The slogan “adapt or migrate” applies well to our situation in the current economic landscape. The good news? With all this market shifting and many of your competitors making costly mistakes, this might just be the big break you’ve been waiting for.

Let’s talk about five PPC tips that will help your company succeed during the “coronaconomy”. 

1. Don’t mistakenly run socially inappropriate ads

Be careful to not subtly or overtly encourage people to engage in unsafe behaviors regarding the pandemic. With the immense danger the coronavirus poses and all the emotion around the subject, extra precaution should be taken to prevent yourself from making an embarrassing blunder. You might want to review your PPC campaigns and scan for anything that may have been fine and normal before but is now socially inappropriate in our current condition. 

When the virus started to break out, Geico was running a video ad called “The Perfect High Five”. In it, a woman describes the feeling of switching to Geico as the feeling of giving a perfect high five to a coworker. The high five is so perfect, apparently, that the whole office breaks into a cheer and the boss comes into the room and gives her a promotion. While the ad is quite funny and would normally be yet another great Geico commercial, the timing was horrible. This was right when social distancing was beginning. Loud voices on Twitter began criticising Geico for their counterproductive efforts in the pandemic, and undoubtedly some ill-will was generated before the ad was finally taken down. Not a great look. 

Other embarrassing examples of this mistake came from KFC, who premiered a new “Finger-lickin’ good” commercial that showed restaurant patrons energetically licking their hands, and Lysol, who continued to show how great and wonderful their sanitising products were long after Lysol was all sold out in stores. In the best scenario, these kinds of ads make a company seem oblivious, and in the worst scenario, they make a company look cold and uncaring. 

Hopefully if you review your PPC you won’t find anything quite that behind the times, but chances are that there will be something worth changing. Consider making some updates.

2. Don’t run ads that will likely be disapproved

The google trends of how many people are searching for coronavirus related terms online are insane. Many advertisers and PPC specialists are attempting to use these terms in order to inflate their impressions. 

That said, platforms are on the lookout for misleading campaigns that are trying to exploit the hype, and if you include any keywords too closely related to “coronavirus”, “covid” or “pandemic”, your ads will likely be disapproved. 

As almost all of us in the PPC world agree, having your ad campaigns disapproved can be extremely frustrating. Check out this guide to why your ads may not be running to learn more.

3. Pivot your brand to make it more relevant to society’s new needs

With the way the world is shaken up, many consumers have unmet needs that advertisers can address. Don’t miss out on a chance to help make your brand look good, help people cope with quarantine, and spread goodwill and support for those affected by the virus. It may be that one of the products or services you offer can be reframed to address your audience’s new needs. 

Take a look at this clever telephone ad from the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic.

“People who are in quarantine are not isolated if they have a Bell Telephone.” This messaging has been perfectly tailored to reframe the product benefits in context of the quarantine. 

I was recently running the PPC for a company that sells clips to help soap dispensers give out a less exorbitant amount of product and thereby help homeowners save money by not wasting soap and shampoo. When the pandemic hit, we pivoted this marketing message to instead cater to helping people in general – and especially the parents of pump-happy kids – dispense product more responsibly and not fall victim to shortages. We thought the reframing of the product benefits would catch people’s interest and the results agreed. This more relevant messaging more than tripled previous PPC revenue. 

4. Recognise that many of your previous campaigns are no longer going to work well

Although your PPC campaigns might be approved and they might be pandemic-culture friendly, it is likely that some of them will no longer function. Recent market shifts have changed industries a lot, and your PPC probably shows it. Now is a good time to make some optimisations and adjustments. 

Consider starting with your ad schedule. Because of radical changes in people’s schedules, it is more than likely that your dayparting strategy needs an update. You might find some lucrative times of day to get conversions that you haven’t seen before. 

Naturally, checking your keywords and your ad copy will also be an important step. If there are still a good amount of people clicking your ads and coming to your keywords, their motivations for doing so may have changed, and your keywords and copy need to reflect that. 

A similar audit on your bid strategies, as well as your devices and placements, will also be helpful for cutting costs and identifying any new low hanging fruit that may have appeared. 

5. Don’t let fear make any decisions when it comes to running your PPC

When it comes to any decision, giving priority to emotional responses (especially fear) over a data-driven approach is almost always a bad idea. Recognize that many times your “gut feelings” are deeply seated biases that will lead you astray if you let them. If such “gut feelings” do happen to be trustworthy, prove them right with good data. 

Analytics appraised, it might be the case that certain aspects of your PPC campaign need to be temporarily shut down. This can be a good way to cut costs and focus on campaigns that have more potential. For example, I used to run a successful Google Ads campaign that targeted people searching on Google for things to do. Now, with so many things closed and so many safeguards in place, the way people search for things to do and what they’re looking for when they make such queries has radically changed to the point that my campaign has become ineffective. This particular campaign needed to downsize. 

Even though some segments of the marketing world have taken serious damage, there are also other segments that have arisen and are ripe for the harvest. Not only that, but with the vast amount of new free time that many people now enjoy and how many people are stuck inside and looking at their devices, users are spending much more time on platforms than before. Even better, concerned marketers dropping out of the keyword bids have reduced the typical CPC rates to a refreshing discount. 

For these reasons and more, deciding where to take your CPC strategy right now should be a careful, calculated decision, and not something that turns on or off based on the sporadic ups and downs of the pandemic. 

Adaptation is good marketing

The climate of the business world is always changing. Good marketers know that successful marketing is simply the ability to change quickly accordingly. As you adjust and optimise during this new time of PPC strategy, hopefully, you can learn from others’ misfortune so that you don’t have to learn from your own. 

The post Five PPC Tips to Keep You Afloat During COVID-19 appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Google Shopping’s latest move to free listings is a massive opportunity for brands that want to develop an integrated search strategy. Google Shopping is a highly effective paid and organic e-commerce channel, so removing the exclusivity of these paid listings from the shopping tab is a big deal for brands. This change will have an immediate impact on paid activity: search listings will become much more competitive and optimisation will increase in importance. 

So how can brands adequately prepare and develop their integrated search strategy to incorporate these changes and reap the benefits?

Why invest in Google Shopping?

The current, paid-only iteration of Google Shopping is already a highly effective platform for driving ecommerce sales. A typical search on Google Shopping is much closer to conversion due to the specificity and purchase intent behind product search, meaning the traffic that Google Shopping drives is high quality.

This is demonstrated by conversion figures we see across a variety of e-commerce clients – a Google Shopping search could on average be 30% more likely to convert than a traditional text ad.  

With this update, driving this high quality traffic becomes possible organically. And a major difference (and advantage) of Google Shopping search vs traditional search for merchants is that product management is centralised. 

The Google Merchant Center will feed both paid and organic listings, so instead of managing two separate work streams, you just need to govern one process for effective paid and organic performance.

This means that it will be more important than ever to optimise your product data feed and to ensure your product pages provide an excellent landing page experience.

How can brands get the most out of the Google Shopping Feed?

