The Most Significant Changes in PPC for 2017
From changes in targeting to the latest products available, following are the need-to-know changes in PPC this year from your expert SEO company in Houston.
2016 was the year that brought mobile advertising to a new level when it surpassed the searches completed from desktops and increased search spend by $6 Billion. Since we know that mobile will be even more important this year, let’s take a closer look at the most significant news, trends, and launches seen from Google AdWords and Bing Ads. We’ll begin with this key: Machine Learning.
Machine Learning
Frederick Vallaeys, the former Google technician and founder of Optimyzer mentioned in his column, Adwords 201 is all about dealing with an artificial intelligence. Today machine learning is behind every significant revolution in search marketing.
One good example would be the earlier announcements for smart display campaigns from Google. These specialized campaigns depend on the capacity for machine learning to automate each feature of the campaign.
In March 2017, there was another important development on the machine learning frontier. Google has announced that it will be expanding the meaning of “close variants” for exact matches. In the future, word order will be ignored and functions words in exact matches can be added or ignored as necessity demands.
Here is a short story about how this industry will be such a great place to be right now. This all happened on a Friday before the SMX West was launched. I had the pleasure of hosting a last-minute conference session with fellow moderators Matt Van Wagner and Brad Geddes. The previous night we were wondering if we would spend the session talking amongst ourselves, but at 7:55 on the following morning the conference hall filled and we were the center of a lively discussion filled with important questions and tips, you can hear parts of the conference in this podcast. Sometime after the conference, I learned that an important project manager from Google had also arrived to hear about feedback. The feedback showed that over 100 people had risen early to talk shop and cross-cultivate many ideas a true testament to the nature of this important industry.
In May, there was an important update made for the AD Rank thresholds that works to determine the context of a query, for example, if this relates to a recent news article or a specific product.
Conversion Tracking & Attribution
Another important event in the first half of the year was the advent of AdWords Converted Clicks and the initial presentation of Google Attribution. This was the biggest product launch mentioned at Google Marketing Next. Search marketers have had some experience with Google attribution data in the Analytics and Adwords, but the latest introduction pulls in more data from across different channels and makes this essential data available for bespoke bidding strategies.
Another important addition was that of the Maximize Conversions tools that were added to the suite of automated strategies sometime near the end of May. If you regularly use the offline conversions tools you can schedule these Adwords imports today.
These new releases and tools have a host of different advantages to lend. Google can now track and provide reports on visits made to store that come in from a large selection of YouTube campaigns.
Google launched another important pilot and dubbed it “Ads Added by AdWords”. Over 2000 accounts were invited to participate in the campaign that adds ads which are tested in each different ad group.
The green outline featured in the Google ad label became an official symbol at the end of February. Those interested can see the entire history of the Google ad labeling at his exclusive trip down memory lane.
Then in March, expanded text ads can begin receiving support through Dynamic Search Ad very own page feeds. This means that headlines can now be generated in a dynamic way, and the extra characters are all available to the advertisers in a unique type of description.
Not long back Google decided to test a second description line for text ads. So far it’s only a limited test. Price extensions are available on all devices. You’ll find those extensions in carousels that are swipeable on mobile. Google is in experimental mode with that format and experiments include the extensions found in a carousel.
There’ve been a number of announcements by Google concerning call ads. Headlines for the call only ads where the default and the extensions are set at the account level. These are the kind of issues that a quality local SEO Houston service can help out with.
Ads with AMP are ramping up and Google is testing AMP enabled landing pages. Mr. Vallaeys recently wrote a column expressing the value of using AMP landing pages. That column was entitled ‘The Best Kept Adwords Secret: AMP and your landing pages.’ An e-commerce company has decided to develop a full AMP experience for their audiences on mobile search. They made the decision to do so after testing the landing pages orf mobile using AMP. You can find where I profiled about that test case.
In mid-May Google open things up so that when someone buys from PLA’s they can do so faster. In addition to that, they also added extensions for automated calling and those additions are rolling out to more and more advertisers. For those advertisers that don’t have call extension set up, Google actually pulls their phone numbers into the ads. These actions came after Google had announced that they would automatically display any local phone numbers instead of using a central number.
Audiences
From this year forward targeting specific audiences will be a major action. During the first half of 2017 Market audiences for search and shopping became available in AdWords. Bing ads followed up by allowing marketers to exclude list and their retargeting campaigns and is testing custom audiences.
Shopping
Bing ads can now query reports for products. It’s also added promotions for shopping in the US and now allows merchants to show special offers in any product Ads they have. Anyone who is not able to do so can fill out a form and apply. It’s now possible to find shopping ads on the Display Network And Google is experimenting with home design and fashion sites to show shopping on display.
Google made the choice to include all advertisers in that test program. Any advertiser who wants can opt out but it’s not possible to set up any type of separate shopping campaign because the volume is still low. Google shopping was also the main reason for the record fines applied against Google by the EU for being in breach of antitrust laws. It’s my opinion that the ruling against Google is outrageous. If you’re interested you can read more at Crealytics.
UI Changes
It is now finally possible to view a company’s historical quality score information inside of Adwords. You’ll also find that the interface for bidding inside the UI will show suggestions for bids and a variety of page positions. Adwords Next is rolling out, and recently a million advertisers gained access to the new interface. It is scheduled to be released to everyone before the end of the year.
Bing ads now have more device targeting. This allows advertisers to create mobile-only campaigns. All advertisers on the Bing Network now have access to the new ads editor for Mac. When you need help with these changes you can contact your local SEO Houston expert to get the help you need.
Leave a Reply