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 rolls out generative AI tools for product images in the U.S.
By Nicola Agius | Nov 1, 2023 | Search Engine Land
Google has introduced new AI-powered tools in Product Studio for U.S. advertisers, allowing them to create and modify product images using simple text prompts at no cost. These tools aim to save time and reduce expenses by negating the need for professional photo editors, although the quality and copyright implications of AI-generated images remain to be fully assessed. The features, which range from changing background colors to enhancing low-quality images, are now available to all Merchant Center Next users in the U.S. and Google and YouTube app users on Shopify. Despite not visibly tagging AI-manipulated images, Google ensures that such information is embedded in the image metadata. Matt Madrigal, VP GM Merchant Shopping at Google, highlights the value of multiple high-quality images in e-commerce, noting that offers with more images significantly increase impressions and clicks. However, he acknowledges the challenges businesses face in creating such images, positioning Product Studio as a free, accessible solution that aligns with Google’s AI Principles.
Are You Paying Too Much for Your Brand Keywords? 5 Ways to Find Out (& Fix It!)
By Jyll Saskin-Gales | Nov 3, 2023 | WordStream
Jyll Saskin-Gales provides insights from an ex-Google employee on why CPC for branded keywords may be unexpectedly high. Despite the overall increase in CPC across various industries, branded keywords are usually cheaper and have a higher conversion rate than non-branded ones. Five common issues causing high branded keyword CPCs are identified: incorrect match types, insufficient negative keywords, competitor bids on your brand name, the wrong bid strategy, and Quality Score problems. To address these issues, the Saskin-Gales suggests ensuring correct match types, adding relevant negative keywords, maintaining a high impression share to deter competitors, choosing an appropriate bid strategy, and improving Quality Score by optimizing ad copy and landing pages. The advice is to methodically evaluate these areas to manage and potentially reduce branded keyword CPCs effectively.
Cracking the Code: Why your Google Ads might not be working
By Anusha Harikumar | Nov 6, 2023 | Optmyzr
Advertisers often face disappointment when their Google Ads campaigns don’t yield expected results. Anusha Harikumar explains that Google Ads, a pay-per-click advertising system, can drive traffic and increase profits when properly managed. However, issues can arise due to several factors such as paused or disapproved ads, billing problems, low search volume keywords, incorrect ad scheduling, and landing page errors. To address these challenges, advertisers should regularly monitor their campaigns, adjust bids and budgets, improve keyword quality scores, and avoid conflicts between positive and negative keywords. Harikumar advises against manually searching for your ads, instead recommending the use of Google’s “Ad Preview and Diagnosis” tool.
Customer Scoring For Agencies: How To SQL Your PPC Customers
By Navah Hopkins | Nov 6, 2023 | Search Engine Journal
Navah Hopkins emphasizes the importance of evaluating new and existing PPC clients based on their potential profitability and the enjoyment of working with them, a process referred to as sales qualified lead-ing (SQL). She outlines several criteria for SQLing, such as client budget alignment with industry standards, content creation expectations, communication cadence, and the client’s operational compatibility. Hopkins advises against focusing solely on financial gain or personal happiness, as either can lead to burnout or financial shortfalls. The process of SQLing involves open-ended, helpful discovery questions, either before or after initial sales discussions. For existing clients, maintaining an open dialogue is crucial to address issues like scope creep or budget changes. The article concludes by asserting the importance of SQLing for scalable growth and maintaining good client relationships.
Amazon Ads for lead generation: What advertisers need to know
By Navah Hopkins | Nov 6, 2023 | Search Engine Land
Navah Hopkins discusses the rise of Amazon as a significant player in the search advertising market, with a nearly 20% share in the U.S. and $12 billion in ad revenue in Q3 2023. Amazon has introduced non-endemic ads, allowing non-Amazon sellers such as those in the travel, automotive, local services, and other sectors to target Amazon’s extensive audience through display campaigns. The ads, which are currently display-only, can be paid for on a CPC or vCPM basis and have a verification process for advertisers. With Amazon’s rich audience data, non-endemic ads offer a valuable channel for reaching specific customer cohorts without the need for individual targeting, presenting a significant opportunity especially for auto and local services sectors. Setting up these campaigns requires attention to creative details and audience selection, with Amazon offering a clear preview of audience market share. The platform’s audience insights are especially beneficial in a privacy-first web environment.
Microsoft Ads Announces New Bid Strategies For Audience Ads
By Brooke Osmundson | Nov 7, 2023 | Search Engine Journal
Microsoft Ads has introduced two new bid strategies for its Microsoft Audience Network ads, Maximize Conversions and Target Cost per Acquisition (CPA), designed to optimize conversion rates within an advertiser’s budget. However, Microsoft notes that campaigns with less than 30 conversions in a month might experience volatility while the system learns. These strategies cannot be used with third-party platform bidding. Alongside these strategies, Microsoft has also rolled out a new Universal Event Tracking (UET) testing functionality to help advertisers test and troubleshoot their UET tag setups. These features are timely for the holiday season, and they signify Microsoft’s commitment to enhancing conversion modeling and providing tools to increase efficiency in advertising campaigns.
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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