Google hosted its annual Google Performance Summit on 24 May 2016, where they announced some revolutionary changes to Google Adwords, and how it’s about to change the paid search game for everyone.
Online advertising guru Larry Kim, founder and CEO of Mobile Monkey (a chatbot building platform), attended the conference, and sums it up in this blog post on the summit: “Of course, paid ads need to adapt to the mobile-first world too, and today Google has announced some new and interesting changes to AdWords, rolling out over the next few months, that PPC marketers need to know about.”
Here’s our take:
1. Audience targeting in search ads
Remarketing lists for search ads (RSLA) now segments your audience who used specific keywords and visited your site! This is great for marketers because by using RSLA, your ads can get up to triple the engagement rate, triple the conversion rate, at a 1/3 of the cost per click. Good things come in threes.
If you know what your audience is looking for, you can push the right ads to them. If you know they’re looking for a specific car model, show that specific car model in your ads.
Soon, Google Adwords will even allow for demographic targeting for search. Narrow your audience down even more so that you can really target the right demographic, who you know have searched for your product or brand. Basically, it’s Inbound for Pay-Per-Click.
2. Responsive adwords
It’s all about mobile. The world is rapidly making the shift to always being online using their smartphone devices, which means that Marketers have to think mobile first, desktop second.
“ All design should be mobile-centric. Mobile is no longer an afterthought in the adwords design space, but a priority. That’s not to say that you can let go of designing adwords for desktop - mobile and desktop should work in tandem.” says Sandra Palmer, the Media Director of Penquin.
3. Device bidding
The way people access the web is changing, and Google understands that. Which is why marketers can now set different bids on smartphone, tablet, and desktop searches. How does this help marketers? If you know that the majority of your potential customers are using smartphone, you would allocate a much higher budget to smartphone adwords, than ones that appear on desktop.
4. Display ads are coming along for the drive
Google Maps is now going to be fully integrated with Google Adwords. With the latest update, Google ads uses your phone’s geolocation to serve you location-relevant adwords.
How does this work? Well, when you claim your company on Google - which all companies should do - you get found, and your location shows up in Google Maps. If a person is using the App in your vicinity, they can now get served ads from you at a time when it is most accessible to them.
5. Double headlines
Adwords are only as good as the work that goes into crafting them, and let’s be honest; making your headline say what you need it to in 25 characters is difficult. This sentence has 31 characters.
Luckily, your Adwords can now have two headlines of 30 characters each. This sentence is 30 characters. This means that marketers can breathe a sigh of relief, no longer having to swap one keyword for another in order to keep within the 25 character limit.
6. The gap between measuring your physical ROI from Digital ad space is shrinking
Not everyone has an online store, but that doesn’t stop companies from using Adwords. The problem with this is knowing what percentage of in-store conversions come from a successful Adwords campaign.
So how does Google do this? They follow you everywhere. It sounds a bit 1984, but Google uses your phone’s location history to see if you were served an ad, and then visited that store. Simple.
Clearly Google is keeping up with the growing digital trend of going mobile - are you? Review your website here:
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