (your legal and/or privacy teams can provide further guidance). Consent mode is the mechanism for passing your users’ consent choices to Google.

Consent mode has become especially relevant for advertisers with end-users in the European Economic Area (EEA) and the UK as Google strengthens enforcement of its EU user consent policy in March.

As part of this, consent mode (v2) now includes two new parameters – ad_user_data and ad_personalization – to send consent signals for ad personalization and remarketing purposes to Google.

You can find more details on consent mode v2 here. The simplest way to implement consent mode is to work with a Google CMP Partner.

If you have consent mode implemented but don’t update to v2, you will not have the option to remarket/personalize ads to these audiences in the future. To retain measurement for these audiences, you should implement consent mode by the end of 2024.

Consent mode also enables conversion tracking when consent is provided and conversion modeling when users don’t consent to ads or analytics cookies.

In Google Ads, when conversion modeling becomes available after you’ve met the thresholds, you’ll be able to view your conversion modeling uplift on “domain x country level” in the conversion Diagnostics tab.

You may have seen a notification in Google Ads asking you to check your consent settings. This message will appear to all customers globally to alert you to the new Google Services selection in your account and to check your settings.

We recommend all relevant Google services be configured to receive data labeled with consent to maintain campaign performance.

Conversion Modeling

Conversion modeling has long been used in Google’s measurement solutions and is increasingly important with the deprecation of individual identifiers like cookies on the web and device IDs in apps.

Additionally, Google privacy policies prohibit the use of fingerprinting and other tactics that use heuristics to identify and track individual users.

How it works:

Google’s conversion modeling uses AI/machine learning trained on a set of observable data sources – including first-party data; data from platform APIs like Apple’s SKAdNetwork and Chrome’s Privacy Sandbox Attribution Reporting API; and data sets of users similar to those interacting with your ads – to help fill in the gaps when those signals are missing.

Conversions are categorized as “observable” (conversions that can be tied directly to an ad interaction) and “unobservable” (conversions that can’t be directly linked to specific ad interactions).

We then identify an observable group of conversions with similar behaviors and characteristics  (again, based on a diverse set of observable data sources noted above) and train the campaign model to arrive at a total number of conversions made by all users who interacted with your ad.

To validate model accuracy, we apply the conversion models to a portion of traffic that’s held back.

We then compare modeled and actual observed conversions from this traffic to check that there are no significant discrepancies and ensure our models can correctly quantify the number of conversions that took place on each campaign channel.

This information is also used to tune the models. You can read more about how conversion modeling works here.

You’ll find modeled data in your conversions and cross-device conversions reporting columns.

How To Improve Your Conversion Modeling

This is where everything we’ve discussed so far comes together! 

The following steps will ensure you’re capturing as many “observable” conversions as possible. This will provide a more solid foundation for your conversion modeling.

The first step to improving your conversion modeling, no surprise, is to be sure your conversion tracking is set up properly with Google Tag or Google Tag Manager.

Next, implement enhanced conversions for web. For conversions affected by Apple’s ITP, enhanced conversions help advertisers recover up to 15% additional conversions compared to advertisers who haven’t implemented enhanced conversions.

Advertisers who implement enhanced conversions also see a conversion uplift of 17% on YouTube and a 3.5% impact on Search bidding.

Then, consider using consent mode. Again, this is particularly relevant for advertisers in the EEA, UK, and CH regions whose measurement is affected by the ePrivacy Directive.

Additionally, for app developers, on-device conversion measurement helps increase the number of observable app install or in-app conversions from your iOS App campaigns in a privacy-centric manner.

Data-driven attribution looks at all of your ad interaction account-wide and compares the paths of customers who convert to those of users who don’t convert to identify conversion patterns. It identifies the steps in the journey that have a higher predictability of leading to a conversion. The model then gives more credit to those ad interactions.

Each data-driven model is specific to each advertiser. Those who switch to a data-driven attribution model from a non-data-driven one typically see a 6% average increase in conversions.

That additional conversion data also helps inform Smart Bidding.

GA4 properties began including paid and organic channel-modeled conversions around the end of July 2021.

Reports such as the Event, Conversions, and Attribution reports and Explorations will include modeled data and automatically attribute conversion events across channels based on a mix of observed data where possible and modeled data where necessary.

Marketing Mix Modeling

With the loss of visible event-level data, many CMOs are also taking a fresh look at aggregated measurement methods such as marketing mix modeling (MMM).

While MMMs aren’t new, they are privacy-friendly and have become increasingly accessible for companies with robust first-party data strategies.

This month, we introduced an open-source MMM called Meridian to help advertisers get a more holistic picture across channels.

By open-sourcing the model, advertisers can choose to use the MMM solution as it is, build on top of it, or use whichever pieces they find most useful.

It’s launching with three primary methodologies to help marketers:

  • Get better video measurement by modeling reach and frequency in MMMs.
  • Improve lower funnel measurement by accounting for organic search volume; and
  • Calibrate MMMs for accuracy by integrating incrementality experiments across channels.

Meridian is currently in closed beta, but all eligible non-Meridian MMM users can now review and use any of these three methodologies in their own models.

Take Action Now

Now is the time to ensure you have an action plan for durable, future-proof, privacy-first measurement.

I know these may sound like a bunch of buzzwords, but the aim is to have a plan that will prepare you for third-party cookie deprecation and can evolve with future changes.

More resources:


Featured Image: Photon photo/Shutterstock

Google Ads Checklist: 5 Ways To Audit & Optimize Your Campaigns To Boost Results

This post was sponsored by That PPC Guy. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Google Ads campaigns not yielding the desired results?

Want to turn things around, but don’t quite know where to start?

Unsure of where your PPC campaign may have gone wrong?

Google Ads can be a powerful tool to drive traffic, generate leads, and increase sales.

However, managing your campaigns successfully can be a complicated task – especially as a small business owner competing for search visibility against the big spenders.

Between proper audience targeting, conversion tracking, and keyword optimization, there’s a lot that goes into making a Google Ads campaign effective.

So, if you’re going to invest your precious time and money, you might as well get the results you deserve.

With that said, let’s explore how you can: 

First, what should you avoid when creating Google Ads?

5 Common Causes For Underperforming Google Ads

Some of the most common issues encountered by small businesses using Google Ads are:

  1. Missing or incorrect audience targeting.
  2. Lack of proper conversion tracking setup.
  3. Irrelevant or poorly targeted search terms/keywords.
  4. Failure to establish negative keywords.
  5. No connection to Google Business pages.

So, let’s dive into how you can fix each of these issues to improve your Google Ads campaigns.

1. How To Improve Google Ads Audience Targeting

One of the most common pitfalls in Google Ads campaigns is improper audience targeting, as many tend to ignore or neglect to select the bulk of their audience.

It’s estimated that $37 Billion in marketing spend is wasted every year due to poor targeting and a lack of relevancy.

This is why it’s important to optimize your audience targeting effectively by refining your settings to ensure they align with your campaign objectives and audience demographics.

