Author: Nils Rooijmans

Performance Max campaigns are about as transparent as a window painted over with chalkboard paint.

The Google Ads interface gives us little to nothing when you want to analyze the results from your PMax campaign.

Luckily, we can use Analytics to do some more analysis on the audience PMax attracts and its post-click behavior on our website.

You can create a segment of users for whom the acquisition campaign name contains Performance Max, or whichever naming convention you use (see image 1 below).

Now, you can use this segment (and compare it to other segments) to see how these users are interacting with your website (see images 2 and 3 below).

For example, you can use this new segment on the Landing Page Report to see what landing pages your PMax campaign is sending traffic to, and whether you need to add URL exclusions or turn off URL expansion in PMax.

Or, you can go to the Geo Location report to have a look at the geo-locations from where your audience is originating, and decide whether or not you should exclude some based on the behavior on your website.

Or, compare the Mobile devices your PMax audience is using compared to other users.

Or …

Happy analyzing!

– Nils

(Below are the images, you can click them to enlarge.)

Visiting /r/PPC on Reddit is part of my daily routines. It helps me stay in touch with what is buzzing in the PPC community. Every now and then, a crazy hack pops up. Here’s today’s catch:

“This might have limited use for a lot of you on the sub but hear me out.

From time to time you will come across a client who has a legacy expanded text ad running in a display ad group that is performing very well. In fact, it can’t be defeated.

Even if you create a Responsive Display Ad that uses the exact same headline and description, for whatever reason, the new inventory that opens up due to it being an RDA seems to make the ad unprofitable. Or maybe it is the fact that Google forces you to add an image which makes it look too much “like an ad” to some people… who knows the reason.

The issue here? Google retired ETAs and doesn’t let you create them anymore, so if that ad gets disapproved for whatever reason, you are out of luck.

Thankfully I found this little hack in Google that let’s you add Responsive Search Ads into your Display ad groups.

If you try to copy a responsive search ad from a search campaign and paste it into a display campaign using the Google Ads interface, you will get an error message saying something along the lines of ‘this ad type is not supported’.

However, if you do it from the Google Ads Editor, it lets you post the ad without any issues. And you can even use dynamic location and countdown features! How cool is that? Being able to call out someone’s location within the ad on the display network!?

Hopefully this helps some of you that have come across this same issue.“

SOURCE: https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/wwli01/ppc_pro_tip_of_the_day_testing_responsive_search/

It is loopholes like these that give you a (temporary?) unfair advantage so you can beat competition on GDN.

Let’s test?

– Nils

Have a nice day at work!

– Nils

Every now and then, I forget things that shouldn’t be forgotten. 

Like a 50 euro bill in the small pocket of my jeans.

But then, there is at least the surprise of discovering it again!

Last week, I had a similar experience, while going through some open tabs. One tab had a link to a Google support doc that I didn’t have a look at for… well, a long time.

Back in February this year, Google Merchant Center had added support to Google shopping feeds for a short title attribute. The benefit of the short title is that you can control what is included in your titles before they’re truncated on the smaller display areas of the Google ad network (i.e., mobile displays).

Google has a new help document on short titles that goes over the requirements and best practices for these. Some of them include:

– Use a relevant short title that clearly describes your product.
– Be concise. While the title [title] attribute is used to match a consumer’s search to your products, the short title [short_title] is intended to show your product more concisely in browser experiences.
– Limit your short titles to 65 or fewer characters. Users usually only see the first 65 characters of a short title, depending on their screen size.

SOURCE: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/11551083?hl=en

We just recently started experimenting with this new attribute. Personally, I like to structure my short titles with product name + product nouns + brand. For example: “EVO 4.2 Bookshelf Speaker – Wharfedale” 

How about you? Do you already have some learnings on this topic that you can share? I’d love to learn. You can share them with me via email at nils@nilsrooijmans.com.

– Nils

PS: Here’s a track I’m currently listening to on my Wharfedale speakers -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUYboWbVe0A

Here’s my tip for today: if you want to see how much your PMax campaigns are spending on YouTube, customize your columns, get Avg CPV column, get views column, and then multiply.

In the ‘all campaigns’ view, you can create a view with columns like these:

I hope that helps 🙂

– Nils

Nobody will remember:
– Your salary
– Your fancy Title
– How ‘busy’ you were
– How many hours you worked
– Any of the Google certificates on your wall

People will remember:
– How you spent twice the client’s monthly budget in a single day

Such is agency life.