For those who are not already familiar with the platform, Google Shopping is powered by a data feed that contains information about your products including product name, ID, description and price. There are 57 attributes in total, some of which are required and others which are optional fields, dependent on your product category.

The information that you submit within these attributes is what Google will use to index your products in organic Google Shopping results and generate relevant search queries via paid listings. 

Therefore, to get the most out of Google Shopping’s free listings, you will need to:

1. Ensure the key attributes of your product title and product description are accurate, detailed and descriptive. These will be the primary methods for generating relevant organic and paid query visibility. To further support the creation of relevant queries, keywords can also be inserted into the feed as an additional attribute. 
2. It’s also essential that product images are accurate and of high quality. Mobile formatted images are a bonus. 
3. You will also need to ensure your product category and product type definition are both accurate and relevant. These attributes are essential for product feed segmentation and providing Google information with which to group products to relevant queries.

These three key steps have always been best practice for traditional paid Google Shopping performance, but now they’re even more important with organic listings on the horizon.

It’s likely that there will be other factors at play in the Google Shopping organic algorithm that are similar to the traditional search algorithm, including landing page experience and user behaviour signals. Naturally, we recommend ensuring your website provides a fast and coherent user experience for product searchers.

For large e-commerce sites, in particular, product listing pages, rather than product pages, are more likely to act as the entry point to your site from search. If the user-base of Google Shopping grows, product pages will become an increasingly more common entry point, therefore it’s vital that these pages provide an optimal experience in term of UX design, content and page speed.

How can brands make the most of the Google Merchant Centre?

Alongside improvements to your feed there are also features within the Google Merchant Center that you can implement which will automate elements of your feed and help overall feed quality.

Firstly, enabling Automatic Item Updates for price and availability will allow Google to scrape product data from the structured data mark-up on your website product pages and then amend price and availability if it mismatches the product information in the feed. 

Secondly, enabling Automatic Image improvements will allow Google to try and amend images that do not fulfil its image criteria, for example images that include promotional overlays.

Thirdly, Google can crawl your XML sitemaps to find products and supplementary information to automatically update your product feed.

Enabling product feed automation within the Merchant Center makes Google Shopping management much easier and ensures users are presented with the correct, most up to date product information directly from Google Shopping.

What you can do right now to optimise for Google Shopping

Google Shopping organic listings have only launched in the US so far but it will likely be live across EMEA by Q4 2020. Advertisers with existing Merchant Center’s are already being contacted by Google to opt in to showing data feeds across surfaces on Google, which includes the shopping tab. 

To help you prepare for the change, there are several actions you can take now: 

• Audit your product data feed to ensure it includes optimised attributes and feeds as much information to Google as possible. Alternatively, create a product data feed if you’re not already using Google Merchant Center.
• Improve your product pages with UX design, content and page speed improvements. As product pages increasingly act as landing pages, it’s vital that they provide a positive initial experience for shoppers. Benchmarking and A/B testing is key for this.
• Implement Schema mark-up across your product pages. Key attributes such as price should be dynamically marked up in JSON-LD or microdata to enable Automatic Item Updates within the Merchant Center. 
• Ensure your XML sitemaps are comprehensive, contain all of your product pages and follow best practices

With these actions, you’ll be in good stead to improve your current paid Google Shopping performance and your eventual organic Google Shopping performance. 

The post How Brands Can Make the Most of Google Shopping Free Listing appeared first on PerformanceIN.

For almost half of this decade, Google updates dominated table and bar talk at most any digital marketing convention. Now, Google updates don’t generate the market share of buzz in our community – and a calm tranquility exists – but rest assured, the leviathan that is Google does not stop working, and they are, as we speak, working on ways to improve search. And when those improvements are culminated into an Update, the chips again will fly. The question is: where will they land for you and your business? 

This article aims to help you prepare for the next update, and undoubtedly improve your SEO at the same time. It’s a win-win – but you might be surprised how many people let these simple maintenance pieces fall into disrepair. Let’s start with what you’ve always done (or should have been doing).

Do what you’ve always done (or should have been doing)

I’m going to ask you to be honest with yourself – how many of these articles have you read in the past, decided this is the month or quarter you’re going to update your website’s SEO, only to find yourself scrambling at the next update, chastising yourself for not adding alt tags or that extra recommended 200 words on an important landing page? It’s OK – you’re not the only one. 

Regardless, the best way to prepare for the next Google Algorithm update is to simply get back to making sure your site is putting its best foot forward for visitors. That is, to do what you’ve always done (or should have been doing). Remember why Google updates to begin with. Aside from security patches and new tech integration, the driving purpose of an update is to make Google Search better for the user. Because those users – millions a day – are Google’s customers.  Let’s look a bit closer at what you should be doing to keep your website penalty free (and increase your organic traffic).

Keep your website clean (of errors)

Keeping your website clean means consistently monitoring for errors. You can do this with myriad auditing websites or with Google Console. Broken links, outdated plugins, media compatibility, unruly 301 redirection, and browser incompatibility can all contribute to a poor position during and after an update. I know this seems straightforward and perhaps a bit mundane, but sending clean signals (like updating that ‘copyright 2012’ in your footer) shows Google that you care about your site. Think of it as a brick and mortar – when you’re expecting walk-ins, it’s good to perform some general house-keeping to make your business presentable. Especially when you know Google is coming for a walk-though (crawl) every few days before they recommend their customers to your business. Don’t procrastinate on the simple maintenance and housekeeping items.

(See a list of maintenance items at the end of this article)

Create good content (and lose the garbage)

At risk of losing you’re your interest here, I’ll only write Content is King once. There, I won’t write it again. But it does bear repeating – the reality is, while generating good content is difficult – it’s still the best way to acquire and retain good ranking, as well as good standing in Google’s algorithmic purview.  So, whatever that looks like on your website, “it’s” still King. Also, while the previous SEO mantra touted specific sweet spots for keyword density, semantic relation, and paraphrasing in H1 tags, these days content is measured predominantly by one thing – engagement. Good content precedes engagement. Sure, the old rules apply in general – if it’s written, you should try and get it past a few hundred words. And of course, keep it original, but most importantly – create it for people. Create it for your audience. 

How do I know if my content is good? Great question. There’s an area in Google Analytics that can show you: Behavior > Site Content > All Pages > Avg. Time on Page (or ATOP). Find your page and check the average time on site: if it’s over 30 seconds, that’s pretty good. 

While you’re there, why not sort that table ascending for ATOP? Do you see those pages that have a 3 second ATOP, with a 97% bounce rate? Those pages are not helping. In 2011, I had a website with about 2000 of these. It was crushed in the Panda Update, and just recently I let the domain go entirely. The lesson: QUALITY over QUANTITY – throw out the garbage.

Embrace new markup / tech

Before Google started showing markup diagnostics in Console, very few websites made the effort to incorporate schema markup – the same could be said about AMP on a smaller scale.  At the time, it was difficult to find someone who even understood what is was, let alone implement it. We couldn’t even find a suitable contractor to implement it so, I ended up performing the updates for all our clients myself.  Sometime later, Google announced that markup may help Google understand your product or service better, and that it may help facilitate better ranking (trust) or allow Google to put your business in front of the right customer. Once that happened, markup implementation was a main service SEO offering for us for over a year (second to backlink profile cleaning).