You can select and segment your audience based on:

  • Who they are.
  • Their interests and habits.
  • What they’re actively researching.
  • People who’ve already interacted with your ads or website, and may return.

Google offers many in-market and affinity audiences to select from, and you can also add bid adjustments to emphasize the most relevant audiences.

Another option is to build custom audience segments using URLs, customer lists, and keywords.

The Easy Way: 

While you focus on your favorite tasks that grow your business, That PPC Guy can build your custom audiences, using your customer data to get you in front of your ideal audience.

2. How To Improve Future Conversions With Conversion Tracking

Accurate conversion tracking is essential for determining your ROI and measuring the effectiveness of your Google Ads campaigns.

If you don’t take the time to set up conversion tracking properly, you’ll miss out on valuable information about what makes your customers decide to convert.

With Google Ads, you can track conversion actions such as web purchases and sign-ups, phone calls, app installs and in-app actions, local actions, and more.

How To Import GA4 Conversions Into Google Ads

Once you’ve set up conversions in Google Analytics 4, you can import them into Google Ads for reporting and bidding, using the following steps:

  1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
  2. In the top right, click Tools and Settings Google Ads | tools [Icon].
  3. Go to Measurement > Conversions.
  4. In the top left, click + New conversion action.
  5. Click Import, select Google Analytics 4 properties, then click Continue.
  6. Select each conversion event you want to import, then click Import and continue.
  7. Click Done.

The Easy Way:

That PPC Guy can audit your attribution and conversion tracking and give you a personalized strategy to increase your paid ad ROI.

3. How To Focus On Keyword Relevance & Targeting

The success of your Google Ads campaigns ultimately hinges on the relevance of your keywords.

Irrelevant or poorly targeted search terms can lead to wasted ad spend and low-quality traffic.

Which Keywords Are Irrelevant?

If you’re choosing the “wrong” keywords to target in your campaigns, it usually means that the search terms or phrases you’re using don’t align with the products, services, or content offered on your website.

For example, if you own a clothing store specializing in formal wear, targeting keywords related to casual or athletic wear would be irrelevant.

And ultimately, these keywords won’t accurately reflect the intent of users or attract your desired audience.

Making sure you target the right keywords helps ensure your ads are being shown to users who are interested in or actively searching for what you have to offer. 

How To Find Relevant Keywords That Will Attract The Right Visitors

First, you’ll want to conduct thorough keyword research to identify relevant keywords that align with your campaign goals and audience intent.

Then, you’ll want to make sure you’re refining your keyword lists regularly so they remain targeted and effective.

Whether you use an exact keyword match or a broad match type, you should continually review to ensure you’re reaching the right audience.

Or, you could try the easy way and let That PPC Guy do the keyword research for you, and then build out a campaign around your objectives and budget. Get started by outsourcing your Google Ads Management now.

4. How To Manage Your Negative Keyword Lists

Neglecting to establish negative keyword lists can result in your ads being displayed for irrelevant search queries, leading to wasted clicks and low conversion rates.

As you set up your campaigns, you want to create these lists in order to prevent your ads from being triggered by certain search terms that are not relevant to your business or likely to attract clicks from your targeted users.

A negative keyword list is an effective way to exclude specific categories of keywords across multiple campaigns or the entire account.

However, sifting through individual negative keywords within a campaign or ad group can be quite time-consuming, much like identifying duplicate keywords.

With negative keyword lists, you can organize certain keywords into groups and apply them to different campaigns with ease.

To access this feature in Google Ads, navigate to Tools and Settings>> Shared Library >> Negative keyword lists.

Creating and regularly updating a negative keyword list is an essential part of optimizing your campaigns and ensuring that your ads are reaching the right audience.

The Easy Way: 

That PPC Guy will take the time to identify and implement negative keywords to filter out irrelevant traffic and improve the overall performance of your campaigns.

Learn more about how PPC management services can help your business.

5. How To Integrate Your Google Business Profile

Integrating your Google Business Profile with your Google Ads campaigns can not only enhance your local visibility but also improve the overall performance of your ads. 

A Google Business Profile is a free tool that allows businesses to create and manage their online presence, providing essential information such as location, contact details, hours of operation, and customer reviews to help users find and connect with them on Google Search and Maps.

You’ll want to make sure that your Google Business Profiles are properly connected to your ads and optimize them for local SEO in order to maximize your reach within your target market.

With location assets from Google Business pages, your ads can display information such as your address, a map to your location, or the distance to your business to help people find your stores.

People can then click or tap your location when shown with your final ad to get further details about your location on your location page, which includes the most relevant business information all in one place.

For seamless integration with Google Business pages, try Google Ads management with That PPC Guy.

Start Auditing & Optimizing Your Campaigns With That PPC Guy

Optimizing your Google Ads campaigns requires proactive effort and attention to detail – not to mention a deep understanding of the platform and its nuances, which can be overwhelming for those without extensive experience.

That’s where active campaign management resources like That PPC Guy come in, with expert advice and solutions to help you master Google Ads and grow your brand.

By addressing common challenges such as audience targeting, conversion tracking, keyword relevance, negative keyword management, and Google Business page integration, you can optimize your campaigns for success.

Schedule a discovery call with That PPC Guy and learn more about how to achieve your business goals through Google Ad management.


Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by That PPC Guy. Used with permission.

PPC Made Easy: 4 Strategies To Save Time With No-Cost Tools

This post was sponsored by Redesign.co. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Tired of overspending on PPC tools that provide more than you need? It’s time to get back to the basics.

Whether you’re an established PPC manager or a small business owner handling your company’s Google Ads campaign, advertising tasks can quickly become overwhelming.

While it’s tempting to turn to pre-packaged software for help, there may be a more efficient way.

Learn to do more with less by following a few PPC management tips for maximum efficiency and performance.

1. Become Proficient In Google Ads Offline Editor: Your Secret Weapon For Quick Edits

Time Savings: 1 hour/week

It’s surprising how many Google Ads users neglect this powerful tool.

With the Google Ads Offline Editor, you can quickly download, edit, copy, paste, move, review, and upload changes.

The real magic is that you can make dozens of changes in seconds without waiting for the browser to reload every time you go to another screen. If you’ve spent any time in the Online Editor, you know how annoying this can be.

How Google Ads Offline Editor Speeds Up Your PPC Workflow

Here’s a quick example of how efficient the Offline Editor can be.

Imagine you’re running a PPC ads campaign called “Plumbing.”

You’ve got various services under this umbrella, but you’ve noticed that water heaters are particularly in demand.

So, you decide it’s time to break out the “Water Heaters” ad group from your Plumbing campaign into its own campaign.

In 15 seconds, working offline in Google Ads Editor, you can:

  1. Duplicate the “Plumbing” campaign.
  2. Rename it “Water Heaters”.
  3. Delete the non-relevant ad groups in the new campaign.
  4. Pause the old Water Heater ad group in the old campaign.

If you do this online, each action – pausing or deleting – requires navigating through and waiting for multiple web pages to load.

