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The Most Important Paid Search Change of 2017

Home | podcast | The Most Important Paid Search Change of 2017

The Most Important Paid Search Change of 2017

You’re listening to the Paid Search Magic Podcast – your weekly deep-dive into Search Engine Marketing, AdWords, client management, and so much more.

 

This is episode #23, and I’m your host Amy Hebdon. This week’s episode is an epic round-up of what 11 industry experts say are the biggest paid search changes that occurred in 2017. It was a big year for all of us, so let’s jump right into it. 

Our guests are answering this question: 

What was the most important paid search change of 2017? 

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Special Guest Contributors (in order of appearance)

Gil Hong @_GilHong Sr. PPC Manager at Seer Interactive
Nava Hopkins @navahf Services Innovation Strategist at WordStream
Matthew Poldberg @NotSpamIpromise Media Director at Prove.It
John Williams @SaltedPecan Digital Strategist CDK Global
Charles Brocato @cabrocPPC Account Manager at Momentum PPC
Jake Hoopes @JacobHoopes VP of Product Development at Showroom Logic
Joe Martinez @MilwaukeePPC Director of Paid Media and Community at Granular
Lisa Sanner @LisaSanner VP of Search Marketing at Point It
Ed Leake @EdLeake Founder and Managing Director of Midas Media
Andrew Lolk @AndrewLolk Founder and Lead PPC Manager of Savvy Revenue
Glenn Schmelzle @heyglenns Head of Marketing What’s New

Show Notes

We want to extend a special THANK YOU to everyone who was kind enough to contribute to this episode. Below, you’ll find the details of each person’s response along with their Twitter handle and website.

Navah Hopkins:

@navahf Services Innovation Strategist at WordStream

Hi. My name is Navah Hopkins and I’m the Services Innovation Strategist at WordStream. My big takeaway for 2017 when it comes to paid search is optimizing for close variants. You may have noticed that there has been a rise in average cost per clicks across account, which has of course led to an increase in cost per acquisition. A lot of folks have kind-of been afraid, “Oh, no. Are my customers going to be more expensive?” Not true, all we have to do is look at those variations. Singular, plural, slight misspellings, one word being turned to two words, two words being turned into one word. Pick the keyword that is the most cost-effective and has the best metrics. Pause the rest, and you will begin to see those average cost per clicks going down. As your budget is now not trying to support too many different keyword ideas that are essentially the same. 

[bctt tweet=”What’s the biggest #PPC change in 2017? @navahf says it’s optimizing for close variants. See her full answer (and others): ” url=”https://paidsearchmagic.com/23/”]

Matt Poldberg:

@NotSpamIpromise | Media Director at Prove.It

My name is Matthew Poldberg, I am the media director at Prove.It Los Angeles. Prove-dot-I-T. I believe there are three major changes to paid search in 2017.

The first major change is the addition of the new AdWords interface. I hope AdWords reconsiders or redesigns this move, as I believe it has negatively affected the quality of my team’s interaction with the product.

The second major change is the rollout of Google guaranteed listings for local services. If your clients are not in this program, then you’re going to fall behind quickly.

The third major change is the expansion of acceptable query matches, especially on broad match. The match types have been evolving over the last few years on Google and Bing, but in the last 12 months we’ve had to become hypervigilant and restrictive with negatives on any campaign with broad match keywords.

[bctt tweet=”What’s the biggest #PPC change in 2017? @NotSpamIpromise says it’s the AdWords interface. See his full answer (and others):” url=”https://paidsearchmagic.com/23/”]

Lisa Sanner:

@LisaSanner | VP of Search Marketing at Point It

Hi there, my name is Lisa Sanner, I’m VP of search marketing at Point It. We are a digital marketing agency located in Seattle, Washington. I think the most important paid search change of 2017 was more of a strategic approach to audiences. I feel that because of the growth of Facebook that people became a lot smarter about targeting and the utilization of audience data. That, I think, enabled us to use some of the tools that Google and Bing have been developing for a while now. Things like RLSA, G, and targeting, re-targeting, and similar audiences and dynamic searches, which is an RLSA component. To be much more strategic about putting that right message in front of the right user at the right time. So it was really exciting to see and I’m excited to see how it even becomes a lot more strategic in 2018. Happy Holidays to everyone listening.