Whenever new markup starts to become popular, and you aren’t sure if you should use it or not, pay attention to whether Google has given the nod. A good way to keep on top of this is to check in with some of the top SEO sites, like MOZ or Search Engine Journal. If Google officially endorses new markup, immediately make efforts to include that markup in your site. You’ll be glad you did – Google never penalizes endorsed tech, and as we saw with AMP, they sometimes favor sites who have stayed ahead of the curve. 

Don’t try to (organically) get rich quick

Unbelievably, there are still SEO scams out there, including but not limited to, paid link schemes. You might be thinking – it’s obvious to mark that email as spam – but when you’ve been working on your site’s SEO for years, and still only receive 20 visits a week, these emails become more and more tempting. You become desperate, and that’s what these link vendors are counting on. 

I would estimate that of all our new clients, about 60% have traces of link schemes in their backlink profiles, and I’m talking POST Penguin. Some are date stamped 2018. Some clients know, some are unaware and some wouldn’t admit it either way, but the reality is, many businesses still fall for this. Don’t be one of those businesses. This is by far the best way to ensure you will be on the losing end of future updates. 

If you are struggling with ranking, and continuously sit on page 3+ for your keywords you should be ranking for, I implore you to check your backlink profile and clean it before doing anything else. You can do this using Link Detox or MajesticSEO, or you can have any veteran SEO do this for you. (Veteran SEOs that were around during the link-scheme hay-day are arguably better at detecting toxic or low-quality backlinks.)

List of maintenance items

As promised, here is a list of maintenance items to help keep your site in good standing with Google crawls and updates. 

• Remove or canonicalise duplicate content
• Check Source for Hidden Text
• Use Alt Tags for all images
• Cross browser / cross device checks every page or media item (videos, etc.)
• Do not obfuscate content with ads
• Test any markup (in Google Console)
• Check broken links and redirection
• If on a platform, use newest version and update plugins
• Ensure content is what one would expect when clicking on your search listing

Tell us your update story

What’s your Google Update Story?  Did you lose everything? Watch your competitor fall as you are elevated to organic revenue glory?  Tell us below.

The post How to Prepare for the Next Google Update appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Over the last few months, we’ve seen a huge shift in how reliant we can be on the advertising platforms we use for online growth. Automation on platforms such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads and even Microsoft Ads has come on leaps and bounds, giving biddable media managers the opportunity to harness its power and focus on the most important aspect of any campaign – strategy. 

If you’re an advertiser and you’re scared to let go of your manual bidding ways, then let this be the article that nudges you out of your comfort zone. 

The state of ad automation today

We’ve come a long way since Google’s 2007 “conversion optimiser” was first launched, (the automation that helped advertisers reach a CPA target for their ads…if they had at least 300 conversions over a 30 day period.)

In fact, over the last few years, machine learning automation systems have advanced hugely, meaning the ad automation on offer in 2020 is far more dynamic than the lacklustre options we started out with. In addition, ad platforms now have far easier access to the data needed to make automation work as well as it does. 

There are now over nine different automated bidding strategies on Google Ads alone, while paid social channels also rely heavily on automated bidding. Even Microsoft Ads has followed in Google’s footprints. 

Google’s Dynamic Search Ads, Responsive Search and Display Ads have also paved the way for keyword and ad creative automation, showing that bidding is not the only place that machine learning can help us.

What’s clear is that ad automation is finally in full force, yet some advertisers are afraid to let go of the reigns.

It’s time to let strategy take over

There’s no shortage of proof that demonstrates how automation is helping companies to generate better results with their digital advertising. Head to Google’s ‘Think With Google’ blog and you’ll find an array of case studies demonstrating just that.

But Google also talks about how, in the age of automation, the human element is more important than the automation itself. This is where people-powered strategy comes in, allowing advertisers to unleash their personal creativity to harness automated results even further. In turn, bringing a whole new purpose to the people whose jobs were once to change bids on exact match keywords.

But what does the word “strategy” really mean in practice? Firstly it means trusting in the automated tools enough to utilise them as a core part of your overall campaigns strategy. Then, it means thinking about how you can use different automation tools to better meet your user’s needs in a more dynamic, intuitive way, in turn, lifting results and breaking barriers.

Advertisers getting more out of peak times with ad automation 

The last quarter of 2019 saw some amazing results come out of the use of automation. And, most excitingly, a lot of these included incredible Black Friday and Christmas results. 

Historically, advertisers have treated these dates as too precious to risk letting the machines lose on them only to get it all wrong. In previous years, it has made sense to maintain as much control as possible to ensure ad accounts met the steep and important targets associated with the busy shopping period.

But, last year it was different – and the sheer act of having more advertisers place their trust in automation during such key dates was a big deal in the world of Biddable Media.

An example of an automated ad strategy

So, let’s talk about what you can do to get the most out of 2020’s busy periods (and non-peak times, too!)

Firstly, as with any strategy, you need to have clear goals and targets. This is important to highlight as depending on what these are, you may want to use different automated bidding or ads. Ecommerce examples of these might be to increase revenue, increase impression share across competitors or sell X amount of certain products. As long as your goals are clear, that’s all that matters.

Once you have these, decide on what biddable channels you’re going to use. You can choose a mix of channels in order to target your audience across every possible touchpoint.

Then it’s time to weave them together, using the automation features of each channel to work towards the main goal. To highlight how this might work in action, I’ve broken down the channels and strategies we used for a successful campaign last year. Take a look:

Aim:

Increase Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) and revenue YOY

Channels: 

Google Search, Google Shopping

Strategy: 

1. We ran Dynamic Search Ad (DSA) campaigns which focussed on the best-selling brands and products. We changed these campaigns from manual bidding to automated target ROAS bidding in order to ensure we’d only spend based on ROAS. We funnelled more budget into these campaigns to ensure a better return on the products we know would sell better.
2. We created further lower priority DSA campaigns to target the less valuable and/or less popular products. However, we ran these campaigns on an automated Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) bid to limit needless spend. This would allow us to generate valuable conversions at an affordable cost that we knew would contribute towards the overall ROAS.
3. We split our shopping campaigns similarly, creating one shopping campaign targeting the best-selling brand and products. Then we created a lower priority “catch-all” campaign that ensured we were visible for as many other products as possible – without the risk of spending so much that the ROAS would be affected.
4. Then, we changed the shopping campaign’s bid strategy to automation. Shopping ads, we implemented Optimised Smart Shopping (OSS) automation with seasonal adjustments. This automation accounts for sudden increases in conversion rates during peak periods – ideal for this short, but important campaign.

Results:

This strategy worked so well because we were able to rely on automation to do the granular tasks that take time. Previously, we would have kept tight control over the bidding and the ads in an account like this – especially during such a peak period. 

But by letting go of granular manual management, we were able to focus on bringing together a more intelligent strategy that reached our client’s targets in a more dynamic and proactive way. The results of this campaign were incredible – not only did we meet both goals, we exceeded them! 

It’s time to let go of your manual ways

Whatever your gut tells you about giving more control to the automated tools, I’m here to tell you it’s ok. We’ve gone through the teething stage, and it works better now. What’s more, it’s only going to improve. Every major biddable channel is now more invested than ever when it comes to creating innovative automation solutions for advertisers.

My view is clear – automation is an opportunity! Instead of panicking about automation making jobs obsolete, instead, focus on the power it’s giving you as an advertiser. Automation alone can’t generate amazing results. But, with its help, you can now devise intricate, intelligent and powerful strategies that will help your biddable media campaigns do even better. 

So, when you’re planning your next campaign, think about how you can let go of the manual reigns and get creative about how automation can work for you. 

The post Trusting Automation to Get Results When You Need Them Most appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Automation has somewhat been a ‘buzzword’ in performance marketing for some time. Companies continue to introduce digital tools to automate or streamline internal processes for better efficiency. Stories of automation are usually centred around data analysis and reports. Whilst that’s good in most cases, how has the automated data analysis or reports contributed to the campaign in question? How is the data applied to generate actual performance with measurable results?

Enter Deliveroo, a food delivery marketplace where users order meals from local restaurants in their local area via the app. The company uses multiple channels, one of which is paid search, for its advertising. Deliveroo uses accurate geo-targeting to run paid search campaigns. However, one of the problematic issues is the broadness of applying geo-targeting to a campaign — particularly when it fails to accurately match relevant data (e.g. matching the customer with restaurants that actually deliver to their location).

Coming into the paid search team during a period of growth and high demand, Deliveroo head of SEM Byron Tassoni-Resch reinvented the wheel of how the company ran its paid search campaigns. This included the concept of “Virtual Neighbourhoods” across several campaigns which grew paid search by a whopping 166% year-on-year between January and June 2019.

PerformanceIN spoke with Byron to get a deeper insight into how he transformed Deliveroo’s paid search strategy.

Automation within the digital marketing landscape has been discussed before, but to see it applied and used in an innovative manner for paid search with such results is certainly astonishing. Aside from the continued growth and demands of the business, what made you certain that this approach was the right move for Deliveroo?

Byron Tassoni-Resch: The nature of the business of Deliveroo meant that we have to solve unique challenges. When a customer orders a meal from a restaurant, they are going to be within a few miles of that restaurant. Geo-targeting becomes the cornerstone of your account structure. And because you have thousands of unique locations, your campaign structure naturally becomes quite complex. Therefore the best way to manage any complex structure is usually through automation. Us leaning into automation the way we did was the only logical solution for managing almost a million unique campaigns.

More brands are slowly moving their tech in-house and this was something you chose to do with Deliveroo. Why so, and how critical was this in order to implement your paid search strategy?

BTR: When you’re looking to develop marketing technology, it usually comes down to a decision: do you build it or do you buy it? 

In most cases buying it is a simpler and cheaper solution. But if you have a unique challenge you’re looking to solve you will need to build it. Then, you have to determine if you have the technical ability to build it in-house. 

For Deliveroo, we had two things that made moving it in-house the right solution for us. We had very unique challenges to solve and being in-house meant that we knew our business and operating model. And we also felt like we had the right technical knowledge within the team to develop the solutions we needed. 

How did the paid search team react to the changes? Were things generally positive or were there any obstacles along the way?

BTR: To say the team was thrilled is an understatement. What we built enabled us as a team to move away from a lot of manual processes to a structure where our workload now revolves around automation projects. It has enabled us to support the business better, we can focus on projects that make our channel more efficient, and generally work on ideas that propel the channel forward, rather than just maintaining it.

Let’s talk about your idea of ‘Virtual Neighbourhoods’. What inspired this innovative tech and how was it structured/programmed to align with Deliveroo’s strategy?

BTR: The idea was inspired by the fact that we needed to be able to target hyper-local geographical areas at scale. And we needed these areas to be dynamic as the business grew. The idea aligns with the business because as Deliveroo moves into new neighbourhoods and cities we can automatically create campaigns to cover that new neighbourhood. Ensuring that we have 100% coverage in every neighbourhood where we operate.

With the results generated through this campaign, do you think that automation has a firm place within the paid search performance channel to generate successful ROI?

BTR: The ‘Virtual Neighbourhoods’ project was the foundation for our automation work at Deliveroo. What it has done has allowed us to build upon it. Automation isn’t just a nice-to-have any more, it’s the cornerstone of everything we do within paid search at Deliveroo. Every project we launch is done with automation in mind because of the sheer volume of campaigns that we manage, we can’t do anything manually anymore.

Read the full case study from Deliveroo and the success of its automated paid search campaign.

The post How Deliveroo Reinvented Automation to Grow Paid Search by 166% appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Paid media

David Wharram, CEO, Coast Digital 

“In paid media 2020 – budgets continuing to move to agencies that can adapt and evolve campaigns with a focus on the test and learn.  We are moving away from a world where large agency groups dominated due to buying power and into an open playing field based on innovative approaches. Agencies that focus on experts on the platforms, data and attribution will be very competitive. 

Designing creative that is based not only on data performance but also the emotional resonance in their audiences will ensure ads not only perform against KPI’s but offer ad recall – particularly where the AI embraces personalisation.” 

Claire Young, SEO manager, Loom Digital

“Ranking is going to be about real-world signals that can’t be faked and communicating your true brand image on all digital channels, not just Google. She also believes that keywords will be much less important, it’ll be more about the overall value of amazing content. 

Mobile search will make local search vital and with 5G being rolled out, Google sites need to get faster. It’ll be all about fine-tuning your site performance in the perps – speed = visibility and success.”

Bill Swanson, VP EMEA, Telaria 

“Actively adjusting to the rise of Connected TV (CTV) will be crucial to advertising success in 2020. So far, we’ve seen plenty of enthusiasm to reach audiences via a wider range of platforms, but the momentum needs to be maintained ­– brands and agencies must keep adapting their strategies to the different platforms and screens that digital content is now consumed.

Audiences don’t distinguish between linear and digital, and advertising activity should reflect that. Budgets will converge into a single pot for all TV platforms; brands and their Agencies need to wisely plan this joint budget to ensure linear and digital spend complement each other to not only fulfil the campaign needs but enhance the performance that these platforms can help deliver through technological enhancement that programmatic/digital buying allows. This will allow campaigns to flow across the interwoven TV landscape. 

Supply-side platforms ­– many of which have originated in display – are increasingly jumping on the CTV wagon in a bid to cash in on growing investment. Brands should be cautious about such shapeshifters; CTV campaigns require a different set of capabilities and tools, especially when delivered programmatically. CTV platforms must also be cautious as they need to work with technology platforms that understand the particular requirements of this evolving environment.”