Offline, making changes like pausing multiple ad groups or deleting irrelevant keywords can be done in bulk with a few clicks, without any loading delays.

While seemingly insignificant, small delays add up to significant amounts of wasted time and decreased productivity throughout a campaign’s lifespan.

This streamlined approach not only saves time but also eliminates the clutter of “paused” or “removed” assets in your campaign, keeping your workspace organized and focused.

In the Offline Editor, you can make edits before posting online. When you delete items from the new campaign, there’s no history of the old keywords, ads, or ad groups existing. Once they’re gone, they’re gone – no residual clutter.

But this just scratches the surface regarding the Offline Editor’s functionality. Here are a few other things you can do with this no-cost tool:

  • Upload/edit campaigns in bulk from a CSV.
  • Import from Google Drive.
  • Quickly apply Negative Mobile App lists (among many other options).
  • Copy and paste location targeting in seconds.
  • Compare account structures side-by-side.
  • Edit PMAX campaigns.
  • Upload photos.
  • Edit extensions in bulk.
  • Catch errors before pushing live.

2. Master DIY Tools: Easily Build Quick Solutions In Your PPC Workflow

Time Savings: 20 min/week

Need Custom, No-Cost PPC Tools? Build Yours With Our Help.

Are you considering using high-end budget pacing tools? You may be surprised to find that creating your own versions in spreadsheets can be more effective.

Despite popular opinion, automated PPC management software does not guarantee a life free of issues. In fact, it gives some people a false sense of security.

Does this mean that you should completely shy away from automation? Absolutely not!

While automation is useful, it shouldn’t entirely replace vigilant, hands-on management.

For instance, what if data to the software lags or something is set up incorrectly and the software starts ramping budget unbeknownst to you?

In fact, we’ve seen an account overspend by nearly 50% in a month under automated software.

How To Track PPC Campaigns At A Lower Cost

Imagine starting your day by reviewing a custom spreadsheet in Google Sheets or Excel that acts as your PPC command center.

A custom spreadsheet can:

  • Show yesterday’s spend, monthly pacing versus budget, and L7 and L30 KPIs.
  • Offer complete recommendations for daily budget adjustments.
  • Actively recommend actions to meet your monthly targets.
  • Display alerts to flag any account that starts overspending.
  • Keep your PPC team agile and informed.

With our spreadsheets, we manually make budget changes at Redesign.co because, frankly, we want that control.

Budgets are vital to client-agency relationships, and keeping the decision-making power close at hand ensures every dollar spent is a dollar well-considered.

Another significant advantage you’ll find with Google Sheets or Excel is the ability to tailor reports to your specific needs – a level of flexibility often lacking in PPC management software.

We’ve used the same report for over a year, and it’s custom-built for us. It’s still 98% the same as one year ago.

Talk about a huge ROI on our initial time spent building it!

PPC Made Easy: 4 Strategies To Save Time With No-Cost ToolsImage created by Redesign.co, January 2024

3. Streamline Account QA & Maintenance: Google Sheets As Your Efficiency Ally

Time Savings: 2 hours/week

Simplify Your PPC QA. Let Us Help Create Your Free Template.

Google Sheets can also play a critical role in your PPC management by creating robust systems and processes for PPC account QA and maintenance.

Mistakes like burning through a month’s budget in two days, directing traffic to the wrong website, or typos in ad copy are costly.

It’s the little things that often go unnoticed until they snowball into major issues, affecting your credibility and client trust.

Use a simple tool like Sheets or Excel to create well-crafted, structured systems to prevent mistakes.

We use systems and QA checklists to:

  • Keep PPC budgets on track.
  • Ensure traffic goes to the correct landing page.
  • Regularly review search terms.
  • Catch ad copy typos.
  • Monitor ad schedules and targeting accuracy.
  • Quickly fix conversion tracking issues.
  • Stay on top of crucial account verification deadlines.
  • Notice subtle changes in performance.

With thorough, well-designed QA lists in a spreadsheet, you can zip through your weekly and monthly QA checks, sidestepping blunders that cost time and money and hurt client relationships.

We’ve learned that even the sharpest managers benefit from structured systems. Allowing managers to “wing it” and rely solely on their expertise creates blind spots.

Mistakes happen not because people are unqualified but because they’re human; structure and systems act as a guardrail against costly human mistakes.

Avoiding a common yet critical PPC mistake requires a delicate balance: not getting too absorbed in the minutiae or losing sight of the big picture when optimizing accounts.

The key is in setting up systems that allow managers to effectively alternate between a “10,000-foot view” for overarching strategy and a “magnifying glass” for detailed scrutiny.

How To Set Up QA In Google Sheets

The Easy Way: Build Your Free Custom Template With Us.

Utilizing Google Sheets or Excel for listing all essential tasks scheduled bi-weekly and monthly and holding our team accountable for each task.

A built-in notification feature gently nudges us if a task is overdue, ensuring that nothing slips through the cracks.

PPC Made Easy: 4 Strategies To Save Time With No-Cost ToolsImage created by Redesign.co, January 2024
PPC Made Easy: 4 Strategies To Save Time With No-Cost ToolsImage created by Redesign.co, January 2024

4. Use Google Apps Script For Proactive Automation

Time Savings: 1 hour/week

Losing sleep at night worrying about your Google Ads campaigns? The key to your peace of mind is preventing problems before they happen.

By using Apps Script to automate certain tasks, you can keep all your campaigns on track, even when you’re focused elsewhere.

Scripts require a bit of coding knowledge, but the proliferation of ChatGPT allows you to get 90% of the code written for you.

One of our favorite scripts at the moment pauses campaign ad spend and sends an email when an account reaches a pre-set threshold. The applications don’t stop at monitoring ad spend, though.

Need help catching PPC errors?

From scanning PPC ad copy for spelling mistakes and broken URLs to setting up alerts for sudden changes in KPIs, Google Apps Script can be your first line of defense.

Looking to refine PPC keyword strategies?

Set up a script to analyze search terms and send a monthly summary of those generating clicks but not conversions.

Tired of pulling data for reports?

Use a script to automate the process in a Google Sheet for real-time reporting and analysis.

You can even connect it to the reporting dashboard mentioned earlier so that it’s entirely hands-off once built!

Bonus Tip For The Tech-Savvy: Advanced Automation With Anomaly Detection

Time Savings: 2 hours/week

If you’re already comfortable with Apps Script and have experience with Python or R, you can take the previous strategy up a notch by automating anomaly detection.

This isn’t a beginner strategy, but we’ve found it incredibly effective. By combining the vigilance of Google Scripts with the analytical power of Python, we’ve set up a system at Redesign.co that alerts us to any unusual activity within our campaigns.

Every morning, we receive a report pinpointing recent anomalies, complete with graphs of key metrics to help us grasp the full context.

PPC Made Easy: 4 Strategies To Save Time With No-Cost ToolsImage created by Redesign.co, January 2024

Transform Your PPC The Redesign.co Way

Mastering PPC doesn’t have to mean investing in expensive, complex software. It’s about smart, efficient strategies that maximize your resources and minimize hassle.

