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.
What Microsoft’s Acquisition of Promote IQ Could Mean for the Industry
By Lilie le Prevost | Aug 7, 2019
Microsoft announced its acquisition of Promote IQ, a technology provider that allows sponsored products to appear on the digital shelf within retail search. Microsoft advertising now has a view of how brands convert through a retailer. The merger also allows Microsoft to give retailers an alternative tech provider to (re)negotiate with, all while using new Microsoft assets and infrastructure. If they can layer the new technologies with audience segmentation into a retail environment, this will open the door for exciting opportunities for advertisers.
Key Drivers of Increasing Ad Spend Across Social Media
By Emily Anthony | Aug 8, 2019
According to Merkle’s latest Digital Marketing Report, spend growth numbers for Facebook and Instagram have been +8% and 85% in Q2 2019 respectively. Driving the increase in ad spend can be attributed to Instagram’s user growth as a platform and the ability to hyper-target audiences. The ad formats on these platforms are highly engaging for their users as well. Machine learning is also optimizing the advertising experience.
13 Ecommerce Holiday Marketing Tips to Implement Now!
By Conor Bond | Aug 8, 2019
The holiday season will soon be upon us and your e-commerce needs a digital marketing plan. Conor Bond shares his top tips to put into practice this holiday season:
For Google Ads:
1. Attract more clicks with Merchant Promotions
2. Inspire urgency with text ad customizers
3. Tame competitive keywords with audience targeting
4. Save last-minute shoppers with local inventory ads
5. Save last-minute shoppers with electronic gift cards
6. Evade expensive keywords with display advertising
For Facebook and Instagram:
1. Appease the algorithm by slowly upping your budget
2. Fill your funnel with audience list building
3. Close all the deals with offer ads
4. Drive easy sales by targeting past customers
For your website:
1. Generate hype by getting the word out early
2. Own organic search by creating gift-specific pages
3. Cross-sell like crazy with relevant pop-ups
How To Add Availability Countdown to your Google Ads
By Bethany Bey | Aug 8, 2019
Bethany Bey shows us how to use Google’s ad customizers to update ads based on remaining availability. Google Ad customizers allow you to adapt your text ads in real-time using data that you upload using the parameters you set with dynamic text to appear on the Search Network. Bey demonstrates how to set up defining attributes and targeting, enter data and upload the spreadsheet to Google Ads, and add customizers to your ad text.
Mobile Ads Make Cents: Get More From Mobile Ads
By Charmain Johnson | Aug 8, 2019
People spend so much time on their phones staying connected to family and friends, as well as doing their shopping. It makes sense (and cents) for smart digital marketers to use mobile ads to their advantage to reach this larger audience. Responsive Display Ads are very congruent with mobile ads because they adjust in size and format and you can easily add a phone number in the headline. Inserting an IF function in the headline of a text ad can make the ad look different on a mobile device. Mobile app promotion ads, click to call, and call extensions are also great ads for mobile.
5 Ways LinkedIn Advertising Differs From Other Social Platforms
By Alexander Kesler | Aug 9, 2019
LinkedIn has an advantage over other platforms by allowing you to connect with hard-to-reach business-oriented audiences with targeted messaging. Alexander Kesler shares several ways to view LinkedIn advertising more strategically than other social platforms, including:
1. The Only True Professional Social Platform
2. Targeting By Professional Profile
3. Better Conversion Rates
4. Higher Advertising Costs, But Bigger ROI Potential
5. Matched Audience Targeting
The Future of Paid Social: Is Your Marketing Team Ready?
By Alaina Thompson | Aug 9, 2019
Have you started planning your annual budget for 2020 yet? To help make it easier, Hanapin Marketing has released research data showing how marketers plan to spend their annual budgets on paid social platforms. This information may help you decide how much you should be putting into paid social next year.
How Google Ads’ new keyword selection preferences work
By Ginny Marvin | Aug 9, 2019
Ginny Marvin takes a close look at the potential impact of same-meaning close variants for exact match, phrase match and broad match modifier on your keyword matching. She maps out several scenarios to clarify how Google Ads’ keyword selection preferences are designed to work with same meaning keywords. Those include:
- Existing preferences trump new same-meaning matching
- Same-meaning exact match keywords
- New keywords with the same meaning as existing keywords
- Adding a phrase match or BMM of an existing exact match
- Adding an exact match of an existing phrase match or BMM keyword
Facebook’s Campaign Budget Optimization Will Become Mandatory in September. Are You Ready?
By Pam Neely | Aug 12, 2019
On September 1st, Facebook will be shifting most of the campaigns on its advertising platform over to Campaign Budget Optimization. Have you tested CBO on some of your campaigns yet? Whenever CBO does go into effect for your campaigns, it will mean you have to assign a budget to an entire campaign, not individual ad sets. Important consequences of CBO you should be aware of:
1. There will be less work for advertisers.
2. CBO will make campaign management easier.
3. Campaign Budget Optimization makes picking the goal you’re optimizing for even more important.
4. CBO may change how marketers structure their 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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