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.
7 PPC planning tips when entering a new geographic market
By Tim Jensen | Jun 29, 2023 | Search Engine Land
Tim Jensen provides guidance on developing a marketing strategy when expanding into a new geographic location. He highlights the importance of paid media, particularly PPC campaigns, for generating cost-efficient sales in the new market. The suggested tactics include estimating search volume to determine budgets, incorporating regional keywords to target local customers, customizing ad copy and landing pages to resonate with the region, ensuring accurate conversion tracking and tagging, identifying and researching local competitors for bidding purposes, complementing search efforts with other marketing channels, and setting realistic expectations for performance. Jensen emphasizes the need for thorough planning, tracking, and adaptability when entering a new market.
Google rolls out brand restriction settings to all advertisers
By Nicola Agius | Jun 29, 2023 | Search Engine Land
Google has announced the broad rollout of brand exclusions in Performance Max and brand restrictions in Search to all advertisers. These features were previously available only in beta. The brand restrictions with broad match will help marketers increase the reach of their campaigns while maintaining control over where their ads appear. Advertisers can now expand the reach of their brand campaigns with the new brand restrictions for broad match, ensuring that their ads match to relevant brand traffic. This rollout follows Google’s recent testing of automatically created assets on Performance Max campaigns, aimed at providing marketers with more control over brand traffic.
From UA to GA4: Managing your reporting expectations
By Kevin Rea | Jun 30, 2023 | Search Engine Land
The transition to GA4 has been challenging for agencies and businesses, with the sunsetting of Universal Analytics causing further complications. Many businesses are unprepared for the shift to GA4 reports and will be in for a surprise. While GA4 offers new reports and insights, users familiar with Universal Analytics must adapt quickly. Some key changes include the need for more custom reporting, the shift to event-based tracking, and the introduction of data-driven attribution. Patience, education, and a focus on the advantages of GA4’s advanced features are necessary for a successful transition.
5 tips for effective PPC bidding on a budget
By Max Trotter | Jun 30, 2023 | Search Engine Land
Max Trotter provides five essential tips for small businesses on a tight budget to effectively manage PPC advertising campaigns. The first tip emphasizes setting clear goals and aligning campaign types and bidding options accordingly. Creating simple and specific campaigns, aligned with relevant keywords, is highlighted as the second tip. The third tip suggests using long-tail keywords to target less competitive auctions and maximize the budget’s impact. The fourth tip emphasizes limiting location targeting to focus on the highest-performing markets. Lastly, Trotter stresses the importance of ongoing campaign management to optimize spending, identify performing keywords, and make necessary adjustments. By following these tips, small businesses can make the most of their PPC budget and drive growth.
How to harness DSA wins in Performance Max
By Navah Hopkins | Jul 3, 2023 | Search Engine Land
DSAs have been a valuable tool for advertisers to leverage their organic search strength in PPC campaigns. However, DSA appears to be phased out in favor of Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. PMax supports various ad types across Google’s platforms and requires advertisers to account for visual placements and adjust their expectations for campaign success. While transitioning from DSA to PMax involves losses such as the inability to exclude specific parts of the site, there are gains, including better control over assets and the discovery of additional audiences. Although there is no official statement from Google about phasing out DSA, advertisers should be prepared for the shift towards PMax.
Google Ads Update: New Brand Controls For Search & Performance Max Campaigns
By Matt G. Southern | Jul 3, 2023 | Search Engine Journal
Google Ads is introducing two new options to provide advertisers with more control over where their ads appear. The first option is brand restrictions for broad match keywords in Search campaigns, allowing advertisers to set brand terms as broad match keywords but restrict them to show ads only for searches that include the brand name. This helps improve ad performance while adhering to brand guidelines. The second option is brand exclusions in Performance Max campaigns, which enables advertisers to exclude their ads from appearing on specific brands’ Search and Shopping inventory, including competitors’ brand names and misspellings. These options ensure that ads are shown only for the most relevant searches and provide additional tools for ad placement control.
Generative AI Integration SERPs And PPC Advertisers
By Frederick Vallaeys | Jul 5, 2023 | Search Engine Journal
Generative AI is reshaping search engine results pages (SERPs), with both Google and Microsoft using it to offer a new conversational search experience. Google has previewed ads within its chat-based generative Google Search Experience (GSE), while Microsoft has already integrated ads into its chat-based SERPs on Bing. Advertisers currently have limited control over this new search experience, but they need to understand how it may impact user behavior and their PPC strategies. Chat-based search involves natural language queries and interactive conversations, potentially reducing the visibility of traditional search results and ads. Advertisers may need to prioritize ads for branded terms to ensure accuracy and control the narrative, as generative AI can produce factual errors. Broad match keywords with Smart Bidding and responsive search ads (RSAs) can help advertisers optimize their strategies for conversational search, and they should focus on achieving higher ad ranks in the limited ad space available. However, there are currently reporting limitations, as performance metrics are not segmented based on the new chat-based experience. Advertisers must adapt and align their PPC strategies with these emerging trends to capitalize on the evolving search landscape.
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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