We hear a lot of talk about SEO and Paid Search living together in perfect harmony, side by side on your search engine results page, but how do we?
The cost of unnecessary paid brand clicks quickly adds up. Especially if you’re already dominating your SERP (search engine results page). This can feel like an uphill battle for you and the team as economic sentiment continues in uncertainty and spend efficiency is still top of mind.
Join Gary Galloway, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Adthena, as he covers how you can support growth strategies and help your brand achieve SERP while also decreasing costs
When we talk about creating a video strategy, people usually see it as getting found on YouTube. And for good reason – billions of users access the platform every single month.
And then comes an inevitable argument: “I don’t think my product or service is a good fit for YouTube.”
Yet, creating and marketing videos goes far beyond YouTube findability.
Videos can make your content better, your product easier to understand and your brand more credible and relatable. Further, videos continue to receive exposure on Page 1 of Google’s search results for an increasing number of queries.
Even beyond that, a well-shaped video strategy can boost your overall SEO efforts. Here’s how.
1. Deeper understanding of your customers’ buying journeys
Video keyword research allows for discovery regarding which queries your target audience is using when searching for videos.
Knowing how your target audience is searching for related videos can give you a better understanding of their buying journeys, problems they are struggling to solve and tasks they are trying to complete.
When we turn to video content, we tend to look for informational or entertaining content, but we may also be able to uncover content opportunities that naturally solve the customers’ needs best in video format: how-to videos, product demonstrations, comparisons, and so on. A solid marketing strategy should always include both of these parts of buying journeys.
If you compare Google and YouTube auto suggestions, you will notice that YouTube search attracts a specific type of audience. If you search Google for Google Chromebook, for example, the top suggestions will be Google Chromebook laptop, Google Chromebook charger and Google Chromebook price – all three clearly signaling a commercial intent (i.e., start of a buying journey).
Some of YouTube’s top suggestions for Google Chromebook are Google Chromebook won’t turn on and Google Chromebook tutorial for beginners, which reflect an informational intent, possibly for a current owner of the product.
Not all YouTube suggestions have an informational intent, though. Based on YouTube autocomplete, people use the platform to find reviews of products from current customers of the brand, unboxing videos, as well as information on specific models.
And yet, YouTube-driven buying journeys seem to be very different from those that happen in Google, which makes YouTube suggestions such a powerful addition to any keyword research strategy.
A similar pattern applies to Google Video search, which often reveals a different angle or buying journey your target audience may take when researching their options.
Like Google’s regular search, the Google video section generates “related search” suggestions underneath organic search results. Here again, video-related searches differ from those you will see when using Google’s main search showing that people use Google videos for different purposes:
This way, Google Videos’ related searches allow you to discover keywords you’d miss if you were only relying on Google’s regular search results.
To sum up, when you start researching video-driven search queries, you get a better understanding of your target market and where your product may fit in. Your overall SEO strategy becomes better informed than that of your competitors.
Talk about a good way to find new “helpful content” opportunities!
2. Better on-SERP visibility through video carousels
Google’s search engine results are much more diverse, visual and interactive than they were a decade ago.
These days Google’s SERPs include related images, instant answers, popular questions, and more.
One of the most visible sections is the one that includes related videos.
Videos have gained huge visibility in organic search results, mainly through video carousels.
Based on Mozcast data, videos show up in at least 30% of Google’s SERPs:
In many cases, video results are “blended,” i.e., they are included in a standalone section that is not an organic listing but is added within SERPs as a standalone element.
This section is called a video carousel.
What is a video carousel?
A video carousel is a separate search element within Google SERPs that contains related videos.
Video carousels are often included on the first page of search results, but the location of the section may vary depending on the specific searcher’s intent.
Sometimes video carousels show up right on top of SERPs: Try searching for “how to tie a tie,” for example. The video-only search snippet and the video carousel dominate the whole above-the-fold part of the screen, especially if you search from a mobile device. For other queries, the section may be included lower on a search result page.
In some cases, YouTube videos are not included into a carousel and simply act as organic results. This is different (a video actually counts towards the ten organic links that are allowed on page one) but still rewarding: You are able to see a huge thumbnail of the video, which is hard to miss, likely increasing the click-through rate for that rank position.
In both cases (carousels and organic results), when accessed from a mobile device, this video can be played right within search results.
In other words, in both of these cases, well-optimized and hence high-ranking videos that are branded provide additional visibility to a brand helping it dominate its target search result pages with more than a single organic listing.