No-cost tools like Google Ads Offline Editor and Google Sheets provide a DIY path to transform your PPC campaign, turning potential chaos into an easily manageable system customized to your needs.

If you’re looking for more PPC management strategies, along with expert support, Redesign.co offers a partnership that extends beyond the basics. Book a free, no-pressure call with our PPC marketing agency to learn how we can help you focus more on growth and less on the day-to-day grind.

This article has been sponsored by Redesign.co, and the views presented herein represent the sponsor’s perspective.

Ready to start optimizing your website? Sign up for Redesign.co and get the data you need to deliver great user experiences.


Image Credits

Featured Image: Image by Redesign.co. Used with permission.

Paid Media Marketing In 2024: 7 Changes Marketers Should Make via @sejournal, @brookeosmundson

If you fail to incorporate this part, you run the risk of targeting the wrong sector of people, ultimately throwing money down the proverbial drain.

However, if you retarget and refresh your approach, you’re bound to find a dynamic audience that correlates with your vision.

In the end, audience management alone can be worth its weight in gold.

4. Prepare For Video Content Dominance

You’ve likely heard this phrase before in marketing: content is king.

With a slight tweak for 2024, the new hot phrase should be: video content is king.

Not only is video taking over social platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat, but it’s also asserting its dominance in YouTube Ads. YouTube Shorts, the platform’s short-form video offering, is booming.

With this new form of video comes a new ad format: vertical video ads.

Not only should marketers focus on video marketing in general – 2024 is the year to get more sophisticated with video strategy.

Marketers should prioritize creating engaging and high-quality video content that’s appropriate for each platform on which it will be delivered.

If the thought of creating video content for multiple platforms scares you, just remember that a little goes a long way.

Start by creating evergreen content about your brand and test those with different lengths.

These can be used and recycled on multiple platforms and can be used for organic and paid video content simultaneously.

Just remember to create a variety so that your users don’t see the same message or content on the same platforms, which can reduce the effectiveness of video marketing.

5. Don’t Sleep On Microsoft Ads

Microsoft Ads continues to enhance its advertising platform year after year.

Not only does it have many of the same coveted features as Google Ads, but it has added features that are unique to the platform.

As a marketing professional, your brand will surely benefit from digging into it more in 2024.

Some of the most notable updates Microsoft Ads launched in the last twelve months include:

  • Video and CTV ads: Microsoft unveiled these new ad types on its platform in September of 2023. Advertisers can choose from online video ads or connected TV ads that are non-skippable while a user is streaming content. This gives advertisers big and small a leg up on what once used to be a very complicated process of buying TV ads.
  • Three new generative AI solutions: Also announced in September 2023, Microsoft came out with three new AI features to help grow and scale. These include Compare & Decide ads, ads for Chat API, and Copilot campaign creation.
  • Data-driven attribution reporting: Gone are the days of last-click measurement! Microsoft Ads enhanced its UET tagging solution and implemented data-driven attributing modeling. It uses machine learning to calculate the actual contributions of each ad interaction.

While Microsoft still holds a lower share of the available search engines, just remember that you’re leaving a whole slew of potential customers behind by not considering this underestimated ad platform.

6. Focus On Optimizing The User Experience

Between a mix of shorter human attention spans and limited marketing budgets, every interaction and website experience counts.

If you find that your pre-sale metrics are favorable – such as high engagement or high CTR – but never result in a sale, you likely don’t have an ad problem. You have a user experience problem.

In 2024, consumers expect more from brands, especially if they’re spending their hard-earned money with that company.

Ask yourself, when was the last time you sat down and went through your website’s checkout process through the lens of a customer?

If you’re not sure where to start on optimizing your website experience for users, here are some ideas to get you started:

  • Use tools like Hot Jar or User Testing to get real-life analytics of how your customers are interacting and what their pain points are.
  • Review the website landscape on desktop and mobile. While this may be a no-brainer, many websites still forget to optimize for mobile!
  • Make sure that any relevant call-to-actions (CTAs) are above the fold – yes, on mobile, too!
  • Check your site speed.

These are items that should continuously be monitored and not a “set and forget,” which unfortunately happens quite a bit.

Optimizing the website user experience can have a positive impact on those paid media campaigns and can make those dollars go further in the future.

7. Use AI Tools To Your Advantage

Let’s face it: Machine learning and AI aren’t going anywhere.

For marketing leaders, 2024 really is the time to lean into its advantages instead of running away from the inevitable advances.

It’s not a question of whether to use AI or not. It’s a matter of how to use AI to your advantage.

While companies are tightening their budgets and scaling back staff, PPC marketers are constantly being asked to do more with less.

This is where AI comes in.

In fact, using AI can strengthen your ROI for paid media campaigns of all kinds (whatever channel you prefer).

Just make sure you don’t sacrifice your brand’s personality for a little efficiency.

One way you can do this is with Google’s generated AI assets (currently in beta). Using its Gemini-powered AI solution, the tool allows for more streamlined campaign creation and generated ad assets, including images, headlines, and descriptions for ads, and more.

Additionally, you’re likely already using one of Google’s Smart Bidding strategies to automate the bidding process.

With a combination of creativity and machine learning, your ads have the potential to go farther than ever before.

Your 2024 Plan Should Not Be Static

If the past year(s) have taught us anything in marketing, it’s to be fluid.

In some cases, tactics that used to be tried and true are now more volatile than ever.

Take advantage of advances in AI to boost your strategic advantage, and keep in mind platforms that you’ve typically shied away from – the time may come to incorporate them into your 2024 strategy.

What changes are you most excited to try this year?

More resources:


Featured Image: Sutthiphong Chandaeng/Shutterstock

Smart Paid Strategy: 4 Tips To Save You $4K In Monthly Ad Spend via @sejournal, @CallRail

As a marketing agency, the bottom line for your clients comes down to how well you’re managing their budget.

No one likes the idea of wasted ad spend, but often, it can be hard to tell which funds are actually being put to good use.

Even when a campaign is successful, it’s important to understand which tactics are more effective than others.

How do you determine which platforms are generating the most quality leads for your clients? And how do you prove it?

With the right tools at your disposal, you can remove the guesswork from your marketing strategy and analyze performance more efficiently.

The key is to find out exactly what’s working and what’s not so you know where to focus your ad spend moving forward.

After all, a simple shift in budget allocation could ultimately save you thousands of dollars.

So, how can you optimize your marketing strategy and trim the unnecessary fat in your budget?

Let’s explore the top tools and tactics you can use to reduce your cost per lead and boost ROI this year.

Tip 1: Get A Strong Understanding Of Your True, Granular ROI

One of the biggest problems agency marketers face is limited insights, which can greatly impact decision-making.

Without the full picture of your marketing performance, it can be difficult to identify your top-performing – as well as underperforming – channels.

This was the challenge for shared workspace management and consulting firm Workspace Strategies.

However, with the right tracking and recording tools, they were able to gain valuable performance insights and pivot their strategy to eliminate wasted ad spend – ultimately saving them $1,000 per month!

