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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.

Google and Bing halt all ad sales in Russia

By George Nguyen | Mar 4, 2022 | Search Engine Land

Google has temporarily halted ads from serving to Russia-based users. Similarly, Microsoft announced that it will suspend all new sales of its products and services in Russia. “These ad suspensions serve to protest Russia’s actions in Ukraine, but they also help search engines avoid brand safety debacles like misinformation campaigns making it through their automated systems and showing to users,” notes George Nguyen.

Microsoft Advertising’s Ad Creator extracts site images for use in ads

By George Nguyen | Mar 4, 2022 | Search Engine Land

Ad Creator is a new feature, currently in pilot, that extracts images from your site so that they can be used in your ads. “The Ad Creator can help you save time when creating ads by acting as an automated repository for your site images, since you won’t have to upload them manually. The built-in editing capabilities, which are now nearly ubiquitous in these types of features, may also be a timesaver, particularly for those that don’t have access to a design team,” explains George Nguyen.

The Most Expensive Keywords For 2022

By Mike Schrobo | Mar 7, 2022 | Hero Conf

By reviewing the most expensive keywords, marketers can better understand what drives up CPCs and how to optimize their own campaigns accordingly. This report analyzes the top 5,000 most expensive keywords in January 2022 with a minimum of 300 searches per month on Google in the U.S. Mike Schrobo discusses why some keywords are so expensive, and provides tips to avoid expensive keywords. He dives into the most expensive keyword categories, including:

• Legal Keywords
• Education Keywords
• Insurance Keywords
• Addiction and Rehab Program Keywords
• Loan Keywords

Microsoft Advertising announces new ad type for service providers

By George Nguyen | Mar 7, 2022 | Search Engine Land

Professional service ads are a new ad format designed for service providers such as insurance agents, realtors, etc., and are currently available as a pilot in the U.S. and Canada. Professional service ads stay consistent with Microsoft Advertising’s formula for vertical-specific formats, leveraging feed data and automation to match offers to searches. “This ad type may offer greater efficiency for service providers. In the early stages of this pilot, advertisers using Professional service ads were able to increase conversion rates by about 60% when compared to regular text ads, according to Microsoft. The average CPA decrease was 67% compared to overall performance in advertiser campaigns, the company said. But performance can vary, so it’s important to test the waters for yourself to see whether this is the right vehicle for your campaigns,” writes George Nguyen.

​​7 Google Ads Mistakes That Are Squashing Your Success

By Michelle Morgan | Mar 8, 2022 | WordStream

“The Google Ads platform offers a number of ways to customize your advertising campaigns to reach customers. For many, having this many options is the only way to ensure all campaigns are focused on the right objective. But this amount of detail can be overwhelming, which can lead to mistakes or suboptimal strategies,” explains Michelle Morgan. To help you avoid the most common mistakes Morgan runs into, she gives you the information to correct the following situations:

1. Using the wrong (or no conversion actions)
2. Pairing Smart Bidding with the wrong goal
3. Auto-applying recommendations
4. Using only broad match keywords
5. Neglecting negative keywords
6. Not having an ad copy testing strategy
7. Underfunding your campaigns

How to Increase Your Facebook Reach

By Anna Sonnenberg | Mar 8, 2022 | SocialMedia Examiner

“Whether you need to increase Facebook reach quickly or gradually, there are plenty of organic and paid tactics to test. By incorporating these recommendations into your Facebook marketing strategy and using built-in analytics to measure results, you can reach more customers and grow your business successfully,” writes Anna Sonnenberg. To help expand your reach on Facebook for both organic and paid channels, Sonnenberg recommends:

For Organic Reach

1. Generate Real Conversations
2. Follow Consumer Content Preferences: Use More Video
3. Tag Influential Accounts in Shoppable Posts
4. Participate in Co-Branded Giveaways

For Paid Reach

1. Target Consumers Who Share Core Characteristics With Your Customers
2. Turn On Reduce Auction Overlap
3. Configure Prioritized Events to Optimize Facebook Ad Delivery
4. Automatically Turn Ads Off When Reach Falls Below a Specified Threshold

How To Reduce Your Average CPA

By James Bessey-Saldanha | Mar 9, 2022 | Hero Conf

James Bessey-Saldanha dives into what exactly a CPA is, how to calculate it, and how it can impact your account. He goes through some practical tips you can implement to reduce the average CPA in your PPC account, including:

• Increasing your Conversion Rate
• Reducing your CPC
• Implementing a SKAG Structure
• Expanding Keywords and Narrowing Down – the secret sauce

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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