3. More visibility in organic search with video-rich snippets
While YouTube video pages may act as organic listings giving you additional visibility, earning video-rich snippets allows you to get your own page ranked in the same SERPs.
Video rich snippets are enriched organic search results that include a video thumbnail from the page, making the result that much harder to miss:
Unlike video carousels that provide brands with indirect exposure (people clicking a video in a carousel normally land on that YouTube page or watch that video right away from within Google’s search result page), video-rich snippets trigger a direct click to your site.
To earn a video-rich snippet, publishers need to embed a video on that page and use video schema.
Another benefit of earning a video-rich snippet is that it creates an expectation: People seeing a video thumbnail and clicking through to a page expect to find a video on that page, so they are more likely to stay on the page and watch the video. This, in turn, increases the probability that they will continue their journeys through the site, engage with your brand more, and dive deeper into the conversion funnel.
Conclusion
A video marketing strategy is more than making your brand or product findable on YouTube. When you start researching video opportunities, you’ll get to understand your audience better and uncover more SEO opportunities. Additionally, you make your brand stand out in search by having your video show up in related carousels, ranking your YouTube page in organic search and/or earning video snippets.
Google has created a lot of opportunities to make your SEO strategy better informed and more diverse by including videos into your digital marketing routine. If you’re unsure where to begin or don’t have the resources to implement a video strategy yourself, a comprehensive video creation and marketing service can help transform your digital presence, improve brand sentiment & trust, and increase sales & conversions across the web.
PPC campaign managers have had tight control over their account management, data insights, and optimization tactics for almost two decades. But everything is changing.
Query data is already scarce, keyword match types are blending into an amalgam of broad match, and signal loss continues to impact performance data and audience management.
With campaign types such as Performance Max and the lack of visibility into performance, PPC managers need to utilize every available targeting and optimization tool in their arsenal.
Dedicated audience strategies can provide additional control and specified targeting that delivers results. In my previous article, we reviewed the benefits of a well-defined audience strategy.
Now, let’s review your options for creating and managing privacy-focused audiences for PPC campaigns.
Adjusted timeline for cookie apocalypse
It’s worth noting that your timeline for the cookie apocalypse has been extended. The Google Chrome/Privacy Sandbox Team previously stated that third-party cookies would retire sometime in Q3 of 2023. Now, they have extended that timeline to 2024. According to the announcement from Chrome:
“By Q3 2023, we expect the Privacy Sandbox APIs to be launched and generally available in Chrome. As developers adopt these APIs, we now intend to begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024.”
Google needed more time to prepare properly for the retirement of cookies. They are still working on the framework for a post-cookie world. Also, with their stock price fluctuations, I think Alphabet (Google’s parent company) did not want to negatively impact the product (Google Ads) which drives close to 80% of their operating revenue.
Whatever the reason might be, the result is still the same: you have more time to plan for the post-cookie world. However, this doesn’t mean that you should stop building your measurement and audience frameworks, because this will happen eventually.
PPC audience-building options
There are a few ways to build your audience data within Google and Microsoft.
PPC platform third-party pixels
The most direct way to build audience data is via each platform’s tracking pixel. Third-party cookies currently have a shelf life of about two years. I encourage you to start creating a new privacy-focused framework. But for now, if you want to rely on tracking pixels, you can – but the clock is ticking.
Google has recently released a new version of the Google Tag. The new version of the universal tag will serve as the core implementation pixel for all Google marketing properties including Google Ads, Google Analytics, and SA360. Currently, you can use Google Ads and Google Analytics to configure your Google Tag.
Microsoft Ads also provides their Universal Event Tracking (UET). This universal tag provides analytics data for websites, such as conversions, sales, and revenue. Also, you can use the UET tag to build audiences within the Microsoft Ads platform.
Direct upload of audience data
Both Microsoft Ads and Google Ads support direct uploads of audience data into their platforms. On both ad platforms, advertisers can upload a CSV file that contains first-party customer data.
Many advertisers are not yet using this method to create audiences in PPC. They are still creating audience segments and remarketing lists based on their website pixels.
As I mentioned, this strategy will work for the next 18-24 months approximately. But advertisers need to start building an audience framework that is durable when cookies are not available.
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Microsoft Customer Match operates the same way by matching your customer profile attributes to accounts created in their system.
Google Analytics 4 audiences
I’m focusing on Google Analytics 4 (GA4) because Universal Analytics (UA) will sunset on July 1, 2023. Historical analytics data will not transfer into your new GA4 account from UA.
