The document discusses quality score in Google Ads and provides advice on how to optimize campaigns based on quality score as a health indicator rather than a key performance indicator. It notes that chasing high quality scores does not always correlate with campaign success and outlines factors like ad relevance, landing page experience, and audience targeting that have a bigger impact on results. The document also shares a case study of a dog training business that improved revenue 130% from February to May while quality score decreased slightly, demonstrating the need to evaluate multiple metrics.
2. | 2@navahf @wordstream e: nhopkins@wordstream.com
Agenda
• Why Do We Panic?
• Using Quality Score as a Health Indicator
• What Does Chasing Quality Look Like?
• Case Studies
• Worked in digital marketing since 2008
• Work with agencies and advertisers across
WordStream’s international customer base.
• I’m a proud pet mom and have a dog named
HK
About Me:
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It Won’t Surprise Anyone To See This Chart of Average CTRby QS
0.00%
2.00%
4.00%
6.00%
8.00%
10.00%
12.00%
14.00%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
CTR
CTR
63000 US
accounts
in Q2 2018
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Or this one on Average CPC
$0.00
$0.50
$1.00
$1.50
$2.00
$2.50
$3.00
$3.50
$4.00
$4.50
$5.00
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Average CPC
Average CPC
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But What Happens When We Remove Branded Campaigns and Ad
Groups
0.00%
2.00%
4.00%
6.00%
8.00%
10.00%
12.00%
14.00%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
CTR Average CTR without branded
63000 US
accounts
in Q2 2018
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A similar impact is felt in CPC
$0.00
$0.50
$1.00
$1.50
$2.00
$2.50
$3.00
$3.50
$4.00
$4.50
$5.00
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Average CPC Average CPC without branded
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• Quality score of 6 beat 7 with
cheaper clicks and higher CTR
• Quality score of 9 beat 10 with
higher CTR (flat CPC)
• Quality Score of 1 had cheaper CPC
than QS 2-7
Filtering out Branded:
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Impression Share with and without branded
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Average Impression Share & Average Conversions By QS Q2 2018
Impression Share with branded Impression Share without branded
63000 US
accounts
in Q2 2018
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Conversions with and without branded
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
500
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Average Conversions By QS Q2 2018
Conversions Without Branded Conversions With Branded
63000 US
accounts
in Q2 2018
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• Quality score of 2 beat 3 and 5 on
impression share
• The gap in conversions between 8-
10 vanishes when you remove
branded
• Quality Score of 6 beat out 7 on
conversions
Filtering out Branded:
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• Higher click through rate (CTR) and
auction prices tend to be lower.
• Perfect keyword to ad, to landing
page relevancy.
• Home pages tend to get the lion
share of development and design
(experience)
Why do Branded
campaigns have such a
strong impact on quality
score?
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Just because you have a good quality score, doesn’t
mean your leads are converting.
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Certain strategic objectives are predisposed to lower
quality scores.
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Many Advertisers Fall Into the Trap of Conflating High
Scores With Quality.
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Same Quality Score – drastically different results
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Quality Score is a health indicator, not a KPI!
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Let’s break down Quality score into its base elements
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If we “solved” for those elements we would have a
healthy account.
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CTR Suffers If We Don’t Rank In The Top 4
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
0.00%
2.00%
4.00%
6.00%
8.00%
10.00%
12.00%
14.00%
16.00%
18.00%
20.00%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Average CTR and Position by Quality Score (Account Level)
General CTR General Average Position
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Historical CTR Can Suffer if There Isn’t Enough Volume
– Some Industries Will Always Struggle Here
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Expanded Text Ads Mean Your Copy Is Due For A
Revisit!
Description text would
have made great
headlines!
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It’s Hard To Build Relevancy If Campaign Structure is
Flawed
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Sort By Impressions to See Where Ad Networks are
Trying to Put Your Money
60% of
impressions
Budget will
only go to
“winners”
instead of
everything
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Serving For Auctions Your Ads Can’t Win On Will Hurt
Relevancy. Audit Broad Keywords!
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Broad Keywords Can Drag Your Budget into
Unintended Auctions
162%
More
Than
Average
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We need to ask ourselves: is this keyword/ad group
failing me, or am I failing it by not honoring its needs
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If landing pages don’t deliver on your ad’s promise,
you lose relevancy.
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Don’t put prospects/customers to sleep waiting for
your site to load!
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Users shouldn’t have to hunt
through a text-wall to contact
you.
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We live in a mobile first world – don’t build bad
mobile experiences
Wall of Text
Unclickable
Number
Tiny Menu
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• Too many targets
• Too wide a range in auction price
• Too many objectives
Budgets Underperform
When:
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Most Advertisers Struggle to Achieve 50%+ of
Available Impressions
Based on
2973
accounts
with at least
$.01 in
search
spend
Average
impression
share is 47%
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3% cheaper
& perfect
conversion
rate!
What Auctions Will Give You a Positive ROAS
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Are There Parts of Your
Business That Shouldn’t Get
Access To Budget
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Any Redundancies to Clean Up?
Catching all “logo design”
keywords on mod broad
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CTR and Conversion Rates Tell You If Your Message is
Landing
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All of This is Meaningless if Your Audiences Aren’t
Aligned With Your Value Proposition
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• 79 in-home engagements: $2,521
average customer value = $199,159
gross revenue
• 13 Board and Train: $4,037 average
= $52,487.5 gross revenue
($251,646.5 total)
In February they “crushed”
it
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That means we achieved 38X
return on ad spend!
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They obviously wanted to fuel the beast and go for
more leads!
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• 73 in-home engagements: $2,521
average customer value = $184,033
gross revenue
• 37 Board and Train: $4,037 average
= $149,369 gross revenue
($333,402 total)
May’s numbers looked off
until we looked at the
metrics that mattered
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We outperformed Feb by 130%...but not all the
metrics showed that
Feb 2018
• CPA: $25.13
• Search Conversion Rate: 11.62%
• Search CTR: 4.68%
• Average QS: 6.96
May 2018
• CPA: $45.02
• Search Conversion Rate: 5.78%
• Search CTR: 5.51%
• Average QS: 6.89