Apr 9 2025
Ecommerce PPC Challenges & Strategies For Second-Hand Retailers

The second-hand ecommerce sector is significant.

The market for global resale apparel alone reached $227 billion in 2024 and is projected to hit $367 billion by 2029.

This once traditional way of shopping in thrift stores and auction houses has changed drastically. U.S. online resale is expected to nearly double by 2029, reaching $40 billion.

What’s referred to as the “second-hand economy” represents a shift in how people shop, their adaptability to economic changes, and a way of acting on growing sustainability concerns by buying pre-loved items.

As this market expands at pace, brands are ramping up their investment in paid search, with major players like eBay spending over $150 million per year on Google Ads alone.

With this growth in PPC spending, brands are looking to scale and scale fast.

However, running PPC for second-hand or resale ecommerce is a very different ballgame from a traditional ecommerce model, where brands are either manufacturing the items they sell or reselling new items.

In this post, I’ve shared five ecommerce PPC strategies for second-hand retailers that will help find success.

Before we jump into them, let’s dig into a few key challenges that are unique to managing paid search in this market.

Key Challenges Unique To PPC For Second-Hand Retailers

Inventory Turnover And One-Of-A-Kind Products

The flow of products will vary by retailer.

Take eBay, for example. It likely has hundreds (even thousands) of certain items, but for smaller retailers or specialised brands (such as antique or vintage resellers), it is most likely dealing with one-of-a-kind products.

In this scenario, once a product is gone, it’s gone.

Bidding algorithms get little time to learn which products convert the best, as many items may only be in the feed briefly, whereas others may remain in the product feed for a long time and be deprioritized by newer items.

Frequent Product Updates & Data Quality

For some second-hand retailers, inventory can change daily (or hourly) as new products are acquired and are listed on the site to sell through as soon as possible.

This movement, whether fast or slow, impacts both PPC campaigns that use product feeds (such as Google Shopping or Performance Max) as new data is fed into the campaigns on a frequent basis.

It can also impact search campaigns as products move in and out of stock.

Let’s say a brand has a search campaign bidding on keywords themed around “second-hand Herman Miller chairs.” It sells through 80% of the stock and is waiting for new SKUs to be added.

The efficiency of the campaign will decline, and spend could be wasted. This isn’t just for second-hand retailers; it also applies to all PPC ecommerce strategies.

In addition, data quality has to be bulletproof to ensure that products are entered into the most relevant auctions and searchers are provided with the best possible data prior to clicking through.

For example, say one product is uploaded with the title: Nike – Air Force 1 ’07 – White – Size 10. And another: Carhartt Hoodie.

In this scenario, retailers will be forever going back and forth across various teams to fix data issues with the feed (something I’ve seen firsthand).

Then, throw in brands such as Depop and Vinted, which have user-generated listings, and the task of creating a refined, rich data feed becomes even more complex.

Dynamic Budget Allocation

With an ever-changing flow of products and search queries, accurately forecasting and allocating budgets can be a difficult task.

A category may perform great one month, where SKUs that are in high demand are in stock, then drop off the following month as the conversion rate declines due to a less desirable product selection.

Dynamic budget allocation is essential, as there are so many moving parts.

Advertisers must monitor stock levels across many touchpoints (e.g., brand, category, material) and trends in search queries, and undertake systematic performance reviews to feed into how much budget to cut out for PPC and where to allocate this.

Complex Measurement And Reporting

With SKUs coming and going, traditional product reporting is limited.

Advertisers can’t rely on item-level metrics alone, as many items have zero sales (or a single sale) before being removed from the feed and out of product/listing groups.

This essentially takes away the traditional strategy of catering to your “best sellers” first – a strategy that relies on accrued product-level data to feed into various characteristics set by advertisers (e.g., X number of sales over X days at a ROAS of X = best seller).

Second-hand retailers must aggregate their product data to uncover trends in brands, styles, materials, product types, and more.

This comes with a level of expertise in creating these reports and the time to maintain, update, and actually use them to inform the PPC strategy.

So, How Can Second-Hand Retailers Succeed In Paid Search Given The Limitations?

Despite these challenges, second-hand retailers can thrive with PPC.

Here are five strategies that are tried and tested and will lay the groundwork for creating a second-hand PPC powerhouse.

1. Optimize And Enrich Your Shopping Feed

Product feeds are the heart of PPC for ecommerce.

Campaign types that use product listings, such as Google Shopping and Performance Max, allow advertisers to get their products in front of searchers prior to clicking through.

Google search for the query Screenshot from search for [second hand supreme jackets], Google, March 2025

As with a couple of points raised so far, this isn’t a strategy exclusive to second-hand retailers, but the importance of making sure data is rich and processes are in place is critical with many different SKUs flowing in and out of the inventory.

So that you can sleep at night knowing you’re matching the most relevant queries and ensure you have the best possible data in your feed, I’d recommend this approach:

  • The Basics: Create a structure and put a process in place that accounts for every stakeholder who will be involved in feeding data at any point. If you want to ensure you spot any anomalies immediately (definitely recommended), you could use a third-party tool, export your feed to a sheet, and build a script to check that all SKUs follow the same pattern.
  • The Next Step: Custom labels, keyword research, supplemental feeds, and more. This could be:
    • Adding detailed information on the condition of an item in the description, with a summary in the title (e.g., new with tags, used once, X number of owners, etc.).
    • Qualifying that the items are not brand new. This will help with both entering into ad auctions for pre-loved/second-hand queries. It will also help qualify traffic as your listing will clearly show up front that it is not new.
    • Categorizing groupings such as era, designer, or material for antique and vintage stores. This is useful for structuring both the feed and the way campaigns are grouped in the ad platform.

2. Think Categories (Or Bespoke Groupings), Not Individual Product Sales

Ecommerce PPC strategies are often built on best-selling product data.

This segment naturally demands the highest budget allocation as conversion rate, return on ad spend (ROAS), etc., is often the highest.

However, many second-hand retailers may only ever have one (or a handful) of every item, which almost breaks apart the traditional approach of managing paid search for ecommerce.

All is not lost, though. Brands can find success by segmenting (and reporting) by category and using this to steer budgeting, forecasting, day-to-day optimisation, and more.

Aggregating this data helps to:

  • Uncover meaningful trends to both share with the wider business and feed into bidding algorithms.
  • Set the foundations for adapting to change. For example, say a luxury handbag reseller receives a high intake of products from a new brand/designer. A category-level split will help facilitate driving visibility for these items through PPC, whereas if a “best-seller” structure were used, it would not contain the new items and wouldn’t prioritize them.
  • Assist with flexing media budgets, as depending on size, some retailers may be dealing with hundreds of thousands of items and being able to pull back and scale spend on what works is crucial.

3. Don’t Be Afraid To Broaden Your Reach, With Care

I have seen many brands in this space doubling down on Search and Shopping, with strict query funneling to only serve ads for queries that contain “second-hand”/”pre-loved”/”used.”

This is logical and may work well. However, for this theoretical example where we don’t have data, this strategy neglects multiple audiences who are not only in the market for the items, but may convert higher for the short term and help drive up Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) in the long run.

This strategy makes the assumption that if the query has been pre-qualified (second-hand/pre-loved/used, etc.), the audience searching will be the most profitable, which, in my experience, is not always the case.

Take a second-hand camera retailer, for example. If it only bids on pre-qualified queries such as “used Canon cameras” or “second-hand point-and-shoot cameras,” it would miss all users who are looking for the brands they sell, general camera queries, longer-tail searches, and more.

This is where campaign types such as Performance Max and especially Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) are certainly worth testing to expand your reach and serve ads for intent-driven searches across a wide range of audiences.

4. Align PPC Efforts With Inventory And Operations

This isn’t exclusive to second-hand retailers, but it is especially important.

Cross-team collaboration is a must when products are flowing in and out of stock, and retailers have an ever-changing number of products on site.

Data should flow both ways:

PPC → Wider Team (Merchandising, Buying, Operations, etc.)

  • Which categories/brands/designers have indexed up or down vs. average over a certain time period?
  • Are there any new queries that can help with product acquisition?
  • How has category X trended over time since stock volume increased considerably?

Wider Team → PPC

  • We’ve got X units of brand A and more to come over the next three months. How do we prioritize this?
  • The stock of category X has begun drying up. There’s not much on the market, so a restock is unlikely soon.
  • Returns for brand X are 50% above average. How much are we spending on these items each month?

Creating a virtuous cycle will only improve PPC performance and build relationships.

Finding the best way to pull this data may take time, as teams will need to share various datasets (stock reports, CRM, order books, etc.) to then feed into a centralized report, but the payoff is definitely worth it.

5. Think Outside Of The PPC Box

In the world of second-hand retail, the importance of PPC teams having a clear understanding of profitability outside of account-level KPIs such as ROAS or cost per acquisition (CPA) is crucial.

Unlike a traditional ecommerce model where brands manufacture the products themselves, the second-hand market, whatever the product may be, will likely make less margin comparatively due to lower prices, costs of acquiring the product, operational expenses, etc.

Here are a few metrics I would highly recommend keeping close to when making strategic PPC decisions:

  • Return Rate: The average return rate for ecommerce was 16.9% in 2024, with products that require specific fits (clothing, shoes, etc.) rising as high as 30%, and even further during peak. With margin front of mind, weaving these rates into PPC budgeting, forecasting, and setting KPI is essential.
  • New Customer Acquisition Cost (nCAC): This measures the average expense incurred to acquire a new customer and is calculated by total new customer marketing expenses/number of new customers acquired. While it may not be the primary goal, nor are all accounts built to accommodate clear, new, and returning budget splits, this is a metric that must be observed in line with CLV, ROAS, etc.
  • Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): PPC teams operating within this business model have to look past the first sale. CLV helps quantify the long-term value of a customer, which unlocks more informed decisions for budgeting, forecasting, and optimization, especially when acquiring new customers.

In second-hand retail, where margins are tighter, understanding the full customer journey and setting KPIs using a clear view of profitability will empower PPC teams to make smarter, more commercially aligned decisions.

Summary: A Different Approach, A World Of Potential

With changing inventory and tighter margins, advertisers need to adopt a different approach to PPC.

Whether a billion-dollar resale store with self-serving listings or a small clothing store, the same principles apply. As with most things PPC, it all comes back to having clear, accurate data.

Advertisers have a wealth of tactics to consider, from ensuring the feed is the best it can be to setting targets using bespoke groupings that change over time.

