Simply put, programmatic direct advertising works like this: if you’re an advertiser (a buyer), you need ads. You buy them from a publisher (the seller) who creates the kind of content your consumers would find attractive. The system worked well in the early days of the Internet, but then there was more demand than supply, and more publishers than advertisers. To ramp up and meet publishers’ needs, ad networks formed and increased the number of available ad placements and formats.

After ad networks formed and began selling premium ads in batches, real-time bidding started. RTBs can be effective because they target a specific audience, such as only Gen Z students who are enrolled in college or moms with at least two children under the age of five. A publisher can set a predetermined price and bid on ads being auctioned off.

Programmatic advertising has become an integral part of the advertising landscape. After all, what publisher wants to pay for ads that aren’t relevant to consumers? The challenge with programmatic is that with so many sources, it has become difficult to assign value to the ads-until now.

Google Ad Manager changes the game

Google Ad Manager will offer a unified first price auction. The auction is intended to level the playing field for buyers and advertisers. Google Ads will not share bids or reset prices until an auction is won. At that time, the buyers pay the price bid for the ads. Ad Manager’s goal is to make the impression process simpler while offering more value.

According to Google Ad Manager, you can count on:

• First price auctions in simplified programmatics. Simplicity rules in selling and purchasing ads.
• Custom creatives. You still have creative control over your ads. In fact, management tools and formats can be customized more than ever.
• Native style suggestions. No advertiser wants ad copy that looks out of place. Google will recommend styles that complement websites. This feature is now live.
• What the change means

The first auction simplification of the digital advertising market will have deep ramifications for buy-side players who have relied on second auction pricing bids and sales. The good news is Google’s newest position in programmatic landscape means that ads will have an assigned value and cannot be overvalued or lowballed.

As a result, many sellers will have to put pencils to paper as they recalculate their pricing structures and strategies for selling digital ads in a fluid market. It will take a while for the dust to settle as players learn the new rules for engagement. Google Ad Manager will continue to send out updates, and the transition will be completed by the end of the year.

Until then, digital marketing agencies will be helping buyers and sellers regain a position of advantage on the playing field.

The post Google’s Ad Manager Moves to First-Price Auction appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

Imagine being able to take the best of the shopping experiences found in Pinterest, Facebook, and Instagram, and then creating a spectacular mashup that resonates with consumers and encourages them to make purchases with a quick click. In essence, that’s what Google Images has done.

Where once items were displayed in isolation, they now are placed and photographed in the environment in which you would use them. Rather than look at a picture of a cup or plate against a bland, white background, you can see the place setting as it would be used: on a table. It’s a more authentic and engaging way to market products and services.

Shoppers can view multiple ads with different place settings ranging from informal to formal. The ad helps them visualize the product in their own home. With shoppable ads in Google Images, it’s all about the experience.

Shoppable ads

Shoppers turn to images first, and pictures sell products. With shoppable ads, advertisers can create a staged scenario that features several products in a single picture. The picture should suggest a lifestyle that the consumer would find appealing, and as he or she scrolls across the image, the prices appear on any of the items being offered for sale.

For now, shoppable ads are in testing mode with furniture retailers and art dealers who provide a picture of a room staged with their products. Imagine taking shoppable ads a step further.

Advertisers will be able to sell a complete experience by promoting a scenario. On a beach stands a colorful umbrella, and next to it, a few folding chairs. The children are tossing a beach ball, and a surfer is riding in to shore. As the shopper scrolls over each image in the picture, a brand and price appear. The result is a richer experience that is more likely to result in a sale.

Shoppable ads in Google Images allow consumers to identify, save and collect the images on boards they can refer to later. Suddenly, furnishing a room or even an entire home has never been easier because everything you need is right there, curated in the shoppable ads.

