Google Performance Max Campaigns

There have been a lot of queries about what Google Performance Max is, how it compares to other campaigns, and how it performs since Google announced that it would be rolled out more widely. The purpose of this post is to provide answers to frequently asked questions and to assist advertisers in their preparation.

What does Google Performance Max entail?

The main distinction between Performance Max and other ads is that Google automates the campaign’s targeting and delivery based on the data provided by the advertiser.

Performance Max is an automated campaign type that is similar to (but not identical to) a Smart campaign.

Similar to how responsive display advertising functions, Google will automate ad production but just depending on the materials provided.

Performance Max and social campaigns have certain similarities, such as the fact that it runs across numerous places using dynamic ad formats and that performance reporting by audience and placement is limited.

On which network is Performance Max available?

Performance Max campaigns are unique in that they can run across all of Google’s inventory, which sets them apart from other campaign kinds. Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, and Discovery campaigns all have locations that Performance Max campaigns can fill.

With Performance Max, what options and controls do I have?

You choose your objective when you create a Performance Max campaign. Product feeds and shop locations might be linked depending on your objectives.

Bidding and Budget
After that, you’ll decide on your budget and bidding approach. Max conversions and max value are available bidding strategy parameters, but you can also define a max CPA or a target value/conversion, allowing you to use Target CPA and Target ROAS strategies.

Ad Scheduling, Location, and Language

You’ll then select your locations. Because the Google Ads editor does not now enable Performance Max, setting up the targeting is more time-consuming than typical campaigns. If you have a lot of places to add, select “input another location,” which will expand to include a blank area and a link to “advanced search.” Bulk import locations can be found by clicking the “advanced search” link.
You can then select languages, ad schedules, campaign run dates, and more.

Options for Advanced URLs

The URL choices are crucial. Unless you turn off the option, Google will define its own final URLs by default. You have the option to exclude links if you enable Google to deliver traffic to whichever links it sees fit.
You can also provide tracking templates.

Creating “Asset Groups,” often known as ads

After that, you’ll be asked to create an “asset group,” which is essentially an ad that works similarly to a responsive display asset. This “asset group” is termed so because it serves as a resource for all platforms. Advertisers have the option of creating several “asset groups.”

Automated Targeting with Information

There is just one set of targeting for each campaign (so no ad groups). You can choose audiences to assist Google to figure out who it should target. “Your ads will be presented to people who are most likely to convert for your goals,” Google says. By supplying audience signals, you may speed up optimization.” This means that your campaigns may not be limited to certain demographics. Rather, Google is looking for signs in the audiences you supply. They’ll utilize the information to find similar customers who share similar behaviors and interests.

Configuring Ad Extensions

You then add your extensions. For the Performance Max campaigns, you can use existing account-level sitelink extensions or select and develop specific sitelinks. Based on your objectives, the campaign will recommend extension formats. If your major goal is lead generation, for example, the campaign will recommend generating a lead form extension. Structured snippets, pricing extensions, promotion extensions, callouts, and call extensions are also available.

What are the contents of Performance Max reports?

A flaw in performance reporting has been identified. Advertiser feedback on reporting transparency had been heard during the Google Marketing Livestream, and Google will be taking steps to improve openness inside Google Max campaigns.

Because it’s unclear how reporting may evolve in the future, I’ll relate my experience with reporting as it currently exists.

In its current state, reporting is limited. Advertisers can report on overall campaign performance just like any other campaign. The breakdowns are where the transparency disappears.

To begin, consider the following options:

• Advertisers can report on the overall performance of their campaigns.
• Advertisers can submit location performance reports (and if advertising a chain, the store report is available based upon location extensions)
• Advertisers can track performance by hour of the day, day of the week, or day and hour.

Now for the stuff, you can’t talk about.

Although you can add several asset groups (ads), reporting on performance by asset group is not feasible. For example, in the display, you may currently report on performance by responsive display ad, but you can’t really break down that performance by each asset. You can’t even take the initial step of breaking down performance by asset group with Performance Max (ad).
There is also no information on who is being targeted. Remember that the targeting characteristics you supply are used as indicators to help you locate other probable prospects in the market, so the audiences you provide won’t necessarily be utilized as targets, but rather as a way to identify qualifiers and indications to help you find other likely prospects. Finally, there’s no way to know who saw your ad because there’s no audience reporting, keyword reporting, demographic reporting, or anything else. This also means that exclusions for certain items aren’t possible.

