Let me introduce myself right away so you won’t be tempted to think that this text was written by a hired copywriter or artificial intelligence 😁 My name is Yaro (my Linkedin profile), and I’ve been a certified Google Ad Expert since 2013. My area of interest is any paid advertising with a focus on Google, marketing data analysis, conversion rate optimization, growth marketing. I want to share with you my long-term observations on the myths that have grown densely in modern paid ads marketing, and I want to partially debunk these myths. So, let’s get started!

The statement above is more false than true. First of all, Google campaigns are far from being fully automated. Yes, you no longer need to carefully choose keywords and add negatives, do a bunch of a/b tests with ads, and manually adjust bids, as it was 5 years ago. But still, nowadays, without some basic things, a Google campaign won’t work even for a store with a perfect offer and no competitors.

Tracking

One of these things is properly configured tracking. It’s no secret that the basis of modern automated campaigns is machine learning algorithms, which allow you to automate many of the things I mentioned above that used to be done only manually. But machine learning algorithms work properly only when they are trained on a properly designed data set. You can’t just upload any data and hope that “the system will figure it out”. Such a properly constructed data set is what provides properly configured tracking.

Just 6 months ago, it could be automatically configured using some applications. Now there is a problem with this because new layers have been added: Enhanced conversations and Consent mode, which were not there before. But this is a topic for a separate conversation.

Next, “feeding” this data to the system correctly comes to the front of the list. Whether you know it or not, for 80% of businesses, simply adding a properly configured ‘Purchase’ goal as an optimization goal to your Google account will not be enough to get even slightly reasonable results. This is because (and I won’t be too original here) – businesses are all different, the number of products in stores is different, the history of accounts is different. Therefore, you always need an individual approach to each case. I would say that properly configured tracking and correct, timely “feeding” of the right data to the system is 40% of future success.

Product Feed

The second component, 30% of the recipe for success, is working with product feed. Although Google recommends launching all products at the same time, in fact, the Google architecture itself in the form of Asset Groups and Listing Groups is designed for a slightly different approach – for customizing product feeds. And it works really well! This part is not fully automated. But this is where the biggest opportunities for growth lie.

Assets

The last 30% is a work with image and text assets. They are not as game changing as you might think. But of course, to work effectively with assets, you need to know where, when, and in what combination they will appear.

At Adwisely, we actively use with all components of the overall recipe for success. It is clear that in some cases, you can do without complex optimization schemes and product feed segmentation to achieve acceptable results. But, first, this applies to only 10% of stores. And secondly, we are talking about acceptable results here, not the maximum possible results. And there is a difference, as you understand.

Before we dispel this myth, we should first come up with a common terminology to get rid of confusion in terms. The key question here is “what is competition and how does it manifest itself”? In general, the terminology has long been defined. Most people just don’t know it or don’t understand the difference.

Competition

So, there is competition, which is something that can increase the price of a targeted conversion. And there is overlapping, which can lead to traffic moving from one campaign to another without affecting the price of the target action.

Here’s a detailed Google reference on this topic. And it says the following directly:

“Assuming these campaigns are in the same account, …, the campaigns won’t compete to drive bids higher. Only one campaign will enter the auction to serve an ad.”

The key word here is the word “auction”. The fact is that the price for any action (impression, click, or conversion) is formed at the auction stage and only at this stage. Only here, only in the auction, can you get competition between different bids. But the trick is that the competition is between different advertisers, not between different campaigns of the same advertiser. In other words, although campaigns within the same account can interact with each other and overlap, only the best one gets into the auction! How the best one is determined is defined in the Google rules, where each campaign has a certain priority, plus Ad Rank is also taken into account.

Overlapping

Now, about overlapping campaigns within the same account. This is neither a conflict nor competition. As I wrote earlier, these are the wrong words in the context of this situation. Because one campaign cannot in any way raise the cost per click, impression, whatever, for another! Yes, there is interaction. And in most cases, it will manifest itself in the fact that Google will choose the best campaign that will go to the auction, with the best Ad Rank. This means that the total price for the result for the account will decrease in most cases. And this is true for the interaction of campaigns of any type. Once again, in other words: the price per result does not depend on the number of campaigns you have.

At the same time, it’s worth noting that in this case, it’s very likely that traffic and conversions will flow from one campaign to another. In this context, yes, the results of the notional Campaign 1 may drop significantly. But at the same time, the results of the new Campaign 2 will be excellent, and with them, the overall results for the account will be just as good. And I think that’s exactly the goal, isn’t it?