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.
What Just Happened to Google’s Exact Match?
By Pam Neely | Feb 12, 2019

Google Ad’s 2018 changes to exact match and close variants has likely had an impact on your profitability. This is largely a result of Google Ads adopting AI and machine learning automation. You have two solutions: Do nothing and hope your accounts will equalize, or strategically add negative keywords to try to filter out some of the overlaps between exact match keywords with similar intent.
Everything You Need to Know About Quora Ads Targeting Options
By Joe Martinez | Feb 13, 2019

Quora has come a long way with their targeting options– advertisers now have six main targeting options to use for your PPC campaigns. Joe Martinez walks you through how to plan out your next campaign build in Quora, including:
- Question Targeting
- Topic Targeting
- Interest Targeting
- Audience Targeting
- Keyword Targeting
- Broad Targeting
Almost 60% of marketers haven’t implemented AMP, see why (and why it’s no excuse)
By Colin Loughran | Feb 13, 2019

Page speed plays a crucial role in your marketing campaigns. A few seconds of slowdown can cost you– slow load times cripple conversion rates, raise the price you pay for ad impressions, and even drive qualified traffic to your competitors. Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a logical solution, but why have almost 60% of marketers not implemented AMP? Colin Loughran finds three main reasons: Limited development resources, AMP is poorly understood, and Google’s past behavior has made some people wary of AMP. He explores some points of validity to these concerns, but ultimately finds them excuses and recommends adopting AMP.
You’re Doing PPC Ad Tests Wrong – This Script Will Help
By Frederick Vallaeys | Feb 14, 2019

Frederick Vallaeys shares a script with us he describes as: “a script that helps with the tedious task of preparing data about what historical ad texts have worked well and may be worth deploying in more ad groups.” The script splits all ads into their component parts like headlines and descriptions and totals up the metrics from across the account. You can access the script by clicking on the “Read the article here” link.
Update your match types and account structure to improve performance, here’s how
By Amanda Farley | Feb 14, 2019

Ted Ives and Adam Seybold offered insights into how to handle some new strategies after updates with Google Ads and Bing Ads during their SMX West session. They examine relevancy and context in search. His account structure strategy for success includes: Contextually relevant search advertising, minimizing disconnect between user search and advertising content, and leveraging growth with hyper-focused bidding strategies. They also cover match types in relation to B2C and B2B funnel structures.
Facebook Lead Ads vs. Landing Pages: Which Is Better? [Data]
By Gordon Donnelly | Feb 14, 2019

WordStream wanted to find out which method was more effective, Facebook Lead Ads or Landing Pages. They measured conversion rate and cost per action for both lead generation and conversion campaigns, using their in house data of all WordStream clients that were using those campaign types in the past 60 days. Their data set spanned over 3,000 campaigns and about $9.5 million in spending. Their findings include:
- Lead generation campaigns convert to leads (from clicks) at a 2.07% higher rate than conversion campaigns.
- Lead generation campaigns converted to leads at a11.7% higher rate.
- Conversion campaigns had a 5.7% higher conversion rate to a “qualified” lead, and a 1.4% higher conversion rate to a demo.
Their key takeaways: Lead generation campaigns seem to be more effective across the board at converting clicks to leads. But conversion campaigns seem to win when it comes to generating quality leads at a lower cost.
Your Top Questions About AI & Machine Learning Answered
By Chandal Nolasco Da Silva | Feb 14, 2019

Aquisio co-founder Marc Poirier, Brad Geddes of AdAlysis, and Jeff Allen of Hanapin Marketing answer your top questions about AI and machine learning in PPC. The automation trend is not slowing down, and they separate fact from fiction.
How to Build an Executive/KPI Dashboard to Prove Your PPC Value
By Duane Brown | Feb 14, 2019

Duane Brown shares how to figure out what your bosses care about and how you can show the value of PPC on a dashboard. He shows you how you can prove the value of your work, make sure your data is correct by setting up an executive dashboard, and communicate with everyone in the organization.
Become an Accredited Amazon Advertiser Today
By Tanner Schroeder | Feb 14, 2019

You can now become an official Amazon Advertiser with the recent launch of Amazon’s Learning Console. You can learn the basics of Amazon Advertising to get started and take a test to become accredited in Sponsored Ads. Tanner Schroeder dives into the parts of the console and what the accreditation test looks like for us.
Here’s a new script to find the best text for new ads using an n-gram analysis
By Frederick Vallaeys | Feb 15, 2019

Frederick Vallaeys shares another script with us! The new script is used to find the best text for new ads using an n-gram analysis. This script will analyze the performance of commonly found word sequences to deliver additional insights about historical ad performance. You can access the script by clicking on the “Read the article here” link.
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.