So how’d they pull this off? Let’s dig deeper into how the firm was able to prove the true ROI for its campaigns.

The Downside Of Using Multi-Channel Advertising

The bigger a brand’s digital footprint, the more successful it’ll be, right? – Well, not necessarily.

Although it’s important to expand your online presence, there is such a thing as overdoing it.

It’s one thing to market on multiple online platforms, but how can you tell whether they actually bring value to your business?

Workspace Strategies was utilizing Google Ads, as well as various social media platforms to maintain the occupancy rates at their managed workspaces.

Jason, the firm’s Director of Operations, suspected that some of these channels were generating more leads than others.

However, he struggled to prove which marketing channels truly drive results.

Tracking & Optimizing For Maximum Campaign Success

The solution for Workspace Strategies, in this case, was simple: They were able to track and optimize their campaigns more effectively with Call Tracking by CallRail.

With this advanced tool, the firm was able to attribute every one of their leads to a specific channel, which helped them remove marketing spend from ineffective social platforms.

“When you’re making decisions about how to allocate your marketing budget, proof of ROI is everything. We got proof with CallRail.”

– Jason Tiemeier, Director of Operations at Workspace Strategies

Read the full case study to learn more about Workspace Strategies’ success.

How To Uncover Your Highest ROI Channel

With 360° data, you can:

  • See which sources and keywords are generating high-quality leads.
  • Pinpoint which paid ad campaigns are driving the most calls for your business.
  • Improve customer service using Call Recording to identify opportunities for staff training and coaching.
  • Speed up sales and drive ROI more efficiently.

If you’re ready to prove – and improve – the value of your marketing tactics, it’s time to add CallRail’s Call Tracking to your marketing tech stack.

Tip 2: Expand Your Datasets Outside Of Google Analytics 4

If you’re a business with multiple locations, tools like Google Analytics 4 may only provide you with a partial picture of your marketing ROI.

But what if you need to track the source of leads who contact your business by phone?

As businesses increasingly rely on phone calls as a valuable touchpoint for customer interactions, diversifying your datasets is even more important.

The Limitations Of GA4

While Google Analytics 4 certainly has its benefits, it also has its share of limitations.

Some of the most notable challenges include:

  • Complex data migration.
  • A new reporting interface.
  • Fewer attribution models.
  • Limited data collection.

For Workspace Strategies, the limited data Google Analytics provided made things particularly difficult, as it painted an incomplete picture of user interactions and behavior.

However, with Call Recording by CallRail they were able to collect valuable customer insights and close more sales.

How To Improve Customer Interactions With Call Monitoring

Sometimes, the problem with businesses simply lies in how they’re interacting with their customers – anything from excessively long phone calls to weak sales pitches could end up costing them conversions.

For instance, when Jason of Workspace Strategies started monitoring recorded phone conversations with incoming leads in CallRail, he uncovered some missteps made by staff members while trying to close sales.

As a result, the firm was able to quickly incorporate these findings into staff coaching and training.

Find out more about how Workspace Strategies identified and corrected their client-customer communication gaps.

Tip 3: Boost Campaign Results With AI-Enhanced Call Data Analysis

Often, businesses that receive a high volume of inbound phone calls through their marketing campaigns struggle to qualify those leads efficiently and accurately.

However, trying to outsource this task can be expensive and drive up the overall cost per lead.

For example, digital marketing agency Wit Digital dealt with inaccurate and expensive lead qualification, with their cost per lead sitting well above the industry average.

To resolve this, they powered up Call Tracking with CallRail’s Conversation Intelligence software.

As a result, Wit Digital is now saving up to $4,000 per month with a 64% lower cost per lead.

Learn more about how the agency benefited from CallRail in the full case study.

How To Use AI To Unlock The Data Within Your Calls

Conversation Intelligence uses AI technology to analyze your calls and turn your conversations into easy-to-act-on insights.

This advanced technology can:

  • Automatically record and transcribe all of your phone calls with near human-level accuracy, so you can easily refine keyword lists for agency clients.
  • Easily spot keywords and phrases in every call for automated insights and analytics.
  • Define rules to classify calls automatically when specific conversation criteria are met.

“With Conversation Intelligence, I have new insights into what’s working in our campaigns and what’s not. Sometimes even a simple word change can make all the difference.”

Ryan Cook, Director of Client Strategy at Wit Digital

Automate Your Analysis & Achieve Higher Accuracy

With Conversation Intelligence, you get more accurate:

  • Keyword spotting.
  • Auto-tagging and lead qualification.
  • Sentiment analysis.

Plus, you can automatically filter and categorize your phone calls – for instance, if a call from a first-time caller lasts more than 60 seconds, you’ll know it’s very likely a qualified lead and can have it automatically categorized as such.

By removing the need to manually listen to calls and categorize them, Wit Digital was able to stop overpaying vendors to analyze their call data.

Wit Digital is now getting a better return on its own marketing efforts and retaining more customers as they too get better ROI on their pay-per-click campaigns.

And now, CallRail’s new multi-language transcriptions can even help agencies overcome language barriers between clients and their customers, regardless of their native tongue.

Ready to automate your data analysis and boost your campaign results? Try CallRail’s Conversation Intelligence free for 14 days.

Tip 4: Consolidate Your Marketing Data & Streamline Your Process

Sometimes, the hassle of navigating between multiple platforms can be overwhelming.

Media Planning: 4 Tips For Planning Your Digital Media Mix via @sejournal, @joshuacmccoy

From an agency advertiser’s perspective, our job is fun and exciting but also challenging and laborious in the same breath.

Each scoped campaign, across a myriad of industries and objectives, can present the daunting task of developing the best digital media to approach the right audience and satisfy the client’s needs.

While projects should never be scoped in a templated one-size-fits-all manner, to save you time and worry, your process should.

Understanding The Ask

When confronted with a client’s need, it is essential to understand where we need to be by the end to understand where we can start.

There are often multiple objectives – for example, to build awareness but also generate leads.

This is not achieved in one fell swoop; effectively, one leads to another.

Ask the client, “What would be considered a success in the end?”

I know that we have all seen so many different marketing funnel variations over the years, but simplified, it should be a part of your initial consideration set.

Understanding Objectives

Awareness

I like to say that often you won’t be paid today for the work you did today – but someday you will.

This is the appropriate mindset to convey to your team and clients.

The work you do here will pay dividends and result in non-paid benefits in the future, unlike paid lead generation campaigns, where the leads stop when the spend stops.

Tactics to achieve this objective include:

Consideration

The middle ground, or what I call the “considerate audience,” typically knows who you are.

Your job is to help them on their journey to understand that you are a likely candidate for their conversion – that is to say, they should buy from you.

Tactics to achieve this objective include:

Action

Being present for those who are potentially looking for you is key to closing the loop on a customer journey.

Tactics to achieve this objective include:

Understanding The Journey

Audiences vary so much between industries, products, and service types.

Where one audience may typically have a very short journey, your efforts can be better focused on the action phase with SEO or PPC.

