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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.

AI-Bidding Like a Pro: What Marketers Need to Know

By Lindsay Omaits | Aug 2, 2023 | Skai

AI is driving significant transformations in various industries, particularly in advertising. AI’s data analysis capabilities have led to changes in advertising, with programmatic advertising bidding being revolutionized. AI’s precision in identifying suitable audiences, optimal moments, and platforms for ads has improved return on ad spend. Lindsay Omaits discusses the shift from manual bidding to automated bidding, driven by AI. Automated bidding, which can analyze vast data in real-time, eliminates manual intervention and considers a wide range of factors for optimal ad performance. The benefits of AI-powered bidding, including adaptability, broader consideration of variables, and real-time optimizations, are emphasized as the future of advertising.

7 Best Practices for Building Paid Social Creative Campaigns

By Tara Johnson | Aug 2, 2023 | Tinuiti

Tara Johnson emphasizes the importance of paid social media campaigns for connecting with target audiences due to the decline of organic reach on platforms like Meta. She underscores the significance of strong creative efforts in such campaigns, as they need to swiftly capture audience attention and encourage immediate action. The article provides seven best practices for successful paid social campaigns:

1. Setting measurable goals for each ad to align with business objectives.
2. Understanding the target audience’s preferred platforms and tailoring messaging accordingly.
3. Matching creative content with different stages of the marketing funnel (awareness, consideration, conversion).
4. Optimizing creative content for both mobile and desktop devices.
5. Crafting platform-specific creative content due to differences in user behavior and algorithms.
6. Recognizing that most viewers consume content with the sound off and using visual elements like captions.
7. Employing A/B testing and learning from past campaigns to continually improve results.

8 new Google Analytics 4 features to enhance app measurement and performance

By Nicola Agius | Aug 2, 2023 | Search Engine Land

GA4 has introduced eight new features aimed at enhancing app campaign measurement and performance. These AI-powered insights offer marketers a consolidated view of user behavior across both web and app platforms. The features include tools to engage unnotified app users, re-use relevant app audiences, build audiences in GA4 directly from Google Ads, optimize app campaign performance automatically, measure web-to-app conversions with privacy-safe URL parameters, integrate with SKAdNetwork for improved in-app event measurement, support on-device conversion measurement with user consent, and beta test geo-based conversion lift measurement for iOS App campaigns. These advancements aim to help marketers better understand their target audience and subsequently optimize campaigns for higher engagement and conversions.

Understanding Buyer Intent Keywords

By Adam Heitzman | Aug 3, 2023 | Search Engine Journal

Adam Heitzman emphasizes the significance of targeting buyer intent keywords for successful SEO and paid search campaigns. He explains that these keywords are used by individuals considering a purchase and vary based on the buyer’s stage along the journey. Different types of buyer intent keywords correspond to awareness, consideration, and decision stages. Heitzman underscores the benefits of ranking for such keywords, including driving conversion-ready visitors, improving credibility, and attracting qualified leads. He also provides guidance on identifying and incorporating buyer intent keywords into content strategies through customer insights, keyword research tools, and local keywords for businesses with physical locations.

Margin-based tracking: 3 advanced strategies for Google Shopping profitability

By Benjamin Wenner | Aug 3, 2023 | Search Engine Land

Benjamin Wenner dives into strategies for achieving profitability in Google Shopping campaigns through advanced tracking and structuring methods. He highlights three approaches:

1. Profitability-Based Account Structures: This method involves structuring campaigns around product profitability, inventory status, and campaign segmentation. By analyzing cost of goods sold (COGS) and other associated costs, businesses can prioritize products effectively and create campaigns based on profitability and inventory status clusters. This segmentation enables different bidding strategies and budget allocation, maximizing returns.
2. Tracking COGS and Reporting Conversion with Cart Data: Tracking COGS and utilizing cart data reporting within Google Ads can provide valuable insights. COGS can be passed to the Merchant Center in data feeds, allowing for more advanced metrics like gross profit and product gross profit to be used in analysis. Implementing this tracking can be complex but can offer comprehensive data for optimization.
3. Custom Margin Tracking: The most advanced option involves setting up custom margin tracking and a dedicated pixel. While some tools integrate with shop systems, creating custom tracking offers more independence and customization. Tools such as Shopify’s metafields can be used to set COGS and transmit the data to the dataLayer. Custom JavaScript snippets can then be employed to calculate profit based on the provided data.

Wenner concludes that profit-driven strategies and advanced reporting provide valuable insights for optimizing campaign performance and enhancing overall profitability in e-commerce businesses.

The Complete Guide To Google Ads Lead Forms Assets

By Brooke Osmundson | Aug 4, 2023 | Search Engine Journal

Brooke Osmundson emphasizes the significance of user experience, particularly in the context of the dominance of mobile web traffic over desktop. Google’s lead form assets, introduced in 2019, offer a means to generate leads directly within ads, providing a seamless experience for users across devices. These assets are useful for B2B companies and those aiming to generate leads, especially if their website experience is lacking. Osmundson covers the pros and cons of using lead form assets, eligibility requirements, creation steps, optimization, and integration with Smart Bidding and CRM systems. She highlights the benefits of testing these assets to improve conversion rates and user engagement.

Google’s Responsive Search Ad Guide: Navigating AI In Advertising

By Matt G. Southern | Aug 4, 2023 | Search Engine Journal

Google’s comprehensive guide on Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) explains how AI optimizes RSA performance based on search queries. It aims to equip marketers with the knowledge to effectively use this adaptive ad format. The guide covers topics such as RSA functionality, Ad Strength ratings, creating high-quality assets, and evaluating RSA performance. RSAs automatically test various headline and description combinations to determine optimal performance. It emphasizes AI-driven tools for bidding, keywords, and ad copy to achieve successful outcomes, encouraging the use of Smart Bidding, broad match keywords, and RSAs together for optimal results.

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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