Hosted by Julie F Bacchini, this week’s PPCChat session was focused on the things in PPC which were working well earlier but not the same now. what are PPCers biggest frustration or challenge right now in PPC performance and more. Here is the screencap of the discussion.
Q1: Are you finding that things that used to work well or really well in your PPC account are just not the same lately?
Generally yes. more automation and all-in-one campaign types have changed the approach needed to make things work. @JuliaVyse
Most definitely! @NeptuneMoon
Yes! Absolutely. I’m finding myself having to rethink past strategies a lot lately (especially as I start my new position) @MarketingByMark
Big G is still stable over facebook. Things are different this year vs 2020 since people are not locked at home anymore. @duanebrown
Yes, seeing very different results and have had to make some changes on things that used to do very well. @lchasse
The old max click strategy that use to be old reliable for reducing CPC’s just isn’t doing it like it use to. In addition, the usage of exact match seems to be nowhere as valuable as it use to be. @JonKagan
Some tactics, mainly in search campaigns, arent working as good as they used to so we have had to adjust and test out new ways of setting those up & optimizing. @selley2134
Q2: What used to work great in paid search that lately just is not working well or at all? How are you coping with these changes?
Granular account structures. Just doesn’t seem to be worth the time investment anymore like it used to be. @SEMFlem
So the brand v generic in separate campaigns, with each keyword list as negatives in the other is just not working for how Google is matching terms anymore. it’s super messy, which affects overall CPC controls. @JuliaVyse
With Google now labeling niche keywords as “limited by search volume” and expanding matching of those KWs, I’ve tried going broader with keywords and modifying campaigns with audiences. Definitely hopped on the audience trend @MarketingByMark
Not to state the too obvious, but targeting high converting keywords is a lot harder now with the uber fuzzy matching logic. Competitors now match to brand terms regularly. I am talking to clients about tightening focus since targeting is more broad. @NeptuneMoon
Impression share bidding used to work really well with exact match. Now it is a train wreck. Automation also seems to break if a site has issues for any significant amount of time, which then makes it feel like you have to start from ground zero. @lchasse
It’s difficult for us to find the right combo of match types. Match types used to be so straight forward but now we have campaigns that get no traction because they are mostly exact “low search vol” but phrase match just runs away with spend on questionable queries. @selley2134
Related to the match type conversation, keyword sculpting just doesn’t do anything anymore. Almost always a waste of time. Feels like we should just throw keywords in at random and hope for the best. @beyondthepaid
And what I mean about tightening focus is to seriously prioritize what we are targeting in paid search. For ex consolidating or eliminating some campaigns to have more budget for those with greater success potential. You need a lot more $$ to get off the ground. @NeptuneMoon
Mainly some of the engine based strategies, and coping involves an angry letter writing campaign that transpires on twitter. @JonKagan
I was under the impression that Google really doesn’t like impression share bidding. Is that still a thing? (if that sounds like an Elon Tweet, my bad) @beyondcontent
Breaking out by match type doesn’t always make sense anymore. We’re seeing some good success mixing match types for the right ecom client. Things are changing and truely aren’t the same anymore. @duanebrown
Q3: Is there something new in paid search that has been working really well for you lately?
Not terribly new, but we’ve been seeing some success with new broad match + max conversions We’ve also been trying to implement image extensions more broadly, and so far so good. @MarketingByMark
This really pains me to say it it, but the @GoogleAds RSA+Broad Match+Auto bid strategy is working oddly well @JonKagan
Q4: What used to work great in paid social that lately just is not working well or at all? How are you coping with these changes?
Just logging into fb’s ad manager and seeing results… that is not working as well as it use to… lol @duanebrown
Snapchat, and that kinda makes me happy @JonKagan
*deep swig* fACebook. it used to be a THING! now it’s just annoying. srsly tho, the amount you need to spend to get any kind of reach? ugh. @JuliaVyse
In paid social I am seeing sometimes the more broad match audiences performing better than very well defined or even uploaded audiences. That floored me with a couple accounts, but it is working so data does not lie. @lchasse
I’ve been saying this awhile now, but job titles are no longer enough on LinkedIn. Having fields like skills and company revenue combined with job function & seniority make perform so much better because the content can be more relevant @MarketingByMark
Also, Lead Gen forms have gone down in quality at times, I’ve been having to add more text based fields or try landing pages to avoid low quality leads. Facebook has made it so much harder to iterate on audiences which drives me crazy. @MarketingByMark
Across a few social platforms, it used to be really easy to build awareness and strong audiences for search to capture. Now everything is restricted, ads are CONSTANTLY rejected, across platforms. It’s heading back to organic mgmt with individual boosted posts @JuliaVyse
Paid social does seem to have some its former super powers diminished after iOS 14.5. I used to say about FB it could give you the marketing holy grail – here are amazing customers, find me more just like them and it would! It’s not as good at that now. @NeptuneMoon
Facebook disapproval overturn process! I feel like they are more abstract than ever and impossible to overturn. (and they can now penalize other accounts connected your manager account) @MarketingByMark
On the same vein, and not just FB, are lookalikes working for any of y’all? mine took a DIVE. @JuliaVyse
Q5: Is there something new in paid social that has been working really well for you lately?