Essentially, be there when they are looking for a first-touch conversion.

Awareness should be a critical component for a long-journey audience such as car buyers, where there are nearly two dozen touchpoints.

Understand that most of the people who will see your ad will not be a customer this week, month, or maybe even year. Your job is to create familiarity for when their journey will start.

Driving brand awareness early can shore up your total amount of touchpoints needed to convert.

If you don’t necessarily know your audience well – or their journey – do your homework.

There is a wealth of resources out there that can help you better understand audiences, current trends, and behaviors – such as the Consumer Insights section of Think With Google.

Also, it doesn’t hurt to talk to the internal client sales team. They know common behaviors, ideal search terms, and where prospects typically interact with the brand along a journey.

Scoping Opportunity

By this point in the process, you should understand the ask, the potential customer, and the weighted level of need from across the funnel.

This now will allow you to understand what you should likely estimate within budget.

Media Analysis Tip

While scoping for PPC, SEO, and paid social can typically be a self-serve process, media planning can often take many resources to assist.

It is also best to be prepped with knowledge of campaign length or flighting needs. Understanding geographic needs will also better help to prepare your vendor rep in providing spend insight.

Getting a feel for cost will help you understand where you can advertise. Will your play be print, out-of-home, streaming TV, or all of the above?

For DMA-level advertising, you can use tools such as SQAD to give you population insights for various age groups by gender. It also allows for you to estimate TV and radio costs across desired geographic areas.

guidelineScreenshot from SQAD, November 2023

Social Analysis Tip

We haven’t been given the go-ahead yet to build out social media ads, but that doesn’t mean that we cannot create a prospecting campaign to gain a sense of how large our audience is and what amount of coverage we can gain from this area.

This is available on most of the top social media platforms such as Meta, X, LinkedIn Ads, Snapchat, and more.

Simply begin creating a campaign.

From the earlier “ask” process point, you have a general sense of whether paid social is meant for awareness or for driving traffic.

In this Facebook Ads example, you can see that by inputting your geographic needs, demographics, interests, etc., will give you a general sense of your audience size, estimated reach, or clicks.

Digest these numbers and then divide the impressions by the reach figure to gain a sense of frequency. Are you present at least once a week in front of your audience?

Facebook Ads exampleImage from Facebook Ads, November 2023

PPC Analysis Tip

We don’t want to get into a full-scale analysis of PPC competitors; that should come at the stage when you receive approval on your full digital company.

For now, try leveraging a tool like Semrush; ask for direct competitors and review them in a competitive tool like SpyFu. Here, you can gain a sense of their paid keyword coverage.

You can see how many keywords you may need to target and how much you might need to spend.

Additionally, review the competitors and, in total, all of the keywords that are targeted and how closely these relate to your target audience.

No digital analysis tool is perfect, but a service like this is great for estimated spend vs. pulling a number out of the air.

SpyFu overview of SemrushScreenshot from SpyFu, November 2023
paid competitorsScreenshot from SpyFu, November 2023

SEO Analysis Tip

Run your domain through a ranking assessment tool, such as the Performance-Search Console section of Google Search Console, to understand initially how much of your overall keyword presence relates to the client or management ask at hand.

If your niche visibility is severely waning, a cursory glance at the types of content ranking in Organic Search will allow you to understand the ideal amount of content ideation, creation, and promotion that will be needed to suffice.

Google Search Console performance resultsScreenshot from Google Search Console, November 2023

Time Is Something That We All Need More Of

There is no real turnkey solution to the scoping needs of our clients, but it never hurts to craft a process that will save time and resources to give you the best foot forward in your upcoming campaign.

Being able to confront your client objectives with peace of mind in knowing the ask while also understanding your audience coverage is a great feeling!

More resources: 


Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Key Levers To Steer AI in Performance Max And Boost Results via @sejournal, @adsliaison

I often see comments to the effect of, “Google just wants you to launch your campaigns and let its systems do everything.”

Let me just say as clearly as I can: no, that’s not what Google wants.

As always, the marketer’s role is evolving, but that role is as important as ever. This also applies to managing successful Performance Max campaigns.

The set up of Performance Max is where you can really position your campaign for success. But that doesn’t mean it’s entirely “set it and forget it.”

You know your or your client’s business better than Google. The inputs you provide, the tests you run, the creative you build, the analysis you perform to continue refining and iterating – those skills are critical to success and standing out from your competitors.

And understanding how the systems work and how to inform them is a big part of what will set you apart as the use of AI in marketing continues to evolve.

Consider Each Of These Levers In Your Performance Max Campaigns

Let’s dive into the features currently available in Performance Max to help you guide the AI and maximize your results.

Bidding Goals And Targets

Performance Max automatically adjusts formats and inventory based on the goals you provide and focuses on auctions that have a high probability of driving results toward your stated campaign goal(s).

That’s why it’s so important to define your goals based on the key performance indicators (KPIs) you want to drive with Performance Max, whether you’re looking to maximize conversions and have a cost per action (CPA) target or want to maximize conversion value and have a return on ad spend (ROAS) target.

If you have goals such as sales revenue, lifetime value, or profit margins, optimizing toward conversion value allows you to tie your bidding strategy more closely to those real business outcomes.

I’m not going to dive into marginal ROI in this article, but if you’re not familiar with the concept and are using Performance Max, I recommend bookmarking this page for later.

Conversion Value Rules

With Conversion Value Rules, you can indicate a higher value audience – as well as location and device – at the campaign level. Performance Max will optimize the bid and assemble the asset combination best predicted to convert for each audience member in real time.

New Customer Acquisition

You can either opt to bid higher for new customers/new customer value, or bid only for new customers/new customer value.

Note that there are some requirements, including needing to have an audience list of at least 1,000 active members in at least one network for the system to be able to identify existing customers.  Which brings us to…

First-party Data

It’s no secret that having a first-party data strategy is an increasingly key part of adapting to the evolving privacy landscape (some helpful resources here).

First-party data is also an important signal for informing Google AI to find more of those valuable customers and enhance your audience strategy.

There are several ways to use your first-party data in Performance Max, such as audience signals, which are covered here.

Brand Suitability

There are a number of brand suitability controls available for Performance Max, including support for all of your account-level content suitability settings.

You can check out the full list here, but I’ll highlight account-level negative keywords, which launched this year.

Performance Max respects account-level negative keywords which prevent your ads from showing for search terms that aren’t suitable for your brand in Search & Shopping inventory.

(Separately, you can also use “excluded content keywords” to prevent ads from serving on search terms on Display or Video inventory.)

Brand Exclusions

There was a lot of advertiser desire for more control over the brand terms Performance Max can show on. That’s where the new brand exclusions come in.

To prevent Performance Max from serving on specific brand terms (your own, competitor, or partner brands) in Search & Shopping, you can now apply a brand list to your campaign.

Campaign-level brand exclusions will apply to most misspellings and brand searches in a foreign language.

Page Feeds

Performance Max now supports page feeds to help you send Search traffic to a specific set of landing page URLs on your site.