– Nils

Products in Google Merchant Center get disapproved time and time again for all kinds of reasons.

A common issue is a disapproval because of ‘Mismatched value (page crawl): (price [price])’ 

Even when you have the price info perfectly visualised on your landing page, Google may still sometimes not see your price or see the same price you have in your feed. 

A possible cause that gets overlooked easily: Outdated microdata or HTML.

FIX: Check for contradictory information within your site build, and remove it to eliminate crawling issues using this tool –>
https://search.google.com/test/rich-results

– Nils

Do you know how much Google can charge you when you use ad scheduling to only show ads during the weekdays?

I had to look up the exact details myself today, so I might as well share the answers with you 🙂

First, some definitions and theory.

Your average daily budget:
The average budget amount that you set for each ad campaign on a per-day basis. It specifies how much you are roughly comfortable spending each day over the course of the month.

Your daily spending limit:
The max amount you pay on an individual day.

Your monthly spending limit:
The max amount you pay for the given month.

Your daily spending limit is 2x your average daily budget, because of Google’s disputable over-delivery feature. Your monthly spending limit is 30.4 times your average daily budget (because 30.4 is the average number of days in a month).

Sample scenario:
Let’s say you set a daily budget target of $100 in your campaign settings, and schedule your ads to only show on weekdays (i.e., Monday to Friday). Let’s assume this month has 20 weekdays (4 weeks times 5 days per week).

Now, what happens to your spending limits?

You might expect Google to recalculate your monthly spending limit, to be 20 x $100 = $2000, thus limiting the max amount you pay for the given month to $2000.

Not so!

Ad scheduling does not impact your monthly spending limit and does not impact your daily spending limit. Google will still try to spend 30.4 times your average daily budget on a monthly basis.

In our scenario, this means Google will spend 30.4 x $100 = $3040 per month if the search volume is there and the daily spending limit allows it to. Our daily spending limit is 2 x $100 = $200, which easily allows for an average daily spend of $3040/20 = $152. 

Here’s the thing: If you don’t want to be charged more than $2000 in a given month, you need to recalculate your daily budget target yourself and change it to $2000/30.4 = $65.79.

As you can see, pacing budgets via the daily budget setting is far from easy but also no rocket science. 

This is also something that highly benefits from automation, so be sure to check out these scripts to help you manage your budgets:

https://nilsrooijmans.com/daily-budget-overdelivery-alerts-script/

https://nilsrooijmans.com/top-5-google-ads-scripts-for-budget-management/

– Nils

Fellow list member Jacobo Alonso sent in this question (shared with permission, question paraphrased for clarity):

“Would you keep “Longer ad headlines”? Also, I am not sure how these work.”

Here’s what Google has to say about this form of automated extension:

“Automated extensions can give you more robust ads and more chances to win new customers.

Long text headlines in automated extension is a feature that automatically improves the 
format of text ads, by automatically promoting part of the description lines to the headline, 
and adding the visible URL to the headline, when possible. Longer Ad Headlines may use text 
from both Description Line 1 & 2. If our system can determine a proper sentence can be made, 
it will promote the message to the headline.“

SOURCE: email from a Google Rep.

Would I keep this feature on?

No. 

I don’t have data to back this up, but I simply do not trust Google in being able to really improve the conversion value per impression with this automated extension.

What do you think?

– Nils

Do you know the single most important objective for the client you are working on right now?

Is it an increase in profit?
Revenue growth?
Number of clients?
Brand recognition?

Seriously, do you really know?

My bet: the answer is “No.”

It’s rarely the case the client knows, too. 

It is your job to figure it out together with your client.

Here’s a question you can email to get the conversation started:

“Hey [insert client name], if you had to choose between (A) 10% more profit with the same revenue, or (B) half the profit with 20% more revenue, what would you choose?”

– Nils

ICYMI: Last week, Google added advanced location options for PMax campaigns.

This is BIG if you are interested in using PMax for lead gen.

Not all leads are equal and geography plays a big part in the quality and value of your leads.

Hell, some geo-regions seem to ONLY send junk traffic and lead fraud.

Luckily, we can now limit our ads to only show in the geo-locations we really want to target:

– Nils

PS: Music I am listening to today to get energized -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-rSgNpqPew

PPS: Want a big smile on your face? Watch the YouTube video, these guys loooove what they are doing!

