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 is streamlining ‘Ad’ labeling for Shopping ads
By Ginny Marvin | Jun 30, 2020
The “Sponsored” label that appears in the upper right above Shopping ads on desktop will be replaced with the black “Ad” label. The new label will show up on the main search results page in early July, and will then roll out on the Shopping tab and in Image Search results soon after that. This update will bring uniformity to Shopping, Search, and Hotel ads labeling and offer a more transparent treatment for users.
How to Weed Out Less Qualified Audiences from Your PPC Campaigns
By Jonathan Kagan | Jul 1, 2020
With all of the drastic changes the world has seen in 2020, digital marketers have needed to be on their toes to keep up with the rapidly changing landscape. Jonathan Kagan explains that marketers need “to stop focusing on reach and frequency of the consumer. It is now to decide just who is even worthy enough to see your ads in the first place.” The first step in the process is to view your data and analytics to identify who your ideal customer is/has been – not who you think it is going to be/should be. To weed out the less qualified, and still feed the top of the funnel and prospect, you will need to lean heavily into audience exclusion and audience targeting.
How to Improve Each Stage of Your Ecommerce Sales Funnel
By Brad Smith | Jul 1, 2020
Understanding the customer’s journey in the e-commerce funnel can help you optimize your digital marketing strategies and increase conversion rates. Brad Smith reviews what an e-commerce sales funnel is, what the five stages of the funnel are, and how to improve each stage.
Should I Bid on Branded Terms in SEM?
By Aaron Levy | Jul 1, 2020
Aaron Levy adds his perspective on the brand bidding terms debate. He explores if and when a brand may want to consider using this strategy. He discusses:
1. Should You Bid on Brand Terms in PPC?
2. How Should I Structure My Branded PPC Campaigns?
3. Should I Be in the Absolute Top Position, 100% of the Time, for Every Brand Mention?
4. Should I Automate Bids on Brand Campaigns?
5. Should I Use Enhanced CPC (eCPC) for Brand Keywords?
6. If I Turn off Branded PPC Terms, Wouldn’t I Get All the Traffic & Conversions Anyway?
7. Should I Update Ads for Every Promotion?
8. Should I Let Resellers & Affiliates Bid on My Brand Terms?
Ad fraud prevention firm CHEQ enters PPC market
By Ginny Marvin | Jul 1, 2020
CHEQ, a cybersecurity firm focused on ad fraud prevention, is expanding its ad verification solutions beyond impression-based programmatic advertising by launching a solution designed for paid search and paid search advertising channels called CHEQ PPC. CHEQ PPC is designed to add a preemptive layer of protection against invalid clicks and fraudulent traffic on Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and other cost-per-click-oriented platforms. CHEQ PPC monitors the traffic that comes into advertisers’ sites or apps from their PPC campaigns to identify anomalies in behavior. It is designed to block benign and malicious scrapers and web-crawlers, botnets, click farms, out-of geo clicks as well as suspicious human-driven behavior like competitor clicks and affiliate fraud.
Get Ahead With These Tips for PPC Competitor Analysis
By Andrea Taylor | Jul 1, 2020
Understanding the product or service you’re marketing, understanding the conversion journey, and reviewing paid social efforts will allow you to conduct a more useful PPC competitor analysis. Andrea Taylor discusses some tools that she likes to use to do her competitor analysis, including:
- Auction Insights
- Ad Preview Tool
- SpyFu
5 Practical Tips to Step Up Your Audience Targeting Game
By John Lee | Jul 2, 2020
With the widespread use of audience targeting across the advertising ecosystem, it is easy to miss some strategies or overlook what would otherwise be a best practice. John Lee reviews some best practices for enhancing your audience targeting, including:
1. Think Outside the Box
2. Schedule Time to Audit Audience Performance & Make Changes
3. Audiences Like Company: Bundling is Better
4. Matching Audience to Message
5. Don’t Fear Granularity
Top 9 ASO Mistakes
By Lina Danilchik | Jul 3, 2020
With the help of App store optimization (ASO), mobile publishers increase the discoverability of their apps in the app stores and improve conversion rates. Lina Danilchik shares some ASO mistakes you can avoid to optimize your app in the app stores, including:
1. Not localizing your app for specific storefronts
2. Not running A/B tests
3. Not testing app previews
4. Neglecting changes on the App Store & Google Play
5. Thinking of ASO as a one-time action
6. Thinking ASO has nothing to do with paid UA
7. Comparing conversion in A/B tests with conversion in the app stores
8. Not watching your competitors
9. Relying on competitors as if they are pillars of truth
CCPA Roll-Out Causes Havoc for Facebook Advertisers
By Susan Wenograd | Jul 6, 2020
The early effects of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) roll-out are causing stress for ad buyers, who are losing the ability to use data for a large part of the US ad targeting population. Susan Wenograd reviews what the CCPA entails and how the new laws affect Facebook and Instagram ads.
Understanding Target Impression Share Bidding
By Bethany Bey | Jul 6, 2020
If you have a campaign that was transitioned to Target Impression Share bidding or are interested in trying out this bidding strategy, Bethany Bey reviews how to use it in this post. She covers how Target Impression Share bidding works.
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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