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 Ads Negative Keywords: 5 Effective Strategies for Ecommerce PPC Campaigns
By Nicholas Woodward | Nov 8, 2022 | Optmyzr

“Every click matters in an ad campaign. You only want relevant people to see your ads. A comprehensive negative keyword list narrows down the target audience ensuring that the clicks are not wasted on irrelevant searches. By filtering out such searches, your ads will drive relevant, high-quality traffic to your landing page. An effective negative keyword list will positively impact your CTR and consequently your conversion rates,” writes Nicholas Woodward. PPC campaigns suffering from high impressions and low CTR can benefit from negative keywords. Woodard discusses five strategies specifically to target search terms that can drain your budget with unnecessary impressions or irrelevant clicks, including:
- Run search term reports for negative keywords
- Make use of negative keyword match types
- Implement “account-wide negatives”
- Apply campaign-wide or ad group-wide negatives
- Exclude irrelevant keywords based on current events
10 Google Analytics 4 settings to check before the holiday season
By Adam Proehl | Nov 8, 2022 | Search Engine Land

“GA4 measures website activity very differently from UA, so the only way you’ll get a year-over-year comparison for this holiday season vs. the next holiday season is if you have the latest platform properly configured now. That’s why you should care,” writes Adam Proehl. Here are ten things you’ll want to make sure are being properly tracked today:
- Does your ecommerce platform have an easy app or plugin to allow GA4 tracking yet?
- Do you have referral exclusions that need to be added?
- Is there any domain tracking needed?
- Are you driving traffic via Google Ads?
- Which analytics account is your Google Search Console connected to?
- Have you set up your landing page reports?
- Have you enabled the ‘enhanced measurement’ options for key events?
- Are your attributions and lookback windows properly set?
- Have you looked into GA4’s thresholding issue (smaller accounts)?
- How will you take annotations?
Google Rolls Out Ad Frequency Targeting For YouTube Campaigns
By Matt G. Southern | Nov 9, 2022 | Search Engine Journal

The target frequency capability is now globally available for all advertisers running YouTube campaigns. Google is giving advertisers more control over the number of times people see their ads on YouTube, aiming to help advertisers increase impressions without negatively impacting ROI.
Google rolls out Ads Editor v2.2 with optimized targeting, 11 other features
By Nicole Farley | Nov 10, 2022 | Search Engine Land

Google just announced the rollout of Ads Editor v2.2. This version adds 12 new features and also eliminates one. Editor version 2.2 no longer supports Gmail display ads and campaigns. Nicole Farley details updates to the following:
- Asset library
- Notifications
- New UI for editing ad schedules
- Support-friendly network logs
- Out-of-sync indicator
- Global offers
- Recommended Video campaign budgets
- Video campaign target frequency
- Video campaigns with shopping
- More recommendations support
- Basic support for all recommendations
- Optimized targeting
Google Analytics 4: Three Metrics You Should Know To Optimize Google Ads
By Jonathan Befort | Nov 14, 2022 | Search Engine Journal

“June 30th, 2023, is the last day UA will collect data on your website, so dig into the platform and start using GA4 data to optimize your Google Ads campaigns as soon as possible,” writes Jonathan Befort. To help you dig in, Befort reviews three metrics marketers should know to drive impact when optimizing Google Ads campaigns, including:
- Active Users
- Event Count
- Create Your Own Metrics With Custom Metrics
Google’s New Ad Insights Feature & 7 Tips For Competitive Ad Research
By Ilya Cherepakhin | Nov 14, 2022 | Search Engine Journal

Creating ad text or QA for any marketer involves reviewing competitor ads and requires a systematic approach to analyzing them. Historically, this has been especially time-consuming, but the new Google Ads Research Feature streamlines the competitive ad research process. Ilya Cherepakhin explains how to access the new feature and provides the following steps to create a systematic analysis approach:
- Call To Action
- Product Or Service Name
- Product Or Service Features
- Benefits
- Branding
- Tone
- Length
How to Run Shoppable Ads in YouTube Shorts
By Anna Sonnenberg | Nov 15, 2022 | Social Media Examiner

“As YouTube Shorts’ viewership continues to rise rapidly, marketers can benefit significantly from this space. By using ads and product feeds, marketers can effectively increase reach and drive conversions in the Shorts feed,” writes Anna Sonnenberg. Sonnenberg details how to run YouTube Advertising in YouTube Shorts and add a Product Feed to a YouTube Ad Campaign for a Shoppable Ad.
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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