Over the past 12 months, there have been many important changes to Google Ads that will have affected the results of your campaign. Here at ROI, we work hard to make sure our clients are not spending money in the wrong areas.
Over the past 12 months, there have been many important changes to Google Ads that will have affected the results of your campaign. Here at ROI, we work hard to make sure our clients are not spending money in the wrong areas. Spending money in the wrong areas hurts your business in 2 ways
- You waste your Ad budget
- You miss the opportunity to spend this money in the right areas which generate more sales
Today, we are covering 4 areas that may have impacted your Google Ads campaign
- Keyword Matching
- Responsive Search Ads
- Performance Max
- Google Ad Extensions
(1) Keyword Targeting – Google has announced changes to its keyword matching technology and definitions.
What you need to know:
- Exact match is the same label, but now applied differently. Your ads will show for similar meaning keywords.
- Phrase match – definition is wider than before
- Negative keywords very important to ensure you are not spending money on the irrelevant words with these expanded definitions.
(2) Responsive Search Ads New Google Ads campaigns need to use responsive ads, and you cannot update and edit your old, expanded text ads from June 30, 2022.
What do you need to know:
- If you change or update your old Google ads, you will need to create a Responsive Ad
- Be careful to accept all of Google’s suggestions when creating a new Responsive Ad.
- Limit the number of automatic suggestions you accept with Responsive Ads
Note – We have seen many advertisers take Google’s automated suggestions and the result is their ad looks the same as the competition. (3) Performance Max This is a new feature that is superseding Smart shopping and local campaigns. What is Performance Max? Performance Max is a new goal-based campaign type that allows advertisers to access all the Google Ads inventory from a single campaign. ie: Search, Display & YouTube in one.
What Accounts are Performance Max being automatically added to? From July through September of this year, Smart Shopping campaigns will automatically upgrade for advertisers, with Local campaigns upgrading from August through September. Once the automated transition occurs for existing campaigns, advertisers will no longer be able to create new Smart Shopping or Local campaigns in Google Ads. While Product Listing Ads (PLAs) will still be available after the Performance Max rollout, those who don’t adopt Performance Max campaigns before Q4 will be at a strategic disadvantage, which can include higher CPCs and limited scale. What do you need to know?
- Don’t simply accept all performance max campaign suggestions, this will reduce the ROI from your campaigns
- You really need to review your products and ensure they are optimised with all required assets to get a better result.
(4) Google Ads Extensions As of September 15,2022 Google Ad Extensions are now called assets Google Assets is a reflection of the many new options you can display in your Ad, plus the different “call to actions” available Examples of new Google Ad extensions include:
- Images
- Promotion
- Get Quote (lead form)
What do you need to know?
- Many Google Ad options are now available, check all your legacy site links
- Only choose the marketing assets which best fits your business
- Quality checks are important to make sure everything is working properly
Note: Most users do not make decisions from Google search, so aggressive promotional offers may not work best in your Google Ad copy. Conclusion There have always been new changes happening in Google Ads. However, if you not proactively managing your campaigns over the past 12 months you will be experiencing diminishing returns. We hope you found the above information helpful for your business. Thanks for reading If you want a free review of your Google Ads campaign, contact us at ROI.com.au Ewan Watt Founder & CEO – ROI Growth Agency 1300 650 274