If you missed the announcement, Google will be sunsetting Expanded Text Ads in June, 2022. What does this mean for advertisers?

Starting June 30, 2022:

• You cannot create or edit any Expanded Text Ads
• Any existing Expanded Text Ads will continue to serve and run
• You will be able to pause and resume existing Expanded Text Ads at any time

How Do Responsive Search Ads Work?

The premise of Responsive Search Ads is to be able to test ad copy at scale. Using machine learning, Google will test different combinations of your headlines and descriptions to show the most relevant content to the end-user.

Responsive Search Ads consist of:

• Up to 15 headlines (minimum of 3)
• Up to 4 descriptions (minimum of 2)

While this type of ad format is great for testing, it doesn’t leave the advertiser much control on how the ad appears.

Tip #1: Use Pinned Assets

The good news with Responsive Search Ads is that you have the ability to “pin” a headline or description to a desired location.

For example, if you have a piece of information that you always need to show with your ad (such as a promotion, certain Call-To-Action, etc.) you can use the “pin” feature to always show in a certain position (1, 2 or 3).

Screenshot taken by author, December 2021.

Additionally, you have the option to create a Responsive Search Ad with only 3 headlines and 2 descriptions. This would essentially function as an Expanded Text Ad, if needed.

Tip #2: Turn Off Automated Extensions At The Account Level

Automated extensions were introduced sometime in 2019, touting the benefits of improved ad performance for advertisers. These automated extensions are created by Google and they display below your ad.

The types of automated extensions available in your Google Ads account include:

• Dynamic sitelink extensions
• Dynamic structured snippet extensions
• Automated location extensions (if applicable)
• Seller rating extensions (if applicable)
• Dynamic callout extensions

In previous experience, a lot of these extensions shown for clients have not performed well. In fact, many of the extensions were duplicates of the ad copy or showed irrelevant content from the client’s website. 

The good news is that you can turn off this setting at the account level.

Step 1: Go to “Ads and Extensions” tab (make sure to not be in a specific campaign!)

Step 2: Click “Advanced Options” under the 3 dot option. From there, you can choose to turn off any and all automated extensions at the account level. 

Tip #3: Turn Off Ad Suggestions At The Account Level

In any new Google Ads account, the default setting is to allow Google to implement any ad suggestions after 14 days if you don’t review the changes.

There are a few different ways you’ll need to turn off this setting.

The first one is at the Account-Level settings:

Click on “Settings” at the left-hand side (make sure you’re not in any specific campaign)

From there, you’ll click on “Account Settings”:

Go down to “Ad Suggestions” and make sure to turn off the setting, so ad suggestions will not auto-apply).

The second place to look is in your account’s Recommendations tab on the left-hand side:

Once you click on “Recommendations”, you’ll see an “Auto-Apply (Beta)” button in the upper right-hand corner:

There is a section for Ads & Extensions, where you can un-check these boxes:

Notice how vague “Improve your responsive search ads” is. If you check that box, you are authorizing Google to update your headlines and descriptions. This is why it’s important to check both areas of the account.

Summary

There’s no way of getting around Google and its machine learning and AI capabilities. Don’t get me wrong; machine learning and AI is the future of marketing and we should all be leaning into its capabilities. However, sometimes it’s necessary to maintain control of ad messaging, depending on your individual business needs. These tips can help you stay up to date with Google’s best practices but also customize them to fit your needs.

To some advertisers, this may not be a big deal and will carry on business as usual. But for many SMBs, this glitch (or any bug that causes irregularities in auction prices) can greatly affect your budgets and performance.

Dissecting the Performance Glitch

Let’s break down what happened in Google Ads to better understand how this impacts businesses.

So, what happened? 

During this glitch, many advertisers who use Shopping campaigns with Smart Bidding saw CPC prices skyrocket anywhere from 50% to 200%.

Advertisers flocked to Twitter to chime in on what their accounts were seeing. After digging into some of our client data, we saw similar results:

Why This Matters

It’s no secret that Q4 is historically more competitive than other quarters, especially in retail. Everyone is fighting for that coveted advertising space.

If there are unexpected errors or bugs that are out of your control, this can severely impact performance in multiple ways. For example:

• Volatile CPC increases may cause you to spend additional money you don’t have budgeted.
• If your budgets overspent, this may not leave you room to spend during the crucial BF/CM timeframe.

While Google has confirmed and fixed the issue, their notice also states that customers impacted by this “bug” will be refunded by December 3rd. 

Tips to Stay In The Know

Every account should expect some level of volatility at one point or another. In Q4, this may happen more often.

Does this mean your marketing team should be glued to their computer screens all holiday long? Absolutely not! Below are some easy-to-follow automated rules your team can set up to be notified of extreme volatility.

• Rule #1: Send Email When CPCs Increase

This rule allows you to be notified if there are specific volatilities in CPCs in your account. It allows you to then take any necessary action if needed.

• Set rule action to: Send Email
• Set your condition to: CPC > {insert whatever dollar amount would be above and beyond your average CPC}.
  • Unfortunately, you don’t have the option to choose if your CPC increases by a percentage, at this point.
• Set you frequency to: Daily, using data from Yesterday
  • Note, you can choose what time of day this rule runs to fit your business needs the best.
• Set your email results to: If there are any changes or errors.

• Rule #2: Pause Campaigns When Overspent

If you have strict weekly or monthly budgets, you can use rules to automate the pausing of campaigns.

In this example below, say I have a $5,000 weekly limit on campaigns. I have set up a rule to run daily that will pause all enabled campaigns if the cost is over $5,000.

• Set action to: Pause campaigns
• Set condition to: Cost > {insert whatever your amount is}
• Set frequency to: Daily
  • Pro-tip: Try scheduling these towards the end of the day if you typically have higher spend in the evenings. 
  • Pro-tip: Set up this rule to run multiple times per day if needed and you’re adhering to a very strict budget. You can simply duplicate the rule and change the time period of the hour it’s run.

Smart Campaign Types

If you’re wondering what exactly “Smart” campaign types are, you’re not alone.

In the past few years, Google has been rolling out more smart campaigns, touting benefits of increased efficiency, conversions rates, and ROI. Let’s go through these different types so you can better understand if these are right for your business.

#1: Smart Shopping Campaigns

Smart Shopping campaigns are a way to maximize your product reach across the standard Shopping network and the Display network. It also utilizes your remarketing lists to simplify campaign management. Because of this feature, Smart Shopping campaigns can help maximize conversion value in these campaigns.

Additionally, this campaign type uses automated bidding and ad placements. While you’re still in charge and have visibility to the products you promote, you don’t have control over the following:

• Manual bidding
• Search terms that trigger products
• Ad networks ads are served on

#2: Smart Display Campaigns

Smart Display campaigns are a more simple way for advertisers to reach the masses with their products and services. This campaign type utilizes a combination of:

• Headlines
• Descriptions
• Images
• Logos
• Videos

With this combination of assets, it allows your ads to show up on almost all ad formats across the differing networks.

This campaign type utilizes three different optimization technologies to scale success:

• Automated bidding
• Automated targeting (audiences)
• Automated ad creation

#3: Smart Campaigns (Search)

Smart campaigns are available right out of the gate for new advertisers. In fact, if you sign up for a new ad account, Google almost forces you to go this route, touting its easy-to-implement setup. However, if you are (or have hired) a seasoned marketer, my recommendation is to always create the foundation of your initial campaigns, keywords, and ads yourself.

This campaign type will bring results based on the campaign goal you choose from. These ads are shown across all of the Google ad networks, such as Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, and more.

What’s needed for setup?

• Budget
• Initial keyword themes
• Initial ad copy

Summary: Which Campaign Type Is Right For Me?

The infamous answer in digital marketing: it depends. As someone who has audited and managed hundreds of accounts, I have seen automation go extremely wrong. In other cases, it gets the job done.

At the end of the day, there will always need to be a human element to manage and optimize campaigns. Google algorithms are only so smart, and much of the time lack the context or intent of the user to make good decisions all of the time.

If you’re curious about these campaign types, I’d recommend testing them out against your standard campaigns. Start small, especially if you have a limited marketing budget.

Are your PPC campaigns in tip-top shape for the busy season? Whether you’re an E-Commerce brand with booming Q4 sales or a B2B company with declined seasonality, it’s important to understand how your campaigns can stack up to your target goals.

Not sure where to start when setting goals? I’ve outlined five tips to help supercharge your PPC campaigns for holiday growth.

Tip #1: Analyze Your Prior Year Data

If the year 2020 taught us anything about consumer trends, it’s that users flocked online and E-Commerce is here to stay.

Because we are still in the midst of a pandemic, last year’s data can be a good indicator of this year’s performance. Users are buying more and more online every day.

Now, what type of data should you be analyzing? Here are a few quick tips I’ve put together to help you start asking the right questions.

• Did CPCs increase from Q3 to Q4?
• Did competition increase from Q3 to Q4? 
  • Pro-tip: You can find this by reviewing the Auction Insights report in Google Ads!
• How did our onsite metrics differ in Q4 compared to Q3?
  • Did Conversion Rate increase/decrease?
  • Did Revenue or Average Order Value increase/decrease?

Why is this important? By answering some of these questions, you’ll be on your way of setting more realistic targets for your PPC campaigns. This can also help uncover opportunities for growth.

For example, say in Q3 you have a $5,000 monthly budget and your average CPC is $2, that’s roughly 2,500 visitors to your site. If Q4 shows increased competition and your CPC has now increased to $2.75, but your budget is still the same. That same $5,000 now only gets you 1,818 visitors. That’s a 27% decrease in visitors!

By analyzing your prior year data, you may find that you need more budget in Q4 to just maintain your current website traffic. Analyzing throughout the year will help you realistically forecast what’s needed to hit your targets.

Tip #2: Study Your Seasonality

Along with prior year analysis, seasonality is important to monitor no matter what type of brand you are. 

For example, I’ve seen many B2B companies have lower volume of leads in Q4, compared to E-Commerce or consumer brands that showcase higher-than-average revenue due to the holidays.

Why is this important? Part of setting realistic goals is to understand your market. If your leads historically dip in Q4, it wouldn’t be realistic to set a 15% goal increase for leads this year.

The goal is to understand the hills and valleys of your Marketplace, when they take place, and structure your goals, spend, and competitiveness accordingly.

Tip #3: Give More Budget To Top-Performing Campaigns

With many brands, every dollar is crucial. Especially during the pandemic, marketing dollars are watched and protected fiercely. 

Q4 is also the time where online competition skyrockets. Everyone needs to get in front of their customers. Some of your competitors may have an open checkbook, even!

If your brand has lofty goals this holiday season, it’s important to review your top-driving campaigns. What makes them so successful? Ask questions like:

• What is my Share of Voice in this category?
• What campaigns are performing better than the KPIs?
  • KPIs can be anything that is important to your business, such as Conversion Rate, Cost Per Lead/Sale, etc.

If your budget is limited this season, put more emphasis and budget towards your top-performing campaigns. It’s ok to turn off non-performers to not spread your budgets too thin! Just be sure to review cross-channel performance before making any changes (we’ll get to that in tip #5).

Tip #4: Ease Up On Ad Scheduling

These days, it seems that we go from one screen to another throughout our days. If your day looks like mine, it looks a little like this:

• Computer → TV → Phone

What does this mean for your campaigns? 

Opportunity, that’s what!

Because users are on multiple devices each and every day, you have more opportunities to expose your brand to them.

If you typically have ad scheduling on your campaigns, try reducing it (or even removing) this holiday season. With the holidays and family gatherings, working from home, users’ schedules are far from the 9-5 we’re used to seeing.

Perhaps a mom is trying to get in some late-night online shopping after the kids are asleep. If your ads are typically off between the hours of 10pm-5am, you may miss an opportunity to reach those late-night shoppers!

Do you typically pause your ads on the weekends? It may be worth loosening up that restriction this season. The goal is to meet your customers where they are (as long as you have the data to back it up!)

Tip #5: Evaluate Cross-Channel Performance

Data has shown that user attention span has decreased over time.

Because of this, it may take more touch points than previous for a user to resonate with your brand.

Historically, the default-model for attribution has been “Last Click”, and still is for many companies. What this means is that no matter how many times a user interacts with a website, the last channel that they come in on before they make a purchase/sale is the one that gets all the credit.

All hope is not lost, though! There are different reports in Google Analytics to help you tell a better story with your data.

One of my favorite reports to visualize is the “Top Conversion Paths” report in Google Analytics. This can help showcase how many touchpoints it takes for a user to get to your website.

Summary

A lot of these tips involve heavy analysis before making any decisions. By reviewing data from a more strategic approach, you’ll be equipped to:

• Create realistic budget forecasts
• Start a project plan to implement
• Communicate effectively with stakeholders based on data

By taking these measures, you can make sure that your holiday season can be more successful and less stressful.

This report above shows just how many touchpoints it may take a user to ultimately convert. While some conversions have just a few channels, it still may take them multiple touchpoints (sometimes within the same channel!) before they end up coming directly to the site.

After seeing this, it becomes clear that some credit should be given back to PPC efforts.

If you have some PPC campaigns that seem to perform “worse” than others, try running this report for your brand. You may find that certain campaigns are “Awareness-Drivers”, and while they don’t lead to the initial sale, that doesn’t mean it didn’t influence your customers!

The goal here is to get a better picture of your user’s online interactions. Before you start pausing campaigns or are quick to write-off a “poor performer”, use this report to understand if it actually does play a part in the user journey to purchase.