Marlene Grimm, data and partnerships manager, TVSquared 

“TV attribution has been a hot topic over the past year, with brands demanding greater proof of performance for their campaigns. To overcome the attention deficit of today’s consumers, marketers must invest in platforms that are not only effective at driving audience response, but also offer a measurable impact. This means that old-school metrics such as ratings and audience will soon be replaced with methods that test both TV and digital in a comparable way. The industry will need to make decisions based on real-time, actionable data and analytics; tying together spots on programmes, channels, times of day, and days of the week, all the way through to business outcomes.

Moving into a new decade, performance will become the new currency for TV, meaning accountability and visibility into a campaign’s impact will be the gold standard for the industry. Brands need an in-depth understanding of how their media budgets are driving audience response, to make sure ad spend is maximised for efficiency.” 

Anthony Capano, managing director, international, Rakuten Marketing

“There’s no doubt that connected TV (CTV) will continue to pull viewers away from linear TV, with its promise of original, on-demand content. At the same time, the increasing arsenal of streaming services is fuelling “subscription fatigue,” which will push consumers in the direction of seeking options offering free, ad-supported video content. We’re seeing a rise in ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) options coming to market, with the likes of Amazon Prime launching an AVOD service in the US and even our own Rakuten TV announcing AVOD services in Europe. 

It’s unrealistic for consumers to subscribe to everything, from Netflix to Hulu, to HBO NOW, to Disney+ but with the unwavering demand for real-time accessible content, AVOD is going to become a more substantial player in the CTV ecosystem. Brands should consider capitalising on the benefits of AVOD, including advertising to incremental audiences (13% of audiences in the UK are streaming, but not watching traditional TV); reaching young, affluent demographics; and delivering personalised, engaging content, all in a brand-safe environment that fosters consumer consent.”

Graeme Lynch, head of demand, SpotX

“2020 marks the start of a new decade in which audiences will become even more connected. Over the past ten years, internet speeds have improved, smart TV penetration has increased and audiences have displayed more sophisticated viewing habits. This has resulted in video advertising solidifying its position as a crucial strategy for brands and their advertisers wishing to retain and attract customers. 

Next year, we will see connected TV advertising continue to develop as agencies get to grips with its new audience reach and analysis formats. The measurement gap which has slowed the pace of adoption will be tackled head-on by a number of different companies keen to resolve the challenge of measurement and attribution. This will benefit brands hugely as they will be provided with better device reach and frequency understanding. Overall, the industry will enjoy a more complete view of audiences leading to a better understanding of media value and attribution. A further consequence is an improvement in the user experience through more targeted content and advertising.

Alongside this, device manufacturers, such as Samsung, and native CTV broadcasters, such as Rakuten and Pluto TV, will offer a different product set to traditional internet-delivered broadcaster advertising. These native OTT platforms will drive innovation in the market through audience data and create more choice for the consumer as well as new opportunities for advertisers. 

In the new year, we will see technical evolutions on both the supply and demand side. In-housing has been a hot topic for 2019 but is not black and white. Often, advertisers want to determine the buying and data platforms they use while still relying on an agency’s skill set for strategy/innovation, campaign planning and media activation. I predict this will continue into 2020 and will put the emphasis back on building knowledge and expertise across the industry.”

Consumer journey and advertiser mindset

Andrew Buckman, CEO, Sublime

“Alongside technology and consumer behaviour continues to shift and evolve in 2020, our mindset as an industry will also undergo a transformation, with more emphasis on people and wellbeing. The stereotypical ‘boozy’ culture is gradually on the demise, as we move towards a more sustainable and mindful way of doing business. Respect for people’s time and health – both mental and physical – is rightly more of a priority, with pertinent issues starting to be discussed more widely. We need to continue investing in employees to ensure we provide supportive and positive work environments. High job satisfaction not only reduces employee turnover rates, but it also increases productivity, reduces stress for individuals, and ultimately benefits the company as a whole.

Meanwhile, the cookie won’t crumble in 2020 but there will be more focus on other ways to target the consumer, with contextual-based targeting high on the agenda. We will also see a shift in advertiser requirements – those who want to use their expensive made-for-TV video assets digitally, but are dissatisfied with the larger tech platforms pushing them to accept shorter formats, which don’t allow the same level of storytelling.”

Oli Marlow-Thomas, director & founder, Adlib 

“With Brexit still unresolved, marketing budgets are likely to continue to struggle through 2020, meaning marketers will be put under pressure to look for new ways to create efficiencies and differentiation. But currently, the data vs. creativity narrative is holding the industry back, preventing digital advertising from reaching its full performance potential.

With 86% of consumers saying relevance plays a role in purchasing decisions, personalisation will continue to be the key objective for marketers in increasing the performance of digital campaigns. Yet while all other aspects of media buying are now highly personalised and targeted, only 3% of ads personalise the creative for each audience segment in real-time. 

And although 70% of digital campaign performance is attributed to the creative quality, creative production receives only 10% of the campaign budget. Furthermore, current processes for delivering tailored creative across diverse geographies, languages, formats and buying platforms are slow, expensive and difficult to manage. 

Heading into 2020, creative will be the differentiating optimisation tool that brands will rely on to stand out. Using machine learning, smart, budget-conscious marketers will be looking to ‘robotomise’ the Creative Director in order to serve personalised, highly targeted data-driven creative in real-time, cutting campaign build and production costs.  The data vs creativity narrative will die; instead, the two will work together to inject the boost of efficiency really needed to reach peak creative performance.”

Andrew Morsy, managing director international, Peer39 

“In 2020 we expect to see the pendulum swinging back to balancing audience and environment rather than just focussing on the audience, as advertisers and publishers look to maximise ad impact. With concerns high within the industry about the ability to place ads alongside suitable content without falling foul of data regulations, brands will be undertaking initiatives to ensure their media procurement is compliant, both in term of the data itself, and the path in which it reaches its audience.

Increasing compliance demands, as well as the absence of behavioural learning left by the demise of the third-party cookie, will see an emerging focus from advertisers on cookie-free, privacy-friendly technologies. Data that is compliant to shifting regulatory and consumer changes while delivering scale will be in high demand. With this in mind, contextual targeting will undergo a resurgence in the year ahead, but this time with a focus on semantics.

The context in which individuals view content is a strong proxy for their intent. For example, if a person is looking at material relating to a sporting event, at that moment there is a good chance they’re more open to ads relating to buying tickets, merchandise, cross-promotions and so on. By harnessing contextual, ads can be matched with consideration to the environment, place and time the individual is viewing them, and linked to content users are currently consuming. This high level of granularity is exemplified by the adoption of semantic targeting.

With concerns high within the industry about the ability to place ads alongside suitable content without falling foul of data regulations, semantic contextual targeting looks likely to take a bigger share of ad revenue next year.”

