HeroConf 2019 Chasing Quality Over Quality Score

@navahf nhopkins@wordstream.com
Chasing Quality Over Quality Score
Navah Hopkins| WordStream

| 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 just adopted
dog named HK
About Me:
#PPCPuppy

3| Confidential
Why Do We Panic?

How many of you have heard of the goldfish
study?

Disproved 2 Years
Later

We are capable of great focus, but only if we
care

How many of
you read the
Acquisio study
that told us to
strive for 7
quality scores?

63,000 US Accounts in Q3 2018 Average QS in
US is 5.6
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
9000
10000
Number of accounts
• QS 1 = 8%
• QS 2 = 6%
• Q3 = 12%
• Q4 = 10%
• Q5 = 13%
• Q6 = 12%
• Q7 = 13%
• Q8 = 11%
• Q9 = 7%
• Q10 = 8%

We want to be
exceptional!

We want discounts on
clicks!

We want good impression share!

It Won’t Surprise Anyone To See This Chart of Average CTR
by 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

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

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

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

• 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:

Impression Share With & 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

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

• 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:

• 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?

Certain Strategic Objectives Are Predisposed
To Lower Quality Scores.

Just Because You Have A Good Quality Score,
Doesn’t Mean Your Leads Are Converting.

Same Quality Score – Drastically Different Results

Quality Score Is A Health Indicator,
Not A KPI!

25| Confidential
Using Quality
Score as a Health
Indicator

Let’s Break Down Quality Score Into Its Base Elements

If We “Solved” For Those Elements We Would
Have A Healthy Account.

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

Historical CTR Can Suffer if There Isn’t Enough
Volume – Some Industries Will Always
Struggle Here

Boring Ads Kill
CTR

Expanded Text Ads Mean Your Copy Is Due
For A Revisit!
Description text would
have made great
headlines!

It’s Hard To Build Relevancy If Campaign
Structure is Flawed

Sort By Impressions to See Where Ad
Networks are Trying to Put Your Money
60% of
impressio
nsBudget
will only
go to
“winners”
instead of
everythin
g

Serving For Auctions Your Ads Can’t Win On Will Hurt
Relevancy. Audit Broad Keywords!

Broad Keywords Can Drag Your Budget into
Unintended Auctions
162%
More
Than
Average

We Need To Ask Ourselves: Is This
Keyword/Ad Group Failing Me, Or Am I Failing
It By Not Honoring Its Needs

If Landing Pages Don’t Deliver On Your Ad’s
Promise, You Lose Relevancy.

Don’t Put Prospects/Customers To Sleep
Waiting For Your Site To Load!

Users Shouldn’t Have To
Hunt Through A Text-Wall
To Contact You.

We Live In A Mobile First World – Don’t Build
Bad Mobile Experiences
Wall of Text
Unclickable Number
Tiny Menu

41| Confidential
What Does Chasing
Quality Look Like

• Too many targets
• Too wide a range in auction price
• Too many objectives
Budgets Underperform
When:

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%

3% cheaper
& perfect
conversion
rate!
What Auctions Will Give You a Positive ROAS

Are There Parts of Your
Business That
Shouldn’t Get Access
To Budget

Any Redundancies To Clean Up?
Catching all “logo design”
keywords on mod broad

CTR and Conversion Rates Tell You If Your
Message is Landing

All of This is Meaningless if Your Audiences
Aren’t Aligned With Your Value Proposition

• Balanced in-home dog training
• Board and train programs
• Group classes for specializing dogs
(police, service, etc)
Koru K9 provides:

Feb 2018
● CPA: $25.13
● Search Conversion Rate: 11.62%
● Search CTR: 4.68%
● Average QS: 6.96
May 2018
● CPA: $45.02
Which month was my client happier with me?

Koru K9 Story

• 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

That means we achieved 38X
return on ad spend!

They obviously wanted to fuel the beast and
go for more leads!

May report

• 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

We outperformed Feb by 130%...but not all the
metrics showed that
Feb 2018
● CPA: $25.13
May 2018
● CPA: $45.02

Treat Quality Score As A Health Indicator – Not
A KPI

Honor Your Budget – Don’t
Ask It To Do Too Much

Build Branded Campaigns, Not Ad Groups

Strive To Be The Best In & Set Goals In Line
With Your Industry

Judge The Success Of Your Campaigns By
Profit, Not Vanity Metrics

Thank You! Questions?
Navah Hopkins| WordStream
nhopkins@wordstream.com / @navahf

HeroConf 2019 Chasing Quality Over Quality Score

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