Google Ads Management – Page 3

January 18, 2023

January Google Ads Conversions Dip

This month, we are seeing a trend across nearly all managed Google Ads accounts and wanted to share the issue with you and how we are working to improve account performance.

In January 2023, we are seeing a dip in conversion activity in Google Ads across a broad sector of verticals. B2B and B2C are impacted as well as ecommerce accounts.

We are seeing good upward movement in clicks and impressions but conversions are lagging compared to the prior month and last 30 day figures by 13% to as much as over 50%.

With a full review of all account metrics, we are not looking carefully at the use of broad match keywords in client accounts and are either moving out of broad match entirely and into phrase match and/or adding to our negative keyword list.

Of concern to us as experienced Google Ads account managers is the continued push by Google and Google Reps to fully embrace a broad match only keyword strategy. But, we find that broad match does not always meet our clients’ needs.

It is important to monitor closely the search queries that are triggering ads. Google has continued to erode the line between broad match and phrase match much to our concern. This change in client account activity may be an impact of Google continuing to blur the line between phrase match and broad match keywords.

We’ll keep you posted as we evaluate further and continue to react to the changing environment driven by the auction in Google Ads.

June 9, 2022June 8, 2022

What Your Google Ads Manager Wants You to Know About the Cookieless Future

Be Prepared for the Sunset of Google Analytics in 7/2023

July 2023 is coming sooner than you think. Do not be unprepared for the important changes that are coming in how Google Ads tracks conversions. Failure to take this seriously will impact your advertising, costs, the ability to measure the successes from your Google Ads advertising investment and may even cause a decline in sales.

Cookies are changing in July 2023. Google will be sunsetting Universal Analytics (UA), removing third party cookie access from the Chrome browser, and Google Ads will not record conversions in your advertising account from third party cookies after that date.

What Happens to Conversions in this New World in Google Ads?

Right now, most Google Ads conversions are tracked via third party cookies. That means if you have not embraced first party data and G4 Analytics, your Google Ads account may not show all conversions that are being generated from Google Ads. You still will get conversions, but you just won’t know where the conversion came from. For some clients, they will erroneously feel that Google Ads is not working for them, and cut ad spend budgets in error. For many this will create a loss in sales and may even drive some companies out of business.

The Impact of the Cookie Change for Google Ads Account Management is Significant

Google Ads advanced bidding algorithms all use cookies to record conversions. Without valid conversion data the bidding algorithms will have trouble setting appropriate bids and Google Ads will not be able to deliver targeted results. This will most certainly lead to fewer and more expensive conversions when actions are only partially recorded.

Conversions are not going away with this new cookieless world, but the ability to see which conversions are driven by Google Ads will be gone if you do not move to first party data and cookieless conversion tracking by July 2023.

Google Ads has stated that using G4 and Google Ads first party data in website codes will generate data that it will combine with AI to extrapolate conversion data points that it will use for the advanced bidding algorithm and conversion reporting metrics.

From the Google Ads Manager Perspective

Many clients are simply not aware of how automation is used in their Google Ads account. Bidding from the keyword level and even ad text inclusion by viewer is all driven by conversion results. Without strong and valid conversion data to base these decisions on, we return to manual bidding which drops conversion numbers and in many cases does not let an account be competitively placed in the Google Ads auction. And, the bidding algorithm drives up costs and escalates the cost per conversion as it has no idea what to bid based on no data or flawed data. The responsive ad engine does not understand which pieces of ad text generate a return and so does not create compelling ads that generate sales.

Performance drops and clients start to think that Google Ads is not a good investment. They stop advertising and their phone stops ringing, sales drop, and then suddenly everything becomes a crisis.

Without the first party data which powers the Google Ads advanced bidding algorithm and Google’s ability to fill-in conversion data using AI, Google Ads stops working for an account.

But, your competitors are moving forward and continuing to leverage their first party data in Google Ads to get results. What happens is those that did not embrace first party data, G4, and early preparation simply get left behind and lose business to others that could have been theirs.

Our Recommendations Is to Be Prepared

We recommend using the first party data of Google Ads tracking code to track conversions on your website and using G4 Analytics for a deeper insight into your website traffic.

Don’t wait and get caught in a spiral of confusion and lack of important decision making data. Plan ahead and actively work to assure your website and Google Ads conversion code is transitioned and ready for the cookieless future before the deadline.

For more information on this important topic we recommend this article at Search Engine Land.

For help with Google Ads optimization and how you should move forward with implementing first party data, please contact us from our website.

March 21, 2022

What to Know About the Future of Web Cookies

The future of the Worldwide Web is cookie-less. Google has announced that the Chrome browser, which has a market share of 66.6% (as of December 2021) will drop third-party cookies in 2023. Most other browsers already allow you to block third-party cookies, but we expect all browsers to follow suit with total blocks of third-party cookies in 2023 or earlier.

So what? You may say, but for the world of online advertising, this change is and a really big deal. How so? By blocking third-party cookies, conversion and reporting data will be less accurate and may even impact how willing businesses are to spend cash on paid advertising.

Here are just a few ways that third-party cookies are used:

Google Analytics uses third-party cookies to track user behavior and return the website traffic stats that we all love to use. With 55.2% of all websites using Google Analytics this loss of data may impact marketing decisions and lower the accuracy of results reported in Google Analytics.

Google Ads remarketing programs use third-party cookies to serve ads and track activity. The loss of relevant data and the inaccurate recording of conversion activity may lower the realized relevance of Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising programs as businesses struggle to make a case for high ad spend budgets with lower reported results.

Google Ads uses third-party cookies for conversion tracking data in Google Ads. Without strong conversion metrics, some advertisers may search for alternative opportunities to generate website activity and lower their footprint in paid search advertising.

Facebook uses third-party cookies to deliver ads in based on your online activity. With the changes that Apple made in late 2021 to require users to approve cookies set on their device, Facebook advertisers are reporting a drop in conversions and higher conversion costs.

What is Being Done to Help Advertisers with Cookie-Less Reporting Issues?

Google has been very proactive in seeking solutions for third-party cookie retirement, but with minimal industry participation. This past year most mainstream browsers refused to join Google’s initiative called FLoC. This was Google’s program to solve the third-party cookie program, but getting all browsers to work together to create audience groupings. Due to the lack of interest, Google actually abandoned their program and pushed the self-imposed deadline of dropping third-party cookies back one year.

Google has still not announced a clear resolution that is embraced by browsers on how to solve this issue.

For now, we see Google pushing users into the new G4 Analytics by announcing the dropping of UA Universal Analytics later this year. Google stats that G4 will be able to use cookie-less data and then extrapolate based on trends and machine learning to fill in the gaps in activity. Clearly this is why there is such a push to get websites and advertisers to embrace G4 quickly.

Google is also pushing the use of Customer Match lists in Google Ads. As these lists are first-party data, Google is hedging bets that it will be able to record the conversions and activity from these data sets to boost reporting performance.

At issue for us with Customer Match, is the difficulty for some businesses to map data from their CRM into Google’s data fields. But most of all once the list is loaded, Google sometimes has such a woefully low match to mapping these users to users it knows of that customer match lists becomes meaningless.

For example one of our clients sent us a 10,000 member list to load and Google was able to only map 400 members. You need 1,000 members on the list to use the list in search ads which renders the time and exercise to clean up a customer match list a waste of time.

As this is a difficult problem without a clear path to a resolution, this topic is one you will want to watch this year as Google and Facebook seek cookie alternatives.

February 28, 2022

Our New Appointment Scheduling App

Connect with us your way for Google Ads Strategy Calls

Our existing clients are seeing a new application this month to use in booking Google Ads strategy calls with our team. We are testing out Microsoft Bookings and would appreciate your feedback.

We send out links to our booking page monthly. You can view the invitation online at this link.

Our clients will now be able to choose a 15 minute of 30 minute call. In most cases the call will be free but in some cases when you do not purchase more than 4 to 5 hours of time in a month for services, you may see a charge for the extra time for this call on your month end statement.

You will now be able to select to receive text message reminders of your appointment, select your date and time based on your own time zone in the calendar, and will receive a reminder email the day before and then 15 minutes before the call.

You will also be able to easily cancel or reschedule the call.

We will also ask what technology you want to use for the meeting – a simple phone call, Zoom video/screen sharing call, Google Meet video/screen sharing call, or the new Microsoft Teams call with the ability to simply join from a browser without a login or download.

We look forward to your feedback on using our new scheduling app. We are looking for ways to make the experience more user-friendly and better for your personal needs.