Jenny Stanley, MD and founder, Appetite Creative

2020 is the year of the consumer and anyone who doesn’t put their consumer first is going to fall short. They want immediate answers delivered directly and they want to find exactly what they need in a very short space of time. Consumers are becoming more conversational, from social media even to Alexa to Siri, and we need to embrace formats that generate leads directly and answer questions users have, without a need for them to leave the site. Marketers need to deliver creativity that allows for real interactions with consumers in a unique, innovative, engaging yet, not the intrusive way.

Aftab Aslam, head of UK operations, Savings United

“Our experience and all the available data shows that voucher code usage is increasing across all demographics. And, as we head into 2020, this will continue to grow. As has often been the case, voucher codes will flourish in conjunction with changing consumer behaviour. This will be led by macroeconomic factors such as Brexit and global economic uncertainty; changing social norms, e.g., dining habits or; technological trends like increased smartphone usage. In addition, the ability to deploy and deliver codes through a range of means, such as personalisation, push notifications and proximity targeting, will continue to evolve. Crucial to this should be the need to maintain relevancy and positive user experience throughout.”

Publisher revenues

Richard Reeves, managing director, AOP

“As we enter a new decade, the same issues will continue to challenge digital publishers, but we have seen evidence that when we work together, we can become an irresistible force – take for example the Ozone Project – and this will become more apparent in the next 12 months.

With a keen focus on transparency, 2020 could be the year we see real progress with deploying distributed ledger technology to help identify discrepancies and increase financial transparency within the supply chain, contributing towards creating an accountable ecosystem. At AOP, we will continue working closely with members, vendors and other trade bodies to test and trial various technologies, to inform recommended best practice for the benefit of both the advertiser and publisher.

It would be almost impossible to discuss the future without drawing attention to data privacy and the ultimate demise of third-party cookies, especially with increased pressures from both changing browser policies and compliance enforcement of data privacy regulations from DPAs across all markets. While social platforms have had the advantage over media owners through having log-in data, single – or unique – identifiers could redress the balance, effectively bringing publishers similar benefits from having log-in data and, will help counter concerns over the possible demise of the cookie.

As premium publishers shift their focus to diversifying revenue streams, and not solely relying on advertising as their main source of income, affiliate commerce will be increasingly prioritised.”

Mike Klinkhammer, director of advertising sales EU, eBay

“Trust in third party data has fallen even further in 2019 and the future of the cookie has become increasingly uncertain. Looking forward, as marketers consider how to deliver the most effective campaigns in a cookie-less world, first-party publisher data will fast become more important and valuable than ever – especially for brands and for publishers, such as eBay, that are looking to target audiences based on behaviour and context.

In 2020, brands and publishers should look to harness the powerful first-party data at their fingertips – such as their search keyword data and, if they have it, their e-commerce data for more granular and intelligent targeting. After all, the days of cookies may be numbered, but necessity is the mother of invention – and marketers now have a chance to create cookie-less targeting solutions which are more efficient and relevant for both brands and consumers.”

Attribution

Ben Samuel, VP sales EMEA, Nielsen Marketing Effectiveness 

“As we move into the new year, there are signs that this reliance on digital is being questioned – with many brands now seeing value in taking a more holistic approach. As Adidas discovered to its detriment, focussing purely on performance to address short-term targets based on KPIs falls short when it comes to longer-term planning and brand awareness.

This will be the year of re-balancing to achieve both long and short-term results. Re-balancing measurement through the combined use of multi-touch attribution (MTA) and marketing mix modelling (MMM) tools will enable marketers to optimise results across all media. Meanwhile, re-balancing responsibilities across the business – for example ensuring that measurement tools are not owned by just the marketing or finance departments, but are accessible across the business – will allow the company to deliver improved outputs to meet the needs of all stakeholders.”

AI and technology

Paul Rowlinson, managing director, GroupM Digital UK  – responsible for Xaxis

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the defining technologies of our time, and its impact is being felt in the advertising industry. Marketers are already applying AI to identify prime retargeting opportunities and better predict high-performing impressions, helping to improve the ability of ads to achieve all-important outcomes. But the power of AI isn’t limited to performance-boosting benefits. Marketers can run thousands of tests using AI to pinpoint the best time and price for a bid in an exchange, making each media buy more cost-effective.

Custom algorithms created with AI will continue to be a defining feature of advertising as we head into 2020 as marketers invest greater budgets. Although this investment will be heavily directed toward the human intelligence behind the technology, rather than the software itself, because making the most of AI relies on being able to optimise against clearly defined custom outcome indicators. This is an immensely complex task in practice, which requires highly-skilled data scientists and engineers to create and customise algorithms based on a specific set of measurement metrics defined by individual brands. Going into 2020, it will be the brands and agencies that have access to this talent through strategic partnerships that will achieve the best business outcomes.” 

Jeff Pfefferkorn, head of sales, UK, MainAd 

“If the past few years have been about the proliferation of big data with the rise of IoT, hyper-connectivity, and marketers focusing on ‘being there’ at every touchpoint, 2020 will be the year of relevance. Efficient AI and machine learning will be key to managing this abundance of data and make it meaningful for marketers. And there will be further investment in fields such as programmatic advertising where data points are leveraged at their best. 

Audiences are spread across a multitude of touchpoints, but they tend to gravitate towards messages that resonate with them specifically, answering their needs and interests. They are also willing to offer information if they can have relevant experience in return. The focus will need to shift from “be everywhere” to “be where it counts”, to find that crucial point between engagement and the brand’s desired outcome, where they can truly deliver value and tell their story in a brand-safe environment. 

What will work in marketers’ favour is if they have the right tools, giving them an advantage as the consumer moves down the funnel. Next year, we can expect predictive analytics and in-app retargeting to play a bigger role in the industry. With robust device-agnostic data-driven insight, marketers will be able to drive better creativity, smarter re-engagement and avoid missing opportunities through irrelevant messages.”

Sarah Assous​, CMO, Zoovu

“Voice search will become increasingly prevalent – especially in manufacturing, retail and electronics, where people will buy more through voice over time. As this happens, we will also see more dynamic conversations. These will be increasingly unstructured, where technical language will begin to resemble more human language. This is especially important in the case of very technical product information where those conversations will lead to higher levels of engagement. AI and machine learning will play a big part in this across the board.” 

DTC

James Shepherd, managing partner for growth, M&C Saatchi Performance 

“There is no doubt that direct‐to‐consumer (DTC) brands have been disrupting established brands and sectors. Typically, when discussing these brands, we’re talking about disruptive companies that have emerged in the past decade. We’re getting side-tracked by this definition, as many traditional brands are a direct‐to‐consumer enterprise – think buying flights via British Airways. We need to change our approach. Whether it’s established companies, such as John Lewis, or DTC disrupters like Eve Sleep – DTC is about driving direct action with the connected consumer in a measurable, accountable­, and ultimately ROI-positive way.

In 2020, we can expect to see more brands embrace the strategy that has made these inherently direct-to-consumer brands so successful. Highly effective user acquisition is central to the rapid scale of DTC and fundamental to achieving the accountability and efficiency needed to accelerate growth. By harnessing all available data, brands will be able to elevate their marketing efforts and reach target consumer groups. As more products and services begin to mirror that provided by disruptor brands, we can expect their marketing strategies to do the same.