One-size-fits-all approaches may bring short-term stability, but for long-term growth and scalability, the teams that think and adapt quickly will lead the pack.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Wayhome Studio/Shutterstock

      Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
      Mar 18 2025
      Google PMax: Inside The Negative Keyword Limit Increase & What’s Next via @sejournal, @adsliaison

      As Google’s Ad Product Liaison, I often share updates and insights with the community of digital advertisers and, best of all, get to hear your feedback first-hand.

      We heard quite a lot after our recent announcement that, after a period of beta testing, we’re rolling out negative keywords in Performance Max (PMax) campaigns with a restriction.

      We had set a cap of 100 negative keywords per campaign.

      While the ability to add negative keywords in PMax directly in Google Ads without having to request them through Support or an account rep has been a long-time ask, we heard very quickly that the cap of 100 negative keywords felt too restrictive for many.

      Here’s a look behind the scenes at the reasoning behind the initial cap, what we learned from your feedback, and the subsequent decision to increase the limit to 10,000 negative keywords per campaign.

      Why The Cap In The First Place?

      AI, by its nature, thrives on flexibility, adapting to real-time data and user behavior.

      Performance Max is an AI-powered, goal-based campaign type that’s designed to find conversions based on the goals you set.

      The intention of capping negative keywords in PMax at 100 was to give advertisers additional control while still giving PMax the flexibility to achieve your campaign’s stated goal – a limit of 100 negatives felt like a reasonable starting point.

      To arrive at that number, we analyzed PMax campaigns in which negative keywords had been added via Support or their account rep.

      We found that the 100-keyword limit would cover the vast majority of campaigns using negative keywords.

      We also saw that the majority of submitted negative keywords had no actual serving impact – their ads already weren’t triggering for terms advertisers had concerns about.

      In many other cases, other targeting exclusions would have been more suitable for blocking unwanted traffic.

      We saw this in our beta testing as well. In short, 100 felt like a good compromise between offering enough flexibility without dramatically increasing the risk of accidentally blocking valuable traffic.

      Negative keywords are just one way to control where your ads show on Search. Other controls such as brand exclusions, account level negative keywords and keyword prioritization are also available.

      The initial cap of 100 negative keywords aimed to:

      • Preserve AI Optimization: Excessive negative keywords can act as rigid constraints, preventing the AI from exploring valuable search paths and hindering its ability to identify emerging trends. Essentially, it can stifle the algorithm’s ability to find the most efficient conversions. Very large negative keyword lists can potentially negatively impact the machine learning systems and hurt performance.
      • Prevent Accidental Traffic Exclusion: We aimed to prevent advertisers from inadvertently excluding valuable traffic through overly broad negative keyword scopes and missing potential high-intent customers.

      What Your Feedback Told Us

      We heard advertiser feedback loud and clear that while negative keywords are welcomed, the cap of 100 felt too restrictive.

      We heard from brands that quickly hit the 100 limit before including the key themes they wanted to negate. In short, it wasn’t a practical solution for many.

      After looking at options, the team agreed to align with the limits in Search campaigns and raise the threshold to 10,000 negative keywords per PMax campaign.

      That’s obviously a significant jump from 100 and way more than nearly every business will need or should use, but aligning on one common threshold simplifies things and gives advertisers plenty of room to experiment.

      Actionable Insights And Considerations For Measuring Impact

      Adding negative keywords to a Performance Max campaign can, of course, impact where your ads show on Search and Shopping inventory.

      While the increased limit provides greater control, it’s crucial to use negative keywords strategically. Here are several things to keep in mind when applying negative keywords in PMax:

      • Judicious Application: Avoid overly broad exclusions that might hinder the AI’s ability to find valuable conversions. Prioritize high-impact negatives that address specific ROI concerns. Keep in mind that account-level negative keywords you’ve added for brand suitability purposes already apply to your PMax campaigns.
      • Match Type Precision: Understand the nuances of broad, phrase, and exact match negative keywords in PMax. Negative match types work differently than their positive counterparts. For negative broad match keywords, your ad won’t show if the search contains all your negative keyword terms, even if the terms are in a different order. Phrase match negatives exclude queries containing the exact phrase, while exact match excludes only the specific query. Use them strategically to balance precision and reach.
      • Performance Monitoring: Closely monitor key metrics like conversions, conversion value, and conversion rates to ensure negative keywords have a positive rather than negative impact on performance.
      • Conflict Resolution: Be aware that if a user search matches both a positive signal and a negative keyword, the negative keyword will take precedence, and your ad will not be eligible to serve for that query.
      • Beyond Negative Keywords: Remember that PMax offers other control mechanisms to inform when your ads can trigger on Search.
      • Regular Audits: Just as with your Search campaigns, be sure to regularly audit your negative keywords to identify where you might be blocking potential valuable traffic. And Search Term Insights can help you identify query themes and individual search terms you might want to block with negative keywords.

      Your Questions Answered

      I received several questions about this update from advertisers on LinkedIn and X (Twitter) and want to address some of those here.

      “The real challenge is how negative keywords interact with PMax’s black-box decision-making. Will we get more visibility into which search terms PMax is actually serving against? And how will negatives impact machine learning optimization long term?”

      While PMax is designed to automate many aspects of campaign management, we recognize the importance of providing advertisers with meaningful insights.

      The introduction of negative keywords is one of several recent steps towards providing additional controls.

      Search Terms Insights for PMax provides a view of the search term categories as well as specific search terms that triggered your ads in Search. You’ll find performance metrics at the search term level.

      Search Terms Insights is designed to make analyzing search term data easier by already grouping similar searches into broader categories, saving you the time to sift through individual search terms.

      This data can be downloaded and available via scripts and the Google Ads API.

      As for the long-term impact of negative keywords on campaign optimization, it’s important to strike a balance.

      While negative keywords provide crucial control, an overly restrictive approach could limit the system’s ability to learn and adapt to new opportunities.

      As noted above, our recommendation remains to use negative keywords strategically to exclude truly irrelevant traffic, allowing the AI to continue exploring and finding valuable conversions within the defined boundaries you set.

      Reporting and insights are areas the team is actively focused on. Stay tuned for more on this.

      “Google never needed <100 negative keywords in order to have>

      Our intention was never to encourage spending on irrelevant queries.

      Performance Max is a goal-based campaign type which means it’s designed to find more of the conversions that you indicate are valuable to your business.

      The initial cap of 100 negative keywords was tested in beta and seemed to provide a reasonable level of control while still allowing the AI the necessary flexibility.

      We acknowledge that our initial assessment was not sufficient for many advertisers, and that’s why we listened to your feedback and made the significant increase to 10,000.

      “Why can’t negative keywords be limitless at any/every account level? Are there technical/operational issues that would be impacted?”

      This is a fair question. There are limits on certain entities in Google Ads accounts to help ensure system and process stability. We have more details on various entity limits here.

      “Will Google give us the ability to see the previously applied negative keyword lists we used to do via Support or our reps.”

      Yes, you’ll be able to see and edit negative keywords and negative keyword lists that were previously added by Support or a rep.

      “Why weren’t negative keywords available from the very start when PMax launched.”

      The core principle behind PMax is leveraging AI to discover conversions across Google’s channels.

      When PMax launched in 2021, the vision was to give advertisers a streamlined way to tell Google what they want to optimize for and then allow the system to learn and find those desired customers across all of Google’s inventory.

      Exclusions were seen as unnecessary and potential impediments to optimization.

      Over time, and with advertiser feedback in mind, features within PMax have expanded. And the pace of new insights and controls has been accelerating in recent months.

      “What about negative keyword lists?”

      Many of you asked about the possibility of using negative keyword lists within Performance Max campaigns, as you can in Search campaigns.

      We are actively working on this and expect to have more to share on support for negative keyword lists in PMax later this year.

      How PMax Is Evolving

      I recently shared the overview below of many of the recent reporting and control updates for PMax at the Paid Search Association Conference.

      These features are aimed at giving you more tools and information to steer PMax to find more of the conversions you want to generate for your business.

      Features like brand guidelines help ensure your responsive display ads and auto-generated video ads reflect your brand’s visual identity.

      Ginny Marvin presented recent PMax controls and insights updates at the Paid Search Association ConferenceRecent controls and insights updates for PMax. Image from author, March 2025

      Stay tuned for more on search terms data and analysis capabilities as well as additional insights this year.

      This is an area we are actively focused on. And keep the feedback coming.

      More Resources:

      Featured Image: Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock

      Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
      Mar 18 2025
      [SEO & PPC] How To Unlock Hidden Conversion Sources In Your Sales & Marketing Funnel via @sejournal, @calltrac

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

      Did you know 92% of all customer interactions are from phone calls?

      And very few know how to track conversions from phone calls.

      Brands meticulously track clicks, impressions, and online interactions through SEO, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, and data-driven strategies.

      Yet, one critical piece is often missing: offline conversions.

      Many high-intent customer interactions, especially in industries like healthcare, legal, home services, and B2B, happen over the phone.

      If you’re in an industry that receives any number of calls, you may be struggling to connect these calls to your digital marketing efforts, leading to:

      1. Inefficient marketing strategies.
      2. Wasted ad spend.
      3. Difficulty proving ROI.

      How do you fix this? Call tracking.

      By leveraging AI-powered tools and advanced attribution technology, marketers can bridge the online-offline gap, ensuring no lead goes unnoticed.

      How To Attribute Sales To Phone Calls

      TL;DR: Historically, you could not attribute conversions to phone calls; now, you can.

      Yes, offline conversions can be tracked.

      And despite the high percentage of customer interactions happening over the phone, many brands fail to track which ad or campaign led to those calls.

      This could stem from knowledge gaps, tight budgets, or reluctance to integrate more technology into their stack.

      Without call attribution, businesses are left guessing about what’s driving revenue.

      What Is Offline Conversion Attribution?

      Offline conversion attribution is the process of linking your online marketing efforts to offline sales or actions.

      It helps you understand which digital marketing channels and campaigns contribute to offline conversions, such as in-store purchases, phone call inquiries, or signed contracts.

      How Offline Conversion & Phone Call Attribution Works

      By paying attention to phone call conversion data, you can:

      1. Connect Online Interactions To A Phone Call: A user clicks on a digital ad, visits a website, fills out a form, or calls a business after seeing an online campaign.
      2. Store User Data In One Place: Data from these interactions (such as email, phone number, or a unique tracking ID) is captured and stored.
      3. Match Callers With Offline Events: When a purchase or conversion happens in-store, over the phone, or through a sales team, businesses match it back to the initial online touchpoint.
      4. Analyze & Optimize Webpages With Content That Converts: You can analyze which digital campaigns, keywords, or ads drive the most offline conversions, optimizing their marketing strategy accordingly.

      What You Can Do With Phone Call Conversion Data

      When you introduce a tool that acts as Google Analytics for phones, you’ll be able to:

      • Improve ROI Measurement: Helps businesses understand the real impact of digital marketing on offline sales.
        Enhance Ad Targeting: Enables better retargeting of high-intent users.
        Optimize Budget Allocation: Allows marketers to invest more in channels that drive actual sales, not just clicks or website visits.
        Bridge the Online-Offline Gap: Particularly important for industries like retail, automotive, healthcare, and B2B, where many transactions happen offline.

      Examples of Offline Conversion Attribution

      1. A customer finds your business through organic search.
      2. They see a retargeting ad on Facebook.
      3. Finally, they click a PPC ad and call to book an appointment.

      Without call tracking, the PPC ad might receive full credit, even though SEO and social played key roles. Choosing the right attribution model ensures data-driven marketing decisions.

      Best Tools for Offline Conversion Tracking

      • Google Ads Offline Conversion Tracking
      • Facebook Offline Conversions API
      • CRMs like HubSpot or Salesforce
      • Call tracking software like CallTrackingMetrics

      SEO & Call Tracking: Connecting Organic Efforts To Real-World Conversions

      Gain Keyword Attribution Beyond Clicks

      Rankings, traffic, and forms typically measure SEO success fills. But what about phone calls? Call tracking technology with dynamic number insertion (DNI) allows businesses to:

      • Identify which organic search queries lead to phone calls
      • Optimize content around real customers’ questions and concerns
      • Understand which landing pages drive the most offline conversions

      For example, if multiple callers reference a specific product-related question, that insight can inform new blog topics or FAQ pages to improve SEO efforts, driving even more right-fit traffic into your sales funnel and conversion metrics.

      Optimize For True Local SEO

      Local search is a major driver of inbound calls. When combined with call tracking, businesses can finally understand:

      • Which local listings (Google Business Profile, Yelp, etc.) generate the most calls?
      • What information do customers search for before calling?
      • How to refine location-based content for higher engagement

      How Call Insights Can Strengthen Your SEO Strategy

      Phone calls aren’t just conversions—they’re valuable sources of customer insights that your teams can use to refine ad strategies, train teams on sales pitches, and identify areas for growth in your content strategy. Each conversation has the potential to reveal the common questions, pain points, and content gaps that businesses can address to improve their marketing performance.

      1. Identify FAQs for Stronger Content

      Often, customers call a company’s support phone number when they can’t find information online, either about a product or service they’re considering buying or one they’ve already purchased. By analyzing call transcripts, businesses can spot recurring questions and proactively address them in blog posts, FAQs, or product pages.

      For example, if a home services company frequently gets calls asking, “Do you offer emergency repairs on weekends?”, this signals a need to make that information more visible on their website. A dedicated service page or blog post could reduce unnecessary calls while improving customer experience.

      2. Refine Your Website Messaging

      If callers repeatedly ask about pricing, product differences, or service details, your website messaging probably isn’t clear enough.

      For instance, an e-commerce brand selling fitness equipment might notice that callers often ask, “What’s the difference between your basic and premium treadmill?” Adding a simple comparison chart or explainer video can help lessen confusion and improve conversions.

      3. Fill Content Gaps To Reduce Sales Friction

      Repeated calls about the same topic are a good indicator of missing or unclear content. A B2B SaaS company, for example, might receive frequent inquiries about integrating with a particular CRM or social platform. Instead of solely relying on customer support, the marketing team could identify this pain point and create a step-by-step guide or video tutorial to address it, which would reduce friction and improve self-service for prospects.

      PPC & Call Attribution: Maximizing ROI With Better Insights

      Tracking clicks alone doesn’t reveal the full ROI of PPC campaigns. Many conversions, especially phone calls, happen offline and go untracked. Without attribution, businesses may waste ad spend and overlook high-intent leads. This section explores how call tracking connects PPC efforts to real conversions, improving marketing efficiency.

      Paid Search: Wasted Spend Without the Full Picture

      A high cost-per-click (CPC) doesn’t guarantee strong ROI if businesses aren’t tracking offline conversions. Without call tracking, marketers risk:

      • Over-investing in underperforming keywords
      • Missing opportunities to optimize campaigns for call-driven leads
      • Failing to attribute revenue-generating phone calls to PPC efforts

      When a business fails to account for ROI in the form of phone calls, they’re losing an opportunity to accurately account for their real CPC and allocate resources accordingly.

      Call Tracking + Google Ads = Smarter Bidding

      PPC campaigns are only as effective as the data behind them. Without tracking phone calls, businesses risk misallocating budgets to keywords that drive clicks but not conversions. Integrating call tracking with Google Ads provides a clearer picture by linking calls to the specific campaigns, ad groups, and keywords that drive valuable conversions.

      With AI-powered call scoring, marketers can identify high-intent leads and adjust bidding strategies based on actual conversion data—not just clicks. This ensures ad spend is focused on quality leads rather than wasted traffic.

      Retargeting with First-Party Data

      Not every caller converts immediately. Call tracking allows businesses to retarget high-intent leads with personalized follow-ups. By analyzing call topics, marketers can tailor ads or email sequences to address specific customer concerns, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

      Additionally, integrating call data with CRM platforms like HubSpot and Salesforce ensures sales teams can nurture prospects effectively, preventing lost opportunities. By combining PPC insights with offline conversions, businesses gain a clearer understanding of customer behavior, leading to smarter ad spend and more targeted outreach.

      Back To Basics: Omnichannel Attribution & The Power Of Call Data

      As marketing shifts to a mix of online and offline tactics, attribution models must evolve. By integrating call tracking with Google Analytics, CRM systems, and automation tools, businesses can gain a complete view of the customer journey.

      A company that integrates CallTrackingMetrics with Google Analytics and its CRM can:

      • See exactly which campaigns drive calls.
      • Automate follow-ups based on conversation insights.
      • Optimize for higher-value interactions.

      AI & Conversation Intelligence

      Call tracking is no longer just about recordings or basic attribution. AI-driven call analysis provides deep insights, such as:

      • Customer intent and sentiment analysis.
      • Common objections that impact sales.
      • Automated lead qualification based on real conversations.

      By leveraging AI, businesses can better understand customer needs, improve sales strategies, and ensure marketing efforts are driving meaningful engagement. Implementing AI-driven call tracking empowers teams to make data-backed decisions that enhance both customer experience and conversion rates.

      Proving Marketing’s True Impact

      Marketers are often challenged to prove ROI beyond what we might call “vanity metrics”, like impressions and clicks. Though these have a place in any strategy, these metrics don’t necessarily move the needle toward sales goals.

      Call tracking, on the other hand, delivers revenue-focused attribution, showing exactly how digital marketing contributes to bottom-line growth. This kind of revenue-focused attribution can help an entire company analyze past efforts and accurately forecast revenue based on real campaigns, real calls, and real results

      Case Study: This study from CallTrackingMetrics demonstrated how AI-driven call tracking optimized PPC ROAS and improved lead quality​.

      Want to see how conversation intelligence can improve your marketing performance? Check out our guide to building an effective omnichannel communications strategy.

      Ready to get to work? Book a demo with our team and see how CallTrackingMetrics’ products can help you.

      BOOK A DEMO NOW

      Image Credits

      Featured Image: Image by CallTrackingMetrics. Used with permission.

      Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
      Feb 21 2025
      13 Google Ads Settings To Check When Running International PPC Campaigns via @sejournal, @brookeosmundson

      Expanding your Google Ads campaigns to international markets sounds exciting – until you realize just how many settings can make or break your results.

      If you assume that what works in your home country will work everywhere, think again. From currency mismatches to targeting mishaps, international PPC comes with a unique set of challenges.

      To avoid costly mistakes, here are the key Google Ads settings you need to check before launching or optimizing an international campaign.

      1. Location Targeting: Are You Reaching The Right Audience?

      This may seem like a no-brainer, but many advertisers forget to refine location settings properly.

      By default, Google Ads includes users who “show interest in” a location – meaning people outside your target country might see your ads.

      What to do: Change your location targeting to “Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations” if you only want to reach users physically present in your chosen market. This helps avoid wasting spend on irrelevant clicks.

      2. Ad Scheduling: Does It Align With Local Time Zones?

      Your ad schedule may be perfectly optimized for your home market, but time zones shift everything when running internationally.

      What’s peak conversion time in New York might be the middle of the night in Paris.

      What to do: Set your ad schedule based on the local time zone of the targeted market, ensuring your ads run during business hours or when your audience is most active.

      Another best practice is to keep your international PPC campaigns in their own ad account, which can be nested underneath an MCC account.

      That way, you can set your time zone at the local time zone at the account level and not have to do complicated time zone conversions if they were to all be in the same ad account.

      Trust me, a separate ad account will save you so much time in the long run!

      3. Currency And Conversion Tracking: Are Your Numbers Making Sense?

      Imagine checking your return on ad spend (ROAS) and thinking you’re crushing it, only to realize later that you’ve been calculating revenue in USD while spending in GBP. Ouch.

      What to do: Make sure your Google Ads billing currency matches your reporting metrics. Also, confirm that your conversion values reflect the correct currency to avoid misleading performance insights.

      This is another case in point for having a separate Google Ads account for international PPC campaigns, instead of housing every campaign under one ad account.

      4. Language Settings: Are Your Ads Reaching The Right Speakers?

      Google’s language targeting doesn’t translate your ads. It only determines who sees them based on their browser settings.

      If you’re targeting users in Spain but only using English keywords, you’re missing a huge chunk of potential customers.

      What to do: Set up separate campaigns for different languages within a region, using properly localized ad copy and keywords that match how people search.

      5. Keyword Match Types: Are They Performing Well Across Markets?

      Search behavior varies by country. A broad match keyword that works in the U.S. might trigger irrelevant searches in Germany. Even worse, direct translations of keywords can change meaning entirely.

      What to do: Research local search behavior before deciding on match types. Use exact and phrase match strategically to control spend in new markets, and analyze search term reports frequently.

      Have a solid negative keyword strategy in place at the start to mitigate any keyword match types going rogue.

      6. Bidding Strategies: Are They Aligned With Market Conditions?

      Bidding strategies that work in one country might not translate well to another due to competition levels, cost-per-click (CPC) differences, and conversion rates.

      For example, say you’re using a Target Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) bid strategy for your United States campaigns, and the CPA is set at $50.

      It would be unwise to set that same CPA target on international PPC campaigns without knowing purchase behaviors in the region you’re targeting.

      There may be less competition in those areas, so you may want to start with a lower CPA target to avoid overspending.

      What to do: Start with manual or “Maximize Clicks” to understand market dynamics before switching to automated bidding.

      If using Smart Bidding, give the algorithm time to learn and adjust based on local performance trends. Understanding your international markets is key when getting started with Smart Bidding.

      7. Product Feed Optimization: Is Your Shopping Feed Localized?

      For Google Shopping campaigns, simply adding a product feed to a new country isn’t enough.

      Product titles, descriptions, and even pricing can impact how well your ads perform.

      But localization goes beyond just translation – it’s about using the terminology and structure that aligns with how local shoppers search.

      For example, a “sneaker” in the U.S. is a “trainer” in the UK, and European shoppers may prioritize brand and material in product titles more than U.S. shoppers do.

      Additionally, some countries have strict rules on tax and shipping display, meaning incorrect settings could lead to product disapprovals.

      What to do: Optimize product feeds for each country you plan to run ads in. Ensure titles use local terms, pricing is in the correct currency, and required attributes (such as tax settings) are properly configured.

      Also, check product imagery. Some countries have cultural sensitivities that may affect what’s acceptable to showcase.

      8. Regulatory And Compliance Settings: Are You Following Local Laws?

      Different countries have unique regulations for digital advertising, from GDPR in the EU to stricter ad policies in regions like China. Violating these can not only get your ads disapproved but could also lead to legal trouble.

      For example, the EU’s GDPR rules require explicit user consent for data collection, meaning that cookie-based remarketing might require additional compliance measures.

      Meanwhile, certain industries, like finance or healthcare, have extra advertising restrictions in countries like Canada and Australia.

      What to do: Familiarize yourself with country-specific regulations and ensure your ads, landing pages, and data collection methods comply.

      Google may also restrict certain industries or ad types in specific markets. Google’s advertising policies page is a good place to start, but consulting a legal expert in your target market is even better.

      9. Payment Methods: Are You Aware Of Billing Differences?

      Google Ads billing methods vary by country, and some regions have restrictions on payment types.

      Not all credit cards or invoicing options available in the United States work in other countries.

      This account setting is yet another reason why you should consider a separate Google Ads account per region that you plan to run ads in.

      What to do: Before launching, check Google Ads’ payment options for each country and ensure your billing setup won’t disrupt your campaigns (if running international ads in the same account).

      10. Audience Targeting: Are You Using The Right Signals?

      Your U.S. audience lists might not translate well internationally due to differences in customer behavior and market dynamics.

      If you’re using imported lookalike audiences or U.S.-based remarketing lists, they may underperform because user intent differs significantly between markets.

      For example, an in-market audience for “luxury watches” in the U.S. may skew toward younger professionals. Whereas in Japan, that same audience might lean more toward older, high-income shoppers.

      What to do: Build new audience lists for each market rather than relying on U.S.-based data.

      Use Google’s audience insights to refine targeting based on regional behavior and test performance before scaling.

      11. Ad Copy And Ad Assets: Have You Adjusted For Cultural Nuances?

      A direct translation of your ad copy isn’t enough; cultural differences impact how messages resonate.

      A phrase that works in one country could come across as awkward, or even offensive, elsewhere.

      For instance, humor that performs well in U.S. ads may not have the same impact in Germany, where direct and factual messaging tends to work better.

      Similarly, a “limited-time offer” urgency tactic in Japan could feel too aggressive, as consumers there often value trust and relationships over hard selling.

      What to do: Localize your ad copy beyond just translation. Adapt messaging to fit local customs, humor, and expectations. Also, check that ad assets (like callouts or structured snippets) make sense in the market.

      12. Competitive Analysis: Are Your Benchmarks Realistic?

      While this may not be a direct Google Ads setting, I felt it was worth including because competitive analysis is crucial when launching in new markets.

      CPCs, conversion rates, and ad competition vary significantly by country. If you assume costs and performance will mirror your home market, you might be in for a surprise.

      What to do: Use tools like Google Ads Auction Insights, industry benchmarks, and other competitor analysis tools to set realistic expectations for performance in each country.

      13. Landing Pages: Are They Properly Localized?

      Again, this isn’t a Google Ads setting to check, but because your ads have to go to some sort of landing page, this is another crucial check before launching your international PPC campaigns.

      Sending international users to a generic English landing page (or worse, an untranslated one) is a surefire way to tank conversion rates.

      Even if the international region you’re targeting is an English-speaking country, they still may use localized language or phrases different from the United States.

      What to do: Ensure landing pages are fully localized with correct language, currency, cultural references, and legal disclaimers. Even small details like using “shopping cart” vs. “basket” can impact conversion rates.

      Get The Details Right Before Scaling

      Running Google Ads internationally is more than just expanding targeting. It requires a deep understanding of regional differences in search behavior, competition, and user expectations.

      A small oversight in settings can drain budgets fast, so double-checking these key areas ensures your campaigns run smoothly.

      With the right approach, international PPC campaigns can unlock massive growth potential.

      Just make sure Google Ads isn’t working against you because of pre-applied settings that don’t align with your new market.

      More Resources:

      Featured Image: dee karen/Shutterstock

      Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
      Feb 21 2025
      How To Drive Google Shopping Growth With Only One Of Each Product

      Google Shopping is a Google Ads product that allows advertisers to serve feed-based ads on the search engine results page (SERPs).

      The auction for Shopping Ads works in a similar way to Google Text Ads, in the sense that the auction is query-based.

      However, Google Shopping does not target keywords and uses the feed (and a few other factors) to determine when and where to serve ads.

      Here’s an example of the Google Shopping results on a SERP:

      Screenshot of the Google Shopping results when a search is made for 'Tiago Lemos 1010 New Balance' Screenshot from search for [tiago lemos 1010 new balance], Google, January 2025

      Advertisers are set to ramp up their spending on U.S. retail media search ads, with a projected 23.4% year-over-year growth in 2028, pushing the total spend to $76.83 billion.

      Google Shopping offers advertisers the freedom to serve:

      • Product images.
      • Clear product titles.
      • Content-rich descriptions.
      • Upfront pricing.
      • Promotions.
      • Shipping costs.

      Google Shopping allows advertisers to inform searchers about their products prior to clicking through – and when compared to standard text ads – has the potential to drive better-qualified traffic.

      From multinational retailers to local bakeries, hundreds of thousands of brands use Google Shopping to get their products in front of searchers every day.

      How To Find Success With Google Shopping Ads?

      Many factors determine how online advertising performs, from key performance indicators (KPIs) to pricing, payment options, imagery, site speed, the social responsibility of a company, and more.

      However, looking solely from an ad platform perspective at Google Shopping, the one factor that will determine success is data.

      • Product Feed: The data within your feed should be high quality, accurate, and well-planned. This is the heart of Google Shopping and is a huge factor in determining the search queries your shopping ads will enter the auction for. Where possible, ingest additional data that will help feed bidding strategies, reports, and more with valuable insights about your products.
      • Segmentation: There are many ways to segment Google Shopping campaigns: by margin, product categories, search query length, best sellers, and more. Segmentation and structure are important because this is where advertisers can control their budgets, set targets, and lay the foundations for scaling spend.
      • Budgets and Bidding: If your structure and segmentation lend themselves to your KPIs, you’ll be able to set budgets with confidence and build a portfolio of bidding targets that will work towards the correct goal.
      • Refinement: There aren’t any keywords, but there are negative keywords. Use these to refine your campaigns and ad groups to enter auctions for search queries that align with your KPIs. It may be that for upper funnel generic queries, you want to serve a certain category but not another; this is a perfect use case for negating queries and funneling traffic.
      • Performance Max: I couldn’t talk about shopping without mentioning PMax. All of the above applies; the only difference is that segmentation works slightly differently with asset groups and one single target, which is set at the campaign level vs. ad group level for Google Shopping.

      With these basics in place, from the moment you activate your campaigns, you’ll be gathering data and learning.

      This learning is the backbone of shopping campaigns, providing Google (and the bidding algorithm) crucial data all the way down to an SKU level.

      Over time, you’ll start to uncover a wealth of insights, such as:

      • Which products have the highest conversion rate?
      • How does engagement look for category A when served for upper funnel search queries?
      • What happens to the conversion rate when products A, B, and C drop out of stock?

      This data feeds machine learning as Google understands how your products perform across hundreds of thousands of touchpoints.

      This model fits most ecommerce brands with multiple stocks of each item to gather learnings overtime on what works and what doesn’t.

      But if you’ve only got one of every product, how can you drive success on Google Shopping when once a product’s gone, it’s gone?

      What Business Models Have One Of Each Product?

      • Auctions, e.g., eBay.
      • Marketplaces, e.g., Etsy.
      • Second-hand/pre-loved, e.g., Vinted.
      • A mix of the above. Typical retailers who have adopted a marketplace feature or a pre-loved arm of their business, such as Farfetch.

      The scale of the business, vertical, market, etc., all play a role in determining the stock of each SKU.

      Take a brand like eBay, a global online marketplace with both auction and “buy it now” functionality. They have thousands of items where the stock level is above one, and thousands where it is one of one.

      There are thousands of auction houses, second-hand retailers, marketplaces, and more that have a similar setup, but on a smaller scale.

      But for this post, we are focussing solely on one of one product.

      How Does This Business Model Impact Google Shopping?

      This campaign type thrives on data, and this flows through every layer, from the bidding strategy down to individual SKU performance.

      The feed is the heart of Google Shopping, and with the SKUs changing frequently (depending on the business), accruing data on which SKU performs the best/worst works differently as SKUs sell through and may not be in the feed again for weeks, months, or in some cases, ever again.

      There are a number of considerations that need to be taken into account:

      • Learning: With only one of each SKU, items may sell out quickly, whereas some items may be in the feed for longer. Bidding algorithms will struggle to gather data to optimize toward your KPIs, and a lack of historical data will be limiting for machine learning, especially at a product level.
      • Feed: The data within your product feed should be rich, up-to-date, and aligned with your paid media goals. This is even more important when SKUs are being added/removed frequently, as this will cause instability with learning, crawls, and more.
      • Reporting: With one-of-a-kind SKUs, the interpretation of the data within the ad platform is critical; it’s not like you can filter by sales > 0 over a date range and decide how to structure your campaigns, as many SKUs will have been and gone.
      • Automation: Bid strategies can certainly be used, but unlike traditional retailers who may have in-platform ROAS/CPA targets that remain fairly stable, the intricacies of category performance and knowing exactly what products have sold is critical as this is ever-changing and will impact how you feed data into machine learning.
      • Budget Allocation: When building for the long term, fluctuations in performance make it difficult to set budgets to get the most out of your media spend. Watertight reporting is essential, and communication between teams is key to helping spot trends, plan inventory ahead of time, and stay as efficient as possible.
      • Dynamic Retargeting (and PMax): Dynamic retargeting uses the feed to serve product ads to audiences (e.g., website visitors who have added an item to a cart and not purchased) and can be run in isolation or as part of PMax. Having one of every product creates a disconnect as multiple users could be interested in one item, and when it’s sold, it’s gone from the feed.

      These are just a snapshot of the limitations, and there are more.

      But that certainly doesn’t mean it’s a non-starter.

      A different approach is needed, compared to Google Shopping, for a traditional e-commerce model. Above all, communication and planning will be the backbone for success as these campaigns most certainly don’t fall into “set and forget” paid search management.

      Can You Scale Google Shopping For This Business Model?

      Absolutely.

      This will require a fresh perspective on how you report, optimize, and plan your media budget, but it’s certainly achievable.

      Look at eBay. It spends >$150 million each year on Google Ads, with the majority being through Product Listing Ads (PLAs).

      Here are a few approaches that are tried and tested:

      Reporting

      Product-level reports are going to be useful for any ecommerce business. However, with products dropping in and out of stock frequently, a focus on categories (or bespoke groupings) is essential.

      Say you’re a home furniture auction house with a large inventory. In the mass of data, you’ll need to find trends, and these trends sit within various categories, which are formed from aggregated product data over time.

      This could be:

      • Top-searched designers or brands.
      • Most purchased colors of category A.
      • Share of search by category across AOV brackets.

      This data will feed into almost all strategies and tactics adopted in the account, from structuring to forecasting and setting bidding targets.

      This reporting can be automated and then queried to provide each stakeholder with a different view of performance that all leads back to driving growth through Google Shopping:

      • Buyers may want to see which categories or designers are indexing highly by search volume to feed into planning, which, in turn, helps Google Shopping as the products/categories that are performing the best are then stocked moving forward.
      • Paid search teams will want a view of how ROAS/CAC has trended over time by category to know how to set realistic targets at the campaign, ad group, and product group levels.
      • Analytics teams need a view of the time lag between the first session date by campaign and the purchase date to provide feedback to marketing teams on how to accurately report on Google Ads performance.

      Optimization

      Google is going to struggle to gain enough data to optimize at a product level.

      Mirroring your reporting, you will need a view of performance at the category (or another grouping) level, as individual product performance isn’t going to feed into your campaigns as it would for a typical ecommerce store sat on the stock.

      You’ll need to do the work analysing performance across multiple segments to build a picture of how each category performs to then set budgets and bidding targets and maintain the day-to-day tasks required to manage Google Shopping campaigns.

      Product Feed

      It is critical that your feed is optimized and you are ingesting as much supplemental data as possible (within reason).

      This data will feed into your Google Shopping campaigns, and the time invested will pay for itself down the line.

      Take the furniture store example. It can supplement its data with era, designer, etc. When new items are added, this additional data can help group products into segments with realistic targets and budgets vs. being dropped into a top-level category and leaning on product performance to determine what SKUs to serve.

      Above all, there has to be ownership and a process for adding SKUs to the feed.

      Although products will be moving in and out of your feed frequently, there will likely be cohorts of SKUs that will remain in the feed for a while, which you should keep an eye on as these may need removing/scaling back in line with efficiency.

      Summary: Advertisers Will Need To Think On Their Feet

      A great deal of the work involved in navigating this business model and scaling Google Shopping happens outside of the ad accounts.

      Advertisers need to interpret and share data across the wider business, and this process works both ways.

      What are buyers in the company looking at bringing in and where would this sit with the Google Shopping strategy? Are there categories trending upwards that can be shared with the wider team to capitalize on?

      Without stable product data, advertisers will need to think on their feet and get fully ingrained within the business, which in 2025 is essential – whatever the business model.

      More Resources:

      Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock

      Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
      Jan 29 2025
      Google Launches Open-Source “Meridian” Marketing Mix Model via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

      Google has launched Meridian, an open-source marketing mix model (MMM) that helps marketers improve their advertising budgets.

      It uses Bayesian causal inference methods to offer better insights into online and offline media channels.

      In an announcement, Google highlights how older MMMs focused on offline media and branding, often missing the complexities of performance media like search ads.

      Meridian helps advertisers understand the real impact of their marketing efforts. It goes beyond usual conversion metrics and shows how brand-building activities—like TV commercials and YouTube ads—can affect long-term business results and future customer acquisition.

      Data & Insights Made Easier

      Meridian’s data platform helps advertisers access key Google media metrics like impressions, clicks, and costs. It also provides information, such as Google Query volume, to show how paid search spending delivers results.

      Additionally, Meridian tracks reach and frequency for video campaigns on platforms like YouTube. It examines how many viewers are reached and how often they see the ads, helping marketers predict how brand interactions lead to future purchases.

      Benefits For Marketers & Agencies

      Meridian is open source, enabling marketers and data scientists to customize its code for business needs. It also allows you to include outside factors, like economic conditions and pricing strategies, in their models for a better overview.

      To help marketers use Meridian, Google has created a partner program with over 20 certified agencies. These trained partners will assist advertisers with implementation and optimization.

      What People Are Saying

      Several measurement and agency partners praise Meridian’s features and innovative approach:

      Dr. Santosh Nair, Founder and Director at Analytic Edge, states:

      “Meridian integrates technical innovations to assess the indirect impact of search on marketing channels in the consumer journey. It enhances the measurement of “Reach” and “Frequency” for YouTube campaigns, helping advertisers with campaign planning. The seamless integration with Google Marketing Data Platorm boosts productivity in data processing and improves the accuracy of the data used in the model. Our collaboration on Meridian will help advertisers better understand the interactions between channels and improve their campaign strategies.”

      Shuho Yoshida, Data Science Manager at Dentsu Digital Inc., states:

      “Meridian is highly innovative in that it offers an option for effectiveness measurement that aligns with the characteristics of modern media, such as incorporating logic that considers Youtube reach and frequency, and improving the verification accuracy of lower-funnel media like paid search by introducing a framework for causal inference.”

      Why This Matters

      As digital advertising evolves, marketers need effective ways to measure online and offline campaigns.

      Google’s Meridian offers a flexible solution for modern marketing challenges, including detailed search data and video metrics.

      Looking Ahead

      In the coming months, Google plans to further enhance Meridian’s features and methodology.

      Marketers interested in exploring Meridian can download its core codebase on GitHub. Those seeking expert guidance can connect with Meridian-certified partners to tailor the platform’s capabilities to suit specific goals and business models.

      Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
      Dec 12 2024
      Google Ads 2024 Recap: With An Eye To 2025 via @sejournal, @adsliaison

      This year brought a steady stream of updates in Google Ads that spanned across campaign types and creative, media activation, and measurement solutions – many informed directly by advertiser feedback.

      I won’t cover every big update here, but building on a talk I gave at Hero Conf in San Diego recently, I’ll highlight some of the key themes in this year’s launches and the technological and consumer trends driving product innovation in Google Ads. (It was wonderful to catch up with old marketing friends and meet so many new ones!)

      Let’s dig into some of the top trends and launches of what’s possible now to help you engage audiences and drive better results – and get a sense of where we’re headed.

      Search Is Evolving & Bringing New Opportunities For Advertisers

      Google Search is undergoing significant changes – both in the types of questions people ask, how they’re asking them, and in the results Google provides.

      For many years, people largely searched with short two- to three-word queries. For advertisers, that meant we could simply target a list of keywords matching those short queries to reach the right audience.

      This has been changing.

      We are seeing people asking longer, more complex questions.

      Queries of five or more words are growing 1.5 times faster than shorter queries (Source: Google Internal Data, Global-EN, November 2022 – April 2023 vs. November 2023 – April 2024). You may notice this in your own search behavior.

      This shift is why we continue to invest so heavily in broad match to help ensure your Search strategy can keep up with the complexity and diversity of searches.

      AI Overviews in Search combines large language models (LLMs) with Google’s core search systems to provide responses and resources for more complex queries.

      AI Overviews is now available in more than 100 countries and territories, reaching more than 1 billion users monthly in six languages (Source: Alphabet Q3 2024 Earnings).

      Additionally, visual searches on Google are growing, thanks to huge leaps in multi-modal visual search capabilities with Lens.

      Overall, we’re now seeing 20 billion visual searches a month on Lens, and 1 in 4 visual searches has commercial intent (Source: Google Internal Data, Global. Lens, August-September 2024).

      To help advertisers connect with consumers in these new experiences when relevant, we’ve introduced Shopping ads in Lens results globally and text and Shopping ads in AI Overviews on mobile in the U.S.

      More Personalized Shopping Discovery

      Another new experience to highlight is the completely reimagined Shopping tab.

      Currently live on mobile in the U.S., the new Shopping tab experience features a personalized feed for signed-in users and a dedicated deals page. It also incorporates features like Virtual Try-On.

      Powered by Gemini models, Virtual Try-On lets potential customers see how an item of clothing drapes, clings, and stretches on real models of different sizes and shapes rig by combining the images of real, diverse human models with photos of your garments from Merchant Center.

      All apparel brands with a shopping feed and high-quality imagery are automatically opted into Apparel Try-On and can show in both free listings and Shopping ads.

      And while we’re on the topic of Shopping, Merchant Center Next (now simply called Merchant Center) rolled out globally this year.

      The new interface has feature parity with the previous version, plus more features such as generated performance insights, tailored recommendations, and visual reporting that you generate with plain language prompts.

      Launch, Iterate, And Scale Engaging Creatives

      Creative generation solutions make it easier for businesses to create and launch higher-performing, on-brand ads.

      The conversational experience for Search campaigns expanded to more languages and is available in English, Spanish, French, and German. It’s also now powered by Gemini models.

      This feature is particularly helpful for new and small business advertisers.

      We’ve seen that advertisers that use the conversational experience in Google Ads are 63% more likely to publish Search campaigns with “Good” or “Excellent” Ad Strength (Source: Google Internal Data. US, English campaigns published after using asset generation vs. published without using asset generation. January 1-31, 2024).

      In short, that means they’re launching campaigns that are more likely to perform better from the start.

      Image from author, December 2024

      We also made continued improvements in our generative AI models and capabilities to make it a whole lot easier to create varieties of high-quality, on-brand image and video assets at scale.

      The asset enhancements feature for responsive display ads uses AI to automatically modify your ad with smart cropping to highlight focal points, text assets, and logo overlays on relevant image areas, and improve image resolution and sharpness. It can even animate your static images for more engaging ads.

      We also expanded generative creative capabilities beyond Performance Max to other campaign types this year.

      Image asset generation is available in Performance Max, Demand Gen, Display, and App campaigns. It is now powered by Imagen 3, Google’s latest text-to-image model that generates crisper, more lifelike images for your ads.

      To generate on-brand image assets, you can upload image references to help generate multiple image assets that better match your brand’s visual style.

      Image editing got more capabilities this year as well and is now available in Performance Max, Demand Gen, Search, Display, and App campaigns.

      During campaign construction, you can remove, add, modify elements, and extend backgrounds in your image assets, as well as adjust images to fit any size, aspect ratio, or orientation.

      Pro tip: Image editing can be great for moments like seasonal campaigns to make sure your assets are on-trend with different holidays and moments during the year so they resonate strongly with audiences.

      Note that image editing is different from Product Studio, which is where you can edit your product assets in Google Merchant Center and the Google and YouTube app on Shopify.

      Product Studio also now supports reference images to create assets that reflect your brand’s visual style. And with image-to-video animation, it can quickly generate videos from your existing product images.

      Speaking Of Video . . .

      Image from author, December 2024

      Creating great video assets for all the inventory options on YouTube can be challenging for businesses of all sizes.

      This fall, we introduced video enhancements, which use Google AI to automatically create additional flipped and shortened versions of your existing videos.

      These new ads go through extensive quality review before going live. You can remove generated assets you don’t want or opt-out (if desired) at the campaign level.

      Voice-over is a new self-service feature available globally in the asset library in Google Ads. Simply add your script, choose the voice option you want, and then click to generate a voice-over for any YouTube video ad in more than 12 languages.

      Long-form content is still extremely popular on YouTube, of course, but Shorts now see 70 billion daily views and an audience of 2 billion signed-in users monthly. And Shorts views on connected TVs more than doubled last year.

      This year, we launched branded QR codes on YouTube connected TV. Viewers can scan the code on their phone to visit your website, make a purchase, or learn more about your product or service.

      In Video View Campaigns, we introduced new format buying controls with the option to run ads on Shorts inventory only.

      And if you’re interested in tapping the power of YouTube creators, Partnership ads powered by BrandConnect are now available in Google Ads globally.

      You can use videos made by a creator and promote them as ads, then create new audience segments based on viewers of those videos.

      A new video-linking API is also available to link creator videos to your Google Ads account at scale.

      New Controls. More Transparency.

      We all know that when using AI, better inputs lead to better outputs – and outcomes for your business.

      Google AI doesn’t automatically know the definition of better results for your business – only you do. That’s why we’ve continued to add more ways to tell Google what’s important to your business.

      In Search campaigns, brand inclusions allow you to use broad match, while still constraining your brand campaigns to serving on specific brand or related product queries.

      Brand exclusions are now available for all match types and Dynamic Search Ads to prevent your ads from serving on certain brand queries, including misspellings and variants.

      We also rolled out these highly requested updates for Search campaigns:

      • Negative keywords now take misspellings into account. Just add one negative keyword to exclude traffic from all misspelling variations.
      • The search term report shows 9% more search terms on average by reporting misspelled queries with the correctly spelled query.
      Image from author, December 2024

      You can also see this focus on controls and transparency emphasized in many of the Performance Max updates this year, such as:

      • With Brand guidelines, you get to tell Google about your brand colors and font to generate on-brand visuals.
      • Campaign-level negative keywords – a top ask – are in beta and will be rolling out soon.
      • IP exclusions are supported, and account-level placement exclusions now also apply to the Search partner network.
      • A new experiment allows you to test the impact of final URL expansion to let Google AI select the most relevant landing pages and help you match to additional relevant search queries.
      • To give you more flexibility when managing both Performance Max and Standard Shopping together, Ad Rank is now used to determine which campaign serves when you have product overlap between them.

      In addition to controls, we’ve also added more insights for Performance Max, including:

      • Asset-level conversion reporting.
      • Impression share reporting.
      • Demographics in audience insights.
      • New target pacing insights.

      This is an area we are actively focused on. Stay tuned for more in 2025!

      More Bidding Options Tailored To Specific Goals

      Another area I want to call out is the continued focus on expanding and improving bidding capabilities tailored to advertisers’ specific goals.

      Here’s a look at some of the work happening in this area:

      For retailers with both online and physical stores, omnichannel shoppers tend to spend more.

      In Demand Gen campaigns, Omnichannel Goals is now in beta to give those retailers the ability to optimize towards both online conversions and Store Visits.

      For lead gen advertisers, the customer journey can be complex. And, of course, not every customer has the same value to your business.

      I’ve talked a lot about value-based bidding for lead gen advertisers this year, including a series of short videos followed by deeper dives here in Search Engine Journal.

      Continuing to make value-based bidding easier to understand and execute will continue to be a focus area because we’ve seen the positive results it can drive for advertisers.

      Lifecycle goals offer additional options to optimize toward your most valuable customers:

      • Last month, we added the ability to use custom experiments in PMax (in beta) and Search to test new customer acquisition.
      • The new retention goal is currently in beta for Performance Max. It allows you to optimize your campaign to win back lapsed customers to reduce churn rates.

      And lastly, bidding to profit has also been a top ask from customers.

      The new gross profit goal is in beta in Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns. It pulls in profit data from sources you already have, like Merchant Center, enabling you to bid to profit with Smart Bidding.

      You can also easily switch between revenue and profit goals without disrupting performance.

      Data, Measurement & Privacy

      Image from author, December 2024

      While advancements like image generation may capture attention, the solutions that provide Google AI with the necessary data are equally vital.

      Your first-party data is the foundation for better performance and measurement. It helps drive better results and safeguard your campaigns against the impact of privacy changes and signal loss.

      We’ve developed a number of privacy-centric solutions that enable durable measurement and allow you to make the most of your first-party data.

      Google Ads Data Manager is a big step forward in simplifying the process of connecting your first-party data sources to your account and keeping your audience lists and conversion data complete and accurate.

      This fall, we introduced confidential matching for Customer Match in Google Ads Data Manager. It securely processes first-party data for use in Google Ads.

      This happens automatically in the background so you don’t have to think about it other than knowing your data remains encrypted and unseen by anyone – including Google.

      We’ve also launched the option to encrypt the data yourself and receive proof that your data is processed as intended. And, we are currently running a closed beta to enable confidential matching for enhanced conversions for web.

      Tag diagnostics for the Google Tag is available in Google Tag Manager, Google Ads, and Google Analytics to help you quickly identify and troubleshoot potential issues.

      Measurement diagnostics for Enhanced Conversions for Leads is also fully rolled out in Google Ads. Use it to monitor your setup and ensure you can take action against the offline data you share with Google.

      While we’re on lead generation, new lead funnel reporting for lead gen gives you added visibility into offline conversions when you share qualified and converted leads with Google.

      Lastly, advanced consent mode includes two new parameters for sending consent signals needed for ad personalization and remarketing purposes to Google.

      The easiest way to enable and maintain advanced consent mode is to work with a Google CMP partner.

      The new integrated CMP setup in the Google Tag UI makes this even easier with select partners. Just connect your CMP and configure consent settings right within the Google Tag UI – no code editing needed.

      Looking Ahead

      AI’s power comes in helping you dynamically adapt to market shifts and create better experiences – and ultimately better outcomes – for your customers and your business.

      When you put AI to work with good data and inputs about what you know about your business and goals, you can spend more time focused on, well, the joy of marketing.

      In the year ahead, you can expect us to continue building on these capabilities to help you create and measure engaging experiences that drive incremental value for your business.

      Keep the feedback coming, and be sure to check out the full recap of top launches across each campaign type in Google Ads this year!

      More Resources:

      Featured Image: Ginny Marvin/Google

      Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
      Dec 2 2024
      Using Google Merchant Center Next For Competitive Analysis via @sejournal, @gilgildner

      In Google Ads, where every click can be a potential sale, understanding your competition isn’t just strategic, it’s also absolutely necessary for creating a profitable ad campaign.

      For our ecommerce clients, Google Merchant Center has long been a critical tool for managing unwieldy amounts of data.

      When some ecommerce clients can stock thousands of SKUs or maybe even millions of SKU iterations, it enables us to manage shopping campaigns that would otherwise be impossible.

      With new evolutions of machine learning and AI-powered Shopping on the horizon, making sure your store remains competitive in the massive landscape of ecommerce advertising is more important than ever.

      Enter Merchant Center Next, which is the next evolution of Google’s product listing management tool. It’s designed to give ecommerce retailers a sharper edge in the competitive arena.

      Here’s how you can use this tool not just for managing product feeds, but also for identifying huge opportunities in your competition.

      Merchant Center Next is an upgraded platform that allows ecommerce stores to manage how their products appear on Google Shopping, both paid and organic.

      But for this post, we’ll focus more on its analytics and insights features, which are a gold mine for competitive analysis.

      How To Use Competitive Analysis Features In Merchant Center

      First, you need to make sure your account actually has access to Merchant Center Next.

      Although Google first announced a full rollout by September 2024, not all accounts have access yet. The integration with Google Ads is seamless, so it’s an easy click.

      Second, take a look at the competitor visibility section. This section is reached by navigating to Analytics > Products, and then looking at different content tabs, labeled Traffic, Competitors, Popular Products, Pricing, and Promotions.

      This shows you cards that highlight how your products stack up against the competition in terms of overall visibility. You can see who among your competitors is getting more clicks, where their ads rank, and how your own traffic compares.

      Third, take a look at price competitiveness. Google Merchant Center Next provides insights into how product prices align with the overall market.

      Are your SKUs priced above, similarly, or below the average price across the internet? The data within this section will help you adjust your pricing strategy easily.

      Google Merchant Center Price CompetitivenessResearching Price Competitiveness Within Google Merchant Center. Screenshot from Google Merchant Center, November 2024.

      Next, look at search trends. This section allows us to have a closer look at and to understand what consumers are looking for in aggregate.

      It’s not just about products or individual SKUs, but also entire categories and product niches you may not be aware of.

      Doing a deep dive into product performance can be massively valuable.

      Best Sellers allows you to identify products flying off your virtual shelves. If competitors are selling items you don’t currently offer, this is a good indicator to consider product line expansion.

      Out-of-stock Insights gives you a heads-up that you may need to restock a product – inventory management is always a huge issue with popular ecommerce stores.

      How To Interpret Data For Real-World Use

      One of my favorite metrics in Google Merchant Center Next is the Ad/Organic Ratio Analysis. This metric tells us how much of the traffic per product is paid versus organic.

      You can infer competitor ad spend from this. If you can see a competitor has a high ratio of paid to organic, it means they’re possibly spending a lot more on ads than you, so it might be time to ramp up your Google Ads spend (something you’ve likely heard from plenty of Google reps).

      Ad/Organic Ratio AnalysisAd/Organic Ratio Analysis in Google Merchant Center. Screenshot from Google Merchant Center, November 2024.

      Since Merchant Center isn’t only about paid traffic, you can also use search term insights in the Analytics > Summary tab to help with your ecommerce store’s SEO performance.

      Use these insights into keywords to refine product titles, descriptions, or even URLs. If a competitor’s product with a similar title is ranking higher, this can indicate possible opportunities for improvement.

      Continuous monitoring and adapting to the current market are critical. Nothing seems to change faster than the digital advertising landscape.

      Using Merchant Center Next to identify market shifts means you can discover new entrants, changing consumer preferences, seasonal trends, and more.

      Merchant Center Product TrendsUsing Merchant Center Next to identify changing product trends. Screenshot from Google Merchant Center, November 2024.

      Using this newly available data within Merchant Center can help you outsmart the competition – spotting gaps where you may be able to see that competitors are missing out on certain categories or price points.

      If you can see that no other competitor offers free shipping, or aren’t bundling products in unique ways, these are all ways to leverage the data for your own benefit.

      More Data Is Coming For Shopping

      One of the biggest complaints over time has been that Google Ads seems to continually remove granular data from our fingertips, making it harder to optimize and improve campaigns.

      This is especially important to ecommerce advertisers who often have unwieldy amounts of SKUs and transaction data to analyze.

      Google Merchant Center Next actually seems to be bringing some of this data back into the fold. By leveraging this data – specifically the competitive analysis tools – you cannot only keep up with the rest of the ecommerce market, but also maybe even jump ahead.

      Plus, Google Ads has been making some major strides in consumer-focused customized experiences within Google Shopping.

      These AI-powered custom shopping experiences are still in their infancy, but making sure your campaigns are fully optimized within Merchant Center Next is the first step to staying competitive even through these new changes.

      After all, the data that Google uses to train these new experiences come directly from stores just like yours (which can sometimes feel like a double-edged sword, to be sure).

      All indications seem to be that this data will continue to increase. Not only has Performance Max been offering more and more data recently, but shakeups at Google Ads seem to indicate that more granular data may be coming to us from more than one platform.

      Ecommerce knowledge and data aren’t just power – they are profit!

      More resources:

      Featured Image: eamesBot/Shutterstock

      Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
      Nov 25 2024
      Should You Be Bidding On Your Brand Keywords In 2025?

      Paid search advertising has many arms.

      Marketers spend years crafting strategies to drive results through Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and more.

      Of these many strategies adopted by brands and agencies, in my experience over the last 15 years, one topic that sits across every paid search strategy is brand bidding.

      What Is Brand Bidding?

      Brand bidding, in its truest form, relates to targeting keywords that relate to your (or your clients) business.

      For example:

      This is a screenshot of a Google search results page for the search query 'new balance'. The image shows a Google search ad at the top of the search results from the brand New Balance. There are 5 sitelinks showing below the ad and the Google Shopping listings on the right hand side are blurred out to highlight the Google search ad.Screenshot for search for [new balance], Google, November 2024

      The most common keyword marketers will include in their strategy is the company name. But depending on search demand, there may be additional keywords that are included.

      Such as:

      • Brand keyword + product.
      • Brand keyword + ‘address’.
      • Brand keyword + ‘customer service’.
      • Brand keyword + ‘returns’.

      There is also an element of brand bidding focused on products/services that may not contain the company name.

      Think Apple and the “iPhone” or Converse and the “Chuck Taylor.” These terms are most certainly brand keywords, just without the company name.

      From a tactical standpoint, whether brands bid on their keywords or not is a decision made between the stakeholders involved.

      However, since Google Ads was birthed in October 2000, this topic has been very controversial for several reasons.

      Why Is Brand Bidding A Controversial Topic?

      The controversy is rooted in a question that many brands or agencies will likely have been asked or have asked themselves, “Why should we pay for traffic that we can get for free through organic?”

      This is a completely justified perspective on brand bidding, and if brands could guarantee that the Google search engine results page (SERP) would serve a single organic result – and no competitor ads when a brand term is searched – it would make the decision for and against much more straightforward.

      However, times have changed, as have Google Ads campaign types and the way in which the SERP is delivered and used by searchers.

      Brand bidding should be treated on a case-by-case basis, considering as many situational factors as possible, such as:

      • Competition.
      • Market penetration.
      • Keyword contextuality (a common case being a high volume generic keyword as part of your company name, e.g., “The Next Day Flower Company”).
      • Search demand.
      • Resellers.
      • Budgets.
      • Organic rankings.

      It’s not always clear which path to take, but there are a host of reasons for and against.

      What Are The Benefits Of Brand Bidding?

      Strengthened Visibility

      Serving a branded text ad on the SERP alongside your organic listings provides an additional link for searchers to click through to your site.

      Let’s say you rank position one organically for your company name, have the knowledge panel displaying your company information, a text ad serving sitelinks alongside your review rating, and your company telephone number. The real estate you are maximizing on the SERP will serve as an authority for your brand.

      Brand Protection

      Being on the receiving end of competitor bidding is a common reason for marketers and agencies to activate their own brand campaigns.

      Brands are free to bid on competitor company names and/or related keywords across Google, Bing, etc. This is a common strategy used by brands and agencies worldwide.

      There are restrictions that forbid brands from including trademarked company names within ad copy, but outside of this, brands have free reign.

      In my experience, there are a few reasons (among others) for why brands adopt this strategy:

      • Reactiveness – when a brand spots a competitor bidding on their brand terms to get their brand back to position one as soon as possible.
      • Exploration to see whether the results-driven are in line with KPIs and if the incremental value is worthwhile.
      • Necessity as competitor bidding is common practice, and bidding on a brand is a requirement to ensure users can find your brand immediately in a busy SERP.

      Messaging And Control

      The organic listing served for brand queries contains a customizable title tag and meta description.

      However, Google’s guidelines state that it will only use this if it is accurate and will often rewrite these and serve organic sitelinks.

      By serving a branded search ad, the advertiser is given complete control over the messaging.

      This is useful in many scenarios:

      • Poor organic rankings (e.g., not serving an organic listing for branded search, wrong page ranking above the homepage).
      • To instantly serve bespoke messaging for your branded ads (e.g., promotions, updates).
      • Combatting rewritten title tags and/or meta descriptions.
      • Creating bespoke sitelinks to direct users to different landing pages.

      Click Costs

      Context aside, brand cost-per-click (CPC) is likely cheaper than non-brand (generic keywords) as there is less competition, and your quality score will be strong.

      Each industry (market and vertical) will have a different scenario in terms of how much a branded click costs.

      Take Nike, for example. Its brand terms will be incredibly competitive as resellers, marketplaces, and affiliates will serve ads on the company name. However, a small ecommerce store might not have anyone bidding on its brand name.

      With the typically cheaper click costs, bidding on branded keywords can be seen as a cost-effective strategy, but all other factors must be considered – a key one being the impact on organic performance.

      Incrementality

      This refers to driving better results overall by bidding on branded keywords than you would without, and is a very hot topic in PPC.

      As with almost all arguments for and against brand bidding, the incremental gains driven through this strategy differ by brand.

      Among other methods, turn-off experiments are common practice.

      This is where marketers pause brand bidding for a treatment group while maintaining visibility for the control group to observe the impact of bidding on branded keywords.

      Studies have shown that turning off brand campaigns can result in lower overall performance versus having brand ads live.

      Others have shown barely any impact overall, with organic picking up the sales or leads that would have been driven through ads.

      What is the best way to find out? Give it a test.

      What Are The Drawbacks Of Brand Bidding?

      Budget

      Context plays a huge role (size of business, level of demand, market, etc.).

      But aside from any incrementality testing – in a budgeting scenario at the very top level – spending money on brand terms that (to some degree) will be picked up through organic can be seen as an inefficient use of spend.

      It’s not uncommon to see companies with huge levels of brand search demand cut their brand spend. eBay did this over a decade ago, and more businesses have followed suit since.

      Freeing up this budget will impact brands with considerable online demand. For smaller brands with less search demand, it’s really a case of weighing up the savings and seeing how far this could go if it were to be reinvested into non-brand new customer acquisition.

      Impact On Organic

      If a searcher is looking for your company name and you have organic listings serving on Google, the chances are they know who your company is and will visit your company website (among other reasons).

      By activating brand ads, the amount of traffic, sales/leads, and overall organic engagement will be impacted when the ad serves above the organic listing.

      It really depends on the brand, team, goals, and key performance indicators (KPIs) in question to weigh up the impact of running brand ads on organic, and a good place to start is incrementality testing.

      Existing Customers

      In most cases, new and existing customers should be targeted separately for brand search.

      Take ASOS, for example. Its brand traffic will be a mix of new searchers, existing customers looking to shop, existing customers looking to log in and send returns, speak to customer service, and more.

      By not accounting for this within your strategy, efficiencies could be missed, and the budget could be spent on driving users to take actions that are not aligned with KPIs.

      Different Takes On Performance Reports

      Brand performance will almost always be stronger than traffic driven for searchers who are not aware of your brand.

      Over the last 15 years, I’ve seen many accounts that blend together brand and non-brand performance in reporting, including shopping and Performance Max campaigns, which also serve brand queries.

      In some cases, this is the lens that stakeholders want to see. But if a brand drives a large percentage of revenue/leads for a small percentage of spend, the overarching view of performance may look more preferable than it is from a new customer acquisition point of view.

      Relationships (Particularly Resellers)

      Brands who sell through resellers/marketplaces can often have a competitive auction for brand terms.

      Mutual agreements can be a way to put structure in place, agreeing to not bid directly on the company name with the freedom to bid on brand + terms (e.g., brand + product), for example.

      However, these agreements can be difficult to manage as many parties can be involved (resellers with in-house teams, new agencies onboarded into resellers, etc.).

      As a result, the auction can become competitive, which will, in turn, drive up click costs and lower efficiency.

      What Else Do You Need To Consider With Brand Bidding?

      Performance Max

      PMax is a consolidated campaign type offered by Google and Microsoft. This fully automated campaign serves across multiple networks, one being Google search.

      This campaign can (and will) serve branded queries. I’ve seen brands report strong PMax performance many times under the assumption that it’s non-brand when, in fact, a high percentage of sales/leads are driven through their own brand searches.

      There are controls in place to remove brand from PMax (account-level negative keywords, campaign-level negative keywords added via Google Support, etc.). However, if you want control, I’d recommend creating a brand search campaign and removing brand from PMax.

      Broad Match

      This Google Ads keyword match type allows your ads to serve on searches related to the meaning of the keywords you’re bidding on.

      With this, as your brand falls under this category, the chances of your ads entering auctions for brand queries despite your keyword not containing your company name are high.

      As with PMax (but a little easier to implement), you can remove your brand terms from your broad match campaigns with the use of negative keywords.

      Alternatively, you could target brand queries through broad match with a comprehensive negative keyword strategy to ensure you are only allocating budget to brand.

      The Semantics Of Your Brand Name

      Let’s say your brand name contains a word + the product you sell, such as “123 designer handbags.”

      When bidding on brand terms, you may see competitors in auction insights matching through broad and/or PMax for the term “designer handbags.”

      This may impact your click costs, which can fluctuate over time depending on investment (e.g., brands increasing budgets across PMax during peak months).

      Competitors may still bid on your brand terms directly, but others may pick these queries up through PMax or Broad, a key consideration for budgeting and planning.

      So, Should You Be Bidding On Your Brand Keywords?

      There isn’t a right or wrong answer, and claims that there is will likely be rooted in personal experiences.

      Knowing which path to take ultimately comes down to context, and this path will change over time.

      For agencies managing multiple clients, each brand should be treated on a case-by-case basis, and historical context is certainly needed.

      For in-house marketing teams, the same logic applies but you likely have fewer brands to make the decision for.

      The arguments for and against are there to guide you in your strategic decision-making.

      The best place to start is by listing all considerations and questions, such as “What is our organic positioning like for brand?”, “How many resellers do we have and what brand terms are they bidding on?”, and “Do we have the budget?”

      From here, whether you currently bid on brand and want to test incrementality, or if you’re interested in running a short stint and haven’t used this strategy before, ensure reporting is robust and that you are always testing.

      More resources:

      Featured Image: Sammby/Shutterstock

      Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
      Oct 23 2024
      [B2C Marketers] 5 Tips To Drive More Revenue With Google Ads AI via @sejournal, @invoca

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

      In today’s marketing world, AI is more than a buzzword — it’s a necessity.

      Nearly 90% of marketers plan to increase their investment in AI this year, primarily focusing on boosting their Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).

      If you’re not using AI to maximize your ad budget, chances are your competitors are, which could leave you behind.

      But don’t worry — there are plenty of AI tools to help you get more from your campaigns, boost productivity, and drive revenue growth without spending more on ads. One of the most impactful marketing tools is Google Ads Smart Bidding.

      In this post, we’ll break down five essential Smart Bidding strategies that can help you drive more revenue.

      Want the tips without reading? Check out the video series >>>

      We’ll also explore how pairing Google’s AI with a revenue execution platform can elevate your ad performance.

      What Is Google Ads Smart Bidding?

      Google Ads Smart Bidding is an AI-driven tool that automatically adjusts bids in real-time to help you hit your campaign goals.

      Its strength lies in its ability to analyze patterns and trends far quicker than any human could.

      By optimizing your budget and freeing up your team for other high-value projects, Smart Bidding helps you focus on what matters most: growing revenue.

      5 Tips to Drive Revenue With Google Ads Smart Bidding

      Want the tips without reading? Check out the video series >>>

      1. Align Your Bidding Strategy With Revenue Goals

      Google Ads Smart Bidding offers multiple options tailored to different campaign objectives. Choosing the right strategy depends on your specific goals and budget. Here are a few:

      • Maximize Conversions: This Smart Bidding strategy sets bids to maximize the number of actions taken by users, such as sign-ups, purchases, or form submissions. It is ideal if you want to drive more actions like form fills, sign-ups, or purchases.
      • Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): With the target cost per acquisition (CPA) strategy, you specify the amount you’re willing to spend to acquire a customer. Google Ads then automatically sets bids to achieve that desired CPA. This strategy is best for maintaining cost efficiency by acquiring customers at a specific price.
      • Target ROAS: The target ROAS strategy allows you to set a specific ROAS goal, and Google Ads adjusts bids based on expected conversion values. If maximizing revenue while maintaining a specific ROAS is your priority, this is your go-to strategy.
      • Enhanced Conversions: You can use Enhanced Conversions to optimize for specific actions or events that hold significant value for your business. This strategy leverages machine learning to predict and adjust bids based on the likelihood of driving valuable conversions, improving the overall return on ad spend, and enhancing the efficiency of your marketing campaigns. According to Google, marketers who use this strategy see a 5% average conversion rate improvement on Search.

      The key is continuously monitoring performance and adjusting to hit your revenue targets.

      2. Use Advanced AI Tools To Reach More Customers

      Google offers new AI tools to take your Smart Bidding strategy to the next level, helping you expand your reach. You can pair these tools with your desired bidding strategy.

      Here’s what they are and how they work:

      • Broad Match: Use this tool to capture a wider audience by covering related searches and synonyms. Craft a comprehensive keyword list, incorporating broad-match keywords to increase visibility and attract potential customers who may use different search terms. According to Google, marketers who use Broad Match in Target CPA campaigns see 35% more conversions, on average.
      • Performance Max: This AI-powered tool optimizes your campaigns across all Google networks (YouTube, Google Maps, etc.) and ad formats to maximize results. With Performance Max, the AI technology automatically adjusts bids to achieve the best possible results, making it ideal for driving conversions and optimizing ad spend across Google’s expansive network. According to Google, marketers who use Performance Max achieve 18% more conversions at a similar cost per action. By pairing Broad Match with your chosen Smart Bidding model, you can maximize your query coverage on Google search.

      By combining Broad Match with Performance Max, you’ll significantly increase your reach and boost conversions.

      3. Use Revenue Execution Platforms To Supercharge Smart Bidding

      AI is only as good as the data it’s fed, and many marketers miss a crucial piece of the puzzle: phone call conversions.

      This can be a significant problem, as our research shows that 20-50% of conversions come in over the phone in many high-stakes purchase industries like healthcare, home services, automotive, and telecommunications.

      If you’re not tracking all of those phone call conversions, your Google Smart Bidding instance is likely underperforming. That’s because automated bidding tools track the number of conversions each ad variation drives and then optimize bids based on what’s performing best. If you’re not tracking the phone call conversions your ads drive, you’re not giving the tool a complete picture of your performance.

      Illustration, Invoca, October 2024
      Illustration, Invoca, October 2024

      A revenue execution platform like Invoca allows you to track these call conversions and feed them directly into Google Ads. This enables Google’s Smart Bidding AI to optimize more effectively, ensuring your ad dollars are spent on what truly drives revenue.

      Check out this video series, to learn more about revenue execution platforms.

      Illustration, Invoca, October 2024

      4. Optimize Retargeting With Rich Data Insights

      Retargeting is an incredibly cost-effective way to drive more conversions, especially when you’re targeting people who have already interacted with your brand. To enhance your retargeting efforts, first-party data is key — and phone conversations are a treasure trove of insights that can be unlocked with revenue execution platforms like Invoca.

      Phone conversations contain more insights than an online form fill ever could — when your customers call you, they tell you about their needs, preferences, and how to make them happy. Invoca’s AI analyzes these conversations at scale and mines them for insights. The beauty of it is that you can easily train the AI to capture whichever data points are most relevant to your business — for example, you can track products callers expressed interest in, if they were price-sensitive, and if they made a purchase.

      Check out the graphic below to see more of the data points you can collect with Invoca:

      Illustration, Invoca, October 2024

      With these deep conversation insights, you can build more complete customer profiles and retarget leads with more relevant ads. Below are a few common examples of retargeting and suppression strategies marketers use with Invoca’s first-party data:

      • Retarget callers who didn’t make a purchase with ads for the products they mentioned over the phone.
      • Retarget callers who bought over the phone with ads for relevant companion purchases.
      • Retarget callers who expressed price sensitivity with ads touting a special discount code.
      • Suppress callers who bought over the phone from seeing future ads for that product or service.

      5. Detect & Solve Call Experience Issues

      Many marketers lose potential revenue because they aren’t aware of call experience issues—missed calls, long hold times, or unoptimized call scripts that don’t convert leads. You could be flushing good leads down the drain without even knowing it. Using a revenue execution platform, you get detailed reports on call handling and identify areas where improvements are needed.

      Invoca shows you the total number of calls your Google Ads campaigns send to each location or contact center, the number of calls answered, the name of the agent who handled the call, the number of leads, and the number of calls successfully converted to revenue.

      If you notice specific locations or contact centers have high unanswered call rates, you can collaborate with them to improve call routing procedures and staffing. If you learn that some agents have low phone call conversion rates, you can review their call recordings and transcripts to learn the cause and notify their managers to help them improve.

      You’ll increase conversion rates and revenue from your Google Ads campaigns when you work with your contact centers and locations to correct these issues.

      Below is a sample Invoca report showing call handling by location:

      Illustration, Invoca, October 2024

      Addressing these issues, from ensuring calls are answered promptly to refining sales scripts, can lead to better conversion rates and higher revenue from your ad campaigns.

      By following these five tips and integrating a revenue execution platform, B2C marketers can fully take advantage of Google’s AI capabilities, driving conversions and revenue from every marketing dollar spent.

      Ready to learn more about how Invoca’s AI-powered revenue execution platform can help you level up your marketing? Check out this video series to see how it’s done.

      WATCH THE VIDEO SERIES

      Image Credits

      Featured Image: Image by Invoca. Used with permission.

      In-Post Image: Images by Invoca. Used with permission.

      Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments