Google Ads’ Latest Updates

by Apr 21, 2021Blog, Most Popular

This week’s episode of the #TWIMshow covered various Google Ads updates that have been summarized here for you.

Google Ads’ new insights page

If you are actively involved with Google Ads (GAds), or you listen to our #TWIMshow where we share the latest news, then you’d know that GAds has been testing a new Insights page for a few months. Last week it was announced that this new page is now available globally, and it will make it easy to explore insights and emerging trends tailored to your business.

Google shared an example to demonstrate how efficient the new Insights page will be. Let’s imagine a pet store is looking to reach more customers, and they run Google Ads. They will now see the rising demand for “dog subscription boxes” or “dog toys,” for example, and adjust their campaigns or begin new ones, target new customers, or even explore selling dog care packages.

On the podcast, Sajid shares that he hasn’t seen the insights page, and you might not see it as well due to various reasons:

  1. You are not running any Search or Shopping ad campaigns.
  2. You started running your ads recently.
  3. There is no traffic coming to your ads.
  4. Google Ads hasn’t found any categories related to your business that are significantly trending.

Google suggested that insights will work well if you use “broad match” for your keywords and smart bidding options. Although Sajid is not a big fan of “broad match,” especially for beginners, it is valuable to invest a bit more and see what that category can bring for you. Remember that the “broad match” category will make your ad appear to people who use your keyword or any sort of synonym/related words, so it targets a wide audience.

For more information, check Google’s Help page on Insights.

Dynamic exclusion lists in Google Ads

Having control of where your ads are showing is a significant advantage that Google Ads provides. You can create lists with all the pages you don’t want your ad to be showing up on, which provides an extra layer of online brand safety for you.

The new addition of dynamic exclusion lists enables these lists to be automatically updated to simplify placement management. The goal of these lists is to help advertisers protect their ads from being on sites that do not align with their brand.

Previously, advertisers would need to maintain their exclusion lists and exclude certain websites, content types, and entire topics from campaigns, or they would hire a third party that will do that for them. Now, dynamic exclusion lists make this process easier by doing the work automatically without requiring too much of the advertisers’ time and attention. However, the limit is a maximum of 20 shared exclusion lists per account, with thousands of URLs and domains per list.

Google Ads Updates Its Smart Bidding

From April 2021, Google Ads will switch to a different bidding strategy, where target cost per acquisition (tCPA) and target return on ad spend (tROAS) will be replaced. Advertisers will see a new field to add a target CPA when using the ‘Maximize Conversions’ strategy. And also, a new field for target ROAS when using the ‘Maximize Conversion Value’ strategy.

Sajid has often wanted to maximize conversions while also doing target CPA or target ROAS. And now Google Ads is making that possible. Either way, this switch to a different bidding strategy will have minimal impact on performance.

Refer to the table below for a comparison of the usual settings VS the new settings.

17+ auto-applied recommendations are now available on Google Ads

According to Google, these recommendations can “improve your account performance and save time.” However, if you’ve listened to our #TWIMshow before or watched some of our IGTV videos, then you’d know how skeptical we feel about Google’s recommendations.

In the latest podcast episode, Sajid shares that he had tried this on our account 2 months ago when this was still in its beta version and didn’t like it. The reasons for that are:

  1. It’s too early and there is not enough data to say what impact these recommendations will have on our ads. They give Google complete control to change things, and there is a track record proving that sometimes Google can provide the wrong recommendations.
  2. If you go with their recommendations, prepare to spend a significant portion of your budget on that. Google’s advice will be focused on giving Google more money and not entirely to your benefit. You could always check your history to see what changes have been made and decide if you want to undo any.

Sajid’s advice is to not make too many changes at the same time because you won’t understand what works and what doesn’t. For starters, you could have a look at the recommendations Google gives and decide if you want to do them manually, without giving them control over your Google Ads account.

Are you feeling overwhelmed by all of Google’s updates? If yes, it is best to leave Google Ads in the hands of an expert. Book a no-obligation call with us today, and let’s discuss what we can do for your business.

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