Digital media is going to play a crucial role in allowing brands to shift the conversation to scale, growth, and engaging customer bases. Tracking, measuring, and optimising the customer journey through the funnel are essential parts of the consumer conversion, and it is time more brands adopt a performance‐first approach to help meet their targets.”

Ivan Guzenko, CEO, SmartyAds 

“If Martech is about communication strategies, AdTech is what helps to execute these strategies personalized customer experience, and measure results. These 2 systems will sync in the future to blend data sets, achieve the right level of targeting precision, and personalize messages for DTC communication in e-commerce.”

Catch up on Part 1 of our 2020 predictions here.

The post PerformanceIN 2020 Predictions: Industry Comments (Part 2) appeared first on PerformanceIN.

It’s the end of November and we all know what that means: the biggest shopping weekend of the year is mere days away. Yep, Cyber Weekend is back for 2019 and there are deals to be had for the savvy shopper. 

Q4 is a huge opportunity for retailers, but to succeed, businesses need every tool in their kit to be sharp and ready to maximise the conversion from an influx of online customers poised to grab a deal. This is it, don’t get scared now. 

As PPC professionals who’ve worked our fair share of Black Fridays, Cyber Mondays and Christmas periods, we wanted to share what we’ve learned along the way, as well as some Google Partner exclusive insight, to help our readers maximise conversions throughout the key shopping period. 

Behold, the crucial tactics to help businesses sort their PPC strategy and make the most of the increase in traffic from customers that are poised to purchase. 

Budget

Let’s begin with the crucial bit, BUDGET.

Before you embark upon any promotional period, it’s very much worth gaining clarity on what the rules are around spending. 

The budget you need heavily depends on your objective: are you looking to improve ROI, simply make the most of the traffic or maximise return on ad spend (ROAS)? 

We’d like to think that you have these targets already in place, but if not, you should be speaking with your team/client and identifying this information, pronto. 

From here, it’s a case of setting the rules. But, you should bear in mind, that the rules might need to change. Imagine you earmark a £7000 paid ad spend for the entirety of Cyber Weekend and are aiming for an 800% ROAS, but before Sunday is even out, you’ve maxed your budget. What do you do? What are you allowed to do? 

You need to increase budgets, or at least have the liberty to, and you need to know exactly by how much so that you’re making the absolute most of the flurry of potential buyers. Remember, we humans can be fickle, so if you’re not making the most of their attention during this crucial weekend, your competitors certainly will be. 

It’s worth also acknowledging that you should be looking at last year’s Cyber Weekend spend and performance, and increasing budget accordingly. Sales across this period are always on the rise, with more and more customers choosing to shop online every year. In recent data from Retail Gazette, it was estimated that spend over Cyber Weekend 2019 could hit the lofty heights of £8.57billion, a 3% lift vs. 2018, with almost £3billion of that expected on Black Friday alone. 

Urgency

Next, it’s all about the URGENCY

When it comes to Cyber Weekend, urgency is part of the deal, because those offers only stretch for a certain period. It is possible, however, to add urgency to urgency, with a few simple modifications to your ads. 

Here are our top recommendations: 

• Add promotion extensions, such as adding ‘Black Friday’ to your ad, linking directly to your high ticket items and adding dates to highlight the promo period, so it’s clear to the user how long they have to make a purchase before the offer is up. It’s worth noting, however, that these extensions will only be shown if you have a good quality score. 
• Include a countdown to specific promotions, allowing you to break up promotions and 
• work to timescales that suit your targets, for example, you might want to add a countdown timer to promote a 40% discount offer that ends at 11.59 pm on Black Friday, whilst another promotion on the same item might run until midnight on Cyber Monday, at a lower discount rate. 
• Include delivery dates to help customers in their search, providing them with information on final order times to receive in time for Christmas, along with any info on free delivery, if it’s relevant. This is a small addition, but one that your customers will thank you for, as there’s nothing worse than clicking through to finish the purchase then discovering the item won’t arrive in time, or it will for an extra cost that the customer hadn’t bargained for. 
• Introduce inventory counters, which for the discerning shopper is a big prompt to ‘get it while it’s hot’, AKA in stock. Showing your stock levels on promotions, particularly ones that are performing well, will further boost the interest and urgency from potential buyers. Just make sure you have back-up promotions to ‘take over’ once the item is out of stock. 
• Update your feed more regularly to ensure prices/stock levels are correct, any insight gained from competitor monitoring is factored into your ads and basically, you’re continuously keeping your feed in the best shape it can be. 

Organisation

Lastly, a key factor is, of course, ORGANISATION 

That means getting your promotions added and approved well in advance. So like, now. Optimum time would be a week, really, but we know this can be difficult when planning for a weekend as big as the one on the horizon! 
Make sure you keep a close eye on any disapproved products so you can get to work on rectifying these ASAP, ensuring you’re not missing out on anything. 

It might also be worth creating an entirely new Shopping campaign for your most in-demand, high-ticket and worthwhile products, then adopting a single product ad group structure to this. You’ll be able to track the progress of these campaigns far easier, optimise as you go and ensure the budget is being spent on the right products. 
It doesn’t even matter if you’re running a storewide promotion, as not all products are created equal and there are some you’ll want to keep a closer eye on than others. Separating these out into another campaign/group will help you stay on top of the tips above much easier. 

One other tip to note is auditing, and whilst it’s a little late to audit in time for Cyber Weekend, it can be beneficial ahead of the festive period. 

The post Maximise Conversions through Shopping Campaigns this Cyber Weekend appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Ad spend on social media is set to overtake ad expenditure on print, growing 20% this year to reach $84 billion, while in contrast, advertisers combined expenditure on newspapers and magazines will fall 6% to $69 billion, according to Zenith’s Advertising Expenditure Forecasts.

Breaking down ad spend across multiple channels, social media is due to become the third-largest paid channel for advertisers in 2019 with a 13% share of global ad spend. Paid search and television lead the top two with 17% and 29% respectively.

While social media is growing, the channel is slowly maturing with Zenith finding that ad spend is forecast at 17% in 2020 and 13% in 2021 – where it will account for 16% of all global ad spend.

Meanwhile, paid search advertising will exceed $100 billion for the first time, reaching $107bn by the end of 2019. Paid search will then grow at 8% a year and will amount to$123bn in 2021, accounting for 18% of total ad spend. 

Television advertising, however, continues to decline, slipping from $182 billion this year to $180 billion in 2021 – accounting for 27% of total ad spend in the latter year.

“Social media advertising gives brands the opportunity to drive growth by using automated tools to optimise their campaigns for key business objectives,” said Matt James, Zenith’s Global Brand President.

“By using first-party data from their own websites to identify potential customers on social media, brands can convert consumers who are already on the path to purchase and target look-a-like audiences more effectively.” 

With Brexit and political uncertainly looming, forecasts for Europe have been downgraded due to poor economic performance in key markets has eroded advertiser confidence. 

