Welcome to Cultivative’s weekly roundup for all things PPC from around the web—everything you need to know right now about PPC!
At Cultivative, we’re all about making your life easier. We’ve gathered the top PPC news and innovations from around the web and getting it into your hands. Check out what we found this past week.
Facebook testing brand safety topic exclusions for advertisers
By Carolyn Lyden | Jan 29, 2021

Facebook announced it would begin testing news feed topic exclusions for advertisers this year, allowing marketers to choose whether to show their ads alongside potentially sensitive content. Advertisers will have more control over where their ads may appear in a user’s newsfeed, and brands can ensure that their products and services don’t show up next to topics the brand doesn’t associate with or believe in.
PPC Town Hall 32: Tackling shopping ads and e-commerce in 2021
By Frederick Vallaeys | Jan 29, 2021

PPC Town Hall 32 features Google’s Emi Wayner and Peter Oliveira, and SavvyRevenue’s Andrew Lolk, as they discuss the state of Shopping Ads and E-commerce in 2021. Last year’s accelerated online shopping hit the industry fast, and the trends are here to stay for 2021. Here are the key highlights from their discussion:
1. Shopping & e-commerce predictions for 2021
2. Thoughts on e-commerce in 2020
3. Smart vs Regular Shopping Campaigns
4. Smart Shopping outperforms Standard Shopping setups 9/10 times
5. Making Smart Bidding and Smart Shopping work for you
How to Test Your Facebook Ads for Optimal Results
by Michael Stelzner | Feb 1, 2021

Andrea Vahl and Michael Stelzner review how to use Facebook’s A/B Testing tool to test your Facebook ads to reveal the best audience, creative, and copy. Testing lets advertisers discover what ads generate the most leads and business while spending less money. The authors walk-through how to budget for testing Facebook Ads, set up testing, identify responsive audiences, assess Facebook Ad creative variations, determine proper Facebook Ad placements, and analyze test results to refine Facebook Ads.
Target Competitors On Facebook Using Interest Based Audiences
by Chadd Powell | Feb 1, 2021

“Interest-based targeting works because you can use your competitor as the interest being targeted. If you type in a competitor name, Facebook is going to populate it with an audience that has expressed an interest in or liked pages related to that competitor,” explains Chadd Powell, as Facebook doesn’t have keywords, like Google, for targeting competitors. Powell provides an example of how the audiences overlap. It’s not as clear-cut as Google or Microsoft Ads targeting, but it is a strategy you may consider testing.
Facebook Dynamic Ads: 5 Tips to Drive More Product Sales
by Adrian Tilley | Feb 2, 2021

Facebook dynamic ads are an invaluable tool for creating and managing ad campaigns at scale. If you are currently running Facebook dynamic ads to promote your products and looking to improve your results, Adrian Tilley provides the following tips for optimizing your ads for more sales:
1. Promote Separate Catalogs for Broad and Themed Product Categories
2. Provide Contextual Product Details
3. Localize Language and Pricing for International Ads
4. Enhance Static Creatives With Frames and Pricing Overlays
5. Choose Your First Image Visual Wisely
5 Compelling Reasons to Advertise on Social Media (+ Pro Tips)
by Akvile DeFazio | Feb 2, 2021

There is no question that advertising on social media platforms can be profitable for businesses of all kinds. In part, this is because there is real value beyond what they can get organically. From expanding reach and visibility to driving the bottom line, Akvile DeFazio covers five reasons why brands invest in social media advertising to reach their goals and scale their business, including:
- Reaching new customers
- Low entry cost
- Gaining audience insights
- Wide range of formats
- Accomplishing more of your goals
iOS 14 is not your biggest measurement challenge… but it might have just exposed it
by Sam Carter | Feb 3, 2021

In the latest iOS release, additional privacy controls will dramatically restrict ad platforms’ ability to track Apple product users as they navigate between apps and mobile web. Facebook responded to this issue by limiting the windows for attribution and the types of data that advertisers can use to target customers across all devices. For many marketers, these changes are exposing a deeper flaw in their measurement and attribution: a dependency on ad platforms to measure their own performance. With the new limitations to user-level data access for Facebook, there has never been a better time for brands to control their first-party data and independent measurement of their marketing spending effectiveness.
We hope you learned something new you can apply to your PPC business strategy. Let us know in the comments below what you want to start implementing. As always, we are happy to be a resource for your paid advertising needs. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.
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