This document provides questions that performance marketers should ask themselves in 2021 to stay relevant in the evolving digital marketing field. It suggests examining best practices like optimizing product title structures for different categories in Google Shopping and testing different title formats. It also recommends evaluating one's search campaign structure and whether it can be simplified now that Smart Bidding optimizes bids at the query level. The document advises assessing where one's business falls on the ROI curve and looking at what percentage of transactions may be missed due to tracking restrictions as privacy policies change. Finally, it proposes segments like location, devices and audiences that could be used to adjust conversion values.

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5 Performance marketing questions you
should be asking in 2021
Dalibor Klic
dklic@google.com

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Why this deck, why these questions?
1. Field of digital marketing is constantly evolving, if you want to stay relevant we
need to evolve too
2. Looking for improvements in age of massive automation
3. Inspiration for others to examine this topics, perhaps continue in this kind of
questioning
4. Some of the questions should be asked by everyone some of them are for
people looking for minor fine tuning

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What is your best performing title structure
for each category in Google Shopping?

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The more keyword-rich product titles see a CTR uplift of 18%; while the
CTR increase on the exact query match was 88%
Search Engine land case study

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Basic naming structure: Brand + Product + Attributes (color, size, weight)
Apparel Brand + Gender + Product type + Attributes (color,
size, style, material)
Ann Taylor Women’s Black Slacks Size 6
Consumable or
nutritional goods
Brand + Product type + Attributes (flavor, quantity,
weight, count)
TwinLab Super CoQ10, 50 mg, 60 caps
CE or Hard goods Brand (manufacturer) + Product type + Attributes
(size, weight) + Model#
Target, Patio Wicker Chair Set, Brown, 4-
Piece
Televisions
electronics
Brand (manufacturer) + Attribute +Product + Model
#
Brand +Product + Attribute + Model #
Vizio 52” TV, Black, #A783x63
Seasonal/Holiday Occasion + Product type + Attributes (color, size,
weight)
College Grad 2013 Storage Box Gift, Silver
If product is…. Use this structure: Example
Best practices for product titles per vertical

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Ideas for title A/B testing
● Position - experiment with the placement of a specific attribute, for example, Brand name at the front vs at the end of
a title
● Keep or Toss - there are many product attributes that might be relevant from the customer’s perspective, but what is
their actual impact on your ads? Examples: color, size, material etc.
● Synonyms - find words that really speak to your audience and are well aligned with their culture, eg. While in the US,
are you gonna say 'grill' or 'BBQ'?
● Abbreviations - do you have words in your titles that are commonly shortened to abbreviations? It could be your
Brand name or any one of the attributes.
● Length - what kind of titles work best for your audience: very short or maybe more descriptive?
Title testing methodology & ideas
● Set timing for the test
● KPI
a. Search term coverage (# of new queries, what type are new queries brand/generic)
b. CTR in the exact match or overall including new queries (second grade metric conv. rate)
● Divide products in category based on last 90 days performance similarities

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Is your search campaign structure still up to
date?

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Google's Smart Bidding has opened the door for advertisers to safely simplify their accounts
without sacrificing performance. In fact, following the best practices actually lead to
increased performance!
*Source: uLab study - How specialists work with keyword match types?
● 40% specialists creates campaigns in 2 variants
(eg. Exact match plus phrase match)*
● About 30% specialists admitted adding all match
types to each Ad Group*

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Why doesn’t Smart Bidding need a granular account structure?
#1 #2 #3
It bids auction-time
& at the query-level
It uses a combination
of signals to set the
best bid
It optimizes based on
data from all of your
campaigns

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MHC-Exact-KidsClothes
MHC-Exact-CheapKidsClothing
MHC-Exact-InfantClothes
MHC-Exact-ChildrenClothes
MHC-Exact-ComfortableKidsClothes
MHC-Exact-OutfitsforKids
MHC-Exact-BuyClothesKids
MHC-Exact-OnlineClothesUS
MHC-Exact-TrendyKidsClothes
MHC-Exact-PurchaseChildrenwear
MHC-Exact-KidsFashionClothing
MHC-Exact-BestClothesForKids
Keyword-based
ad
groups
Previously relevant campaign structure approaches
● Match-type-specific ad
groups and campaigns.
● Duplicate keywords across
every match type.
● Single keyword ad groups.
● “Funneling” to match type
using negatives.
● Low-volume search terms
as exact keywords.