Yesterday, I came across this thread on /r/PPC: 
https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/vwn9bd/issues_with_googles_automated_extensions/

“Google’s Automated Extensions were enabled without knowledge or consent and stole thousands of dollars from our clients”

OUCH!

It reminded me of the fact that I could not create a script to monitor their performance and check if they are turned on or off. Unfortunately, Google Ads Scripts offers no support for automated extensions. We have to check things manually…

Google states:

“Automated extensions can improve the quality of your ad by including information about your business or changing the format of your ad. The Google Ads system includes automated extensions to your text ads when it predicts that the extensions can improve your ad’s performance.“

BUT… I don’t believe them. I’ve seen dynamic sitelinks sending traffic to the worst landers on the planet.

NOTE: Automated extensions are turned on by default.

Personally, by default, I like to turn them off (with the exception of seller ratings). Here’s how you can do this too:

1. Click Ads & extensions in the page menu, then click Extensions in the subpage menu.
2. Click Automated Extensions at the bottom of the page.
3. Click the three-dot menu on the right, then select Advanced options.
4. Select Turn off specific automated extensions and choose which extension to turn off.
5. Select your reason for turning off the extension and add additional comments.
6. Click Turn off.

How about you? Do you turn them off, or leave them on? I’m curious to learn, you can let me know at nils@nilsrooijmans.com.

– Nils

Performance Max is a different beast with different specifications.

As with all things new, it’s not easy to memorize all the details when you get started.

Here’s a nice simple overview of the different asset specifications for PMax campaigns, taken from the Google Ads API developer documentation:

SOURCE: https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/performance-max/assets

– Nils

The Kawasaki Z900 is an amazing bike. 

No-frills, bare-bones sport riding. 

I just got back from my vacation, trying to tame the Z900 in the Colorado Rocky mountains. What a blast!

Me and my buddies visit the US every year just for that. There’s no comparison between the US and Europe when it comes to  road tripping.  

We’ve been to Colorado before (a couple of times actually) and my buddy was a bit nervous; he “forgot” to pay his fine for the speeding ticket from one of our previous adventures. His “past violation” haunted him for the whole duration of our trip.

Which brings me to today’s topic. 

Before my vacation, we talked about “past violations” and how Google continues to not show ads that it had mistakenly disapproved in the past.

Here’s the thing: unless you notice “past violations” in your ads and take action, these ads will continue to not show.

I made a promise to create a script to alert you on any ad that has the status of being disapproved for “past violations,” so you can take action. Thanks to the help of many list members, the script is finally finished.

Here it is: https://nilsrooijmans.com/google-ads-script-past-violations-alert/

Thanks again to all of you who helped me test and fine-tune the code.

Happy scripting!

– Nils

As of April 2022, Google Ad Editor supports the creation and editing of Performance Max campaigns (version 2.0 and up).

This is all good and well, but there’s a sneaky little bug: if you copy-paste a PMax campaign that has Final URL expansion set to ‘Only send traffic to the URLs you’ve provided’, the copy will have this option set to the default ‘Send traffic to the most relevant URLs on your site’.

To fix this, you’ll need to go into the Google Ads interface and change this campaign setting manually.

H/T to Lyubomir Popov for pointing this out.

– Nils

Fellow list member Simonetta Azzarito sent in this question (shared with permission, question paraphrased for clarity):

“I am searching for a script that produces a Google Sheet with customized report for the auction insights for specific keywords. Can you help me?”

Auction Insights are subject to many questions amongst script kiddies. The BAD NEWS is, they are not supported via scripts!

Currently, there is no way to use Google Ads Scripts or the Report API to get the auction data from our accounts. (Believe me, I’ve tried it. Many times. Even more times than I tried to bench press a 100kg. Failed every time…)

Hopefully, Google will add support for auction insights data in the near future, but I wouldn’t place my bets on it.

That being said, I do have some tips on how to make life a little bit easier if you find yourself spending countless hours downloading auctions insights via the Google Ads interface.

1. Schedule downloads via scheduled reports:

2. Visualise the auction insights data via Optmyzr’s Auction Insights Visualizer. Here’s a nice short video by Frederick Vallaeys that demos this free tool -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgycHrR5diU

3. Automatically store auction insights data in Big Query. This one is for automation daredevils, but definitely a great solution to circumvent Google Ads scripts’ limitations: Stefan Neefischer’s solution that uses Cloud Functions and Cloud Storage to scrape and store your data. Here’s a link: https://www.pemavor.com/how-to-pull-google-auction-insight-data-in-an-automated-way/

Now, I am off to my gym for my bench press challenge. 🙂

Enjoy the weekend!

