Low conversion rates are the bane of paid media campaigns. The simple math dictates that if you pay for nonperforming media, your ROI will be poor, and profit elusive. The targeting we rely on as PPC account managers is the driving force behind surgical efforts to show advertising to consumers (or business prospects) with high purchase intent. Sometimes, we make judgment calls to go “higher...
Should You Narrow Your Sights for Geotargeting? How Google Ads Makes it Easy
As the industry chatter – driven by relentless messaging from Google – revolves increasingly around Smart Bidding options that take bid adjustment levers out of your hands, Google nonetheless continues to layer in more precision in some aspects of the Google Ads interface (and the associated API environment). To continue beating the drum on this subject, Smart Bidding: Doesn’t seem nimble; often...
Target ROAS for You, Inefficient Spend for the Hoi Polloi: What to Expect as Google Collapses Bidding Strategies
In SOPPC 21 and 22, I wrote about the various automated “Smart” bidding strategies offered by Google to advertisers who have clear goals and who are looking to save a bit of time managing bids and underlying bid adjustments. Earlier I also wrote about the prerequisites for this type of bidding to result in positive business results. I must continue to stress: there is no “retire to a spacious...
What Do We Know About “Unknown”? What May or May Not Be Going on Inside That Elusive Demographic Segment
Once upon a time, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld noted: “…as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free...
Four Misconceptions About Audiences for SEM
Audiences, layered over other means of targeting in PPC platforms like Google Ads, can provide us with further means of refinement in our marketing campaigns. If one delves into all of the available types of audiences, the prospects can seem tantalizing. For years, the main types of audiences used tended to be for remarketing. In many cases, that hasn’t changed. Not only can you come up with...