Advertisers are unable to report on device performance or exclude users.

I can’t comment on performance reports at the product level because I didn’t connect a product feed.

What is the performance of Performance Max?
Let me start by mentioning that we are Google Premier Partner agency and we were one of the Performance Max beta testers, so I’ll speak from personal experience. The mileage may differ.

Our non-brand search advertising, which was entirely maxed out with budgets unlimited, had a CPL 21.4 percent lower than the Performance Max campaigns. The CPL was also roughly 22% lower than display, which often does really well for this account. With Performance Max, we were able to improve their total month’s conversions by roughly 5%, and this was with constrained budgets, so there’s still space to push more volume.
It doesn’t appear to be cannibalizing search, but neither the Performance Max nor the Display campaigns were fully loaded, so I don’t know how inventory was migrating between the two channels.

I would temper those findings by pointing you that this is a high-volume account. Because of the volume of data flowing in, automation does exceptionally well here. Nonetheless, overall performance appears to be positive.

We’re currently waiting to evaluate how the lead quality compares to other channels for this account because leads take a long time to close.

Feel free to contact us if you need google cpc agency or any google ads management.

PPC Tracking: A Comprehensive Guide [2022]

The setup of your pay-per-click (PPC) campaign is only the first step.

The next step is to track your PPC ad results so you may fine-tune your paid search campaign and achieve the desired outcomes.

PPC tracking is a time-consuming but worthwhile procedure that may help you create traffic to your site and increase sales, whether you manage an eCommerce business or a startup.

In fact, 33% of marketers in 2020 employed paid promotion to increase brand awareness!

We’re here to help if you’re new to PPC tracking and have questions.

We’ll cover all you need to know about PPC tracking in this piece, including critical metrics to track and more.

What Is PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Tracking?

The technique of tracking your pay-per-click campaign and its performance is known as PPC tracking.

Monitoring metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) that inform you how successful your campaign is are included.

These stats will provide you with a clear picture of what works and what doesn’t for your adverts. For instance, which keywords are effective or which advertisements get the most traffic.

8 Key Metrics to Track When Monitoring Pay-Per-Click Ads

While Google allows you to check various KPIs, here are the eight most important metrics to monitor to guarantee that your PPC advertisements are producing the results you desire.

1. Impressions
The number of times your ad was displayed on search engine result pages is known as impressions (SERPs). If Google shows your ad five times on a given day, your ad has received five impressions for that day. Keep in mind that this number does not necessarily correspond to the number of individuals who saw your ad; it simply indicates how many times it was shown.

2. Impression share
The impression share of your ad compares to that of your competitors.

Impression share also keeps track of how much competition there is for a given keyword or PPC ad campaign.

Divide the number of impressions your ad received by the total number of impressions your ad was qualified to receive to get your impression share.

For instance, if your ad was qualified to appear 50 times in SERPs but only appeared 10 times, your impression share is 20%.

3. Click-Through Rate and Clicks

The amount of persons who clicked on your ad is referred to as clicks.

While clicks are a simple indicator, click-through rate (CTR) reveals how relevant your ad is to users.

The impressions that result in a click are represented by click-through rates.

Divide the number of clicks by the number of individuals who viewed your ad (impressions) and multiply by 100 to get your CTR.

Your CTR is 0.2 percent if your ad receives 500 impressions and one click.

There are two sorts of click-through rates: (1)

Users find your PPC ads relevant and engaging, resulting in a high CTR.
Low CTR: Users don’t find your PPC advertising interesting or relevant.

4. Conversions and conversion rate

Users convert when they click on your ad and do the action you want them to take, such as buying your product or service.

The percentage of users who convert after clicking on one of your adverts is known as conversion rates.

In other words, conversion rates provide a more accurate picture of how many people are buying your products.

Divide the number of clicks by the number of conversions and multiply by 100 to get your conversion rates.

So, if 100 people click on your ad and 10 of them convert, your conversion rate is 10%.

5. Average CPC (Cost Per Click)

When a user clicks on one of your adverts, you pay a cost-per-click (CPC).

Divide your total cost of clicks by the total number of clicks your ad has received to get your average CPC.