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Search Unboxed
How to simplify your
structure

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Steps for simplifying accounts:
Consolidate traffic
into fewer and larger ad
groups and campaigns
Broaden match types
under Smart Bidding
Leverage RSA and
dynamic features for
Creatives
1 2 3

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Consolidate traffic based on objective...
1
Smart Bidding
Match
type
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
Device
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
Audienc
e
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
adgroup
DSA
All Match Types, Devices,
Audiences, DSAs, etc.
Manual Bidding
Broad Match Campaign
Exact Match Campaign
Phrase Match Campaign
Mobile Campaign
Desktop Campaign
Tablet Campaign
10 day (RLSA) Campaign
20 day (RLSA) Campaign
30 day (RLSA) Campaign
Dynamic Search Ads
Campaign 1 Campaign 2
tCPA 10$ tCPA 18$

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Audiences
Algorithms automatically
factor recency on 1st-
party Audience lists - add
the longest & largest list
possible to maximize
reach.
Device, Geo, Day, etc.
Algorithms factor in device,
physical location, time of
day, and a host of other
signals.
Keyword Match Type
Smart Bidding is auction-
time & query-level:
It is not necessary to
segment by match type or
single keyword ad groups
to boost optimization.
...by removing unneeded traffic segmentations...
1

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... moving to larger volume ad groups and campaigns
1
Try to maximize the number of impressions per ad group*.
Grouping themed keywords together helps us better understand the
intention of your keywords to select the best keyword + ad option to
serve.
A good way to consolidate traffic is to have each ad group point to a
single landing page. This will allow more volume and more variety of
queries per ad group, while still staying on-theme.
If not ready to consolidate campaigns, Portfolio Bidding is a
good place to start, as it allows you to optimize bids across
multiple campaigns to reach your performance goals
*Some automated features have volume thresholds, like the Performance Asset label for RSA which only
shows if there are 5k+ impressions per month in the ad group

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Consolidate traffic
into fewer and larger ad
groups and campaigns
Broaden match types
under Smart Bidding
Leverage RSA and
dynamic features for
Creatives
1 2 3
Steps for simplifying accounts:

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Broaden match types under Smart Bidding...
2
A broad match keyword covers all the
same queries as the same keyword in
narrower match types, plus more.
Broad Exact
Phrase
Note: not to scale
When using Smart Bidding, there
is no incremental gain to
having keywords repeated in
different match types.

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…and use fewer keywords with better results.
2
Set of queries
reached through a
single Broad match
keyword
Broad
keyword
Exact
Exact
Exact
Exact
Exact
Exact
Exact
Exact
Exact
Exact
Exact
Exact
Exact
Exact
Exact
Many exact keywords
would be needed to
achieve the same reach
as a broad match
keyword.
...and it’s likely that
business-relevant
queries are missed.
This strategy is time
consuming and
inefficient...
Smart Bidding allows you to safely cast a wider net with a broader match type, as bids are customized in real-
time to make sure you’re reaching business-relevant queries that help you achieve your KPIs.

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Broad match improvements are happening as we speak
Theming - Advertiser Agent New Trumping Hierarchy Quality Improvements
Smarter way for our system to
choose the best keyword in an
account when multiple keywords
are eligible for the same query so
that advertisers do not have to do
this themselves. Advertiser Agent
only works when there is more
than one keyword in the account
that is eligible to serve for a given
query.
Phrase and Broad Match
keywords that are identical to
the search term or the spell-
corrected search term are
preferred over other keywords
in the keyword selection process.
Previously, only an exact match
keyword received preference in
keyword selection.
Improve query understanding
signals by created a new machine
learning system based on
historically reported bad
matches from advertisers to
include in our search language
understanding model to exclude
poor matches and include
matches we may have previously
excluded.
Details at official blogpost.

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Consolidate traffic
into fewer and larger ad
groups and campaigns
Broaden match types
under Smart Bidding
Leverage RSA and
dynamic features for
Creatives
1 2 3
Steps for simplifying accounts:

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Leverage RSA and dynamic features for creatives
3
IF functions*
{=IF(<dimension>=<criterion>,text
to insert):default text}
*Currently compatible with ETAs
Ad customizers-
{LOCATION(Level):default text}
*Currently compatible with RSA
Dynamic Keyword Insertion
{KeyWord:default text}
*Currently compatible with ETAs & RSAs
Maintaining relevance between queries, ads and landing pages is key!
Use the power of machine learning to show
highly-tailored ads with Responsive Search Ads
Leverage dynamic features to deliver
customized ads without segmenting traffic

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Where on the ROAS curve are you?