Showcase shopping ads

Some advertisers want to take the shopping experience to the next level, and for them, Google has created showcase ads. These ads offer multi-image formats that create a series of thumbnails you can enlarge and view full screen. The idea is to funnel sponsored content to interested consumers, encouraging them to become paying customers. The video format offers a richer context and more immersive experience for previewing a product. Through sponsorship, these showcase ads appear at the top of product keyword searches.

Shopping insights

Merging shoppable ads with Google Images makes sense. We’ve known for a long time that a picture is worth a thousand words, so it’s logical that pictures make the sale. Consumers are more likely to make a purchase after seeing an item rather than reading or hearing about it.
Most shoppers in the United States turn first to Google when making a purchase. You’ve done it, too. Now you can be there waiting for them with an immersive experience they’ll love.

The post Google Images getting more shoppable ads appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

But, how do you do that?

Ads are a great way to send targeted traffic to your website, but if you’re not using proper PPC optimization, then you’re going to miss out on a lot of leads.

Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about PPC marketing.

What is PPC?

PPC stands for Pay Per Click. It’s a type of advertising you can do in which you pay when somebody clicks on your link. When you do a Google search, the ads at the top are PPC ads.

Compared to other types of ads, PPC is more cost effective because you only pay when someone actually interacts with your link. This means that the number of people that see the ad is irrelevant.

However, you can also end up wasting a lot of money on PPC advertisements if you’re not optimizing your landing pages. Landing pages are where a potential customer ends up after they click on your PPC ad.

If you have a lot of people clicking the link thatddoesn’ttake any further action on your website, then you won’t make your money back on advertising. This is why PPC optimization is vital.

How to Optimize Your Site for PPC Marketing

Here is a brief guide to optimizing your website for PPC campaigns:

1. Related Content

When someone clicks a link, it’s important that they get exactly what they’re looking for. For example, if someone searches for “how to tie a shoelace” and your ad pops up, the page that ad takes them to needs to be about tying a shoelace.

2. Visuals

We can not emphasize enough the importane of appealing visuals. The brain processes images significantly faster than it does text, so it’s crucial to include images and videos on your landing pages. You want a visitor to quickly be drawn into your site, and visuals are a great way to do that.

3. White Space

As important as visuals are, white space will also allow a visitor to hone in on only what’s most important.

Picture a web page where every inch of it is covered in blocks of color, tacky banner ads, and excessive text. How much time would you spend on that page trying to find useful content?

Make sure you have plenty of white space so the images and text stand out.

4. Easy to Read

Don’t have a rainbow of colors in fancy fonts moving across your page. You want the content to be easy for your visitors to read. Include headings, small paragraphs, bulleted lists, and tables where you can.

This is especially important because of how many people use mobile devices to browse the web. Keeping things easy to read keeps visitors on your site.

5. Clear Call to Action

Your call to action (CTA) needs to be clear. Once you’ve provided a visitor with the answer to their question, tell them what you want to do next. Should they order a product from you, sign up for your newsletter, or schedule an appointment?

Pick just one action you want a visitor to take, then let them know and make it easy for them to do so.

Get Help with PPC Optimization

By preparing your landing pages and carefully selecting keywords, you’ll be able to grow your business by capturing targeted leads.

We want to provide a free assessment of your website today, so fill out our form and we can help you implement PPC optimization for your business.

The post The Importance of Optimizing Your Landing Pages for PPC Campaigns appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

Pay per click (PPC) is one of these strategies, and chances are in your research to find the best marketing strategy for your company, you’ve come across it. But just what is PPC and how does it benefit your business?

Since digital ad spending is on the rise (nearing 78% of total advertising spending in America in 2022), we’ve provided a beginner’s guide to PPC for you to get the most out of your paid advertising campaign and bring in those paying customers or clients!

What is PPC?

PPC is exactly what it sounds like- paying for clicks. Advertisers will create an ad link for customers to click on, these ads can run on search engines like Google or social media like Facebook. The advertiser, however, doesn’t pay a flat rate to run these ads, instead, they pay a small fee every time the ad is clicked on.

