During this week’s PPCChat session, host Julie F Bacchini sought expert views on the PPC platforms, which one is working for them and which one is most challenging. Here is the screencap of the entire discussion.
Q1: On which platform(s) are you currently running advertising? And for which industries (or at least e-comm, lead gen, B2C, B2B, etc.).
Google and Bing, B2B/lead gen. Our clients also run in FB and LI but someone else on our team handles social. @beyondthepaid
I am mainly working on Google Ads right now for lead-gen clients. I have a new client coming on board who is interested in some YT, so excited about that. That is a public interest client.I have been doing more audit and coaching work lately too, but that’s a different conversation! @NeptuneMoon
Ecom and SaaS, Google (+ YouTube), Microsoft, Facebook/IG and sometimes TikTok. @duanebrown
Google, FB/IG, YouTube. Ecommerce. @dan_patterson
Google (including YouTube and GDN) and Bing. We do lead gen, e-commerce, and B2C. @DonSeaberry
Oh, we also run YouTube and GDN. @beyondthepaid
Google (Search, Display, and Video), Bing, LinkedIn, and Reddit. Mainly in the B2B and lead gen space. @adclarke10
Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta – I keep trying to make LinkedIn work but it just never pans out for me. I work with everyone XD. @navahf
Google, so search, shopping, display, YouTube, and Discover. It’s more top-heavy with PMax and Shopping, with search taking an unfortunate back seat to changes this year. Occasionally with cross over into AMZ shopping, still search-based there. @teabeeshell
Google (search shopping display youtube discover pmax), Bing, one client I am doing a small meta campaign but I avoid it generally. @MicheleJaeger1
ecomm and lead gen. @MicheleJaeger1
I find it interesting how some us segment out ad products as entirely different channels vs just grouping them together. I wonder if that’s because many think of Google and Microsoft as search first and feel the need to clarify. @navahf
An aside… I really like that I can see here that people are still typing/responding to questions! @NeptuneMoon
Mostly B2B LI/Meta/Google. @markpgus
Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit. Mostly lead gen (higher ed and professional services), but also some ecomm and a couple non-profits with Google Grant accounts. @robert_brady
I work across a variety of clients, but mostly eCom across Google, Microsoft, Meta, TikTok, Snap & planning some Twitch stuff for November. @MeriemNacer
Q2: On which platform(s) are you having the most success in the past 6 months?Any thoughts on why those platforms are performing well/better than others?
Clients who are running in Bing are getting great results there. We are also seeing mostly good results from LI, especially with lead gen forms. Google is Google – you have to be there. @beyondthepaid
This is going to come to a surprise to many but I actually have seen a lot of success on Microsoft. I have a feeling the lion share of my success is due to my taking extra precautions on set-up and structure. Google is being Google but the biggest area of fluctuation is LSA – it seems like a lot of profiles are in a weird spot and I feel like the reason for it is that they don’t get the same amount of love as the channels PMax covers. @navahf
Well, since I’m only on Google at the moment. I have been pushing hard for clients to take another look at Microsoft Ads. And for one Reddit! @NeptuneMoon
Microsoft doing well for a product that skews older and wealthier! @MicheleJaeger1
How do you keep the junk out of your Microsoft accounts @mel66 and @Navah Hopkins? I’ve had some clients get spam leads galore over there this year. @robert_brady
also pmax for some clients. @MicheleJaeger1
Easier to see success on paid search. You can get success on FB/IG but it is not as trackable since the Apple update of course. Getting some clients to realize that doing the same ads as before just is not cutting it anymore. @duanebrown
As reluctant as I was to dive into PMax with both feet, I’m happy I did. The frustrations persist, of course, but recent attempts to sniff out performance lift have been promising. When running “parallel” Branded Search and Shopping campaigns, PMax is “forced” to explore elsewhere. Yes, that’s into display and YouTube and Discovery ads, but fully built-out PMax campaigns seem to do well enough there. There is still overlap in / cannibalization of Search and Shopping, but it appears to be ~30%, which is palatable for some brands. @teabeeshell
longer – the big shift in performance came around 2019. At least for me and the clients who could leverage the audiences as well as get a lot of the tools that Google was depreciating. @navahf
Google Search and FB are doing really well for us. Granted, they don’t dedupe against each other, but the metrics are good. @dan_patterson
Microsoft has a LSA now (Professional Service Ads) that let you use normal search campaign protections to ensure budgets are happy. @navahf
The main reason they’re unfortunate is a lot of folks treat the audience network more like GDN when they really should treat it like a true programmatic play but most folks aren’t prepared to do that. @navahf
Microsoft Advertising has been doing well, mainly because of low costs compared to Google. Google still tends to drive the highest volume of leads, but I agree with @duanebrown that part of this is probably due to attribution / the nature of the channel. LinkedIn retargeting has also performed well recently.@adclarke10
Microsoft’s performance has really turned around for us in terms of visibility and quality coming through. @HeatherCox
I am in love with how Microsoft is handling feedback on PMax though – they are really taking the time to understand points of friction. @navahf
Q3: Is there anything new you’ve been trying/testing in the past 6 months? If so, how’s it going?
