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.
Brand Leadership & Ethical Profitability During Times Of Crisis
By Erik Stafford | Mar 17, 2020

Businesses everywhere are dealing with the impact of COVID-19 and having to adapt. AimClear has taken a look at what has worked in the past to inform how marketers can move forward during this time of uncertainty. Erik Stafford recommends businesses take these three steps to adopt to stabilize, and even grow, during these unprecedented times: prepare to pivot by asking better questions, communicate transparently, and keep marketing.
LinkedIn Introduces Conversation Ads: A New Message-Based Ad Format
By Matt Southern | Mar 18, 2020

LinkedIn is launching a new type of message-based ad. It uses conversations to deliver a customized experience for each user – designed to be more personal and engaging. Advertisers can build campaigns with multiple conversion paths leading to a variety of calls-to-action. LinkedIn is aiming to drive higher quality engagements from prospects by serving them with more interesting advertising content while in the right mindset.
Amazon’s Latest Announcement Might Impact Your Ads
By Kristin Palmer | Mar 18, 2020

Amazon announced that it will be suspending new fulfillment orders of non-essential products into its warehouses. Kristin Palmer breaks down what that means for advertisers, including:
- Understanding the Amazon Inbound Shipment Announcement
- What This Means for Non-Essential Businesses
- What This Means for Your Non-Essential Product Ads
- What This Means for Your Other Advertising Efforts
How to optimize paid search and Amazon campaigns for seasonality success
By Ginny Marvin | Mar 18, 2020

Despite this time of uncertainty, those that plan ahead for “normal” seasonality on Amazon will come out stronger. Ginny Marvin recaps Genevieve Head-Gordon’s SMX discussion on paid search strategies for preparing and optimizing for Amazon’s peak seasons. To prepare for peak periods, you should know your audiences, work out the kinks, and invest in window shoppers. In the moment, you should utilize automated bidding, Google Analytics, budget monitoring, and channel reporting.
Best Time to Run Facebook Ads? Look at Your Own Data
By Brad Smith | Mar 19, 2020

Do you know when the best time to run your Facebook Ads is? Brad Smith describes running an ad at the wrong time like having a beautiful billboard in the middle of nowhere that no one will ever see. He covers how to choose the best times to run Facebook ads for your business, the types of Facebook ads available, the best way to budget your ad campaigns, and how to track their progress.
From Last Click To Position-Based: An Attribution Test
By Krista Hsieh | Mar 19, 2020

Choosing the right attribution model for your PPC Google Ads account is crucial. Krista Hsieh shares a test she ran when switching from Last Click to Position-Based attribution for a high-value product. She found that Last Click was undervaluing display ads and overvaluing search ads when she took a granular look at the data. She also found that making a move to Position-Based caused her to value our Non-Branded campaigns more, and to keep keywords she might have turned off with the Last Click model.
Coronavirus: Emarketer lowers global ad spend projections for 2020
By Ginny Marvin | Mar 19, 2020

“Worldwide ad spending is still expected to grow compared to last year, says research firm eMarketer, but it has lowered its growth projections by nearly 3%. Worldwide media ad spend will increase by 7.0% to $691.7 billion in 2020 over the prior year, down from the earlier growth estimate of 7.4% to $712.02 billion,” writes Ginny Marvin. Recent changing consumer and B2B behavior during the pandemic are causing marketers to reevaluate their near-term advertising spend and allocations. The most recent estimates by analysts and research firms are based on an expectation that things will pick up in the second half of the year after the pandemic has peaked and the market will rebound.
Google Ads Makes it Easier to Appeal Disapproved or Limited Ads
By Matt Southern | Mar 19, 2020

Google Ads will be launching a new feature that makes it easier for advertisers to appeal policy decisions and get ads approved.
Pro Tip: How to develop a content calendar that’s relevant with creative leeway
By Ryan Brock | Mar 19, 2020

Creating an annual content calendar doesn’t need to be daunting. Using Ryan Brock’s three-step process, you can quickly and effectively produce enough blog topics to fill the calendar with four ideas per month, resulting in 48 topics for the year. You want to make sure each topic is both relevant to overarching content strategy yet broad enough to give content writers some creative leeway.
How to Address 4 Common Causes of Campaign Downtime
By Josh McCoy | Mar 20, 2020

Marketing campaigns build a lot of momentum, and if there’s a halt in the campaign that can kill that momentum. Whether you’re up against a global crisis or a contract renewal, Josh McCoy has four tips to keep your campaigns running during downtime, including:
1. Contract Renewal
2. Marketing Budget Decrease
3. Crisis or Global Emergency
4. Loss of Resources
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.