In recent years, Google’s been highly invested in educating advertisers on various attribution models, and making data sets readily available and easy to analyze.

The old way of relying on last-click attribution was often problematic and limited. It essentially ignores early touch points that sow seeds for future conversion harvests, making it tough for marketers to optimize budgets to enlarge the best channels for finding new customers. Branded search always did great. How could it not? However, other display and non-branded efforts were often erroneously cut back, with less provable value than they deserved.

This year, attribution model choices may be getting slimmer, or perhaps a new default will change our habitual way of counting our conversions. Although no public statement from Google, many SEMs have claimed or are beginning to wonder if the relatively new (and highly recommended by them) “data-driven attribution” method will become the default, replacing the decades-old “last-touch attribution” model. Whether or not this happens (and when), now is the time to study your models and proactively make a choice.

Serious advertisers have used alternate models for years now. When the strategy is for aggressive new-customer growth, then the “finding” channels (top of funnel) become more important. Consider a first touch, position-based or custom modeling to keep the credit (and the budget) going to the top-of-funnel channels, where it belongs.

If it’s important to give every touchpoint channel credit, then a “linear” attribution model is perfect, dividing up all touches and giving equal credit. Should the newer marketing efforts trump the older campaigns from months ago? The time decay model is for you. With six pre-packaged models to choose from, and room for customization, lots of options are on the table. Pick one that makes the most sense for you, and adjust your targets and expectations accordingly. Many products make it easy these days, and Google Attribution’s data-driven attribution capabilities are available for those that want a good look under the hood.

Will attribution data ever be 100% perfect? Probably not. And that’s okay. The idea here is to do something. Reassess your digital ad strategy to consider the bigger, holistic picture. Gone are the days when savvy digital teams consider their own channels in silos. Cross-channel consumer experience should be improved at all costs, and one of the best ways to understand the ebb and flow between channels is by studying these models.

In my 2018 paid search strategies post, reassessing attribution made the narrow list. Whether or not the long-standing last-click model stays default, a fresh look at what makes most sense for your business is never a bad idea. With so many new features, platforms and technologies, there’s little reason to be content with a 15-year old default method for reporting some of your most important data.

It’s time to rethink goals, objectives, strategies, and desires on both a personal and business level. In December we notice things that are off track (think waist lines and checking accounts). January is the time to fix it. For the paid search marketing team, there’s a lot to analyze after the crazy holiday season, but January is the time to figure out big wins for this coming New Year and start bending those chart lines upward.
2017 was probably a good year (if so, congratulations). But every SEM knows that year-over year growth is the name of the game, and it’s not always easy. So after cleaning up the champagne from your recent holiday record-setting party, it’s time to start ratcheting up performance to carry you though this year ahead of the pack.
Here are some New Year’s resolution ideas for paid search strategy in 2018:

1. Fill in the Gaps

Now is the time to analyze your entire portfolio and identify the holes. Chances are there are missing elements to your campaigns that can be corrected early in the year. Take a look at these and beef up your to-do list.

1. 1. Product Inventory – Are there products and categories that you haven’t built campaigns for yet? What new products or services were launched last year that don’t have a strong presence yet? Building out those missing campaigns, ad groups, and product targets early is one of the best ways to grow any account year-over year.
   2. Features – What new features have been announced that you haven’t implemented yet? Are you up-to-date on the latest ad formats, betas, audience targets or other features? How about updating that old Customer Match list from eight months ago?
   3. Extensions – Are some campaigns missing some site links? Are they outdated? Have location extensions been updated to include the three new stores? Can mobile users click to call?
   4. Campaign Settings – Look for any undesirable or inconsistent settings that may have crept in throughout the year. Ad rotation, budget, ad scheduling, device targets, languages, geo targets, networks, search partners, you name it.