Being ok with the things I used to hate with a passion XD search with display select, all broad match….essentially the verdict on broad match is that it needs more specific keyword concepts and negatives to help guide it. search with display expansion is “ok” but you might as well do pmax. @navahf
Really pushing out there creative with a newer client. Engagement is UNREAL. So next step is refining offer/stuff post click to turn that into an overall efficiency. @markpgus
Yeah, I would say really leaning into automation more in Google (e.g. pmax, auto bidding, especially for ecomm). I tested removing branded keywords from PMAX and it destroyed performance, which was interesting. Now I’m running pmax alongside shopping depending on the product/purchase path. @MicheleJaeger1
Broad match – man, it makes me nervous. @HeatherCox
So broad match is not nearly as bad as it used to be. @navahf
I feel that @HeatherCox – I am trying to find ways to test broad. It’s harder with accounts with lower conversion volumes…@NeptuneMoon
We have leaned pretty heavily into PMAX to drive incremental gains for clients. That has gone well. @DonSeaberry
Within PMax campaigns, I’m pushing hard to develop quality audiences, especially including owned data sources:
- Klaviyo Win-Back Segment – Email engagers who have not yet purchased
- Klaviyo Lapsed – Non-engagers who may have emails lost in the inbox shuffle
I’m also testing Competitor Segments (built in Google Audiences) including:
- Visitors of competitor sites – URLs as “keywords” in audience creation
- Similar Visitors – Sites like competitor sites
- Competitor names – As search terms to build the audience
- Contextually-Aligned Interests & In-Market Segments – Picked from Google’s pre-defined list, tailored based on industry/product/service @teabeeshell
We started testing Reddit for a client in the education/career development space, and results have been great. Remarketing campaigns delivered solid leads, and CPCs/CPMs are relatively cheap for Awareness (targeting based on audience interests and specific subreddits). Also just launched a keyword targeting test and excited to see how that performs! @adclarke10
We have also significantly tested a campaign structure with broad match and exact match keyword variations in the same ad group. There are no phrase match keywords in the campaigns. That has been extremely successful and has become a standard structure. @DonSeaberry
I’ve been meaning to test an ROI based structure for my p-max campaigns (having a pmax campaign with all high ROI products and another campaign with low ROI products)but have always talked myself out of it as performance has been decent with just product-themed asset groups all in one campaign. What are your thoughts guys? @samibspin
YouTube is new for us this summer. We’ve run some campaigns pre-covid, but this is our first year turning it on in a while. Seems to be doing pretty well. Also testing out Google Discovery this summer. @dan_patterson
Q4: Which platform(s) are most challenging for you lately and why?
Paid social in general has been weird due to audience nerfing. However, I will say Amazon’s newer tools have made for a really interesting home for several verticals impacted by privacy-first audiences. @navahf
Does GA4 count? @beyondthepaid
Yea GA4 has been a thing. @navahf
I think just generally recalibrating client expectations for both performance and reporting across platforms has been the biggest challenge of the last 6-ish months. Oh, and GA4! @NeptuneMoon
GA4 for sure. @MicheleJaeger1
I am actually pretty mad…I just posted on Linkedin but a client of mine used another vendor for set up and there were no conversion events set up. @navahf
Actually, I’m going to say that – lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of vendors popping up claiming mastery and doing stuff that hurts people and the stress and hardship it causes is just so aggravating. @navahf
The ad platforms don’t need to do anything to make things hard if the unethical can run around unchecked. @navahf
The platform discrepancies between GA4 (imported) conversion and “native” Google Ads conversions drives me crazy. It seems the two should be unified, but it ends up opening up another attribution/source of truth can of worms. @teabeeshell
Social in general has been tougher to track success because of all the changes the last few years, like GA4 and iOS. Trying to combat this by implementing offline conversion tracking, CRM integrations, etc. where we can, but that’s not always feasible for clients. @adclarke10
Q5: Do you have a specific issue going on right now that we might be able to help with?
Anyone have any good tips on how to measure branded keyword spend on PMAX? I think this is not possible, but thought I would ask. @MicheleJaeger1
@MicheleJaeger1 I go about it this way:
- Look at the Insights tab for a given PMax campaign, scrolling to the Consumer spotlight section.
- Ensure the dropdown in the table shows Conversions and open enough rows to see all conversions for that given time frame, either last 7d or last 28d. (Note this date range.)
- Count the number of branded (name and/or product) queries and their corresponding conversions. (Note this total).
- Return to the Campaigns view for the PMax campaign, using the same date range. Divide the branded count you took from Consumer spotlight by the total number of conversions and you have your branded percentage.
Bonuses:
- If you also note the total conversion in Consumer spotlight, you can calculate the volume of Search + Shopping driven conversions. (Total in spotlight / total in PMax for the date range.) The rest (can be) attributed to Display, YouTube, Gmail, and Discovery since they’re not search-based.
- Augment your research with this script from Agency Savvy. @teabeeshell
Also, has anyone tried the new brand restriction options in Google Ads? @NeptuneMoon
@NeptuneMoon RE: Brand Exclusion Lists, I’ve had one “under review” for three weeks now. (It didn’t yet exist in Google’s pre-defined set, created and submitted for review.)Google state it’s a ~3wk review process, so I’m eager to test it out. I’ve only heard poor reviews outside of heavy spenders, but I’m curious to test…once/if approved.@teabeeshell
We doing PMax for B2B yet? Lol. Still manually bidding over here. Some testing of value-based bidding. But PMax… I’ve stayed away. @markpgus
Has anyone else seen PMax deliver automated assets even when all assets are created and this setting is turned off for a campaign? I don’t know how to “force” a respecting of these settings, and the auto-created ads are poor. @teabeeshell
Tweeting? X-ing? It’s so dumb…@dan_patterson
PPCChat Participants
- Julie F Bacchini @NeptuneMoon
- Melissa L Mackey @beyondthepaid
- Duane Brown @duanebrown
- Dan Patterson @dan_patterson
- Don Seaberry @DonSeaberry
- Ashton Clarke @adclarke10
- Navah Hopkins @navahf
- Travis @teabeeshell
- Michele Jaeger @MicheleJaeger1
- Mark Gustafson @markpgus
- Robert Brady @robert_brady
- Meriem Nacer @MeriemNacer
- Heather Cox @HeatherCox
- Sami Bakaitis @samibspin
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