Even if UA remains your source of truth for a while longer, you should start building performance history in GA4 right now.
Audience segments can also be created within GA4. Advertisers can build audiences based on website user behavior tracked in GA4. These audience segments can be ported into Google Ads when the two platforms are connected.
Audience expansion tactics
Once your customer data is populating within the PPC platforms and you have created audience segments based on this data, then you are ready to expand on this foundation.
Similar audiences
Both major PPC platforms provide ‘similar audiences’ segments. Using your existing customer segments, Google and Microsoft will find users with similar habits and browsing histories to your target audience. According to Google:
“Google Ads looks at the recent search activity of the visitors in your remarketing list to help aggregate search behavior of the visitors in your list. Based on this information, the system automatically finds new potential customers whose search behavior is similar to that of people in your remarketing list.”
Similar audiences is a third-party audience since it relies on profile data from the PPC platforms. However, these audiences should be relatively durable even after cookies retire.
The profiles are built on numerous data points based on search history, account profile data, and browsing history that should maintain post-2024.
Affinity and in-market audiences
These two audience types also rely on data from the PPC platforms. These segments:
Do not need to be built off on first-party audiences.
Are created from on-platform usage of Google and Bing and should be moderately durable.
In-market audiences refer to individuals who are in the market for a product or service currently. These are usually needs-based or short-term interests that could align with your brand. Often these individuals are actively searching for your product or service but may not have discovered your brand yet.
On the other hand, affinity audiences are usually based on someone’s long-standing passion, interest, and engagement with specific topics.
These two types of audience segments are similar but they do perform differently. If these audience types are not part of your strategy, you should test each to see which works for your campaign.
GA4 predictive audiences
GA4 has some unique capabilities around audiences. One of the interesting features is predictive audiences. These segments blend your onsite audience data with predictive algorithms within GA4 to determine potential actions that users could take.
Here is the current list of available predictive audiences in GA4.
Likely 7-day churning purchasers.
Likely 7-day churning users.
Likely 7-day purchasers.
Likely first-time 7-day purchasers.
Predicted 28-day top spenders.
Topics API and the privacy-first future
Topics API is an entirely new way of curating and creating audience segments. This feature is still being beta tested within the Privacy Sandbox. There have been a few cookieless tactics proposed by Google, but I think this has a good shot of making it to the general public.
There are two parts to how Topics API functions:
Based on your browsing history, Chrome determines topics/interests that represent you and your interests. Topics are kept for only three weeks and old topics are deleted.
Brands can target specific topics to deliver advertisements to relevant audiences.
According to Google, Topics API is privacy-safe:
“And, by providing websites with your topics of interest, online businesses have an option that doesn’t involve covert tracking techniques, like browser fingerprinting, in order to continue serving relevant ads.”
Hopefully, the algorithms that determine an individual’s topics of interest have improved. Google Ads offered a previous version of topics/interest targeting within the Display Network and performance within those campaigns was usually much weaker than other audience-based targeting options.
Start crafting your first-party PPC audience framework
Advertisers have received an extension on their pixel-based audience strategies. This does not mean you should become complacent when crafting your first-party audience framework.
Keep moving forward toward a framework that is not solely reliant on third-party pixels. PPC managers always want more control over their campaigns and a structured, thoughtful audience framework is the backbone of successful PPC accounts.
Instagram announced two new features to help users control what they see in their feeds.
Mark as Not Interested. The first feature is the ability to mark multiple posts in the Explore section as Not Interested. Those posts will be hidden and users won’t see similar posts in the future.
Keywords, phrases, and emojis. The second new feature is the ability for users to tell Instagram you don’t want to see suggested posts with certain words, phrases, or emojis in the captions.
See more of what you want. To see more posts you’re interested in, Instagram suggests some best practices.
Favorites allow users to see posts from their favorite accounts higher and more often.
Followers will allow you to only see posts from accounts you follow. Users can view content up to the last 30 days.
The Not interested feature can be used to remove posts from your feed immediately. This feature can also be accessed using the three dots at the top right of the post.
Snooze Suggested Posts can be used to snooze all suggested posts from your feed for 30 days.
Adjusting sensitive content. Adjusting sensitive content allows users to see more or less certain types of content that Instagram considered sensitive, based on their Community Guidelines.
Why we care. Social media users don’t like being inundated with too many advertisements or promotions, especially if that content isn’t helpful or relevant. These new features give Instagram users more power to dismiss or hide content they find irrelevant, overly promotional, or spam.
