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.
2019 Digital Ads Recap: Paid Advertising Shifts and Brands in Denial
By Susan Wenograd |
Paid advertising on Google and Facebook has evolved to higher costs, plateaued inventory, and a flood of users and ads, accompanied by lower conversion rates on a per-advertiser level. Paid advertising on Google has been predominately bottom-funnel driven, with Facebook still in its evolution. Facebook’s user demographics have also shifted to older generations, while Instagram’s stories and TikTok is performing well with younger generations. Advertisers will need to add more to their inventory to reach those younger users. Direct response sales on Google and Facebook have dropped because of bottom-funnel message overload. Brands will need to shift their strategies to include more awareness messaging if they want to get the best from their ad budgets.
The State of PPC Explained in 12 Charts and Statistics
By Pam Neely | Oct 16, 2019
The PPC industry is always changing. Pam Neely shares twelve key charts, graphs, and statistics from recent PPC industry reports to keep you on top of trends. The information shows both how fast change is happening and how some things do, in fact, stay the same. Areas covered include:
- PPC still works
- Search still rules in PPC, but social, remarketing, and display ads are popular, too.
- “The duopoly” isn’t going anywhere.
- Managing PPC is expensive.
- Video ads are used nearly as much as image ads on Facebook.
- Click to call PPC ads do better than you’d think.
- Small businesses are still holding back from PPC.
- Enterprise marketers don’t expect big impacts from PPC in the near future, but they do expect AI and machine learning to make a major impact.
- Machine learning is making PPC marketers more efficient.
- Local Services Ads are cannibalizing local PPC ads.
- Marketers leverage many sources to stay current with PPC.
- Marketers are starting to pair conversion rate optimization with PPC.
Snapchat Introduces a New Ad Unit for Ecommerce Advertisers
By Matt Southern | Oct 17, 2019
Snapchat is rolling out a new ad unit for Ecommerce advertisers – Dynamic Ads that will offer automated personalization for new ways to scale and drive performance. Snapchat hopes that Dynamic Ads will be a simple way to create mobile ads at scale while maintaining brand identity through mobile-first templates, with other benefits being high quality creative, improved return, and increased ad relevance.
The 3 Search Campaign Analyses You Need To Run
By Chloe Pascoe | Oct 17, 2019
There is always room to improve the performance of a PPC account, whether it’s a new account or a part of maintenance. To keep your accounts fresh, relevant, and performing, Chloe Pascoe reviews in detail how to analyze:
- Auction Insights and Competitor Analysis
- Quality Score Analysis
- Ad Copy and Extensions
Reach people who are actively shopping with ads in Facebook Search Results
By Facebook Business | Oct 17, 2019
Facebook Search Results Ads will offer advertisers a new way to reach people who are in this discovery mindset. Facebook Business explains that “All new ad campaigns using Automatic Placements will automatically include the Facebook Search Results placement. You can also manually select the placement when setting up your campaign. Once you opt-in, ads will be eligible to appear on search result pages which includes general search and Marketplace search.”
PPC Marketing: How to Reach Quality Leads and Prospects
By Lidia Hovhan | Oct 18, 2019
PPC marketing is a great tool for lead generation. However, the quality of leads can be poor. How do you improve the quality of leads from PPC? The first place to go is a competitor analysis and see what is working for them. After that, you will want to:
- Target Relevant Keywords
- Research through Websites and Social Media Platforms
- Create Customized Landing Pages for Your Ad Groups
- Separate Campaigns into Groups
- Use Your Competitors for Keyword Inspiration
- Test Your Keywords and Ads
Paid Search Association Launches First-Ever Non-Profit to Help PPC Pros
By Matt Southern | Oct 20, 2019
The Paid Search Association has launched the first non-profit organization dedicated to serving the needs of paid search professionals with resources, information, and events. They can be found at paidsearch.org. Benefits to joining include:
- Daily news about paid search delivered via email.
- Education resources dedicated to paid search.
- An exclusive online forum on paid search topics.
- Access to a job-hunting forum.
- A member directory
- Links to a “wealth” of paid search resources.
9 Simple & Fast Ways to Elevate Your Content
By Alexander Kesler | Oct 21, 2019
Outstanding content is a crucial element to a winning marketing campaign. But it’s hard to measure what is ‘quality’ content in today’s landscape. Content that is well-written and on topic is not necessarily going to mean more conversions. Here are some tips for creating content that converts:
1. Know Your Audience
2. Follow Online & Offline Trends
3. Focus on Titles
4. Don’t Focus on Selling All the Time
5. Offer Actual Insight
6. Include Data
7. Repurpose Old Content
8. Be Mindful of Structure
9. Use Conversion-Optimizing Images
Google Ads New By Conversion Time Columns
By Bethany Bey | Oct 21, 2019
Google Ads has launched the new “by conversion time” columns that will let you report conversions at the time they happened instead of when the ad was clicked. Previously, if the conversion time for clicking on the ad and the purchase were done on different days, the conversion was recorded by Google as happening on the same day. Six new “by conversion time” columns are available in the interface to make it easier to compare data across platforms:
- Conversions (by conv. time)
- Conv. value (by conv. time)
- Value / Conv. (by conv. time)
- All conv. (by conv. time)
- All conv. value (by conv. time)
- Value / all conv. (by conv. time)
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.
English