[bctt tweet=”What’s the biggest #PPC change in 2017? @LisaSanner says it’s audience targeting. See her full answer (and others): ” url=”https://paidsearchmagic.com/23/”]

John Williams:

@SaltedPecan | Digital Strategist CDK Global

Hi, this is John Williams, I’m a digital strategist for CDK Global. I think the most important paid search update or change this year, I guess a combination of both would be store visits and insights, and into that part of the conversion funnel. The second thing would be the new UI. Why the new UI? Well, it’s all about reporting. Reporting, reporting, reporting. Everything that we do is about analytics and the consumer journey. We’re the touchpoints, right? WAP and pre-click WAP, and post-click. A lot of the information is now in front of us in the dashboard, so that’s fantastic. Store visits, that’s a, “Wow.” That’s the cherry on top for, “How do you prove value for AdWords,” right? It has just come so far where you had a simple beacon that might have been able to tell you when somebody came in and now we have the ability to say, “Hey, this landing page, this ad, this piece of copy drove this person in and this was the cause.”

The future for advertising is right in front of us. It’s virtual and it’s automation, and it’s about data. I believe store visits highlight that along with the new UI.

[bctt tweet=”What’s the biggest #PPC change in 2017? @SaltedPecan says it’s data and automation. See his full answer (and others):” url=”https://paidsearchmagic.com/23/”]

Joe Martinez:

@MilwaukeePPC | Director of Paid Media and Community at Granular

I’m Joe Martinez, I’m the Director of Paid Media and Community and Granular. I think the biggest change in 2017 was the overall less control PPC marketers have got. In March, we saw the exact match changes which affected a lot of people. We saw the options of ad rotation settings that we get, go from four to two. A big one that affected me a lot was the change of all of our options we had for app campaign targeting all pretty much rolled into one universal app campaign, which kind-of limited a lot of the control we had with promoting our apps.

I think it’s really, really important for 2018 as we look at specifically how our role is going to change. I don’t think our jobs are going away anytime soon, but how we do our jobs and what our role is going to be. Whether you’re agency or in-house is definitely going to change. As Google takes more control, even with enhanced PPCs which I forgot to mention earlier, we’re gonna have to take less of a role of actually being implementers and more being on the consultative approach and coming up with the strategies and being the guide of directing people of the right way to go. Being an extra set of eyes more instead of analyzing our performances and seeing how we’re doing.

So it’s really taking a step back a lot I believe, it’s gonna come in 2018 of really doing a lot of the hands-on work and coming up with the overall strategy and what’s best practice for PPC and your brand.

[bctt tweet=”What’s the biggest #PPC change in 2017? @MilwaukeePPC says it’s our roles as managers. See his full answer (and others):” url=”https://paidsearchmagic.com/23/”]

Jake Hoopes:

@JacobHoopes | VP of Product Development at Showroom Logic

My name is Jake Hoopes, I’m the Vice President of Product Development at Showroom Logic, an automotive paid search platform. I think one of the more interesting developments of 2017 is just beginning to play out on the battlefield of privacy and attribution.

We’ve seen this intangible form earlier this year with Apple’s intelligent tracking prevention and all of the disruption that caused with marketing tactics that rely on third-party cookies. I think this trend towards greater consumer privacy is only going to continue. Which as a consumer, I love. I think that’s a positive thing, but as a marketer, it does cause some trepidation because change is coming. As a builder of marketing technology software, ultimately I probably should be grateful for the job security that this creates because one thing is certain, digital advertising dollars are not going away. So it falls to us, the agencies, the tech providers, the in-house marketing staff to marry all this stuff together and to find a place where they can peacefully coexist. That intersection of what the market needs and what the advertisers and the publishers need is going to shift. Definitely going to shift in the coming years.

The solutions will be less mechanical, more sophisticated and it’s gonna put more importance and emphasis on having smart people making the right decision behind the scenes and figuring these things out. It gets people out of the grind, the heavy lifting of data mechanics and into the strategy. Which is where they belong anyway.

[bctt tweet=”What’s the biggest #PPC change in 2017? @JacobHoopes says it’s privacy and attribution. See his full answer (and others):” url=”https://paidsearchmagic.com/23/”]

Glenn Schmelzle:

@heyglenns | Head of Marketing What’s New

My name is Glenn Schmelzle, I’m head of a lead Gen agency named Marketing, What’s new? I think the most important paid search update is the AdWords and Google Optimize integration. Optimize was a tool to run AB tests. It was inside analytics 360 suite at first, which we didn’t own, but it’s recently become free. I’m sure it does AB tests well, but with the AdWords integration, as I get more time with it I see it helping more than just campaigns with a lot of conversions. I think of using it to create new landing pages on the fly. Means we can make content that closely matches each ad group in our campaigns. This can help raise quality scores.