Advertisers and brands that use Instagram to promote their content may want to reconsider the types of posts they publish. If the content is relevant, followers will be more likely to engage. Brands should look at their Instagram stats and evaluate whether the content they’re posting is well received among their audience.
“Right now, people on iOS and web may see and interact with Tweet Tiles that include text, images, videos, or other elements like a button from people in the initial test group. These formats are designed to easily engage with content and make your timeline more dynamic and visual.”
Another new Tweet format. Twitter’s new “Quote Tweet with reaction” option is another new format they have been testing. It features an updated text editor that allows users to add more color to their comments.
Expected launch date. There is no expected launch date for these new Tweet features. Not all users will see the new formats, as Twitter is rolling these out to selected publishers.
Why we care. Twitter is known as a discussion platform, as Social Media Today points out. Twitter may be attempting to drive more engagement and clicks with updated visual CTAs. Publishers who use Twitter regularly should test these new Tweet formats and analyze their engagement stats.
The new formats do look familiar, though. While Tweet Tiles look a lot like Pinterest boards and native Facebook ads, Quote Tweets remind us of custom Facebook post backgrounds. Is Twitter trying to blend in and look like other social platforms? It will be interesting to see how users react to these new formats as they’re rolled out to the public.
Ahead of the holiday season, Google just announced four new features for advertisers to implement in their ad campaigns and merchant feeds.
Conversion value rules for store sales and store visits
Product-specific insights
Deals Content API
Shipping & Returns Annotations
Conversion value rules for store sales and store visits. Advertisers can now set store visits or sales default values at the campaign level. Google says searches for “store open” have grown by over 400% YoY, so advertisers should optimize their in-store shopping experiences as well as online.
To make it easier for shoppers to find your store, Google suggests keeping your Google Business Profile up to date with your store address and hours. Then grow your store foot traffic by promoting your location to shoppers in the area using Performance Max campaigns for store goals – such as in-store promotions or specials. Smart Bidding can be used to set goals for visits and/or sales.
Product-specific insights.Product-specific insights are available at the account level and help advertisers spot underperforming offers, identify products with missing feed attributes, and compare bidding with your top competitors.
Product insights work on shopping and Performance Max campaigns and are intended to leverage ads performance data to optimize products and provide visibility on what actions to take to fix issues.
Deals Content API. Google says that 55% of shoppers surveyed planned on holding off on buying items until they were on sale.
The Deals Content API is intended to make uploading and managing deals easier at scale.
Merchants and advertisers can now add their sales and promotions to their listings via the Content API, which makes it even easier for merchants to upload and manage their deals at scale.
The Deals Content API had already been launched, but Google had not officially announced it.
Shipping & Returns Annotations. Merchants will now be able to list the expected delivery date (dynamic) (“Delivery by XX/YY”) and free returns right on their ads.
Google notes that 3 in 10 consumers are concerned about stock issues. Adding estimated delivery times can alleviate these concerns and help shoppers stress less and convert more. Advertisers can also easily add their return policies.
Shopping campaign best practices. Google has also outlined some best practices to help advertisers and merchants get ready for the holiday shopping season. To get the most out of your shopping or Performance Max campaigns, Google suggests:
Maximize your reach by showing your ads to shoppers who search for terms related to your keywords using broad match and Smart Bidding.
Harness the power of your Google Merchant Center product feed with YouTube Video action campaigns and Discovery ads, which present new shoppable opportunities for your brand in moments of inspiration and discovery.
Promote your app to shoppers across Google’s largest properties such as Search, Google Play, YouTube and more with App campaigns and give users a seamless web-to-app purchase experience by setting up deep links
Read the announcement. You can read the full announcement from Google and learn more information and best practices here.
Why we care. Ecommerce merchants and advertisers who sell during the holidays should start setting up and testing these new features right away. Don’t wait until the holiday season is already here to begin planning and implementation.
Expected shipping and delivery dates will be especially important as shoppers worry about supply chain issues and an uncertain economy.
Hiring is one of the hardest jobs you have as a manager, team builder and even coworker.
I have a distinct memory of hiring my first SEO employee at Uber over five years ago. The search took months, and the pressure to fill the headcount was overwhelming (lest it be taken away).
The fact of the matter is I just take hiring with great care. And it looks like I’m not the only one.
One of the hottest Twitter topics this year was when Lily Ray, Senior Director, SEO and Head of Organic Research at Amsive Digital, shared her favorite hiring question during the Search Central NYC Meetup.