– Nils

– Nils

I got approached for this today:

– Nils

Looking for some creative inspiration for your next ad copy?

Or maybe you’re just curious about what copy your competitors are using?

If so, here’s a Chrome extension I discovered just today, and I am already in love with it. It scrapes text ads and related keywords from the Google SERP. You can then download the aggregated data as an Excel file. The file will contain all your competitors’ headlines and descriptions in one single sheet!

PRO TIP: 
1) Conduct searches for the top 10 or top 20 related keywords
2) Download the scraped data in your Excel sheet
3) Copy-paste all your competitors’ headlines in a single text file and feed it to an n-gram analyzer like http://guidetodatamining.com/ngramAnalyzer/ 

This will give you some great insights you can use to create and test some ads!

Here’s the link to the Chrome extension:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ppc-ad-editor-adminer%C2%AE/omhnpaidepkhbjngmhjkphmlofoiocna

“Beter goed gejat, dan slecht bedacht!” (A Dutch proverb.)

– Nils

I just got back from a trip to France, enjoying the Champagne region and its lovely drink. Or drinkSSS, I might better say… 😉

For some reason, this afternoon, my brain wasn’t yet ready to come up with some new callout extensions to test in one of my accounts. (Them bubbles…)

So I did what I normally do in such situations: ask Google for help.

Here’s a list with some creative examples that showed up in the result and could benefit you as well:

Ecommerce

Attractive & Affordable 
    Guaranteed Satisfaction 
    30% Off Clearance Items
    Customization leader 
    1-2 day shipping
    Free shipping
    Over 250,000 Team Items 
    Officially Licensed Gear 
    Satisfaction Guarantee
    Spring Arrivals are Here 
    Shop Best Sellers 
    Top Designer Collections
    Price Matching

Service Industry

    Workmanship Guaranteed 
    Upfront Pricing 
    Licensed Plumbing Experts
    Trusted For 67 Years 
    Local Plumbers Since 1947 
    Always Available 24/7
    Electrical Experts 
    Local Service 
    Fast Response 
    Affordable Pricing
    Save $350 Before Dec. 25
    Financing Available
    Liposuction Specialists
    History of Results 
    20yrs Combined Experience
    Handle Complex Cases
    No Service Fees

Accommodations
    
    Free Cancellation 
    24/7 Customer Service 
    Read Real Guest Reviews
    Save Time and Money 
    700,000+ Hotels Worldwide
    No Ads or Pop-ups
    Best Price Guarantee 
    11+ Million Hotel Reviews 
    No Change or Cancel Fees
    Over 300,000 Rentals 
    Listings in 190 Countries
    1,000,000 Unique Listings
    24/7 Customer Service
    Insurance Up to $10,000 
    Peace of Mind Guarantee
    Pet Friendly Rentals 
    Homes with Private Pools 
    Oceanfront Rentals

Insurance

    Multiple policy discount
    Many discount offerings 
    Switch and save $498/year
    Save up to 40%
    Free online quotes
    24/7 service
    Local agents
    Fast, Easy Payments
    State Minimum Rates 
    Free Quote in Minutes
    75+ Years of Savings 
    Free Quotes 
    24/7 Service & Claims 
    Mobile App
    Live Reps to Assist 
    Save on Average $540 
    Quotes in 5 Mins. or Less

Software

    No Strings Attached 
    Where Work Gets Done 
    Easy to Use 
    Make Things Easy
    Easy To Use 
    Trusted By Over 5,000,000 
    Collaborate Online 
    Try It Free
    World class support 
    Deliver projects on time 
    Portfolio management
    Over 10 Million Users 
    Best Way to Manage Social 
    All-In-One Social Tool
    Listen, Engage & Publish 
    Collaborate at Scale
    Unbeatable Value 
    Everything is Hosted 
    Pay As You Go 
    Easily Customizable
    Free Product Tours 
    100% Cloud Platform 
    Real-Time Data
    Save time billing 
    Easy to use 
    Work anywhere 
    Free trial
    6 Million Users Worldwide  
    Auto Syncs Across Devices
    Complete Security 
    Connect on any device 
    Flexible plans

SOURCE: https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/rr29cm/name_the_google_ads_extensions_that_you_use/

ACTION: Why not test 4 new callouts in your account today? It only takes a few minutes!

– Nils