I’m gonna predict in 2018 that marketers could get ads in higher positions and at lower bids with this tool. Looking forward to more magical paid search insights from your guests and from you, Amy and James.

[bctt tweet=”What’s the biggest #PPC change in 2017? @heyglenns says it’s Google Optimize. See his full answer (and others):” url=”https://paidsearchmagic.com/23/”]

Gil Hong:

@_GilHong | Sr. PPC Manager at Seer Interactive

My name is Gil Hong, I’m a Senior PPC Account Manager with Seer Interactive. I think the most important paid search change of 2017 was the update to exact match keywords becoming less exact back in March because it fundamentally changes how we think about structuring our campaigns and ad groups for themes and search intent. Newer builds will have an easier job adjusting to this change but legacy builds will require more analysis of search query and quality score differences before and after the change to make an informed update to current account structure. As far as ongoing maintenance is concerned, PPCers will have to be more vigilant of search query reports and how their dynamic keyword and searching ads are set up to make sure phrasing is still relevant.

One unexpected benefit of this change is that it should reduce the amount of keywords to manage and may also help reduce the amounts of keywords that are plagued by low search volume status.

[bctt tweet=”What’s the biggest #PPC change in 2017? @_GilHong says it’s exact match changes. See his full answer (and others):” url=”https://paidsearchmagic.com/23/”]

Ed Leake:

@EdLeake | Founder and Managing Director of Midas Media

Hi, it’s Ed Leake, founder and Managing Director of Midas Media from the UK. I think the most important paid search update for 2017 was similar audiences or look-alikes. The reason being, I think this is not necessarily the most powerful feature we’ve got today, but it’s a nod in the direction of what’s coming. More behavioral targeting, more audience specific behavior targeting. That is coming from Google, and I think we can see more and more of this in 2018 to take on that big blue beast that is Facebook. So this is really interesting for search and display, I think will narrow the gap from the different audience types that Facebook has to offer that we don’t currently have on search. I’m really interested to see what Google rolls out here.

[bctt tweet=”What’s the biggest #PPC change in 2017? @EdLeake says it’s audience targeting. See his full answer (and others): ” url=”https://paidsearchmagic.com/23/”]

Charles Brocato:

@cabrocPPC | Account Manager at Momentum PPC

Hi, my name is Charles Brocato, I’m an Account Manager with Momentum PPC. I think the most important paid search change for 2017 has been understanding attribution and looking at the models and moving away from last-click attribution. I think is important because it leads to many things, one of them for me that I focus on a lot is getting away from just looking at personas and more looking at behavioral personas. What people are doing, how they’re doing it, how they get to the point where you want them to get. It leads to creating audiences based on the things that people are doing on your site, leading to conversion and how you can now target them, re-target them differently based on those signals.

[bctt tweet=”What’s the biggest #PPC change in 2017? @cabrocPPC says it’s attribution modeling. See his full answer (and others):” url=”https://paidsearchmagic.com/23/”]

Andrew Lolk:

@AndrewLolk | Founder and Lead PPC Manager of Savvy Revenue

Hi everybody, my name is Andrew Lolk and I’m the founder and lead PPC Manager in Savvy Revenue. We help eCommerce stores grow through scalable PPC advertising. I think the most important change that I’ve noticed is how many more searches are being occupied by Google shopping ads. This is not as much a specific change or update, but more a trend that most people have missed. You’ve probably noticed that you’re shopping campaigns have decreased IRI throughout 2017 and the biggest indicator will have been this Christmas season actually. If you didn’t increase two to three times in shopping spent and at the same time maintained a positive IRI, then I can tell you that you are falling behind. The takeaway from all this is that it’s not enough any longer to just set up a standard shopping campaign and then think that’s it.

You have to work in-depth with campaign segmentation, feed optimization, and bit management to get the same kind of success with Google shopping as you’ve been used to. Thanks for having me on Amy, and good luck to everybody in 2018.

 [bctt tweet=”What’s the biggest #PPC change in 2017? @AndrewLolk says it’s shopping ads. See his full answer (and others): ” url=”https://paidsearchmagic.com/23/”]

Close Variants / Match Type Resources

In the good old days, “exact” meant exact. Then things got fuzzier. Now they’re about to get downright blurry.
– Ginny Marvin

Reporting / Attribution

Attribution Resources:
2017 Safari Update:

 

New AdWords User Interface

Targeting and Audiences

 

Honorable Mentions / Other Updates (and our pics)

 

 

 

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