Not so much new, but more aggressive usage of local search, and weighting the actions (store visits, driving directions, etc) differently is making my clients some major $ @JonKagan
TikTok, particularly their top-view takeover product. It’s basically a YouTube Masthead equivalent and it hits hard! very strong performance. @JuliaVyse
Nothing very new yet, but in another couple weeks should have more thoughts on performance max. @lchasse
Nothing too new here. Excited to test LinkedIn company revenue targeting. Also find myself testing a wider variety of offer types and more granular remarketing than I used to, and it’s been working well. @MarketingByMark
Seeing DCA work well in fb ad manager across ad accounts. @duanebrown
Q6: What is your biggest frustration or challenge right now in PPC performance? Maybe we can help each other!
I feel like I can’t give the best possible advice. we’re just surfing all these changes and the people trusting us with important communications deserve robust strategies and tactics @JuliaVyse
Lack of search term visibility and poor RSA performance are 2 huge frustrations rn. @beyondthepaid
For me it is accounts that have smaller budgets + longer conversion times – these are struggling in search. G Ads is not great for these kinds of accounts right now. Trying the budget consolidation to see if it moves the needle. Frustrating. @NeptuneMoon
Finding a nice balance in match types – especially for smaller accounts. The phrase being a new worse bmm can spend a lot on irrelevant queries but Google labels all our exact as “low search volume” For low-volume accounts, it’s really tough to find that winning combo. @selley2134
The lack of insights that prevent us from optimizing campaigns to their fullest.Not being able to view which keywords or sites are driving performance in custom intent.Not being able to view keywords for smart shopping campaigns or negate one that you would like to @BrettBodofsky
Probably the changes happening in platforms so fast, it is difficult to keep up with the testing. The lack of data available to us after all these changes compound how difficult our jobs are to keep growing revenue at specific returns. @lchasse
I would still say the combined search query loss + match type expansion I wish they had some sort of audience data (like LinkedIn data in MSFT) to help mitigate these issues @MarketingByMark
It has never felt more like gambling today than it has in any of the 15 years I have been doing this. @duanebrown
Q7: Is there something that used to work well for you in paid search or paid social that you hope will one day work as well again? Do you think it will/could happen?
Making people happy. social media used to be fun. and ads didn’t always ruin a whole experience. I hope we can return to a sense of offering value, not just blasting out messages everywhere to everyone because targeting? what for? @JuliaVyse
I would wish for visibility into our keywords again. This would probably help a lot more than we know. I also want to see data for smart shopping, performance max etc. @lchasse
We are officially past the point of no return. Google’s cookieless world is coming in 2023… unless they move it up. @duanebrown
I remain stubbornly hopeful that we might get actual (not the 0 click only) search query data back. But I don’t think it will actually happen. @NeptuneMoon
Match types. Pushing budget to keywords you knew would bring in the right queries & using broader keywords to find additional traffic. I hope Google walks this change back & think they will have to IF they continue having keywords. It’s just a mess right now. @selley2134
I know this industry’s a magnet for change, but I anticipate we’ll reach point of routineness with platform AI’s. After all the collective work done to train the algos, we’re in for an era where we oversee, instead of fight with them @heyglenns
PPCChat Participants
- Julia Vyse @JuliaVyse
- Julie F Bacchini @NeptuneMoon
- Mark T Saltarelli (he/him) @NeptuneMoon
- Duane Brown @duanebrown
- Lawrence Chasse @lchasse
- Jon Kagan @JonKagan
- Shaun Elley @selley2134
- Michael Fleming @SEMFlem
- Melissa L Mackey @beyondthepaid
- Andrew McGarry @beyondcontent
- Brett Bodofsky @BrettBodofsky
- Glenn Schmelzle @heyglenns
Related Links
Stop the wasted ad spend. Get more conversions from the same ad budget.
Our customers save over $16 Million per year on Google and Amazon Ads.