PPC ads do not rely on organic traffic or search engine optimization (SEO) to appear at the top of a search engine results page or in the news feed of a Facebook user. Instead, the ad will automatically appear at the top of a Google search page or Facebook will run the ad on the newsfeeds of those users who match your targeted demographic.

PPC Marketing on Google and Facebook

If you own a small business, chances are you have a Facebook page. If you do then you may have seen the option, or even ran a few, to run ad campaigns or boost a post you posted to your company’s Facebook page timeline. This is PPC.

You can either advertise your Facebook page as a whole or just one post you’ve created. Either way, the procedure is the same. You choose how much you want to spend a day, who your targeted demographic is, and how long you wish to run the ad. Facebook does the rest by making sure the ad shows up in users newsfeeds who match your targeted demographic.

And you only pay for each click of your ad link or those that pause long enough to register in Facebook’s system as having read it. The benefit being you could get a few thousand views and likes while paying only a small amount.

The same works for Google ads or Bing. Except your ad will appear at the top of the search engine result page (SERP) whenever someone runs a search using the target keywords you’ve selected. The link will usually lead to a landing page related to the search query of the user. The goal is to create an advertising campaign for your target audience at the lowest cost and drive conversions. Alternatively, there are display ads and YouTube ads that appear on other websites. Display ads are a lucrative tool because browsers track the cookies of the websites users visit and use them to remarket at other websites in the future – that way you are staying at the front of the users’ mind with your display ads.

Get the Most Out of Internet Marketing

PPC is a great way to ensure your ads will get seen by potential customers while ensuring your marketing budget stays low and affordable. It also helps to get a leg up in the competition.

We hope we’ve done a good job of explaining pay-per-click advertising with this PPC guide, but understand that PPC advertising can become quite extensive. For more information on PPC and online marketing contact us today!

Frequently Asked Questions

How Does PPC Marketing Work?

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) marketing is a type of online advertising that allows businesses to place ads on search engine results pages, social media platforms, and other websites. With PPC marketing, businesses only pay when a user clicks on their ad.

To get started with PPC marketing, it may be helpful to work with a digital marketing agency or consultant who can help you develop a strategy that aligns with your business goals and budget.

Can I do PPC myself?

Yes, it is possible to do PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising yourself, but it can be a complex and time-consuming process. To successfully run a PPC campaign, you need to have a solid understanding of keyword research, ad copywriting, bid management, and analytics tracking.

If you lack the necessary expertise or resources to manage your own campaigns or PPC budget, it may be more cost-effective and efficient to hire a professional PPC agency or consultant.

What is the best advice for beginners in digital marketing?

The best advice for beginners in digital marketing is to start with a solid foundation of knowledge and then build from there. Some tips for getting started include:

1. Understand the fundamentals of digital marketing, including SEO, PPC, social media, email marketing, and content marketing.

2. Focus on one area at a time and master it before moving on to other areas.

3. The world of digital marketing is constantly evolving, so it’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest trends and best practices.

The post Ultimate PPC Beginners Guide appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

The definitions within AdWords are as follows:

• Standard: Optimize delivery of ads, spending budget evenly over time (Recommended)
• Accelerated: Do not optimize delivery of ads, spending budget more quickly.  This may cause your budget to run out early

The above statements “Standard” and “Accelerated are literal quotes from Google – here is the screenshot to prove Google AdWords really does “recommend” one setting over the other (the reality is allowing Google AdWords to show your ads whenever they want allows them to show your ads when more sophisticated AdWords advertisers may not be buying inventory so you are essentially giving them permission to buy remnant space on the Google network):

So in reading this, one would assume “Standard” is recommended by Google therefore we should probably utilize it.  Well it may be a good option for some, but often times a Google AdWords advertiser does not know the advantages they are missing out on by not choosing Accelerated.  Typically a more advanced advertiser utilizes “Accelerated” settings because it unleashes the inventory available from the Google network.  The setting allows the advertiser to market their product as quickly as possible and garner as many impressions as available within their budget from the Google network.