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We can also see that
client has potential
for effective growth
of Conversion value
Understanding auction potential helps with realistic expectations
July results with
current settings
(0.78 ROAS)
July results with
new settings
(0.5 ROAS)
Illustrative example

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ROAS Curve of market leader who has nothing to gain by lowering ROAS goal
Validate if performance planner is your best planning tool
Check your curves and performance planner accuracy!
Not so much market leader

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The amount of inventory
YoY and seasonal search query
growth for retail categories
targeted by My Happy Clothes.
Key factors impacting forecast in Performance planner
Validation with
Machine Learning
Forecast engine does forward
& backward measurements to
validate the accuracy of
forecasts. It measures running
campaigns against their actual
performance, and uses
machine learning to tweak
forecasts based on those
accuracy results.
The demand for that inventory
The pricing or cost-per-click changes
based on Auction simulation data over the
last 7 to 10 days.
Signals from Google
Ad auctions
Seasonality, CTR,
competitors, landing page,
time of day etc for My Happy
Clothes’ campaigns targeted
region and industry (retail).

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What % of transactions we don’t see
because of tracking restrictions?

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User expectations for online privacy are changing,
and policies & platforms are evolving in parallel
Platform Changes
Browser restrictions on use of cookies
Mobile OS restrictions on use of device identifiers
Regulation
Increase in restrictions on use of personal data
and additional requirements around user consent
User Privacy
Rising user expectations on Privacy
impacting measurement ecosystem
NEW
NEW NEW

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App
Invest in a durable foundation essential for all
conversion modeling
Google Tag Manager
Global Site Tag
OR
Web
Google Analytics 4
Firebase SDK

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increase in reported
Search conversions
+5%
Adopt products built on top of the global site tag & Google
Tag Manager for enriched first party data
#
what? where? who?
Enhanced
Conversions
Enhanced
Attribution
Consent
Mode
Google
Analytics 4
Uses advertiser’s hashed
customer data to fill in gaps
due to browser changes
Improves conversion signals for
video and display inventory when
third party cookies aren’t
available
Adjust tag behavior and fill in
gaps in conversions due to
consent banners
Provides most complete picture
of behavior and conversions
across Web and App
CM360/DV360 only
Google Ads only
Google Ads, Google
Analytics, SA360,
CM360/DV360
Google Analytics only
Web advertisers in non-
sensitive categories with
customer data
Web Advertisers using
CM360/DV360
App or web advertisers in
the European Economic
Area (EEA)
App or web advertisers
using Google Analytics
increase in reported
YouTube conversions
+12%
lost ad click to
conversion journeys
recovered due to user
consent choices
>70%

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What segments do you use to adjust
conversion value of your transactions?

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Not all customers are equal in their business value after converting
A California-based bank
who is focused on LTV and
knows local Californians
spend twice as much over
time as those living
outside of California.
Before Value Rules, they
valued each customer
identically
A lead generation business
who knows mobile users
are worth on average $50
more than users
converting on other
devices, but can’t send
those on-the-fly when the
conversion tag fires
A financial services
provider who wants to
optimize towards LTV, and
knows that existing
customers with
brokerage accounts
invest more, so would like
to value those customers
twice as much
A retailer who is focused on
profit and wants to
optimize towards users
who are in-market for
running apparel, because
they know they are of
higher value to their
business
Geo location Google Audiences First-Party Audiences Devices
Transaction economy vs. customer view

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Until now we used audiences to optimise before transaction happened
Keep in mind:
Smart Bidding already uses signals like geo, device, and first-
party audience lists. If a user in one of those segments
converts better, and this is reflected in your reporting, Smart
Bidding already accounts for that.
Conversion value rules simply allow you to provide additional
value information that isn’t already reflected in your account
(for example, different margins for different devices or users,
or LTV considerations) and optimize in real time to those
values

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If you use Google Ads Conversion Adjustments, keep using it
Understand your segmented conversion values
Original value (rule applied): total original
value of conversions which then had a value
rule applied
Original value (no rule applied): total
recorded value of conversions that did not
have a value rule applied
Audience, Location, or Device: The net
adjustment when value rules were applied
After selecting the value rules adjustment segmentation, you will see the following
reporting on your campaigns page:

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Summary
1. Ask for yourselves if you know answers to these questions
2. Feel free to get inspired in finding solutions
3. Inspire others by sharing your solutions