PPC Optimization In A World Without Average Position

1. PPC Optimization In A World Without Average Position

2. Agenda Introductions What’s Changed? How We Got Here? Why Is It Important? Why Did Google Make the Change? How Does it Impact Advertisers? The “New” Metrics Adjusted Benchmarks Bidding: What’s a Marketer to do? Must Consider: Match Type reach is changing Question and Answer Session

3. About Vincodo

4. Company Background Founded in 2010 Industry veterans with multi-channel experience both on the client and agency side Over $180MM in active media management Three time recipient of Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies Bing Search Agency Awards Finalist Recognized partner with media providers & tech platforms Core in-house expertise channels: Paid Search, Programmatic Display, Paid Social, OTT, Direct Mail and Email Lists Top serviced industries: Fortune 500 Retailers, Home Service providers, Personal and Business Insurance, Higher Education, Boutique Luxury Retailers, Financial Services, Legal Services

5. Who We Are Kristin Foley, Vice President of Account Services Vincodo, with her 20+ years of digital marketing experience, Kristin oversees the Account Management team that is responsible for daily activities with client relationships while ensuring media operations teams are meeting client deadlines, acting upon client initiatives and achieving performance goals. MRM/McCaan, a leading customer relationship agency. Management Supervisor responsible for maintaining client and agency partner satisfaction while ensuring work was on strategy, on time and on budget. Integrated and coordinated Agency offerings including CRM, digital and data analytics. Oxford Communications, a full-service integrated marketing agency. Served in multiple Account Service/Project Management roles. Helped build the Agency’s Digital Division as the Lead Interactive Account Manager with a focus on website development and digital advertising solutions. Educational Outfitters, an Educational Supply start up. Marketing Director responsible for managing all sales and marketing efforts targeting K-12 schools. Education: B.S. Marketing, Boston College Wallace E. Carroll School of Management

6. Who We Are Drew Brooke, Vice President of Marketing Services Vincodo, with his 13 years of search engine marketing and media buying experience oversees the Search Marketing operations teams while provide strategic direction to clients on Paid Search initiatives and serves an integral role in assess multi-touch attribution between Paid Search activities and other online/offline marketing programs. Unreal Marketing, Director, Performance Marketing. Strategy and execution of online marketing campaigns focused primarily in Paid Search channels. Key clients: David’s Bridal, Speedo USA and Calvin Klein, Career Education Corp, JP Morgan Chase, Wilmington Trust Bank, Aramark, Saladworks Education: B.S. Organizational & Community Leadership. University of Delaware

7. PPC Optimization In A World Without Average Position

8. What’s Changing? Goodbye, Avg. Position On Sept 30th Google will sunset Average Position within the Google Ads interface Due to the ongoing shift in the presentation of SERPs (i.e. – side position deprecated, shopping ads, map stack), Average Position only gauges your auction competitiveness, not your actual Position on the page “Position” has become less relevant over time as Impression Share has come to the forefront, but this is still a major change nonetheless

9. How We Got Here A brief history 2002 – 2012 Avg. Position was all we had for ‘prominence’ measurement 2012 Impression Share (IS) is introduced. (Includes “Lost To:” Detail) 2016 Google removes “side-ads” in SERP 2017 Absolute Top Impression Share (ATIS) in Shopping for top grid position Nov 2018 ATIS and 7 other enhanced IS/Location metrics available in KW Search Feb 2019 Google announces Avg. Position will be deprecated in Q4 2019

10. How We Got Here Influenced by SERP Changes Pre-2016 2017 Onward

11. Why Is This Important? Knowing your competitiveness in the auction is essential to maximizing value for any performance target. Without trustworthy and transparent competitive metrics you will: Overpay for traffic, as you push bids higher or set higher IS targets without driving incremental quality volume Miss out on profitable volume because you’re underbidding due to a perceived strength of competitiveness which may not be reality Challenges will impact optimization, no matter the strategy (Auto, manual, or a hybrid) New metrics provide actual page location, which is a first

12. Why Did Google Make The Change? Clarity and Opportunity “These new metrics give you a much clearer view of your prominence on the page than average position does. “ - Pallavi Naresh, Product Manager, Google Ads “(Position) It’s not enough to know the actual location of your ad on the page. These new metrics are specific and reliable indicators of page location, which is much more valuable.” - Matt Lawson is VP of Ads Marketing for Google “Position” could be misleading for inexperienced marketers IS reliance is a consistent nudge to go after more opportunity

13. How Does It Impact Advertisers? We Must Adapt Revamp reporting Revamp mindset Find your new ‘strength’ benchmarks Know the blind spots Know where to use IS/Location targeting for maximum benefit

14. The “New” Metrics

15. Search Impression Share The impressions you’ve received on the Search Network divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive “Eligibility” is key Targetable by bid strategies Data for previous day, not current day It’s a moving target due to auction mix