2. Invest in Automation

SEMs are some of the busiest people I know. Give yourself the gift of more time to work on the tasks that require a human touch (ad creation, campaign builds, reporting and planning, vacationing). Let the bids be managed while you sleep. If something takes too much time and a robot could do it better, it’s time figure out how to delegate that task to automation.
AdWords has a decent set of basic automation features (CPA bidding, automated rules, eCPC to name a few), and can be expended even further with scripts and custom API integrations. There are dozens of more robust third-party automation platforms that are ideal for more complex accounts. Ask yourself: What’s cheaper? Hiring one or two extra teammates this year to help with the mundane tasks, or investing in a platform such as DoubleClick, Adobe Media Optimizer, or Marin? You might be surprised.

3. Act on Attribution

Good attribution modeling is complicated. Perfect attribution is impossible. But zero attribution modeling is absurd in this day and age. Many SEMs hold back in attribution because there’s really no right or wrong answer. There’s no perfect data. Don’t let the ambiguity of attribution paralyze you from a decision, though. Analyze the cross-channel data, make the best data-driven estimation you can, and adjust your goals accordingly. Nobody knows what the perfect bid will be for your keyword (Google has their opinion). We just guess based on the information that we do have.
This much we do know: some channels are top-of-funnel “finding” channels (non-branded paid search, paid social) while others tend to be lower-funnel “closing” channels (email, affiliate, branded campaigns, remarketing). It’s critical to identify which of your channels fall into each category and then how much value they either contribute to or steal from other channels.
We don’t need complicated and expensive software to see how different channels interact from first to last touch conversions. The MCF Channel Grouping Path in Google Analytics can give a basic breakdown on which channels contribute the most to other channel’s success (finders), and which channels tend to benefit more from interacting with other channels first (closers). Just set up the report to filter different channels for first touch and last touch to see how each channel feeds the other. Play with it, make a basic spreadsheet, figure out the “give:take ratio,” and adjust accordingly.

4. Get a Second Opinion

Fresh perspectives are a quick way to shake up an account and get it moving again. Borrow another set of eyes for your account and see what you learn. Each SEM is a unique person, so the accounts we manage year in and year out tend to take on our own beliefs, preferences, and biases based on our own (limited) experiences. We do things the way we do for a reason. But so does every other SEM expert. And aren’t we all about testing anyway?
If you’re part of a larger in-house SEM team, ask a qualified colleague or another agency to “audit” your account and show you exactly what they would do (if they were in your shoes). Work for an agency? Try an “account swap” for a day, where you each analyze an account that you don’t regularly manage. Swallow your pride, share notes, and help each other out. We all have blinders on to some degree or another, and no paid search account is ever perfect.
New Year’s resolutions are about rising up to (or getting back to) the best versions of ourselves. Exploring new things, growing, learning, reaching new heights. SEMs also need their resolutions for paid search management in 2018.
The year is young. Try something different. Start working on your next all-time record charts, and remember to Scotchgard the carpet before December’s annual SEM report goes out and the champagne flies.
Let us know how we can help you pull it off. Reach out for a free, no obligation paid search analysis or a more comprehensive digital strategy plan.

Search targeting hasn’t been merely about keyword selection for quite a while. The continued evolution toward persona and intention targeting in recent years gives advertisers a new experience with unprecedented options. These days, search targeting has become more about figuring out who your customers are – where they go, what they research, their likes (and dislikes) and where they are in the buying cycle – and dialing in the crosshairs to those that best fit your defined personas.
In mid-2013, Google’s then-new RLSA feature layered non-search user behavior over keyword searches, giving advertisers a chance to blend remarketing lists with keyword searches. The result? A better-targeted search strategy with stronger conversion rates and performance, but a smaller audience. Combining what had initially only been GDN targets with search was a success for almost all advertisers and opened a new way to issue bid variations based on additional data points.