When utilizing “Accelerated” you can also maximize the best days and hours for your account to show ads by creating the most available impression opportunities during your chosen day part.  Some key settings that are really manipulated by the “accelerated” method of bidding are Impression Share and daily budget.  Impression share is a data set you can find by “Modifying columns” and viewing “Competitive metrics”, in the case of “Search” you will want to examine “Search Impr. Share”, “Search Exact match IS” and “Search Lost IS (rank).”  To follow is a screenshot of these settings:

“Search Impr. Share” which is “Search Impression share” spelled out will provide you a percentage of the total “Impression Share” you are receiving for your campaign.  “Search Exact match IS” which is “Search Exact match Impression Share” will provide you the percentage of exact match opportunities you are receiving for your keyword terms.  Exact match is eluding to Google matching up your term with the exact keyword you are targeting in AdWords.  Often to increase exposure in AdWords marketers will have multiple match type settings which will not always lead to exact matches of keywords – you may have phrase or broad match results hitting.  “Search Lost IS (rank)” is “Search Lost Impression Share (rank)” meaning the amount of search impressions you are not receiving because your search results impression is showing up at a rank that is not receiving exposure to a searcher.  If this is the case you may need to raise bids for specific keywords to increase your average position and therefore exposure.  The impression share data point in order to get the maximum impression share opportunity your account will need to be in the “Accelerated” delivery method setting.

Often we will see a marketer that believes they cannot spend more on Google AdWords, we very seldom find this to be the actual case.  Google seems to have a lot of available inventory for marketing impressions and clicks for any given segment.  This being said, if you are not seeing your account hit “Limited by budget” status like in the screenshot below – you are probably just not bidding hard enough and with the correct settings to maximize available inventory and search opportunities.

To sum it up the Google AdWords delivery methods although seeming to be a minor setting, actually may set the pace for your whole accounts success and/or bidding strategy – as well as how much you believe you can actually buy on Google AdWords.  Often I would say if your Google AdWords account is not asking for additional budget – you are probably not bidding hard enough and effectively enough.

Thanks for reading,

Zach Hoffman

Any questions email me direct at Zach.Hoffman@exults.com

The post Google AdWords Delivery Methods and What they Can do to your Account! appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

Why Use A/B Testing?

Though it involves a bit more effort than just posting your pay-per-click ad and letting it fly, using A/B tests can vastly improve your overall conversion rate. Just because you only pay for the clicks you receive doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take the time to ensure your online ad is as attractive as possible to potential customers.

What Gets Tested?

Basically, anything that can appear differently on your ad can be A/B tested. Some examples include:

• General layout
• Images
• Font types and sizes
• Amount of text displayed
• Colors used

Proper Testing Strategy

If improper A/B testing is set up, your results will be worthless. Just as A/B testing is used in science and statistics, you should eliminate as many variables as possible when running your test. For example, don’t test two different designs on different websites. Keep the position of your A and B ads as consistent as possible. Run each one for the same amount of time.

Some sites will allow A/B testing to occur live — visitors will randomly see either one or the other. The ads will point to different temporary landing pages, allowing you to accurately monitor activity. With many sites, however, you can only post either one design or the other, so make sure you do it right.

Choosing a pay-per-click advertising strategy is a good move for an e-commerce business. Get the best possible results by using A/B testing to construct the most effective ad. The experts at Exults are always happy to help!

The post A/B Testing for PPC appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

Building out campaigns for product offerings and service areas are very important. Product offerings can vary and would need campaigns setup based on the type of products or product themes.

An example would be – you own a furniture store and have a variety of products – potentially living room sets, dining room sets, bedroom sets. The campaigns you could structure would be one for each product area – you could call them “living room sets”, “dining room sets”, and “bedroom sets”, each campaign would have a specific budget allocated based on many factors that could include search volume, demand volume meaning clicks to your ads, revenue potential for your store, the highest probability to sell for your business.

