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.
Your one-stop-shop for holiday insights
By Darragh Simm, Stephanie Worley | Sep 14, 2020

The pandemic has created opportunities for advertisers and e-commerce brands as consumers continue to move their shopping habits online. As a response to help advertisers take advantage of these opportunities, Microsoft Advertising has released Microsoft Advertising Retail hub. As per this article, the hub is described as where “you’ll find the latest retail industry insights, consumer behaviors, and product tips to help you prepare for the upcoming holiday shopping season and beyond. These rich Microsoft Advertising Insights provide recommendations for each major market, as well as outline cross border opportunities.”
How much does Google’s new search term filtering affect ad spend transparency? Here’s how to find out
By Frederick Vallaeys | Sep 16, 2020

Google recently announced it would reduce the visibility of search terms shown in reports for advertisers. Frederick Vallaeys with Optimyzr wrote and is sharing this script to calculate how many queries are unidentified to help you to see the impact for yourself. The script pulls daily metrics for as many days back as you’d like. You can choose to focus on impressions, clicks, or cost. It pulls the data two ways: Using an account report, filtered for Ad Network Type = Search, and using a search query report, also filtered for Ad Network Type = Search.
Build your brand with YouTube: New ways to drive reach and engage your audience at scale
By Debbie Weinstein | Sep 16, 2020

As people have been spending more time at home this last year, they have spent more time watching YouTube and YouTube TV on TV screens – watch time jumped 80% year over year. Leading brands are making the most of YouTube’s massive reach and deeply relevant content to build brand awareness, and ultimately, drive results at scale. YouTube’s Debbie Weinstein shares new tools to drive reach and engage your audience at scale on YouTube and YouTube TV.
How to Calculate Your ROAS & Ways to Use It
By Corey Morris | Sep 16, 2020

Return on ad spend (or ROAS) is an important – yet often overlooked – quality metric in PPC and social media measurement where Return on ad spend = total revenue generated by ads, divided by the cost of ad spend. A simple concept, but can get complicated when you calculate total revenue generated by ads. Corey Morris shows us these ways to use ROAS:
1. Setting Expectations
2. Budgeting
3. Bid Decisions
4. Ecommerce
5. Lead Generation
6. Awareness & Other Campaigns
7. Beyond ROAS
Activating Google Audience Strategies in Display and Video
By Jordan Cardonick | Sep 16, 2020

“Within a people-based marketing strategy, priority audiences should be activated wherever available to maximize reach and response while continually testing new audience targets in siloed inventory or ad formats,” writes Jordan Cardonick. He maintains that remarketing is pivotal to any display and video activation to users who have visited your website because remarketing maintains brand consideration, staves off competition, and can shorten conversion windows with appropriately tailored messaging. When expanding beyond remarketing activation, advertisers should first explore modeled audiences, and when prioritizing within a limited budget, custom affinity and custom intent audiences are always a strong option.
This decade’s most important marketing question: What data rights do advertisers possess?
By Kirk Williams | Sep 17, 2020

Kirk Williams tackles the question: Why is the data ownership conversation so crucial to marketing? He believes it will be a dominant topic of discussion in the digital marketing industry for decades to come. An opinion piece, Williams does bring up some excellent questions PPCers should be asking themselves right now regarding who owns data, Google, or the advertisers?
Remarketing vs. Retargeting: Are They The Same Thing?
By Susan Wenograd | Sep 17, 2020

Remarketing and retargeting are used these days interchangeably and have similar goals, but they are technically different, and Susan Wenograd wants us to know the difference. Remarketing and retargeting differ in strategy – and who you are able to reach. Retargeting can have multiple approaches and often refers to online ad placement or display ads targeting users who have interacted with your site in specific ways without purchasing, and once a visitor enters your website, clicks on a product, or takes a certain action that you want them to take, a cookie is set in their browser to “retarget” them. Remarketing is more often about re-engaging customers via emails.
Three Ways to Get Customer Attention This Online Shopping Season
By Joe Kerschbaum | Sep 17, 2020

“TechCrunch tells us that eCommerce is expected to leap to $108 billion this year, an 18% year-over-year upswing,” writes Joe Kerschbaum as he warns advertisers of the busy and competitive shopping season ahead this year. Here are three ways he recommends to optimize your marketing plans for greater brand awareness, increased engagement, and higher conversions:
1. Include CTV in your media
2. Boost your social presence
3. Be there when your audience is looking
How to Easily Get More Calls Using Facebook Click-To-Call Ads
By Akvile DeFazio | Sep 17, 2020

Facebook recently launched a click-to-call ad option within Website Traffic campaigns that allows advertisers to fill their business and client phone lines with a higher volume of calls. Akvile DeFazio covers:
- A refresher on the “click-to-call” call to action for Facebook ad campaigns.
- How to set up click-to-call ads using the Reach and Website Traffic campaign objectives.
- Recommendations for which campaign to use to achieve your Facebook advertising goals.
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.