Ray revealed that when interviewing potential employees, they asked them to explain the difference between a few critical search engine processes: crawling, indexing, ranking and rendering.
Says @lilyraynyc about hiring good SEOs: “We ask them the difference between crawling, indexing, ranking and rendering. You’d be surprised how many get this wrong.” I’m paraphrasing her, and it’s an excellent question #SearchCentralNYCSEOmeetuppic.twitter.com/rlcAVc3wVK
While the onus of hiring at first felt daunting, I now love identifying and interviewing special SEO talent many years later and have contributed to finding a large portion of the SEO teams at Uber and Square.
Hire the right team and I believe you can surmount any SEO challenge. Hire the wrong teammate, and the whole team and morale suffer.
So how do you weed out SEOs in a 30- to 60-minute interview and figure out who is all bark and no bite? What if they’re more of a snake oil salesman than a spider crawling expert?
I asked some of my favorite SEOs their favorite SEO interview questions. Find out the answers below.
10 SEO interview questions to ask and why
1. “Have you done this before? How did you overcome the biggest challenges?”
“You learn more about how the candidate approaches things in general and how they’ve dealt with your specific issue in the past. Since you’re always hiring for a specific problem, that’s the best way to gauge whether a candidate is right for the job or not.”
2. “Imagine we wanted to rank #1 for <insert keyword>. What should we do?”
“…and then every time they answer say something along the lines of, “and what if that didn’t work? What would you do?” And see how long they keep going.”
“I think it’s useful to see how persistent someone is and how deep their SEO knowledge is. A lot of good or bad things will come of this question. If they end up saying, “Well we don’t have enough links” after you ask what else a couple of times they’re probably not the right candidate.”
3. “You’re a vending machine repair specialist. You walk into a room and see a dark vending machine. What’s the first thing you do?”
“It walks through basic problem-solving. The ideal answer is, “I check to see if it’s plugged in.” It shows the ability to logically address an issue step by step.”
4. “How do you go about making sure your recommendations get implemented?”
– Areej AbuAli, Head of SEO, Papier / Founder, Tech SEO Women
Why AbuAli likes this SEO interview question
“Even though this isn’t an SEO question per se, it’s one of the most important ones for me to ask. Simply giving out recommendations is just the ‘first’ part of our job, making sure they get implemented is the ‘core’ of our job. This question helps me understand how the candidate works cross-functionally, how they prioritize their recommendations, how they communicate what needs to get done and how they work alongside different stakeholders in the organization.”
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“One of the biggest lessons I learned during my time at TripAdvisor came from our CEO Steve Kaufer, ‘If it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring.’ If you’re just doing things, no one will know if your actions are contributing to the bottom line. As SEOs, we need to be able to measure impact from our work and testing is a great topic to further understand their thought process on setting up and measuring results.”
6. “Organic traffic is down – walk me through how you would diagnose its cause.”
“You checked x, y, and z and that wasn’t it – what else could it be?” I keep going until they hit the bottom of the barrel. I want to know how they respond to uncertainty. So I throw a hint e.g., “so I noticed our rank showed Y, so the interviewee has a chance to react to new information. I get to understand how they approach problems (bonus points if they look at it differently from the team).”
Why Pan likes this SEO interview question
“You need to test hard skills in SEO, look for a candidate with a growth mindset, and this question also allows you to challenge them just enough to bring out their best self and want to work to learn from you.”
7. “Describe a complex SEO challenge you’ve encountered, and walk me through step by step how you approached trying to solve it, and why you chose the route you did.”
– Kyle Faber, Founder and Head of SEO, Snark Digital
Why Kyle likes this SEO interview question
“The reason I like this question is that it:
a. Gives me a basic sense of what they feel is complex and/or challenging and why.
b. Lets me see their thought process on how they try to solve problems.
c. Gives me insights into how they rationalize their decisions.
At the end of the day, there are multiple ways to approach a challenge, so this question
– Gives me insight into whether or not they’re a strategic thinker.
– Can speak to how they create processes for implementing their strategies.
– And if they are able to back up their decisions with credible reasoning.”
8. “Tell me about a project that you’re particularly proud of, why you’re proud of it and what you learned from the project.”
– Niki Mosier, Director of Digital Marketing and Content, AgentSync
Why Mosier likes this SEO interview question
“I like this question because it gives candidates an opportunity to talk about something they are really proud of and usually gives me a good idea of what types of projects they get excited about. This question also allows us to dig deeper into what kinds of projects the candidate has had experience with. It also gives me a good sense of how they take ownership of projects.”