You can add page feeds in Business Data to specify the URLs on your website that you want to use in your campaign.

You can also add custom labels to your page feeds to help target your ads and adjust bids per label. Note that you’ll need to enable automatically created text assets to use page feeds in Performance Max.

Final URL Controls For Automatically Created Assets

Automatically created assets in Performance Max generate headlines and descriptions from your landing page, domain, and existing ads and assets when they’re more relevant to a user’s search query and are predicted to improve performance.

When you enable Final URL expansion in automatically created assets, Google Ads will automatically send traffic to the most relevant URL it identifies as likely to improve performance. If you want to direct traffic to specific URLs only, you can uncheck this box.

You can also opt into Final URL and click the link to “exclude some URLs” in order to narrow the options available for URL expansion.

You can either enter specific URLs or use rules to exclude categories of content on your site. This is a helpful lever to steer your budget away from certain types of content, pages that are outdated, etc. More examples here.

Asset Groups

If you want to customize your messaging/assets by audience, products, or category, you can use multiple asset groups. Performance Max will test different combinations and learn which ones perform best for your target audiences.

You can use asset groups to theme products in your Merchant Center feed with listing groups.

There’s a helpful grid on this page that shows the minimum, maximum, and recommended number of assets to include in our asset groups – along with a bunch of other helpful info about asset groups – in this Help Center article.

And a quick reminder that ad strength is a guidepost, not a metric. Ad strength is an indicator of whether your asset group has enough assets to maximize performance across inventory.

The more diverse assets you provide, the more opportunities there will be to show the right ad to potential customers. A wide variety of creative assets – including different sizes and orientations – is key to resonating with different customer needs and mindsets.

New generative AI features, now in beta in the US, will also make it easier to scale your assets.

To understand how your assets are performing, you can use asset reports and asset group reporting (new this year).

When using asset reports, compare like assets to each other – headlines to headlines and descriptions to descriptions – because they are rated in relation to each other. The Combinations tab will show the top six combinations for text, image, and video assets, ranked by performance.

With asset group reporting, you can better understand the contribution of your asset groups for optimization by evaluating your average CPA or ROAS at the asset group level.

You can also select and save additional metrics in your views from the Columns button.

Location, Language, Ad Scheduling

It’s worth noting these standard settings are also available for Performance Max.

Signals

There are currently two signals you can add to your Performance Max campaigns to help jumpstart the learning to find more conversions or conversion value.

Note that signals in Performance Max are not hard targeting constraints. Instead, they’re a tool to indicate what’s relevant to your business to guide the AI.

Search Themes

Launched this fall, Search themes are a new, optional signal you can use to inform the AI about your business to expand relevant reach across all channels, including Search.

You can add up to 25 search themes per Performance Max asset group.

Search themes respect brand exclusions and account-level negative keywords, and are additive to queries that Performance Max would already match to using your URLs, assets, and more.

You can add and remove search themes at any time.

Use search terms insights on the Insights page to know what search term themes your Performance Max ads are showing on.

Audience Signals

Also optional, Performance Max will use audience signals as a starting point to find customers faster. You can add your own data, including site visitors, customers, etc., or interest and demographics as audience signals.

Again, this is not a hard signal, and Performance Max may also find that certain asset combinations convert audiences outside of the ones indicated in your audience signals.

When available, audience insights on the Insights page will show you which audiences are “signals” you proactively added and which are “optimized” and found by AI. Use audience insights to see top segments to inform your creative assets and landing pages.

Fundamentals That Often Require Partnership

While they aren’t technically “controls” you can enable, your website, landing pages, product feed, conversion tracking set up and more, can have a huge influence on the success of your Performance Max campaigns.

Sure, it’s a cliche to say good advertising can’t fix a bad website, but AI introduces even more reasons to work closely with your developer, UX, CRO – and even finance – teams and colleagues (and an opportunity to expand your own skill set).

Website And Landing Pages

Your website and landing pages are now key sources for generated assets – automatically created assets and the newly launched generative asset creation for Performance Max – so you want to be sure they accurately reflect your brand, offerings, and differentiators.

Merchant Center Feeds

For retailers, your product feed assets are reflected directly in your ads, so having high-quality images, informative and unique product titles and descriptions, and of course, accurate pricing, shipping, and tax data are all critical to success with Performance Max.

If your image assets aren’t where you want them to be, check out Product Studio which just launched in Merchant Center and uses generative AI to create high-impact product imagery.

Lead Gen Quality Improvements

There are ongoing investments in measures to help reduce invalid leads.

In addition, there are some steps we recommend advertisers take to help prevent leads from users who don’t provide accurate information.

These steps include server-side validation, double opt-in, Recaptcha, and using enhanced conversions for leads with qualified and converted conversion categories.

Performance Max Continues To Evolve

As you can see, many levers, insights, and reporting features have been added to Performance Max since it launched two years ago – thanks in large part to advertiser feedback.

You can expect to see Performance Max continue to evolve to make it easier for advertisers to get more out of their campaigns.

More resources: 


Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock

PPC Strategies For 2024: Insights From Over 16,000 Businesses via @sejournal, @lorenbaker

We’re diving into insights from over 16,000 ecommerce businesses, showing the trends that shaped PPC advertising in 2023, and how to use them to move forward into 2024.

In this insightful interview with Jacques van der Wilt, he and Loren examine highlights from DataFeedWatch’s powerful Multichannel Marketing Report. They take a look at which PPC strategies stood out the most and which channels provided the best return, along with big changes coming next year.

Using these insights, they also explore the most common challenges in ecommerce PPC campaigns, and what leading brands are doing to succeed right now.

We looked into the feeds of 15 to 20,000 online stores in all of those countries, and that means that’s such an incredible volume that what we see basically is an almost exact picture of what is happening in ecommerce advertising. – Jacques van der Wilt, 2:20

Obviously Google is still the largest channel. Almost every retailer is using that. However, we can see that social is beginning to eat their lunch. – Jacques van der Wilt, 6:06

I think Amazon has a big influence on everything. They’re probably market leader in ecommerce, so their impact must have been big. Yet I think that it’s not primarily driven by Amazon. – Jacques van der Wilt, 11:59

[0:00] About Jacques van der Wilt
[2:11] DataFeedWatch’s Multichannel Marketing Report
[6:06] Marketing channel trends
[9:14] Growth of TikTok
[13:42] The 3 largest barriers to PPC growth in 2024
[16:58] Other challenges retailers are facing
[21:40] Best tactics for PPC practioners to use in 2024
[25:02] Challenges for retailers with large inventories

Resources Mentioned:

Creating or modifying images with AI is super easy. Imagine you’re unhappy with your images as a retailer, but you have images for 10,000 products. It’s horrible. So you can do that much quicker. It’s a big time saver. – Jacques van der Wilt, 16:02

Connect with Jacques van der Wilt:

Jacques is a shopping feeds industry leader, start-up mentor, and entrepreneur. He’s the founder of DataFeedWatch (acquired by Cart.com in 2022): a leading global feed management and optimization company that helps online merchants optimize their product listings on more than 2000 shopping channels in over 60 countries. Before founding DataFeedWatch, Jacques held leadership positions in the US and Europe. He is also a seasoned guest speaker at industry events and a mentor at Startup Bootcamp.

