Many PPC’ers were distraught when, in 2019, Google sunsetted the average ad position metric in Google Ads. That metric was one of our go-to decision criteria for bid aggressiveness. Even if your approach to bidding should align with financial KPI’s like CPA (Cost/Conv.) or ROAS (Conv. Value/Cost), you don’t want to “bid through the top of the auction,” so monitoring position would be useful to...
Nudged: The Science of (Ignoring) Google Ads’ Optimization Score
A bit of context for this week’s installment: it may be helpful to reinforce what we’re all about here at Page Zero. Ever read content by a digital-first company such as Basecamp, GoToMeeting, Zoom, or Dropbox, extolling the virtues of remote work? No one should be surprised that they write about that, since their products are premised on that very thing. They’re simply selling (and, yes, eating)...
Three Clever Ways to Use Google Ad Customizers
By virtue of campaign structure – ideally a structure that is well-categorized, thematic, or “granular” – PPC ads are supposed to be highly relevant to the keyword search performed by a user. In a way, we consider these ads to be inherently personalized, even if we don’t know a great deal about the user. But that’s only a baby step along the way towards the promise of richer personalization...
Will a Loss of Google Ads Search Query Reporting Actually Relieve us of Toil?
Google’s recent decision to cease reporting on low-impression search queries – a minor nuisance, at first glance – appears to unleash more complexity than one might think. It has certainly produced strong opinions. The long and the short of it is: if, as an advertiser, you were accustomed to a reporting standard that would show you something like 10,000 unique queries (mapped to the keywords...
Five Ways to Keep Smart Bidding From Acting Not-So-Smart
In this week’s instalment I have one sharp new tip, and a few reminders of other key ways to use Smart Bidding without getting into hot water. As PPC account managers, many of us want some control. Yet under typical conditions, Smart Bidding in Google Ads gives us zero levers to pull. Boo. Well, look over here as I peel back the vinyl covering (it looks like a BBQ cover, but it has the Page Zero...
