Anyone working in paid media knows the job never settles into routine and there is always a new surprise around the corner. Staying alert to the changes and getting ahead of them pays off. Here are some of the significant changes Google Ads made over recent months.
1. Cost per lead is rising almost everywhere
The Google Ads benchmark report published by WordStream shows a significant increase in cost per lead across 91% of sectors. While the overall average growth rate sits at 19%, arts and entertainment, travel and furniture saw increases of 134%, 69% and 54% respectively.
The figures suggest that high prices driven by inflation, together with weaker commercial search advertising, contributed to lower conversion rates and higher costs per lead.
2. New ad formats for automotive, finance and travel
Over the past two years several sectors have had to adjust their strategies constantly as supply chain problems, pandemic restrictions and economic turbulence kept affecting daily life. Some of the Google Ads changes felt like salt in the wound, but there were positives too, including several ad formats built for specific industries.
In March, Google introduced vehicle listing ads, letting dealerships showcase their new and used stock. Like Google local inventory ads, this new vehicle listing appears prominently at the top of the results page, highlighting the vehicle image, price, condition and location. Microsoft Advertising introduced a similar automotive format for local dealerships.
These new vehicle ads are managed much like Shopping ads and require a valid inventory feed submitted regularly and approved through Google Merchant Center. Previously, Merchant Center had a strict policy that banned most cars from the platform.
3. The end of expanded text ads
Every marketer takes pride in writing the perfect text ad. For 22 years advertisers created, tested and manually optimised their PPC ads on Google. Over time, though, Google introduced several new search ad formats. In 2016 it doubled the size of standard text ads with expanded text ads, and those grew again in 2018.
After years of transition, Google finally retired expanded text ads in June 2022, ending the format that had defined PPC advertising for years. In its place, Google's new default is the Responsive Search Ad, which lets the advertiser supply multiple pieces of copy that Google can combine into ads served for each individual search.
4. Smart Shopping and local campaigns
E-commerce advertisers know Shopping ads well. Google launched the Smart Shopping campaign type in 2018, letting businesses promote their Shopping ads across Search, Display and YouTube. With nothing more than a Merchant Center product feed, the reach of Google's quality placements across the web became instantly available to any small business. Google launched local campaigns in 2019 in the same spirit, letting local businesses promote their Business Profiles across Search, Maps, Gmail, Display and YouTube.
Both campaign types delivered significant return for small businesses on tight budgets and helped automate campaign management. Earlier this year, however, Google stopped letting advertisers create either type and began automatically upgrading them to its newest campaign type, Performance Max.
Performance Max has some unique features and offers even more reach through new placements such as the Google Discovery feed. For many brands that is cause for celebration. With more reach, more channels and more automation, plenty of advertisers with lower costs per acquisition can significantly increase conversions.
Not every advertiser is happy about losing Smart Shopping or local campaigns, though. Google's fully automated Performance Max campaigns need enough data and enough budget to run smoothly. They can run on any budget, but advertisers get better results with larger ones, from around R$200 a day. Some will welcome the new inventory included in Performance Max as extra reach, while others will regret the additional and uncontrollable costs.
5. Similar audiences
Google introduced similar audiences almost a decade ago to extend the reach of advertisers' remarketing lists. After the success of lookalike audiences at rival Facebook, Google doubled down on its own. Since then they have been a foundation of Google Ads campaigns for many advertisers.
New data protection standards, however, hit audience solutions at both Google and Facebook hard. In November, Google announced plans to move from similar audiences to a stronger and more durable audience solution over the following year. Advertisers had roughly six months left to use similar audiences in their campaigns. From May 2023 they can no longer be added to new campaigns or ad groups, and shortly afterwards, in August 2023, they will be removed from all campaign targeting.
Google strongly encourages advertisers to refresh their audiences ahead of the migration and to rely on their own data when building new ones, such as customer match data. Google also recommends smart bidding strategies and optimised targeting to improve campaign performance further. Advertisers looking to extend reach beyond first-party data may benefit from Google's audience expansion once similar audiences are phased out.
6. New insight into how competitors advertise in the results page
In 2021, Google announced it would expand its advertiser verification programme to give users more advertising transparency, both inside and outside the results page. Out of that effort, Google launched My Ad Center in October, letting searchers see how advertisers are reaching them.
My Ad Center includes a powerful new tool called advertiser pages. On these pages, users can view every other ad an advertiser has published in the last 30 days.
Click the three dots next to an ad to open that company's advertiser page. From there you can see verified advertiser details such as the official company name and address, and you can also click "See more ads from this advertiser".
That shows every ad the advertiser has run over the last 30 days, and you can filter the results between text, display and video ads. The tool was designed to give Google users transparency, but it can also help existing advertisers keep an eye on their competitors.
7. New ad assets for company names and logos
Companies often need help standing out in crowded results pages and defending their brand names against competitors and other advertisers trying to trade on them. Verified advertisers can now use new business name and logo ad assets in their results and receive some protection from Google.
These features are available only to verified advertisers. The new ad assets are also a visually appealing addition to your ads and help improve performance.
Google believes its policies around these company name and logo features will reduce identity theft and fraud. Advertisers have to complete a verification process with Google to use them. They can also only use the feature to display exact matches to the legal company name or domain name, logos must be displayed prominently, and verified advertiser IDs have to match.
8. New voice-over feature for video ads
Thanks to the rapid growth of TikTok and its accessible editing tools, Google introduced new features for video ad content this summer. Among the improvements, advertisers can now add voice-over to their existing YouTube video ads with no additional editing. Google has said that fewer than half of its video ads contain narration.
Advertisers can choose from eight different voices, four male and four female, supply a script, then preview and edit the voice-over directly inside Google Ads. No extra video editing software or video experience required.
9. Audio ads now support YouTube and smart speakers
As streaming content and other over-the-top services become the norm for most consumers, many advertisers are starting to shift their strategies and budgets. Google announced enthusiastically earlier this year that it would meet the demand from the growing number of music and podcast listeners on YouTube with a new audio advertising campaign.
This new video campaign subtype was built to help advertisers reach users while they listen to music or podcasts, where highly visual video content usually needs rethinking.
10. The broad match beta test
So there has been a mix of positive and negative changes. We saved the last one for you.
In October, Google introduced a limited beta that lets advertisers turn on broad keyword targeting at campaign level. Given that broad match keywords and smart bidding are always in demand, this is no surprise, but even as a beta, seeing options without match types is a little unnerving.
Is there a future without keyword match types? We do not know yet. Google does confirm that keyword match type is not going anywhere for now.
Conclusion
Although the economy and the changes to the results page cost us a great deal, and we lost some eye-catching features in Google Ads this year, there were undoubtedly some welcome additions to PPC campaigns. We are still working out what Google has in store for next year, but we can safely bet on more change. The one certainty is that with these features you have plenty of chances to succeed.
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