Germany and the UK registered small economic contractions in Q2, while year-on-year growth in Russia has fallen below 1%. Zenith now forecasts 1.9% ad spend growth in Western Europe this year, down from the 2.4% forecast in June, and 4.7% ad spend growth in Central & Eastern Europe, down from 6.1%. 

“As we move into the end of the year we can see that some of the optimism for 2019 has ebbed away with the year set to finish 3.3% up in 2018. A large part of this has obviously been due to the uncertainty surrounding Brexit,” said David Mulrenan, head of investment, Zenith UK.

“The lack of certainty has meant that advertiser budgets have continued to fluctuate throughout the year. However, as we move towards some resolution, 2020 is forecast to show greater growth at nearly 5%. Unsurprisingly, most of this growth is being driven by digital channels. However, this has more to do with traditional media owners digitising their inventory and estate than new players in the market,” he continued.

The post Social Media Overtakes Print to Become Third-Largest Advertising Channel appeared first on PerformanceIN.

Celebrating 10 years as a business, Bristol-based digital marketing agency Digirank has undergone a rebrand to reflect the fast-changing digital marketing landscape. Relaunched as Loom, the agency will continue to support businesses in growing and succeeding online through multiple digital channels to ensure collaboration and creating powerful, integrated digital marketing campaigns.

Founded in Bristol in 2009 and still independent and owner-managed, the agency works with high-growth, entrepreneurial South West clients across a range of industry sectors. The last two years has seen the business double in size (now with a 12-strong dedicated team) in helping clients, including Permagard, ForrestBrown, Clik, Touchwood and Lifetime Training excel with digital marketing campaigns.

Based in Temple Studios in the heart of Bristol, Loom is co-owned by the original founder, Director Nicola Ellison, along with Karen Pearce, director of client strategy, who joined the company eight years ago. 

“The name ‘Loom’ communicates much more clearly the work that we do for clients. Effective digital marketing is now about the whole user journey, and we weave digital channels together to get outstanding results for our clients,” commented Ellison in regards to the launch and new name. 

“As the business continues to hit double-digit revenue growth figures each year, we’re celebrating the past decade as well as looking ahead, with plans to double the size of the agency over the next 3 years. None of this would be possible without our great team, made up of certified digital experts, a fantastic client base and above all my co-owner, Karen Pearce, who has helped crystallise our vision,” she continued.

Pearce added: “As well as weaving channels together, our new name reflects the fact that we integrate our team with our clients’, creating close, effective partnerships. We’re a people-powered agency, offering digital skills to clients that they can’t easily recreate in-house. Our client and employee churn is low, which is rare in our fast-paced industry.” 

Loom celebrated the rebrand with a launch party on Thursday (October 3) at its HQ in Temple Studios – which saw colleagues, clients and neighbours all networking and cheering to the exciting developments and future ahead. 

The post Digirank Rebrands to Loom as Agency Celebrates 10 Years appeared first on PerformanceIN.

In advertising, there are several key questions that are always bandied around: how are our ads performing? What’s the ROI like? Are we increasing brand awareness?

Marketers using Google Ads have been comfortable responding to these questions, often relying on the ‘average position’ metric but as of September 30th that metric is being fully retired to make way for ‘prominence metrics’, made up of Impression Share and Impression Rate, which have been being phased in since November 2018.

If this development fills you with panic and like the vast majority of people on the planet you’re initial response is normally to resist change, don’t worry! It is possible to transition from one metric to the other seamlessly and without impacting success.

Why is ‘average position’ being retired?

The ‘average position’ metric let advertisers know where their ads were in ad auctions compared to other ads- not necessarily on the SERP. In this old system, a position of one didn’t necessarily mean you were maximising an opportunity or that ads were showing up above the organic results or not, only the order versus other ads.

Without clarity advertisers have been left guesstimating ad performance and, with an increasing share of searches coming from mobile and new ad formats, the position isn’t as easy to define as it once was.

What is Impression Share and Impression Rate?

In a nutshell, Impression Share is the percentage of impressions that your ads receive compared to the total number that your ads are eligible to get. It’s a way of highlighting missed opportunities by indicating how often a particular ad showed up in the search results. 

Impression Share gives you a clear understanding of where your ads will actually show on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). These new metrics are specific and reliable indicators of page location, which is incredibly valuable.

There are three versions of Impression Share that all measure your impressions divided by the total eligible impressions for your ads, based on different locations on the SERP:

• Search (absolute top) IS: The impressions you’ve received in the absolute top location (the very first ad above the organic search results) divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the top location
• Search (top) IS: The impressions you’ve received in the top location (anywhere above the organic search results) compared to the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the top location
• Search impression (share) %: The impressions that appear anywhere on the page

Impression % (or rate) shows you how often your ads are showing at the top of the search results page. This was a shortcoming of average position, as even an ad in position two might be at the bottom of the page.

The two metrics that are only based on your impressions, not the total number of eligible impressions are:

Impression (absolute top) %: The percentage of your impressions shown as the very first ad above the organic search results

Impression (top) %: The percentage of your impressions that are shown anywhere above the organic search results

How do I optimise for awareness?

Advertisers who are more focused on driving awareness than ROI should be targeting Impression Share. This ensures your ads are meeting a visibility threshold and helping to raise awareness of your brand.

How do I make the most of the new metrics then?

There are always a couple of different ways to skin a rabbit so the transition from ‘average position’ to Impression Share will vary depending on the skills and capacity within each team. If you choose to run your ads directly through Google, their advice is simply:

For those currently “using average position to understand the location of your ads on the page, it’s better to use Impression (Absolute Top) % and Impression (Top) %. If you’re using average position to bid to a page location, it’s better to use Search (Abs Top) IS and Search (Top) IS.”

The easiest way to set your targets is to look at recent performance for campaigns across the three impression % (rate) metrics and use this as a starting point. This will ensure the smoothest transition from targeting a position to targeting impression share.

The table below shows our default mapping from a position target to impression %. This should only be used for advertisers with limited historical data.

However, if like many advertisers who are still getting to grips with the change, you prefer the reassurance of a purpose tool which automatically sets bids to achieve your share Google Ads goal, there are providers out there who offer this. If you keep the following five points in mind when selecting a provider, you can’t go far wrong:

1. Goals-by-device: Independent device optimisation because user behaviour varies a lot between desktop and mobile
2. A responsive intraday bidding engine: Make sure you the tool you select uses the latest prominence signals and runs every few hours to make hitting targets easy
3. A holistic account strategy: The ability to apply bid strategies across multiple Google accounts within the same workflow, instead of individually
4. A single bid strategy: For easy comparison, make sure that the tool is compatible with both position-based bidding for non-Google publishers and Impression Share metrics for Google
5. Immediate setup and launch: With the September 30th deadline fast approaching, it’s imperative that advertisers can dive right in and begin targeting to Impression Share, without the need to upload historical data

The post Google Bids Goodbye to the Average Position Metric appeared first on PerformanceIN.