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.
The 10 Most Important PPC KPIs You Should Be Tracking
By Chandal Nolasco da Silva | Mar 13, 2021

Anyone working in PPC needs to know the most important metrics to assess campaign performance. Knowing what your campaign aims to achieve will allow you to set up Google Analytics and Google Ads in advance, ensuring you measure performance accurately from the start and secure your campaign’s integrity. Chandal Nolasco da Silva reviews these ten top PPC KPIs:
- Clicks
- Click-Through Rate (CTR)
- Quality Score
- Cost Per Click (CPC)
- Cost Per Conversion/Acquisition (CPA)
- Conversion Rate (CVR)
- Impression Share (CPM)
- Average Position
- Budget Attainment
- Lifetime Value
The five latest Google Ads features and how to make the most of them
By Martin Romerio | Mar 15, 2021

Google recently released new features and ways of buying ads that allow marketers to grow their reach and take new approaches. Martin Romerio reviews how to use these five new features that you may want to consider testing:
- Get listed for free on Google Shopping
- Get impressions on Display and YouTube ads… but only pay for sales!
- Customer acquisition is good but NEW customer acquisition is better!
- Get offline – How to keep track on offline conversions
- Be creative! Push gallery ads over all networks
5 Ways AI Can Improve Your Paid Ads Campaigns
By Bhavik Soni | Mar 15, 2021

You can use Artificial Intelligence for paid advertisement optimization. According to Ahavik Soni, AI can boost advertising and ensure it’s effective regardless of where it is published. Soni recommends using AI in your paid advertising campaigns for:
- Creation of dynamic ads
- Easy ad scripting
- Freeze ads and keywords with unsatisfactory performance
- Automated optimization
- Easy Bidding
FLoC is coming — Here’s what we know so far
By George Nguyen | Mar 15, 2021

Google announced that it would not build or use alternate identifiers to track users for advertising purposes. Instead, the company reiterated that its ads will be driven by one of its Privacy Sandbox initiatives, called Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC). FLoC is a method for browsers to enable interest-based advertising. It works by gathering data about a user’s browsing habits and then clustering groups of users with similar interests into cohorts. Information about the cohort is then shared for advertising purposes. Despite the many uncertainties surrounding Google’s replacement for third-party cookies, there are still ways that you can position your agency and your clients to hit the ground running when the changes finally occur:
- Collect your own data
- Communicate the changes to your clients
- Keep up to date with the news
The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Split Testing in 2021
By Martha Kendall Custard | Mar 16, 2021

Facebook split testing is an effective strategy to drastically increase an ad’s effectiveness and help you understand your customers and what they seek most, which will help you create better content in the future. Martha Kendall Custard discusses split-testing in this complete guide, which includes testing your Facebook campaigns on all aspects, as well as maximizing your return on investment:
- Split testing efficiency
- What elements of a Facebook Ad should you split test, and how?
- Pick the metrics that will define success or failure
- Ad set and ads: how to structure your test
- Set the right budget for your split test
- What can go wrong with split testing?
- How to optimize your Facebook ads based on your split test results
Google’s Ads Safety Report Indicates an Increase in Malicious Behavior in 2020
By Amy Bishop | Mar 17, 2021

Google released their 10th annual Ads Safety Report, designed to prevent the malicious use of Google’s ads platforms, including those that misrepresent, mislead, or threaten users’ safety. Of the 3.1 billion ads blocked in 2020, over 867 million ads were blocked for attempting to evade detection systems, and an additional 101 million ads were blocked for breaking misrepresentation policies. To prevent future malicious behaviors, Google’s team follows this process:
- Human reviewers identify and label policy-violating ads.
- Engineers create machine learning models using the policy-violating ads to identify signals of malicious behavior.
- The system uses the machine learning models based upon the network signals they’ve identified to flag similar ads.
- Models are continuously improved over time.
What Is Facebook Ads Library and How to Use It
By Tim Jensen | Mar 16, 2021

A vital part of any online advertising strategy is competitor research, and the Facebook Ads Library is a great place to start. It offers complete transparency into recent Facebook ads run by all brands. Tim Jensen demonstrates how to use the Facebook Ads Library and provides some practical takeaways you can apply to your campaigns and overall strategy, including:
- Accessing the Facebook Ads Library
- Viewing a Brand’s Ads
- Identifying Creative Takeaways
- Finding Copy Takeaways
- Flagging Sales & Offers
- Inferring Targeting
- Start Checking out the Facebook Ad Library
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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