9. “What’s the most important SEO initiative?”
– Eli Schwartz, Author, “Product Led SEO” / Former SEO Lead, SurveyMonkey
Why Schwartz likes this SEO interview question
“I love this question because it’s so vague the answer forces the interviewer to explain and defend and thereby I get insight into what they are thinking and how they think.”
And my personal favorite question to ask when interviewing SEOs is…
10. “What was your most difficult technical SEO project and what was the business impact?”
Why I like this SEO interview question Assuming this role is a little senior, I expect them to:
Figure out how to execute challenging technical SEO tasks.
Understand what the business impact was.
Best case, I’ll selfishly learn something interesting during the interview about something I didn’t know was possible. I’ll also learn if they understand how to look at analytics, how they think through attribution and other critical skills related to being part of a successful SEO team.
Worst case, they’ll reveal that they do not focus on the business metrics or do not understand how to tell the narrative of their business impact, disqualifying them from a senior role in the organization.
Zeta Live is back on Thursday, September 29th, live streamed globally. Following a successful inaugural year, we’re going bigger and better. Join us as we explore how today’s creativity and micro-moments throughout the consumer journey are shaping disruptive macro movements across tomorrow’s digital economy and marketing ecosystem.
This year’s discussions cover all of the buzziest topics, including:
The next chapter in digital acceleration: Join senior executives from the largest marketing and advertising holding corporations to discuss the progress, challenges and vision for the future of marketing.
Preparing for the democratization of data and identity: Consumers are gaining more control over their data. This creates a conundrum for brand marketers — how to provide highly personalized experiences with constrained data access.
Brand building in a World of Web3: How brands can prepare for a decentralized world of tomorrow and the commitment needed for NFTs, cryptocurrency and an immersive Web to future-proof their business.
Recession-proof your marketing: Here, you’ll discover how to make your marketing strategy more efficient and long-lasting.
Our annual conference will be an unforgettable day of thought leadership, featuring the brightest, most forward-thinking leaders in business and a look into some of the most critical topics impacting the industry today.
Automation has stepped in to take over many of the levers we’ve had in digital advertising. Consequently, we need to shift our attention to optimizing the things we can still control.
Right now, one of the essential tools in our kit is the ability to create and fine-tune our ad creatives.
Having the right creatives in the right places helps brands break through the clutter. It also empowers us to qualify audiences by assessing the proper messaging and combinations of creative elements to target audiences and drive results effectively.
However, simply designing and testing creative pieces is not enough. To squeeze the most value out of each piece, you must:
Effectively report on the performance of more granular creative elements.
Analyze what’s working to communicate results.
Continuously optimize ads for maximum efficiency.
Here’s how to develop a creative reporting strategy for PPC to wow your clients and enable your creative team to do their best work.
1. Identify key creative elements to compare results
Aside from finding out the effectiveness of a single creative piece, stakeholders want to know why something is – or isn’t – working.
Finding these answers requires breaking down different elements of the creative piece and measuring each component’s efficacy.
Some examples of creative elements you might want to consider measuring include:
Ad type: How are your static ads performing versus video, HTML or other ad formats?
Primary color: Is your audience more responsive to a specific background?
Messaging: Does the overarching message of the ad resonate with your audience?
Product: Are you offering a variety of products across your creative pieces?
Placement: Where is your creative being shown?
Generally, being able to identify and analyze five to six elements is the sweet spot. Anything more than that, you can run the risk of analysis paralysis and data overload. But, fewer than that won’t tell you much of a story or give you actionable insight.
These elements are not necessarily static or required. For example, if you find that analyzing color doesn’t make much difference to overall performance, consider removing it from your analysis and looking at something else.
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To take ad creatives to the next level, brands and marketers must prioritize the cross-analysis of creative elements against each other.
For example, you may find that one of your product offerings is underperforming against the others overall. However, it may be overperforming when combined with a specific product or color scheme.
Digging deeper into this data and gaining these insights is extremely valuable to marketers. It will enable you to communicate what is working and allow the creative team to focus on providing new content that aligns best with what is driving results.
Before you launch your creative initiatives, ensure that you have clearly defined your measurement and performance goals beforehand. This will vary depending on your campaign strategy and platform.
For example, top-of-funnel tactics may measure success by impressions and eyeballs. But, the magic happens when you get performance data from your client that shows which ads and, ultimately, which creatives best drive their lower-funnel metric performance.