When a user clicks on your ad, the result is how much you’ll be charged.

6. Average Position

The average position of your adverts on search engine results pages (SERPs) defines how well they compete with other ads. Ads show at the top and bottom of search results, giving them more exposure.

To get your ads to the top of the SERPs, follow these steps:

Boost your Ad Rank by incorporating relevant brand information and generating advertisements with site links or extensions that allow consumers to visit your site directly from Google Ads.
Use appropriate keywords to ensure your adverts are relevant.
Make your bid competitive by making sure it’s high enough to compete against other advertisers bidding on the same keywords as you. A bid is an offer made in a pay-per-click auction to ensure that your ad appears at the top of search engine results pages.

7. Quality Score

On a scale of one (lowest) to ten (best), Google rates the quality of your ads and keywords (highest).

Your click-through rate, the average cost per click, and the bid amount are all elements that determine your ad’s quality score.

8. Return of ad spend (ROAS)

The revenue gained for every dollar spent on your ad is known as return on ad spend (ROAS).

Divide the profit from your ad campaign by the cost to calculate your ROAS.

For example, if your PPC ad campaign on Google generated $800 in revenue and cost you $100 to run, you made a $8 profit for every $1 spent.

What Is the Importance of PPC Tracking?

The benefits of PPC tracking range from analyzing the performance of your pay-per-click ads to guaranteeing that they generate purchases.

1. Assists you in determining which keywords and advertisements are most effective.

You can only see the surface-level performance of your advertising if you don’t track conversions, such as how many impressions and clicks they get.

While knowing your impressions and clicks is important for understanding your users’ interests, if you don’t track your conversions, you won’t know which advertisements are producing leads and driving sales for your company.

Conversion tracking allows you to see which keywords and advertising are assisting your PPC campaigns in driving conversions.

You may then tweak and make the required adjustments after you know which of your ads are doing successfully. Modifications could include:

The underperforming adverts are paused or deleted.
Creating Google-generated advertisements or dynamic search ads that target appropriate searches based on your user’s search
Ad wording that corresponds to search terms
To make your keywords more relevant, divide them into categories (for example, if you sell wine bottles, you might have a set of keywords for “red wine” and “white wine”).

2. Enables you to collect data

What was your past month’s click-through rate? Or the previous year?

PPC tracking is vital because it helps you to collect data that shows you what measures to take next to achieve your objectives, whether they are to increase conversions, get leads, improve brand awareness, or drive visitors to your website.

Furthermore, if you engage a PPC agency to manage your ads, they will have access to your past data, which will assist them in:

Make your budget fit your objectives and make sure your advertising dollars are well spent.
Make a plan to improve your PPC marketing campaigns in the future.
Contact the best Google AdWords agency to fix your conversion tracking.

PPC Tracking Limitations

To analyze your PPC ad success and guarantee you’re interacting with your target audience, you’ll need to track crucial indicators.

However, PPC tracking alone is insufficient to fully comprehend the value of your marketing plan and its impact on sales.

Here are three drawbacks of PPC tracking:

1. Call tracking for PPC is not standardized

Call conversion (people who call you) can be measured through PPC ads, but calls can also come from organic search (non-paid results on SERPs) or other channels like social media or your website.

Let’s say you have a Google PPC ad. While you may track calls from advertisements (those made directly from your ads), you may also receive calls from organic searches or social media.

So tracking only PPC calls won’t give you the whole picture.

2. No recording of call quality

You can track the length of your calls (for example, 30 seconds), but not how many of those callers converted.

For example, if 100 people call after seeing your ad but only 60 of them locate what they’re searching for, only 40% of those people are high-quality leads or your most likely conversion prospects.

What about the other 60% of those who dialed?

If they don’t locate what they’re looking for, they’ll be regarded as low-quality leads who are unlikely to buy from your company.

While your PPC stats may say things like “You had 100 calls from your ad today!” they don’t say things like “Unfortunately, 60% of those callers are low-quality leads.”

3. Leads do not guarantee a sale.

According to a 2018 survey, paid search advertising was the quickest way to get information online for 75% of people.

This statistic demonstrates that individuals are more likely to click on Google text ads that answer their questions, helping your ad to generate leads.

While PPC tracking can follow your leads via tracking URLs, you won’t know how many of those leads convert.

