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.
8 Surprisingly Effective Ways to Use Stock Photos in Ads
By Margot da Cunha | Mar 22, 2019

Think stock photos are cheesy and not worth your time? Well, when used incorrectly, you would be right. However, here are 8 ways you may not have thought of for using stock photos for their highest potential. To begin with, you should be using the proper licensing to avoid being sued. Then, you should choose photos that don’t look like stock photos but exhibit natural emotions that real people have and are relevant to your message. You’ll want to err on the side of simplicity, and don’t be afraid to modify (again, make sure you’re using a license that allows modification). And, of course, don’t forget to split test!
Analyzing the Impact of Multi-Brand Shared Keywords
By Rachael Law | Mar 25, 2019

If you have a client that advertise in multiple accounts for multiple brands, it’s important to keep on top of how these accounts are interacting with each other. Rachael Law provides an excellent guide to approaching how you should manage to analyze how keywords and ads may be affecting each other. She answers how to figure out the answers to these important questions:
- Is one brand impacting CPCs of the others over time?
- How often are we double serving?
- Which keywords overlap?
- How do their impression shares compare?
- Do certain keywords perform better for any particular brand?
5 Tips for Getting Results when Search Volume Is Low
By Tim Jensen |Mar 26, 2019

Some niches just don’t have a large volume of search queries to give great PPC results. Tim Jensen shares 5 of his favorite tips for helping to boost results in this scenario. He explores Dynamic Search ads, combining remarketing lists for search audiences with broad keywords, creating demand on social media, using custom intent targeting, and adding in-market audiences.
Custom Audiences: Target customers with your own data
By Nan Li and Aswath Mohan | Mar 28, 2019

Bing has announced Custom Audiences for ad targeting. You can now add your first-party customer data to Custom Audiences using one of their data management platform (DMP) partners: Adobe Audience Manager, LiveRamp and Oracle BlueKai.
My top 10 favorite things about the new Google Ads Editor
By Matt Lawson | Mar 28, 2019

AdWords Editor has relaunched as Google Ads Editor. Matt Lawson runs down his top 10 favorite new features, including:
- The new search functionality
- Built-in custom rules apply to more campaigns
- Video campaigns are easier to manage
- Call ads are easier to manage
- Better ways to manage Smart Bidding
- Full cross-account management
- View recommended daily budgets
- Warnings about ads that could be better
- The new location of the Edit panel
- It’s so much more attractive (and it’s finally Google Ads, not AdWords)
What You Need to Know About PPC Budgets & Bidding
By Adam Proehl | Mar 28, 2019

Take a deep dive into all things PPC budgets and bidding, but be prepared to do some math! Once you have your profitability goal established and identify keyword themes by intent, you can combine with past performance and crunch the numbers to fit your budget. If increasing the budget is not an option, you may want to work on improving your Quality score. As for bidding, you will want to find the ideal bid after data is accumulated in order to determine whether the traffic acquired is completing the action on your website that you intended them to do, and at a cost that is in line with your ideal cost per acquisition. Bidding automation has added some freedom back into the process as well.
Google Ads Editor Introduces Full Cross-Account Management
By Matt Southern | Mar 31, 2019

Google has officially launched Google Ads Editor version 1. New features include:
- Streamlined editing
- Full support for non-skippable video ads
- Custom rules updates
- Ad strength indicator
- Maximize conversions for TrueView for action campaigns
- Maximize conversions for display campaigns
- New support for App campaigns
- Audience targeting in Smart Display campaigns
- Bumper campaigns are now video campaigns
- Message extensions
10 PPC Copywriting Best Practices for Extra Effective Text Ads
By Adam Heitzman | Apr 1, 2019

You have a limited amount of space to catch attention with your text ads. While there’s no magic formula to follow, there are some best practices you should be following for best results. Those include:
1. Know What Your Target Market Wants
2. Address Your Audience
3. Use Emotional Triggers to Your Advantage
4. Use Numbers
5. Remove Objections
6. Use All Your Space
7. Emphasize What Makes You Stand Out
8. Go Local
9. Use Strong, Creative Calls to Action
10. Split Test Your PPC Ads Frequently
Google Ads Keyword Planner Now Allows Up to 10 Seed Keywords
By Matt Southern | Apr 1, 2019

You can now process up to 10 seed keywords when searching for new ideas in Google Ads Keyword Planner. This should open up more keyword opportunities and relevant keywords for you.
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.