If the same furniture store offered residential and commercial furniture – you could create a campaign for “residential furniture” which would have keywords like “home furniture”, “furniture for my house” and a separate campaign for “commercial furniture” which would have keywords like “office furniture”, “waiting room furniture” and many other related terms.

Campaigns are also beneficial for the negative keyword side of things. Campaign “Negative Keyword List(s)” allow you to assign a number of keywords not to be bought by the search engine across a number of campaigns by only entering the keyword once. It is important when adding negative keywords to the campaign level that you add it in the right match type format. The preferred match type for negative keywords we like to utilize are negative keywords exact match followed by phrase match negative keywords. We sometimes see broad matched negative keywords which we would highly recommend against. Broad match is Google’s wildcard keyword and a broad negative keyword may be blocking keywords that would be opportunities for your account.

Additional benefits of separate campaigns include budget allocation as well accounting for values of various services you may be offering.

Campaign settings allow for many targeting strategies in the AdWords network. We hope the above detail will assist you in creating a more effective campaign structure strategy.

The post Advice On Making a Successful Google AdWords Account Infrastructure appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

Google also said: “when you pick a new model, credit will be reassigned across the conversion path for all search or shopping ad clicks on Google.com, and your conversion stats will change moving forward. You can adjust bids based on your new way of counting conversions, and if you’re using automated bidding for search ads, your bids will be optimized automatically to reflect your new model.”

This new change will be released later on this month to all advertisers on the Google Adwords platform.

The post New Bidding Attribution Is Added By Google AdWords appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

Google has made the decision to ban payday loan advertisements from July 13th onwards. Last year, 780 million advertisements were removed from the search giant’s AdWords platform. Now Google wants to practice some “corporate citizenship” by protecting their users from “deceptive or harmful financial products.”

Michael Scurato, VP for policy at the National Hispanic Media Coalition said, “Payday lenders have long preyed on Latinos and other people of color. It is important to ensure that the Internet, which holds great promise for improving economic outcomes among these communities, not also be used as an agent of harm.”

Specifically, Google will ban advertisements that promote loans with 36% interest rates or higher, and also loans that must be paid back in under 60 days. They feel this is in the best interests of the consumer due to the way the ads target the financially vulnerable.

Keith Corbett, executive VP of the Center for Responsible Lending and co-chair of Economic Security Task Force of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, says, “As a leading search engine and innovator, Google’s announced updated policy on financial services advertising is a major consumer coup. By removing ads that lure financially challenged consumers into long-term and costly debt traps, Google is displaying what corporate citizenship looks like.”

The post Payday Loans Will Be Banned From Google Adwords appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.

1. Automated bidding

In general, allowing automated rules in an account is an invitation to waste budget by leaving decision making up to a computer. There are cases where automatic bidding is helpful, but we always recommend close supervision. For example, enabling the Enhanced CPC option allows Google to increase the bid you set by up to 40%.

2. Match types

There are four match types available in AdWords. Broad match is the default match type within the interface, so we see several accounts that are set exclusively to broad match. Because this strategy hands over most of the control to Google’s matching algorithms to determine what’s relevant, we like to set strict boundaries. This includes bid restrictions and isolating broad match keywords.

3. Negative keywords

Adding negative keywords to an account helps to improve performance almost instantly. We often see accounts with negative keywords either missing or set to the incorrect match type. There are also several levels of negative keywords including Ad Group level, Campaign level, and List level. It’s important to know which to use and for what purpose.

4. Search intent

Search intent is (arguably) the most important aspect of an AdWords account. Understanding the differences in the end goals of what people are searching for will impact your bottom dollar. Most people research products and services online before they make a buying decision. Some of this research can include initial searches to determine if they can do it themselves or find an inexpensive alternative. By reaching a searcher after they have completed their research and are ready to make a purchasing decision, you avoid paying for wasted clicks.

The post Most Common Mistakes in Sponsored Search Accounts appeared first on Exults Digital Marketing Agency.