PPC Tracking Key Takeaways

PPC tracking helps you to track the performance of your PPC advertising, gain insight into what’s working and what isn’t, discover areas for improvement, and collect data for future campaigns.

While PPC tracking is beneficial, you can’t rely on its primary indicators to provide a clear picture of how your marketing plan is progressing.

You’ll need to analyze your advertising and keywords, keep optimizing them, track conversions, and follow up on leads.

Smart Google Shopping Campaigns – Do You Need It?

What is a smart google shopping ads campaign? Smart shopping campaigns in the arsenal of Google Ads appeared relatively recently and have already managed to win both supporters and opponents. How do smart shopping campaigns work? The essence of the google smart shopping campaigns tool is to maximize the automation of the process of setting up and launching ads, helping to avoid routine processes and significantly saving the time of the PPC specialist.

On the one hand, it certainly sounds great. There is no longer a need to delve into a huge amount of theory, minimizing the risks of screwing up the settings of smart shopping strategies or missing something altogether. On the other hand, the amount of input for the campaign is reduced to a frightening minimum, which can affect the result. In this article, we will look at whether smart shopping campaigns are so good and who they are suitable for.

WHAT ARE THE TOP FEATURES OF GOOGLE SMART SHOPPING? WHAT TO KEEP IN MIND

SMART Shopping is a collection of product and display ads. Thus, ads are displayed not only in search results, but also in the Google display network, including third-party sites: YouTube and Gmail. Display ads are used here to remarket products to audience potentially interested in it.

Before launching this type of campaign, you need to make sure that there are 20 conversions in the current shopping campaigns (in total) in the last 45 days. Otherwise, the newly created campaign will not have enough data to analyze and its performance is likely to be unsatisfactory.

SMART Shopping uses machine learning to optimize campaigns for time and efficiency. This means that it is completely impossible to track the search queries for which the ads were displayed. Adding negative keywords here, respectively, is not possible.

Another important thing is that there is no control over the rates here either. By default, only one bid strategy is available: maximum conversion value. You can only set the ROAS that the campaign will focus on, or leave this field empty altogether.

LAUNCHING SMART SHOPPING: ALL THE PROS AND CONS

For some reason many people are sure that if the campaign is “smart”, then it should bring significant results. This judgment is sometimes wrong. To make a final decision in favor or against the launch of SMART Shopping, let’s first discuss all the advantages and disadvantages of this type of campaign. So if you are not sure you did everything right, better to contact a PPC agency and take a consultation.

WHAT ARE THE MOST EFFECTIVE SMART MARKETING CAMPAIGNS?

Saving time due to the simplicity of the settings. The speed of creating a campaign is a big plus for a PPC specialist, while entrepreneurs who independently launch ads have already appreciated the lack of complex settings. All you need to do to set up a smart shopping campaign is to choose the average daily budget (you can specify ROAS), select the products to be advertised, write short ads and add product images (for remarketing).

Reduced cost-per-click. Let’s say you found out from the article how to create a smart shopping campaign and launched it having a sufficient number of conversions in your account over the past 45 days. Then, during the training phase, a smart shopping campaign will display a general pattern among users who have already purchased your product and will display ads for the most relevant queries, while reducing the cost of a click.

One budget — 4 advertising channels. This item is for entrepreneurs who do not yet have large advertising budgets, but need to start somewhere. As mentioned above, SMART Shopping ads are displayed in search, display networks, as well as YouTube and Gmail, effectively distributing the budget between them. This “versatility” significantly reduces advertising costs, eliminating the need to create additional advertising campaigns (the same remarketing), and investing your money and time in them.

Minimum of management. Keeping smart shopping campaigns afloat is easy enough. In general, all you need is to monitor the results of each specific product and disable it if necessary, add and remove images in ads. Machine learning will do the rest.

DISADVANTAGES OF SMART SHOPPING CAMPAIGNS

The absence of a report on keywords. You should never exclude the possibility that ads are served for non-targeted queries. Looking at the example of ordinary shopping campaigns, the situation may even be as follows: advertising has been running for many months and it seems to you that most of the irrelevant queries have long been in the list of negative keywords, but suddenly there is a surge in traffic and an increase in costs. Of course, there is no increase in the number of sales. You go to the search query report and see that your ads have recently started being served for a large number of irrelevant queries. Then with this in mind, you can take all the necessary measures.

