Written by Frederick Vallaeys - Google Shopping ads are visual ads that appear when a user searches for a product on Google. Here’s an example of Shopping ads when a user searches for [pour over coffee]. Screenshot from a search for [pour over coffee]. Annotations by author, Google, August 2022 This ad format is uniquely engaging. It shows additional information [...]
Written by Frederick Vallaeys - Now that RSAs (responsive search ads) have replaced ETAs (expanded text ads) in Google Ads, it may be time to rethink your strategies for optimizing ads. Optimizing RSAs takes a whole different approach than what most advertisers have been doing for years. While you’ll still want to use a similar methodology to decide what text [...]
Written by Frederick Vallaeys - Google has added many automated tools over the past years including Smart Bidding, Responsive Search Ads, and close variant keywords. Performance Max campaigns are the latest addition to this increasing list of automated PPC tools. And it might be the most revolutionary campaign type so far in Google Ads. Performance Max campaigns let advertisers promote [...]
Written by Frederick Vallaeys With the continuing onslaught of automation from the ad engines like Google, should we still care about ad scripts? I believe so. Scripts are the perfect tool to execute an automation layering strategy. They give you a technique to use your own simple automations to control, monitor, and improve more sophisticated machine learning automations from Google. [...]
Advertisers looking to optimize their performance have long used A/B testing to improve their ads. It’s well understood how this is done with expanded text ads (ETAs).But recently, Google has announced it will sunset ETAs, making responsive search ads (RSAs) the main text ad format from July 1, 2022 onward.It’s time to revisit our ad testing best practices.What Is A/B [...]
As PPC account managers, we’ve always had to do a lot of reporting to keep our stakeholders informed.Now with the continued rise in automation, reporting has taken on new importance as one of the key ways we can monitor what the machines are doing.For example, we can use reports to monitor which queries are considered close variants for exact match [...]
Repetitive tasks can take up an inordinate amount of time and energy for in-house PPC managers and drain the profits of an agency.One of the best ways to deal with these is to start automating these repetitive tasks using Google Ads Scripts.Google is continuing to invest its time and effort into scripts. It has recently announced a new version that [...]
Google Ads recently announced that advertisers can start automatically accepting recommendations for their ads accounts.And no, they’re not asking for a blank check. They aren’t offering to automatically raise budgets, either.Setting our skepticism aside, let’s take a look at the 17 optimizations included in this update and whether any of them are safe enough to accept automatically.Spoiler alert: Some (but [...]
Over the past few years, automated bidding has become more consistent at delivering solid performance for search advertisers.They no longer need to pick a CPC bid for every keyword and can instead set CPA or ROAS goals and let machine learning calculate the correct bid to achieve the stated goal for every single search that happens.But in this move towards [...]
PPC pros who underestimate the impact automation will have on their professional lives risk missing out on a great transformation.I’ve been writing about the ways automation is transforming PPC for a few years now.Through that time, it’s become abundantly clear that managing PPC is rapidly moving away from requiring PPC tacticians.We used to operate in the details, such as focusing [...]