16. Search Impression Share Eligibility is constantly changing, you must monitor and react Honing your Quality factors is still essential. More auctions = more opportunity Restrictive Match Types + good query isolation = IS will be useful for targeting Loose Match and minimal Negatives = IS will be more misleading

17. Search Top Impression Share The impressions you've received in the top location on the search result page (above organic listings) divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the top location Targetable by bid strategies Data for previous day, not current day Above 50% correlates to previous Position of 3 or higher

18. Absolute Top Impression Share The impressions you’ve received in the absolute top location (the very first ad above the organic search results) divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the top location Targetable by bid strategies Data for previous day, not current day Above 45% correlates to previous Position of 1.5

19. Search Top Impression Share Rate The percent of your ad impressions that are shown anywhere above the organic search results Actual ad location above organic, finally Intraday reporting Not targetable by bid policies Be wary, Google may not be serving ads above organic Above 65% correlates to previous Position of 3

20. Search Absolute Top Impression Share Rate The percent of your ad impressions that are shown as the very first ad above the organic search results Actual ad location in peak ad spot Intraday reporting Not targetable by bid policies Above 55% correlates to previous Position of 1.5

21. Click Share Ad copy factors come into play here, not as movable as Impression-based metrics on bid alone Should be higher as you move up the page, not guaranteed Getting above a 90% Click Share is difficult, even on Brand Mid 30 – 40% for this metric is strong, 60% on non-brand is near max

22. Adjusting Benchmarks

23. Finding New Baselines Search IS: Lacks consistent alignment with “Position”, Page Location metrics are the gold Search Top IS: Higher prominence above 50%, more likely to be above organic Search Abs. Top IS: Above 25%, or old position 2, is getting more into the fray • 5% here was a plug for “<10%”, it’s actually lower but not given Impr. (Top) %: 65 – 70%+ range is strong Impr. (Abs. Top) %: Top is 35 – 40%. You don’t start to ‘own’ it until above 70% Example: Lead gen, 5 months of data, MBM and Exact

24. Finding New Baselines General Targeting Guidance How IS/Location relates to Avg. Position Sourced from prospecting queries in a lead gen marketplace, your results will vary The % targets are set roughly at the bottom of each Position grouping Abs Top level represent the lowest level in that tier. We see 85%+ levels if you solidly hold Abs Top placement

25. Finding New Baselines Considerations For Mobile Devices For most advertisers, the base build for their paid search campaign is still designed with Desktop in mind. Mobile bid modifiers are typically utilized to increase/decrease bids in an effort to gain more volume within allowable ROI. SERP presentation varies significantly between devices, with Mobile often showing fewer ads than seen for the same exact keyword terms on Desktop/Tablet. If using Mobile bid modifiers, it is important to make sure adjustments are applied with respect to Impression Share. Unfortunately, using bid modifiers can lead to pushing up bids on keywords that don’t need an increase. For improved Impression Share management, consider replicating your campaigns and managing Mobile separately down to the keyword.

26. Bid Strategy: What’s a Marketer to Do?

27. What’s a Marketer To Do? For All Marketers: Setting a reasonable Max CPC limit for any IS auto-target strategy is key For Brand terms, IS targeting can be the most sound strategy Never Target CPA or ROAS for Brand Set specific targets for IS at intent segment levels, monitor results, and adjust If you’re using Automation, disable Enhanced CPC – it’s for Manual approaches Agile IS target management is key no matter the bid strategy Manual bidding: move bids to meet IS targets Automated bidding: move the IS targets

28. What’s a Marketer To Do? For Performance Marketers: Sustained efficiency will always be your primary goal, so continue to focus on ROI attainment first and foremost Bids and targeting will still be driven by how keywords, audiences, and intent groups perform to the bottom line New metrics still provide insight into ad placement and opportunity, no matter your bidding strategy Top IS and Abs Top IS can be viable in situations with low conversion or engagement signals Newly launched content can use IS Top/Abs Top targeting while conversion data is still accruing

29. What’s a Marketer To Do? For Performance Marketers: For Automated bidding, the strategies for Target CPA, Target ROAS, and Maximize conversions may still be your go-tos in prospecting scenarios The same downsides inherent to those strategies are still there If you’re not getting the needed volume, you’re mostly left with moving the Targets to achieve more Low conversion volume may lead to pre-mature minimization of bids, reducing their ultimate potential to drive volume Technical site issues that cause a conversion rate drop can throw the algorithm off and it needs to recover Systems can be slow to react if there are significant DOW fluctuations The upsides are all there too AI has greater capacity to absorb and react to real-time data trends AI can incorporate user signals that manual marketers can’t Positive results are more predictable with consistent oversight from attentive marketers Quality of optimization should only keep improving over time