3. Develop a clear feedback process for the creative team
With any reporting, the goal of building out creative reporting is to be meaningful and actionable.
Whether the creative team is in-house for your client or you are working with a third-party agency, it is critical to convey your analysis to that team so they can focus on providing new content that aligns best with driving results.
A feedback cycle might look like this:
Setting up a bi-weekly cadence to review performance.
Providing the creative team with direct access to your reporting.
Teaching them how to derive the information they need.
The key to optimizing ad creatives reporting is conveying your intentions to your client and creative partners. You need to show the value of having buy-in for a properly defined feedback and communication process. When a creative reporting strategy is fine-tuned, the results will always speak for themselves.
4. Consider creative fatigue as a factor
One crucial aspect to consider when analyzing and communicating creative results is the ability to identify when creative fatigue is setting in.
What this looks like is up to marketers to quantify. But generally, if something that was performing starts to take a noticeable dip, this can indicate that it’s time to switch things up and provide fresh messaging.
By regularly monitoring your creative performance, you can quickly notice an otherwise unexplained drop in performance week over week and ensure you don’t continue spending valuable budget on stale creative.
The takeaway
With the ever-shifting landscape of the digital advertising world, we need to continually find fresh ways to redefine our roles and demonstrate our utility as marketers.
The ability to dive into the numbers, analyze creative performance and offer robust, concise reporting will ensure you continue to provide tangible value to clients and stay ahead of the competition.
YouTube has added a Promotions Tab to let creators promote their channels and videos without needing to go through the Google Ads Manager.
The new Promotions Tab is within YouTube Studio and is a way to make buying ads easier, versus going through the traditional Google Ads Manager route. If creators have access to the new tool, they’ll find the tab within the Promotions section on the Content Page of Studio.
What YouTube says. YouTube thinks the new Promotions Tab will get a lot more channel managers running quick promotions for their content.
“We’ve heard that creators want more tools to help grow their channel and reach a wider audience, so we are testing a simpler end-to-end workflow in Studio instead of through Google Ads. If you’re in this experiment, you’ll see a new “Promotions” tab in the Content page of Studio.”
Read the announcement. You can read the announcement from YouTube here.
Why we care. The new feature allows channel creators and advertisers to grow their channels without having to deal with Google Ads. However, it’s also a way for YouTube to bring in more ad revenue. Channel creators who didn’t have the knowledge to run channel or video promotions through a complicated platform such as Google Ads can now do so more easily. But creators who are new to the platform should exercise caution, learn Google Ads best practices, and test their Promotions with a small budget before scaling.
Experienced advertisers can also use the Promotions Tab. Though most would likely opt out and stick to the traditional Google Ads method.
Google is testing two new labels in search results:
Quick Read
5 Min. Read.
What it looks like. The labels were shared on Twitter. Here are screenshot of both types, via @Ozaemotion and @lilyraynyc:
Short content can be helpful content. For nearly a decade, skyscraper content and 10x content have been popular concepts. In short, the idea behind both was that “length is strength.”
Some SEO correlation studies appeared to back up the idea because Page 1 of Google is full of articles at 1,000+ words.
However, word count is not a ranking signal. And searchers have been growing tired of clicking on articles that discuss the entire history of a topic before finding the answer to their question buried somewhere in a 2,000+ word blog post.
Does that mean all long-form content is bad? No. In some industries, longer content is good, necessary and acceptable.
There is also no need to revisit your content strategy at this point. Don’t edit or break up all your stories so they have a reading time of 5 minutes or less.
Why we care. Any change Google makes to its SERPs can impact which sites get clicks and traffic, which makes this test one to watch. If this test becomes a feature, it could have a major impact on recipe searches, for example, which are notoriously overstuffed. It also makes sense in places where you’d expect a short answer or definition instead of a novella full of anecdotes and tangents.
Advertisers now have five additional months to migrate their expanded text ads to RSAs.
The new extended deadline. In April we reported that Microsoft was extending the original June 30 deadline to August 29. Today Microsoft announced that they were once again, extending that deadline to February 1, 2023. Microsoft says the extension is in response to advertisers need for more time.
Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) will continue to serve with RSAs but advertisers will no longer be able to create new or edit existing ETAs.
What Microsoft says. Microsoft says that advertisers who have switched from ETAs to RSAs see an average of 7% conversion rate improvement in their performance.
