5 Things to Learn from Brad Geddes’ AMA

Everyone wants to hear from Brad Geddes. And it came as no shocker that the ‘Ask Me Anything’ reddit session was flooded with questions asking for his expert opinion. For those few who don’t know, Brad is the author of Advanced Google AdWords and founder of AdAlysis and CertifiedKnowledge.org.

It is a no-brainer to say that the session was knowledgeable and must be ‘bookmarked’ for future references. You can view the entire session here

For now, we bring to you 5 of the many things this educative session has taught us.

1. Biggest upcoming change is to use data layering with ad customizing

Answering to the question on “What do you see as the biggest upcoming change in paid search over the next couple of years?”, Brad responded:

I think there are two biggest upcoming changes. 1) Data layering. The ability to use time of day, demographic, location, etc data in your ads is amazing and its only going to get better as we can layer in 1st party data with established 3rd party data. 2) Customizing ads at scale. With dynamic remarketing, ad customizers, etc – we’re finally moving from ‘impersonal scaling’ to ‘personalized scaling’ of accounts. What I think will be the biggest upcoming change is to use data layering with ad customizing. We’re still a little ways away from that; but its coming – it’s just the format is still a bit fuzzy on how its going to look.

2. Optimization Schedule is Brad’s top to-do

In response to the question “What is your top-do and top-don’t in regards to PPC?”, Brad pointed out that the PPC space has a lot of things for the marketers So, instead of relying on todo lists or trying to remember what has and hasn’t been done he prefers to list out what needs to be done, how often, and then schedule it. Adding on he said that he doesn’t waste time on beta unless he thinks there are some amazing short term gains from it. He is wee bit cautious before accepting beta invitations. Here’s the link to a post by him talking of the same

3. eCommerce sites should try DSAs

Answering to what were some of the traps for eCommerce sites, Brad said that the companies emphasized more on optimizing for ROAS and not profits. Another issue is, not considering other products being bought through a PLA. He said:

The last stats I saw (granted, this was about a year ago) was that 50% of all PLA clicks that lead to a conversions did not include the product that was initially clicked on from the SERP. So thinking about cross sell and upsell opportunities and having a great search experience is really important to ecommerce.

Adding on to it he said it would be useful if eCommerce companies occasionally changed their data feeds. He concluded his response with a useful tip for the companies:

Don’t be afraid to try DSAs for products that have too low of a margin for you to put into your PLAs. DSAs (with low bids) can be a great way to determine what new products you should be advertising on if you have more products than you have time to create ad groups for in your account

4. Brand Bidding – A useful marketing strategy

To a question about brand bidding, Brad said ‘Brand’ bidding was more of a marketing philosophy. Stating it with examples he shared:

For instance, you have companies like Geico who are brand advertisers. Their goal (besides conversions, of course) is to always make you think that they can save you on car insurance so that when you’re seeing your high bill, you call them first. Then you have people like Nutrisystem or 1&1, still big names, but they do everything – even TV & print – on a direct response basis.

He mentioned that there isn’t any data to prove whether it is a must have or must not. As long as it is a stragetgy that a company willingly wants to adopt, they should

You can’t win philosophical debates with your boss and the data really isn’t there yet to prove out either point; so what your CMO believes is really the answer right now.

5. Keywords aren’t going anywhere

Brad mentioned that keywords are crucial part of PPC campaigns and will remain as-it-is for quite some time. Further answering to the question “Do you think keywords are really going away, as many have predicted, or will we just start to use keywords layered with audiences?” he said:

I think keywords will become another audience layer to use in your targeting. Their signal is just so much stronger than audience data that you can’t get rid of them right now.

Now, that was an interesting bunch of information that you surely can make us of. Look out for more such threads by Brad Geddes on reddit.