30. What is a Marketer To Do? For Branding Marketers: Ad location metrics are a great help to you, as your goal is to achieve predictable visibility Evaluate how intent segments perform through to site engagement and use that to drive IS/Location targets for those specific segments Linking up Google Analytics to Google Ads will allow you to understand things like Cost Per New Visit (CPNV) and Cost Per Non-Bounce Visit (CPNB) Find your segment baselines for CPE (Cost Per Engagement) and set IS targets to be managed by automated or manual strategies Most of the automation downsides for Performance don’t exist here

31. What’s a Marketer To Do? Other Tips Quality factors are still most essential Relevant ads, engaging landing pages, full ad extension adoption, intent-based keyword segments The shift to IS could create more competitiveness (Google hopes so) so your QS is more important than ever A read/react adjustment cadence is still the go-to approach Know your performance baselines, pick your targets specifically – then tweak, read, and re-tweak. Evaluate the change in volume and quality after a tweak and decide if another Share/Placementis sound or if you should be addressing Quality factors Be specific about the targeting and monitoring of IS and Location metrics Break out brand vs. non-brand at a minimum Great value in prospecting segment breakouts in reporting A fully rolled up view can be misleading Targets are only as good as the controls you have in place. Watch out for: Overly loose Match Types Underbuilt Negative Terms Overly ‘rolled up’ Keyword buckets (too much intent variety in a bucket)

32. What’s a Marketer To Do? Other Tips IS alone can be misleading due to constant eligibility mix changes The looser the keyword targeting the higher likelihood that you're dramatically changing the auction mix IS and Location only relates to Search and Shopping ads – not some other key clickable elements For example, business location map stack is not included in IS Big click potential there but you wouldn’t know what you’re missing only focused on Search IS and Location Google may not be serving ads for an auction type, so be careful with evaluating Rate metrics Keywords/Segments where Google is serving Shopping or Organic elements in favor of text ads means optimizing toward Rate% can steer you in the wrong direction Stick to IS for targeting and use Rate% to add context to performance evaluation

33. Match Type Changes And Potential Impacts

34. What’s Changing? Key Match Types going broader Google is now expanding the available query reach on Phrase and Broad Match to “same meaning” queries They started adding “same-meaning” reach to Exact match in late 2018 as a first step “Same-meaning” or “same intent” query correlations are AI driven Positive: Your reach may expand in productive, valuable ways Negative: If correct intent-matching fails you’re showing up for undesirable things It’s a major step in the direction of AI reliance vs. marketer intelligence and expertise This seeks to address 3 concerns held by engines and some marketers: • 15% are new queries never before seen each day (Claimed by Google) • Marketers (seasoned or not) being too restrictive in their keyword match types • Marketers underbuilding keywords or not expanding/testing frequently

35. How Do We React? Strategies to maximize the benefits Critically, from Google: “If a query currently matches to an exact, phrase, or broad match modifier keyword that exists in your account, we’ll prevent that query from matching to a different phrase or broad match modifier keyword that’s now eligible for the same auction as a result of this update” This means best practice query mining, keyword building and structure control are still strong levers Reminder, Query Reports still only show queries with Clicks, not impressions Must use long timeframes to uncover questionable query trends KWs with very low CTR need to be evaluated more closely than ever

36. How Do We React? Strategies to maximize the benefits Mine your search queries more regularly for variations to block or shift/isolate into positive keywords segments Find valuable new variations and move them to positive keywords in controlled places “Same-meaning” is a double-edged sword, but you can force it in the helpful direction with query monitoring to retain control where needed Google is saying if a new query “matches to an existing Keyword” -- we hope they mean close variants of an existing terms Including plurals and misspellings Otherwise this will create endless keyword additions to assist control Google does want that, right?

37. How Do We React? Strategies to maximize the benefits Ad Group structuring should adapt to the needs of better query flow control Already a best practice consideration when building AGs, it’s even more crucial now Expanding Negative terms to force any beneficial “same-meaning” themes into controlled places is only possible with best practice Ad Group structures Ad Group structuring best practices: Separate by Match Type Ad Group level Negatives to force proper query flow Address user search themes and intent Isolate high volume generic terms from long tail

38. Summary

39. Summary Key Takeaways Share and Placement metrics bring enhanced value, but targeting them exclusively may not make sense depending on your performance goals (but it probably does for some segments) Choose segment-specific targets based on the performance your seeing, then read/react Ad Copy development and addressing Quality factors continue to be the tide that lifts all ships Keyword building/structuring and Negatives strategy is more important than ever to maximize your value with the expanded ‘same-meaning’ match changes

40. Q&A

41. Thank You Kristin Foley and Drew Brooke kfoley@vincodo.com dbrooke@vincodo.com