Why we care. Advertisers who haven’t migrated their campaigns yet have a few more months to get it done. Microsoft won’t support ETAs after February, so migrating as soon as possible will help prevent your ads from being auto-updated, or dropping in performance.
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Attribution has been the holy grail for advertisers since the beginning of time, especially for media platforms that typically sit further away from the conversion and play a role in branding (i.e., billboards, banner ads and videos).
In September 2021, Google Ads announced its plans to move away from last-click attribution to a data-driven attribution (DDA) model. This change is intended to better allocate credit that search keywords play in a consumer’s purchase decision.
Last month, Google started letting advertisers know it will automatically switch conversion tracking to the data-driven attribution model. Using machine learning, Google believes that data-driven attribution provides the greatest opportunity to value each unique interaction properly.
Here’s what this change in default attribution model means for advertisers and businesses.
The attribution problem
Media platforms have long maintained their contributions in influencing consumers about the brands and products they purchase.
How will the recent attribution shift affect these platforms?
Think about Hulu’s path and the ad products Disney+ and Netflix will sell to advertisers wanting to tie conversions to their media placements.
Think about Pinterest and Snap’s challenges when cutting ad budgets.
What is the first to go? Conversion drivers at the end of the funnel, like search, or awareness-based tactics, like sponsored stories?
This discussion is what makes attribution such a timeless discussion.
Google has the same problem as all these companies but within their own properties.
While Google has shown its ability to grow its search business consistently in almost any economic condition, its real growth opportunity comes in non-search tactics (YouTube, Gmail and Google Display Network).
Inventory is essentially limitless in these areas, unlike search. This is why this change is so important for Google and advertisers.
Common attribution models
Let’s start by breaking down attribution and the different models that indicate how “credit” for conversion is applied. The six common attribution models are:
Last click: This is the historical default that gives all credit to the final click prior to the conversion.
Time decay: Gives credit based on the time between interactions.
Linear: Gives equal credit across each step of the conversion path.
Position-based: Gives credit to specific steps in the conversion path (typically first and last).
First click: All credit to the first interaction (typically used to credit awareness tactics)
Data-driven: Uses historical data to determine the attribution credit. The model will shift depending on the unique path.
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What does shifting to data-driven attribution mean for my business?
Partial conversions
Moving to a DDA model will create conversions for keywords that are <1.
For example, if two keywords are involved in conversion the DDA model may allocate the credit for that conversion as .25 and .75 or .5 and .5. as opposed to giving full credit to the client keyword as a whole number.
Google only
Many advertisers’ digital marketing efforts go beyond just Google ad buying platforms. However, DDA within Google Ads only considers Google properties in attribution modeling.
Let’s say a customer clicks an email, then searches for your brand, then watches a YouTube video before clicking through on Facebook to your website to buy.
In this scenario, Google will only allocate credit to Google proprieties. This could potentially give more credit to a conversion or result in double-counting across analytics platforms or conversion tags you might be using.
What does the data show?
I pulled data across a vast majority of our accounts and looked at the differences between the various models.
I noticed slight differences when indexed against the total number of conversions. So slight that I had to alter the chart’s y-axis to the thousandth place.
The most significant difference was between last click and first click attribution (which makes sense since it’s the biggest difference in strategic approach).
The second closest was last click to data-driven attribution. Even so, the swings were less than 0.3%.
Now, these swings may be larger for advertisers with bigger non-search spend amounts or heavy users of Performance Max campaigns.
However, even the accounts with these features didn’t see that big of a difference to change how we managed them materially.
What action should be taken?
This is a very personal choice for the brand. We have seen most of our customers move to DDA, given the smaller change each model has on the total number of prior reported conversions.
Also, the total number of conversions reported out of Google Ads before any shift does not change. Thus, it is just within your account that conversions change. Comparing another tactic like Facebook pre/post won’t be impacted.
Ultimately, the amount of data that Google has on various conversion paths goes beyond any individual advertiser. It also can help provide insights into where cookies or other data is opaque for advertisers (see modeled conversions).
Also, to inform this decision, Google has created the ability to compare various model types. Go to Google Ads and navigate to Tools and Settings > Attribution > Model Comparison.
This tool will allow advertisers to see the variances between the models. Using these comparisons, you can help communicate and educate your internal team about the potential impact.
Overall, data-driven attribution, while not a silver bullet solution completely, provides better insight into various ad types and keywords and how they impact the customer journey.
This will allow your brand to allocate budget and resources better – ultimately optimizing your business to maximize results.