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vanderwilt/

Connect with Loren Baker:

Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/lorenbaker

Connect with him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorenbaker

Customer Generation: Experts Reveal Paid Media Strategies For SaaS Success via @sejournal, @hethr_campbell

Growing your customer base without draining your budget can be tough, especially in today’s dynamic market.

With constant search engine updates and ever-evolving user behaviors, how do you drive revenue for your business while keeping your customer acquisition costs low?

How do you know where to focus your ad spend for maximum ROI?

If you’re looking for a game-changing solution, join us on December 6 as we reveal a proven formula to help you supercharge your strategy. 

In this webinar, we’re cracking the code to customer acquisition and walking you through a unique methodology that has driven low-cost growth for hundreds of SaaS brands – from startups to publicly traded companies. 

Sign up and discover actionable ways to grow your pipeline and revenue (all backed by real data from over $150 million in SaaS ad spend per year!)

Here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll take away from this live presentation:

  • The Power of First-Party Data: Learn how and why leveraging first-party data rather than third-party data is the key to campaign success.
  • Financial Modeling with LTV:CAC: Discover how to analyze channel performance through use of the Customer Lifetime Value to Customer Acquisition Cost (LTV:CAC) ratio for better budget allocation that your CFO will love.
  • Getting Personal with Your Pipeline: Develop laser-focused psychological marketing tactics and use gift-giving to boldly identify and emotionally resonate with your precise target personas at your ideal accounts.

With Garrett Mehrguth, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Directive, we’ll dive into key insights on Customer Generation, the proven methodology that makes sure you never miss your growth goals again.

Get ready to unlock the secrets to SaaS success and arm yourself with the strategies you need to boost your customer base and revenue.

Attend live, and you’ll even get the chance to chat with your industry peers and ask Garrett your most burning questions.

Register now and access the expert tips to guide you through 2024 and beyond. Don’t miss out!

Mastering PPC In 2024: Trends To Inform Your Strategy via @sejournal, @sejournal

Navigating PPC isn’t easy.

No one has all the answers, but get enough experts together, and you can discover powerful PPC trends.

Which is exactly what we did.

As pay-per-click (PPC) marketing evolves with new trends constantly emerging, it can be hard to know where to focus your efforts.

What worked for your PPC campaigns in the past may no longer cut it.

Not only do consumers continue to change, but the technology available to marketers is always advancing – not to mention search engines and social media platforms throwing curveballs into the mix.

Between widespread adoption of AI, inflation in cost-per-click (CPC) budgets, and new shifts in user engagement, we’ve seen a lot of changes in 2023 that will shape your PPC strategy moving forward.

So, if you’re looking to get ahead in the dynamic world of PPC, the key is adapting and knowing when to pivot.

Download our PPC Trends ebook to access expert insights on what’s coming, what you should pay attention to, and what to avoid.

This sixth edition features commentary from 13 of the top PPC marketing experts. Inside are the latest developments over the past year and how you can leverage these trends in 2024 and beyond.

Let’s dive into three of the core ideas outlined in the ebook:

  • AI in PPC: The potential these new tools offer, along with the limitations that can lead to pitfalls.
  • How to control your budgets and maximize value amidst CPC inflation.
  • The new user engagement channels shaping PPC, and what you should focus on.

AI In PPC: Potential & Limitations

AI had its moment in the spotlight this year, with several shiny new AI features making their debut on PPC platforms. Marketers also began adopting generative AI in earnest.

But now that the dust is settling, we’re realizing that it’s not all black and white.

While some experts champion the benefits of AI, like automated ad campaigns, others advise caution.

AI has its strengths, but it’s not a universal fix – and human thinking and creativity still drive online interactions.

Here are three key AI insights from the ebook:

  • AI is very good at the things it’s good at, and very bad at the things it’s bad at.
  • AI is a square peg, so beware of round holes; AI is not a panacea.
  • AI can be a multiplier of productivity and results, but some processes are worth the difficulty.

So when it comes to AI, tread carefully, use it where it shines, and remember that the power of the human touch remains invaluable.

CPC Inflation: Controlling Budgets & Maximizing Value

Inflation has cast its shadow far and wide, from the grocery store to business supply chains – and even in your ad auctions.

As you brace for these rising costs, you can refer to this ebook for expert tips and guidance on how to navigate CPC inflation.

One key point to note is that it’s not always about directly seeking cheaper CPC prices, but rather extracting maximum value from your CPCs as they are.

Here are three key insights on CPC inflation:

  • Cost-cutting, for its own sake, isn’t always the way.
  • Don’t obsess over what you can’t control; make the higher cost worth it.
  • Don’t mindlessly follow the metrics fed to you. Validate your data.

Download PPC Trends 2024 to learn more.

Lean Into New Developments & New User Engagement Channels

With all the potential challenges on the horizon for 2024, diversification is a way you can insulate your businesses from disruption.

But broadening your channels and data sources is no small feat.

First, you need a crystal-clear cross-platform strategy, a unified messaging approach, and a consistent brand identity.

You must also be willing to experiment to discover positive and negative outcomes.

Plus, you’ll need buy-in from stakeholders to be flexible about key performance indicators (KPIs) – and be willing to engage in activity that’s more difficult to measure directly.

Here are three key insights on how you can lean into change, but in service of marketing strategies that have always been effective:

  • Meet people where they are isn’t a new concept, but it will require you to learn new platforms and new ways of engagement.
  • Stubborn adherence to one channel or one data source won’t work: You need new channels, new sources of data, and a model to draw insights from various sources.
  • Embrace the new in service of what you’ve always known about marketing.

Discover more of the trends that made waves in 2023 and are set to reshape the future of advertising.

Read expert insights from:

  • Akvile DeFazio, Founder, AKvertise.
  • Alex Macura, Founder/CEO, Your Digital Assembly.
  • Amalia Fowler, Principal Strategist, Good AF Consulting.
  • Amy Hebdon, Founder + Managing Director, Paid Search Magic.
  • Andrea Atzori, Director, Ambire.
  • Ben Steele, Senior Editor Ebooks, Search Engine Journal.
  • Ben Wood, Director of Growth & Innovation, Hallam.
  • Corey Morris, President/CEO, Voltage.
  • Ginny Marvin, Ads Product Liaison, Google.
  • Lauren Weisel, Director of SEM, Media.Monks.
  • Lisa Raehsler, Founder and SEM Strategy Consultant, Big Click Co.
  • Navah Hopkins, Evangelist, Optmyzr.
  • Tim Jensen, Sr. Search Marketing Specialist, M&T Bank.

Grab your copy of PPC Trends 2024 for expert insights and actionable tips to prepare for the year ahead.

Mastering PPC In 2024: Trends To Inform Your Strategy


Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal