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Category: Google Ads News and Information

  • Amazon Prime Days and Google PMAX Shopping

    Amazon Prime Days and Google PMAX Shopping

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

    How Are PMax Shopping Ads Affected by Amazon Prime Days?

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

    Why does PMax performance change during Prime Days

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

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

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

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

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

    PMax Options During Prime Days

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

    Make no Changes to PMax

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

    Compete With (leverage) Prime Days

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

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

    Shut Down PMax

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Plan and Manage the PMax Strategy

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

  • Evolution of a PPC Agency

    Evolution of a PPC Agency

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

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

    The Search Engine Competitors

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

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

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

    Google Ads: From complete control to black-box

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

    Long-Tail Search Term

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

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

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

    SKAG – Single Keyword Ad Group

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

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

    CPC Max Bid – still available, lease valuable

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

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

    What Does AI Mean for a PPC Agency?

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • 5 Common Mistakes in Google Ads

    5 Common Mistakes in Google Ads

    Maximize the Effectiveness of You Ad Spend

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

    1. Improper Conversion Tracking

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

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

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

    2. Not Setting an Ad Schedule 

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

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

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

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

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

    3. Blindly Accepting All of Google’s Recommendations

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

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

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

    4. Not setting up location targeting

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

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

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

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

    5. Lack of Ad Assets

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Wrapping Up 

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

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

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

  • Are You Starving Your Google Ads PMax Campaign?

    Are You Starving Your Google Ads PMax Campaign?

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

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

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

    PMax Needs Data

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

    How We Siphon Data From PMax Campaigns

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

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

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

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

    The PMax Journey

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

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

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

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

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

    Steps To Moving to PMax

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

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

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

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

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

  • Google Tag for Ads

    Google Tag for Ads

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

    Why you need to implement Google Tag

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

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

    Third-party Browser Cookies

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

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

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

    Enhanced Conversions with Google Tag

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

    Automated Detection

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

    Manual Implementation

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

    Privacy Policy for Enhanced Conversions 

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

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

  • The demise of Cookies and lessons from it

    The demise of Cookies and lessons from it

    As Google Chrome is sent to send Cookies to the dustbin this year, digital marketers will lose one tracking mechanism on which they have come to rely…perhaps too much so.

    A primary application for browser cookies in marketing is the ability to remarket/retarget a browser (person) that has been to the website. This seems great, as it shows interest. But, it has led to lazy marketing habits.

    Blanket remarketing gives no real thought to context or timing. It intrudes on users when they are completely removed from the context or concerns that led them to the advertiser in the first place.

    But doesn’t Google automation deal with this? Not really. In theory, it should. But we’ve all experienced the unsettling sensation of being “followed” around the Internet by a site we visited. 

    This recent article in AdAge speaks to this very issue. 

    The next level of automation

    As Google pushes everyone to trust their AI, it expands on the concern raised by blindly retargeting users based on cookies: that, as marketers, we are relinquishing our control to a black box of automation. We are told this improves our marketing ROAS, but I am not convinced.

    I think AI will improve results when it comes to unmanaged programs. For marketers who do not have the time to monitor and adjust their campaigns, AI provides a level of optimization that is bound to make things better.

    I have seen dedicated campaign managers do much better for the average company. One thing AI is good at is finding the low-hanging fruit. A freshly launched program managed by AI can get quick wins, but they often plateau. Changes to pages, offerings, and budgets can reset the AI to a learning phase. Manually managed programs can get beyond the low-hanging fruit.

    The other area where AI will excel is data analysis and response. However, the response/output is only as good as the data input, and the average company has issues with this.

    A full circle of ads, outcomes, and feedback works well for AI. The most basic of these is E-commerce sites that feed all the sales back into Google Ads (directly or through G4.) AI is likely your best bet if you have an e-commerce website, and your primary conversion is an online sale.

    Where Google AI falls short is when the value of an action is determined after the conversion point. All Google knows is that a conversion point was triggered. Herein lies the problem. 

    Left to Google, the initial round of leads is more likely to be filled with junk than value. However, Google doesn’t know this, so junk leads are used equally in conversions. The AI is optimizing the program to deliver junk.

    Can this be fixed? Yes. Absolutely. But not by the resources of the average company.

    Fixing Junk Leads in Google Ads

    Google provides valuable mechanisms to improve lead generation for offline activity following an online conversion.

    Every lead submitted to Google Ads should include the corresponding lead ID, which should be carried with the lead through the sales/closing process.

    When leads are closed, a file can be generated (or API used) to load the results back to Google. With this file, Google can assign value to each lead, allowing the AI to optimize lead generation.

    For junk leads, which are usually identifiable very quickly, a file with the lead ID can be uploaded to Google to have these leads deleted from the system.

    Like so much of the ad tech hype, leading-edge tools require resources and knowledge that are not available in the average company. 

    Beyond the issue of resources is that of reliance on technology and complacency. Remarketing as we know it will end this year. And that’s not a bad thing. It reminds us that we are prone to accepting the easy out, allowing technology to do what we should be doing—or at least paying a great deal more attention to. 

    As we continue to push the envelope of AI in advertising, we must always pay close attention to the outputs and ask ourselves if this really is the best that can be done.

  • A Guide To Google Ads With Wix

    A Guide To Google Ads With Wix

    Using Wix to Set-up Google Ads

    Starting a business is no easy feat and includes a lot of steps. Two of which are making a website and getting said website in front of customers to promote your product or services.

    If you have ever thought about setting up a website before, we are sure most of you have heard of a little platform called Wix, an easy to use, code free website developer. However did you know that Wix also allows you to set up Google ads directly from their platform? 

    We know that when starting a business there is also a LOT of research that needs to be done. Scouring the internet, bouncing from page to page, trying to decide which path is best, and not everyone has time for that.

    Today we are going to keep it all in one place! Everything you need to know about using Google Ads through Wix and if it’s better than setting up a Google Ads account directly through Google. 

    How To Set Up Google Ads on Wix

    Before we go through the pros and cons of using Wix to set up Google Ads, let’s walk through the steps to set it up. Wix keeps things pretty simple so there are only 5 main steps we are going to touch on.

    1) Set up location targeting

    Advertisers are able to enter up to ten locations based on country, state, city, zip code, and region, or advertisers can enter a street address that they want to advertise near.

    2) Set Up Ad Schedule

    Choose if you want to run your ads all the time or at specific times. If you opt for specific times you can then choose which days and which hours your ads run.  

    3) Select Keyword Themes

    You can then select up to 10 keyword themes that you think are relevant to how people might be searching for products and services like yours. You can enter in your own keywords or pull from Wix’s suggestions. You only get 10, so choose your themes carefully to encompass everything that you want your campaign to target. 

    4) Assets

    Advertisers enter in 3 headlines and 2 descriptions about their company and landing page. This is what will appear when your ad shows to users.

    5) Set Budget

    For Wix, you must first purchase a monthly subscription starting as low as $150 a month. This will then pool as the ad credit acting as the money that your campaigns can then pull from when you set your daily spend on the campaign level. It’s important to keep in mind that your campaigns also have a minimum daily spend so if you have a second campaign you will need to purchase more ad credit via a one time purchase or an increase in the monthly subscription. 

    Pros of Running Google Ads Through Wix:

    And just like that, in five easy steps, you have yourself a Google Ads campaign set up through Wix, which leads us to our first pro for using the Wix platform to run Google Ads.

    Pro 1) It’s Easy

    Wix uses a simplified version of Google Ads that allows you to run search ads, as opposed to the Google Ads platform which has a number of different ad types, complex targeting, and more nuanced ad set up.

    Though some people like the bells and whistles of Google Ads, not every company has the band-with to set up and manage complex campaigns.

    Wix’s easy to use pared down platform is efficient. Plus it comes with step by step tutorials to walk you through how to set up Google Ads in Wix.  

    Pro 2) Integration

    Using the same platform cuts down a lot of time. Right off the jump, you don’t need to create a Google Ads account, become a verified advertiser, or enter credit card information into a new platform.

    In fact, You don’t need to learn another platform at all, because it’s all right in Wix, so you are already familiar with their tools.

    Pro 3) Singular Platform (part one)

    The pro of a singular platform in terms of integration is great but there is a lot to be said for its simplicity of a singular platform in the long term.

    Let’s be honest, as a business owner there is a lot to manage and that includes the 101 tabs open on your computer that you need to check on.

    Well advertising through the Wix platform instead of the Google Ads platform cuts down on one extra tab that you have to remember to check.

    Instead of bouncing around between Wix and Google Ads you are able to view your advertising data alongside your organic data on one platform.

    Time is money and there is a lot of time being saved by having one less platform to pay attention to.

    Cons of running Google Ads Through Wix

    There are a lot of pros to using the Wix platform to run Google Ads but some of those very things that are pros can quickly become cons for advertisers.

    Con 1) Limited Data

    Having one platform is great when you don’t have time to learn or set up a Google Ads account, however it also means that Wix is not built to report the same way the Google Ads platform reports.

    Wix has very limited data compared to Google Ads.

    In Google Ads, advertisers have the ability to do detailed audience reports, gather data on individual keywords, and track many metrics such as impression share that Wix does not report.

    This lack of reporting prevents advertisers from gathering insights on their target market and limits ad optimization. 

    Con 2) Limited Ad Control

    Again another pro that can quickly become a con. Wix has a simplified ad set up, which makes ads easy to build, but easy doesn’t necessarily mean better. Here are a few ways Wix is limiting:

    The biggest drawbacks of ads on Wix is that you can only run search ads, so any display or video advertising is out of the question from the jump. 

    Wix also doesn’t allow for more than 3 headlines and 2 descriptions. In Google, Advertisers are able to enter up to 10 headlines and 4 descriptions that then get optimized based on performance.

    On Wix, advertisers can’t add extensions to their ads, meaning they are missing out on images, pricing, and call outs that can help an ad stand out, be competitive and attract users.

    Finally, Wix has advertisers pick out keyword themes and not specific keywords, meaning that the search terms your ads are showing up for are more broad and might not be relevant. Thus, there is also less data on the success of a keyword/keyword theme.

    Con 3) Campaign = Ad

    Right now every ad that is created in Wix is its own campaign. In Google Ads there are campaigns, ad groups and then ads.

    There can be more than one ad group in a campaign and more than one ad in an ad group, allowing advertisers to organize ad content and gather data on different markets in a concise manner. 

    Con 4) Google Ads and Wix Don’t Connect

    Though you are able to advertise with Google Ads through Wix they are separate platforms.

    This means, if you start advertising through Wix and then decide you want to switch to using the Google Ads platform for all the tools and data that Google provides, you aren’t able to retroactively pull your data from Wix into Google Ads.

    As far as Google Ads is concerned you have not been running ads through them. Thus you won’t have all your data in one place.

    Is Using Wix to run Google Ads Worth It

    Truthfully this is going to depend on your business.

    As an agency, we wouldn’t use Wix to advertise for our clients because it does not provide near enough data for us to work with and make intelligent observations on campaigns.

    However, advertising is our world and we have the time, means and knowledge, to quickly and effectively set up Google Ads campaigns.

     A small business owner looking for a way to easily advertise their business might benefit from having a simple platform that is in the same place as where their website is being hosted.

    In conclusion, if you have the time, Google Ads is more worthwhile, however if you don’t have the time or desire to learn Google Ads, then setting up ads through Wix is a good resource to get you started in advertising. 

  • Google Ads Updates – Feb 2024

    Google Ads Updates – Feb 2024

    Over the past month, the two biggest (but not surprising) announcements have to do with Google and the automation of the PerformanceMax, or PMax campaigns.  Google has faced several critiques about its AI-driven programs.

    Because there is no transparency, ads are run in objectionable places. 

    Google will launch placement visibility and exclusion capabilities to PMax, according to Campaign.com.

    Gemini (Google Generative AI) will become part of PMax 

    One challenge advertisers may face with PMax is creating ad assets to fit within all the possible placements of a PMax campaign. With Generative AI, Gemini can create appropriately formatted ad assets for the campaigns. Google PMax and Gemini

    Google continues to push for AI control while advertisers are looking for more visibility and manual input, if not actual control(that ship has sailed.)

  • Why is it hard to trust Google Ads AI?

    Why is it hard to trust Google Ads AI?

    There is no doubt that Google is pushing advertisers and their agencies to implement Google Performance Max or PMax (combined with Gemini.) PMax is Google’s latest iteration to automate the advertising program for companies. Whether your program is search, display, or shopping, Google wants to move you to PMax, promising that it will outperform anything you do.

    If you are new to digital advertising, you’ll see that implementing a PMax campaign is not too difficult. But that is part of the issue. As the path of least resistance, it makes it easy not to consider what you don’t see and don’t know. For advertisers that have worked through the programs of manually managing ads and automated campaigns, as well as implementations between the two, fully trusting PMax is a challenge.

    Trust issue with Google Ads

    When you speak with a Google rep, they are confident that the automated system is the best. They quite sincerely believe and recommend advertisers use it. The confidence with which they tout PMax is borderline cult-like. If you dive into the details of the ads and run a PMax for an extended period, your trust in their confidence will wane.

    Some basic observations with Search Terms

    In a fully automated program, Google will present your ads to users in various channels that the AI considers important and likely precursors to a conversion. With all the data that the AI is fed, it makes sense that it should be able to determine what leads to a conversion. So, why do we lack confidence?

    Run a managed search campaign

    Even if you use an exact match or phrase match, Google will present your ads to people based on what it deems to be a close variant. While doing this, Google continually asks you to move all your terms to a broad match. In theory, this allows the system to match against what it deems intent, even if the search term used doesn’t appear to match with your target keywords.

    Take a look at the search terms that were entered and triggered your ads. Some very basic things stand out. As an example, look at geographic terms. 

    Run ads for your local market using geo-targeting. With that, you can also use geo modifiers, such as “xyz companies in Chicago.” You will notice some things:

    1. People who enter “xyz companies in Canada.”  will show up.
    2. If you add “Canada” as a broad negative match, suddenly, “XYZ companies in Toronto” or some other geography like France, New York, San Diego etc will show on the search query report.
    3. Long-tail bidding has not been possible for a long time, but Google is still showing that people are using long-tail searches.

    Google Ads Deliver to Inappropriate Searches

    These few (of many issues) used to be fully manageable through match-type implementation. Now that Google ignores match types, all we can do is add negatives. This has always been part of the process, but it is now the only tool we have.

    To the issue of trust in Google’s AI: A company can only work with other companies in a market, they set up the Geo-targeting correctly and also set up target keywords correctly, but Google is showing ads to people who explicitly are looking for providers in other markets. 

    When giving the AIs even a little latitude, Google spends advertising dollars on searches that cannot lead to a qualified prospect. It seems to be a simple concept that when we target a geo and use geo-targeted terms, the AI should be able to weed out bad queries. It just doesn’t.

    A cynical perspective is that Google is simply amping up the number of bidders for each user search, thereby driving up the average CPC. Similar to the implication of removing long-tail bidding. Lump every 4+ word query into an auction with three or fewer words, and you increase the number of bidders for each auction. 

    Whatever the drivers behind showing queries that are not appropriate, the effect is the same: higher CPC and lower qualified clicks.

    The Fragility of PMax

    Moving from keywords to complete AI-managed campaigns through PMax, there are a few things that show up.

    Consistency matters to AI

    The PMax platform depends on a period of learning. Set a budget, and the system starts slowly, learning how people respond and eventually spending the entire daily budget. This can take 1-2 weeks. If you have a change, your PMax campaign can reset itself. 

    Budget Matters

    The representatives at Google will direct PMax users with large budgets to a special team with more experience on the platform. One thing we did notice is that the performance at the higher spending level did not match the performance at the lower spending level. It deteriorated. 

    This can happen with manually managed programs as well. However, there is a notion being presented that PMax is some kind of magic that can make your program work on any budget. 

    Learning Matters

    As marketers, understanding our customers and how they respond to our marketing is important. We can cross-seed our channels by learning from another channel. PMax campaigns (and, to a lesser extent, the responsive ad campaigns) remove our ability to learn. It either performs or it doesn’t. We can’t tell why because we can see nuance.

    Premature Confidence in Artificial Intelligence

    Over the past couple of years, AI has been hyped as the holy grail of advertising optimization. In reality, it has a long way to go. From basic mistakes that it doesn’t know are happening, or the need for a relatively steady state in order to maintain optimization, or not truly outperforming manually managed paid search programs at scale, PMax has a role in search but not the only part to play.

    Opaque AI Tools

    As mentioned earlier, learning matters in marketing. It is not enough that the AI “learns,” but the people managing the programs also learn. This is important to other marketing campaigns. Understanding how changes in your overall marketing, products, and competitors might affect campaign performance is also important. With the black-box AI, not only can you not see what is working, but you can’t see what isn’t… and the AI doesn’t know either.

    Take the recent problems with Google Generative AI Gemini and it’s image generation. It produced historically inaccurate images when users asked for it to create images of the pope (and other historical cases), and the images were clearly not an accurate historical representation(CNN.) Given that only white men have been popes (for better or worse), it is a simple historical fact; there is no ambiguity. But Gemini didn’t know that, or wasn’t allowed to apply it. 

    If real people hadn’t reviewed the images, the AI would continue to produce inaccurate results and never make adjustments. 

    So, we know Google Ads’ AI delivers ads for a Chicago company (that only wants to do business with other Chicago companies) to people interested in Canadian companies. What else is it doing that we can’t see? How much waste is there when implementing a fully AI-driven campaign with no inputs or visibility other than your URL?

  • How to Use Remarketing in PPC

    How to Use Remarketing in PPC

    The Role of Remarketing in PPC: Strategies for Targeting and Converting

    In the fast-paced world of online advertising, capturing and retaining the attention of potential customers is crucial for success. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is an effective way to reach targeted audiences, but what happens when those initial clicks don’t immediately lead to conversions? This is where remarketing comes into play. In this article, we’ll explore the pivotal role of remarketing in PPC campaigns and provide strategies for effectively targeting and converting prospects.

    Understanding Remarketing:

    Remarketing, also known as retargeting, is a digital marketing strategy that involves targeting users who have previously interacted with your website or mobile app but haven’t completed a desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a contact form. By tracking user behavior and displaying targeted ads to these individuals as they browse other websites or social media platforms, remarketing aims to re-engage them and encourage them to take the desired action.

    The Importance of Remarketing in PPC:

    Remarketing plays a crucial role in PPC campaigns for several reasons:

    • Re-Engagement: Remarketing allows advertisers to re-engage with users who have already shown interest in their products or services. By keeping your brand top-of-mind, remarketing helps nurture leads and encourages them to return to your website to complete a conversion.
    • Increased Conversions: Studies have shown that remarketing can significantly increase conversion rates by targeting users who are already familiar with your brand and are more likely to convert. By delivering personalized ads based on users’ previous interactions, remarketing helps create a more tailored and compelling user experience.
    • Enhanced ROI: Remarketing campaigns often yield higher returns on investment (ROI) compared to traditional display advertising. Since remarketing targets users who are further along the sales funnel, the likelihood of conversion is higher, resulting in a more efficient use of advertising budget.

    Strategies for Remarketing Success:

    When launching a remarketing strategy, it is important to not think of it as a one size fits all campaign. Not all people who have been to your site are the same. In fact they aren’t even all at the same place on the conversion path. The plus side of a remarketing campaign is that advertisers already have information on the users, so use it! Cater your ads to the segment.  

    Remarketing segmentations can get pretty niche depending on your previous campaigns and website, but today we are going to focus on two of the most common remarketing segmentations: landing pages and abandoned carts.

    Landing Page Remarketing

    Users who bounced off your landing page without taking action may still be in the early stages of the buying journey and may need more nurturing before they’re ready to convert. In this case, remarketing ads can focus on providing valuable content or showcasing other products or services that may be of interest to them.

    Abandoned Cart Remarketing

    For users who abandoned their carts, they have already expressed a strong intent to purchase, making them prime targets for remarketing efforts.

    By creating remarketing campaigns specifically targeted at cart abandoners, you can remind them of the items they left behind and provide additional incentives to encourage them to complete their purchase. This could include offering a discount or promotion, highlighting free shipping or returns, or emphasizing limited-time offers to create a sense of urgency.

    Wrapping Up

    By creating distinct remarketing segments, advertisers are able to tailor messaging, assets, and landing pages to their target audience to increase click through rate and ROI. By delivering relevant and personalized content that resonates with each segment, advertisers can optimize campaign performance and achieve better results from their remarketing efforts.