Fast forward a few years. Search campaigns now have even more targeting layers for zeroing in on select searchers and tightening control on ad reach. Here’s a closer look at some recent audience targeting features and why they matter:

• Customer match – Upload email addresses of customers (or prospects) into AdWords, and target those list members who have Google accounts. Most companies have a gold-mine of CRM data, full of segmented customers, marketing or sales qualified leads, demo viewers, verified decision makers and more. Advertisers can now cut through the clutter and show search ads to their top prospects and customers with greater precision.
• Demographic targeting – Gender and age groups rarely (if ever) perform the same, so why bid the same? Google recently offered demographic details and performance comparisons between age and gender for search campaigns, allowing advertisers to increase or decrease ad exposure to particular groups or combinations that make the most sense to their business.
• Similar audiences – Now available for search campaigns, this feature lets you target new customers who share similar characteristics with those that visit your website. The system looks at search activity around the same time that users were added to your remarketing lists, and creates a list of people that have similar search patterns to your visitors.
• Household Income – Google lets you target income groups “based on publicly available data from the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS).” This feature shows ads to select geographical areas that average a particular household income range. Ideal for those that offer high-end or luxury items and services.
• Parental status – You can target one of three groups called ‘parent,’ ‘non-parent’ and ‘unknown.’ How do they know? According to a Google spokesperson, they “used surveys to find hundreds of thousands of respondents who are self-declared parents with children in their household. Our algorithm takes that data and finds other users across our network that have similar [GDN] and YouTube content consumption patterns and characteristics.” If you sell baby formula, daycare or 529 savings plans, chances are you’ll want to target parents more aggressively, if not exclusively.
• In-market audiences – this wasn’t available for search at the time of publication but was announced by Google to be rolling out to search campaigns soon. This feature gathers a list of high-potential users that are recently and actively searching for, reading about and considering products similar to what you offer. Although somewhat vague in Google’s descriptions, most understand that the factors that likely help Google guess who else is “in your market” include:
  • recent website content read
  • recent searches performed
  • ads selected

Whether expanding your reach or narrowing your scope is the goal, pinpointing ideal customers with greater precision is easier now than ever before. That’s not to say that stacking multiple targeting layers like pancakes is beneficial or desired, though. Those who experiment with complex layering targets soon realize that you can choke your traffic down to a drip if they’re not careful. As with all things search, testing and experimenting into your ideal sweet spot of volume and efficiency is the key.
Search targeting has evolved. Has your targeting strategy evolved to embrace these features? Advertisers stuck in the keyword selection mindset exclusively run the risk of becoming outdated in their expertise and will miss out on smart ways to target additional and better customers.
Need help finding opportunities for growth and figuring out an ideal game plan for optimizing your search targets? Contact our team of SEM Experts now for a complimentary analysis on your paid search targeting!

Starting October 4^th, Google is allowing themselves to spend up to twice the campaign daily budget on any particular day. Advertisers can’t opt out, either.
The intention is “to help you reach your advertising goals, like clicks or conversions.” Google can now better accommodate the unexpected ups-and-downs of traffic on a day-to-day basis to help advertisers maximize their potential each month, which is generally a good thing, but there are some things to watch out for. If your desire is to spend 100% of your budget each month and you have carefully set your daily budgets (and don’t change them often), then this is likely a good change.
The concept isn’t exactly new. Google has had the ability to increase daily spend up to 20% over the daily budget in years past. The strangest part about this update is that it’s officially become a monthly budget. Why still call it a “daily budget?” That’s the question on most SEM practitioners’ minds. Daily budgets should be just that – daily budgets (interpreted as “daily limit” for most reasonable minds). If you send your kid to the store and say “only spend up to $20 today,” do you expect him to return having spent $40 because the last 2 times he only spent $10? Only if it’s a monthly budget, would that logic make sense.
Most ad managers are getting used to these types of self-declared, “Google knows better than you” updates that seem to undermine the advertiser’s attempts to control their own campaigns. Without a doubt, they tilt the table towards higher spend and profits for Google. So some eye-rolling is expected. Pessimism aside, this can be a great feature for advertisers with a budget that they hope to maximize and spend 100%, and can actually help advertisers increase their own profits as well – as long as those campaigns are profitable and well-managed. Mindful, alert SEM teams won’t be affected.
Google promises that advertisers won’t be charged any more than their own set monthly allowance for spend, which is the average number of days in a month (30.4) multiplied by your average daily budget. Because it’s not an optional change and it’s in effect right now, advertisers should be mindful and careful when setting monthly budgets, and likely have a calculator handy.
In cases where daily budgets are changed, or when campaigns run less than 30.4 days, the math can be tricky for the advertiser. An example on Google’s help center showed how:

Did you catch that? The advertiser wanted to spend $120 ($30 + $40 + $50) over 3 days, but can be charged up to $240 – and a monthly charge limit “won’t be used.”
Needless to say, advertisers should to be hyper-aware of these compulsory changes, new calculations and exceptions when setting “daily” budgets and be vigilant in their calculations and forecasts.

Apple dropped a bomb on search engine marketing teams recently with the announcement of their Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) for the iOS 11 update. Apple is changing how third-party cookies are now handled on mobile Safari, essentially disallowing third-party cookie targeting after just one day. This significantly (and negatively) affects the ability to target iOS Safari users in that now-restricted 2-30 day window, given that we’re accustomed to a full 30 days to target/retarget.

It’s no surprise the announcement was met with resistance and disappointment from advertisers. However, consumers view the change as a unique privacy feature and selling point for Apple phones, a much-needed counterbalance in the wake of growing privacy concerns over new features like face recognition (Face ID).
Google moved quickly to help remedy the situation by updating their Google Analytics cookie to keep Safari’s ad tracking capabilities working beyond one day – but only for Analytics/AdWords accounts that are linked with auto-tagging enabled. We recommend all mobile-heavy AdWords advertisers link their accounts to GA to make the most of these recent changes.
With mobile traffic growing and the popularity of iOS, this will likely bring significant changes to your ability to (re)target mobile users and track conversions. Digital marketing teams should run their numbers and be cognizant of how their data will change, and make necessary adjustments in goals, targeting and expectations.
While cross-device consumer behavior is unlikely to change because of this update (except perhaps seeing fewer remarketing ads), the data will change for iOS Safari 11 users– especially if you rely on a non-Google tracking pixel.
 

Hero image above used as part of creative commons via Flickr: Martin Hajek

When it comes to testing display ads effectively, most advertisers simply don’t have the time and resources to keep up with it. To do it right, it requires multiple designs and different messages for each audience. When you multiply each of those factors by 5-10 different ad sizes, the challenge becomes obvious.
Google’s new “Smart Display” (SD) campaigns helps solve this challenge by making display ad testing faster and simpler, requiring fewer inputs. It combines the elements of automatic ad creation, automated targeting and automated bidding into a simple campaign type that systematically tests multi-variate combinations towards winning combinations. Optimizations are based on your ideal target cost per conversion, so profitability is less of a concern when expanding deeper into the GDN.
With SD campaigns, advertisers enter their assets (images, headlines, logos, descriptions and even product feeds for dynamic ads) and the system arranges them into different combinations and formats, while showing detailed performance data on the variations. Advertisers can see what’s working (and what’s not) and make changes. These campaigns require 2 weeks of data or 50 conversions, whichever comes first, to make ideal optimizations. With any automation feature, the more data the better.
The automatic targeting engine combines automatic remarketing and automatic targeting together to hunt down new conversion opportunities for those that are more likely to convert. While targeting is automatic, SD campaigns still give advertisers the opportunity to exclude irrelevant websites and categories as they choose.
Automation is unlikely to ever fully solve the inherent challenges of display ad testing, but for those that lack the adequate time and resources to create complex banner ad experiments, Google’s Smart Display campaigns are a welcome feature for those that want to participate in the widening audience-targeting future of Google.