When working with smart shopping campaigns, you can not only view the above-mentioned report, but also add negative keywords (if you already have a list from previous campaigns). All that is in our hands is to add the most detailed product descriptions to the data feed, using keywords.

“No” to manual bid assignment. Depending on the niche and the cost of the goods, bid management can be extremely important. In this scenario, it becomes impossible to redistribute the budget in favor of the most marginal products and bestsellers, which bring the largest share of profit. This can result in wasting money, or selling low-margin products, the costs of which simply will not pay off.

Smart shopping campaigns have a hard time working with a low-cost segment because even with a low cost-per-click and a large number of sales, advertising costs can significantly exceed revenue. Think twice before launching whether you are willing to sacrifice bid management in favor of machine learning.

Uncertainty. In addition to the fact that it is quite difficult to predict the result of a smart shopping campaign, its effectiveness is almost beyond your control. Due to the minimal number of settings and available reports, optimization opportunities also tend to zero. It turns out that the campaign either works or it doesn’t, and you need to accept it.

WHEN SHOULD I LAUNCH SMART SHOPPING CAMPAIGNS AND HOW CAN I IMPROVE MY SMART SHOPPING CAMPAIGN?

Here we come to my favorite part: the one in which it will finally become clear in which cases it is possible to launch SMART Shopping, and in which cases it is better to refrain. So, what makes a good influencer marketing campaign? Below are the conditions that are most likely to bring the desired result. However, these conditions alone are not limited, and a wide variety of factors can affect the work of the campaign – from the business niche to the competition in the market. Let’s take a look:

Stable demand for the product. Perhaps the most advantageous option. Thanks to the stable demand, you will quickly gain the required number of conversions in your account, which a smart shopping campaign will then analyze and use. At the same time, if you are afraid of a drawdown on conversions, there is no need to disable campaigns that have already proven their effectiveness. Strong consumer demand, combined with detailed descriptions in the feed, will ensure a positive trend in the operation of a smart shopping campaign.

Here’s an example: for four months, we worked with the usual sales campaigns of a client who sells meditation products. During this time, there were almost no fluctuations in demand and the number of transactions remained approximately the same from month to month. Then it was decided to test a smart shopping campaign. The graph shows how the number of transactions in the account has increased in 2 months of smart shopping compared to the previous two.

 

Small budget for advertising. This option does not guarantee effectiveness, but it should be tested.  SMART Shopping is a comprehensive tool that, in fact, combines different types of campaigns and works with several sales channels at once. Thus, instead of splitting the already small amount of money into different types of campaigns, you can set the entire estimated budget in one campaign, which will train itself, and, in general (it all depends on many factors), will be able to show better results than different campaigns individually.

In addition, smart shopping campaigns are easier to optimize by turning off products that “drain” the budget. There is no flexibility with rates here, of course, but the headache of “what settings to change to save money and how to optimize smart shopping campaigns” is also at a minimum.

SMART Shopping for best sellers. When the usual shopping campaigns have already reached their maximum potential and bring about the same number of sales per month, the most obvious thing that can come to mind is to create a smart shopping campaign with the same products. But there is an equally worthy alternative — SMART Shopping only for bestsellers.

Add the TOP 20 products that generate the most revenue to your new campaign, and turn them off in all other campaigns. What for? A smart shopping campaign has enough statistics to show bestsellers to the most relevant users and thus increase their sales several times. At the same time, other shopping campaigns will try to sell the remaining products in them, collecting statistics on them. Later, these can also be added to SMART Shopping.

CONCLUSION: BRIEFLY ABOUT THE MAIN ASPECTS

Whether or not to launch SMART Shopping is a personal matter. Someone wants to automate routine processes and is ready to trust machine learning, while others need to keep everything under control and understand where their money goes. As for me, I can say that if the product is good, then in the hands of an experienced specialist, it will sell well in ordinary shopping campaigns.

If the product was almost not sold before, then it is unlikely that it will be sold in the SMART campaign. At least because of the lack of necessary statistics. Consider smart shopping campaigns as a tool to improve your (already good) performance, and not as a panacea for the lack of transactions. And one more thing: trust only the experts.