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Getting Started with Google Ads for E-commerce

It’s that time of year when PPC advertisers start feeling the heat of the busy shopping season.

So we’ve put together a comprehensive guide that will help you understand all aspects of running ecommerce campaigns with Google Ads, from choosing the right campaign type to creating campaigns and ads, as well as best practices for optimizing and managing them effectively.

Before we dive in, let’s take a step back and understand why Google Ads is a popular choice for many PPC advertisers.

Why use Google Ads for your ecommerce businesses?

Google Ads has long been a go-to for ecommerce brands and for good reason. It gives you access to potential customers across Google Search, Shopping, YouTube, and a massive network of partner sites.

And now, with placements showing up in things like AI Overviews, the competition for attention is getting even tougher.

What sets Google Ads apart is how targeted you can get. You’re not just casting a wide net; you’re reaching people based on what they’re searching for, what they care about, and how they behave online. That means your ads show up for the people most likely to buy.

It’s also flexible. You only pay when someone clicks, and you can adjust your spend based on what’s working and what your goals are.

In addition, Google Ads provides analytics that allows you to track the performance of your campaigns and see what’s working and what’s not. This data can be used to optimize your campaigns and improve results over time.

But while Google Ads makes it easy to get started, scaling campaigns profitably, especially across large product catalogs and dynamic markets, requires more than Google’s native tools. That’s where Optmyzr comes in, giving ecommerce advertisers the automation, feed control, and budget intelligence that Google doesn’t provide out of the box.

Running campaigns is just the start. Staying profitable, especially during busy seasons, takes a smart setup. You’ll need to choose the right campaign types, manage budgets with intention, and build in ways to keep reaching the right audience, even after they’ve clicked.

Read on to learn about it, from campaign types to budget strategies, audience targeting, and more.

Types of Google Ads campaigns for various objectives

In Google’s vast ad ecosystem, there’s a campaign type for nearly every channel. From Search and Shopping to YouTube, Gmail, and beyond.

Each has its place. But in ecommerce, it’s not just about picking the right type. It’s about managing them at scale. When you’re juggling hundreds of SKUs, multiple feeds, and dynamic budgets, it can quickly become overwhelming to manage.

Let’s walk through the main campaign types and what they offer, then we’ll zoom in on how to use them strategically for ecommerce growth.

Search Campaigns

Search campaigns are the most common type of Google Ad campaigns. They appear in Google’s search results when users look for specific keywords.

Advantage: Search campaigns are a great way to target audiences who are already interested in your offer, as they are actively searching for it. However, as your product catalog grows, so does the number of ad groups and keywords you have to manage.

Display Campaigns

Display campaigns allow you to show your ads across the Google Display Network on websites and apps.

Advantage: Display campaigns are an excellent way to reach a wider audience and build brand awareness. But they are less intent-driven and harder to control at the conversion level.

Shopping Campaigns

Shopping campaigns allow you to show your product listings in the Google Shopping tab and other search results.

Advantage: Shopping campaigns are a great way to drive traffic to your website (ecommerce store) and increase sales. It is important to have a consistent feed hygiene and repeatable processes when you’re managing SKUs, inventory, and product data at scale.

Local Campaigns

Local campaigns allow you to promote your business in Google Search results and Google Maps.

Advantage: Local campaigns are a great way to reach potential customers looking for businesses like yours in their area. However, they may not be as relevant for online only ecommerce businesses.

Performance Max Campaigns

PMax campaigns use machine learning and automation to optimize your ads for all of Google’s channels, including Search, Display, YouTube, and more.

Advantage: Performance Max campaigns are a good option for businesses that want to reach a broad audience and achieve business goals with a single campaign.

Discovery Campaigns

Discovery campaigns allow you to show your ads in the Google Discover feed. It’s the personalized content that users can see on Google Search, the Google app, and YouTube.

Advantage: Discovery campaigns are great for reaching audiences who are already interested in topics related to your business.

There’s more to Google Ads, but for now, we’ll get into campaign types specific to ecommerce: Search, Standard Shopping, and Performance Max.

Search Campaigns

Google Ads search campaigns involve bidding on specific keywords and displaying text ads on Google’s search engine results pages (SERP). Advertisers can tailor these ads to include additional information like prices, reviews, and images through ad extensions.

Search campaigns are often where ecommerce brands start. They capture high-intent shoppers right when they’re searching. But as your product catalog grows, so does the complexity. Managing keywords, budgets, and performance at scale takes more than a basic setup.

Where Do Search Ads Appear

 

Source: Google Ads

Google Shopping: If you have a Google Merchant Center account, you can show your product listings in the Google Shopping tab and other search results.

Source: Google Ads

💡Pro Tip: Search ads perform best when you’re showing up for the right queries and skipping the ones that waste budget. Optmyzr’s Keyword Lasso helps you spot high-converting search terms that aren’t yet keywords in your account, so you can add them quickly and grow coverage where it counts.

 

 

Ad Formats for Search Ads

Search Ads Bidding Strategies

There are a variety of bidding strategies that you can use for your search campaigns. The best bidding strategy for you will depend on your ecommerce business goals and budget.

Some of the most common bidding strategies include:

Standard Shopping Campaigns

Standard Shopping campaigns give you more hands-on control over how your products show up across Google. You can manage everything from product groupings to bids and negative keywords—making it easier to shape performance around your ecommerce goals.

They help you promote product listings across the Shopping tab, Search results, and more, driving traffic to your store and supporting sales growth.

Where Do Shopping Ads Appear

 

Source: Marcel Digital

💡Pro tip: When you're juggling thousands of SKUs across multiple channels, having a clean, well-organized feed is essential. The Shopping Campaign Builder makes it easy to turn your product catalog into tightly grouped, performance-ready campaigns.

 

 

Ad Formats for Standard Shopping Campaigns

Standard Shopping campaigns include Shopping Ads and Local Inventory Ads.

⚠️Quick fix: Feed issues can silently tank performance. Shopping Feed Audits flag missing data, misgrouped items, or missing negatives and Feed Alerts notify you when approvals or prices go off-track.

 

Read More: The Complete Guide to Product Feed Optimization

Standard Shopping Campaign Bidding Strategies

Standard Shopping campaigns allow for automated strategies like Target ROAS and Maximize Clicks, as well as manual CPC.

Performance Max (PMax) Campaigns

The buzz about Performance Max campaigns is all about its ability to use machine learning to optimize your ads for all of Google’s channels, including Search, Display, YouTube, and more. This campaign type uses robust automation across various aspects of the campaign, including bidding, budget optimization, audiences, creatives, and attribution.

Where Do PMax Ads Appear

Performance Max ads can appear in the following places and also automatically adapt to new inventory and formats:

Ad Formats for Performance Max Campaigns

PMax offers a wide array of ad formats, including:

Performance Max Campaigns Bidding Strategies

Performance Max uses automated bidding strategies like Maximize Conversion Value and Maximize Conversions. And with automated bidding, Google automatically sets your bids to get as many conversions as possible within your budget.

This is where tools like Optmyzr’s Shopping Analysis come in. You can break down PMax performance by product attributes like brand, category, or custom labels, giving you insights Google doesn’t show natively. You’ll know which segments are pulling their weight and which ones might be eating spend.

 

Additional Features of Performance Max Campaigns

PMax has some additional features that can be helpful for both lead generation and ecommerce campaigns, including

Speaking of leads, it’s important to know how to use Google Ads campaigns to generate leads and drive sales for ecommerce businesses. While lead generation and sales are crucial parts of any ecommerce strategy, there is a difference between the two.

By understanding the different campaign types and targeting options available, you can create campaigns tailored to your specific business goals.

Let’s look at how you can approach Google Ads differently for lead generation and sales in ecommerce campaigns.

When creating a Google Ads campaign, it is essential to first define your goals.

Are you looking to generate leads, drive sales, or increase brand awareness? Once you know your goals, you can choose the right campaign type and targeting options.

When leveraging Google Ads, the strategic goals include:

Lead generation attracts and converts new potential audiences and prospects into someone who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service. A lead is a person who has shown some interest in what you have to offer but hasn’t yet become a customer.

Sales is the process of converting leads into paying customers. It involves building relationships with leads, understanding their needs, and persuading them to buy from you.

Google Ads can be used for both lead generation and sales. However, there are some key differences between the two types of campaigns.

Aspect

Lead generation

Sales

Goal

Generate leads by collecting contact information from potential customers.

Convert leads into paying customers.

Target audience

People who have shown some interest in your company's product or service.

People who are already interested in your product or service.

Ad copy

Focuses on the benefits of your product or service and how it can solve the customer's problem.

Focuses on the value of your product or service and why the customer should buy it now.

Call to action

Typically, it includes a call to action to sign up for a free trial, download an ebook, or schedule a consultation.

Typically, it includes a call to action to buy your product or service.

 

Now, let’s get into how you can optimize the three main ecommerce campaign types (Search, Shopping, and PMax) differently for lead generation goals.

Now that we understand what options you have in terms of Google Ads campaigns for ecommerce, let’s look at how to create the three types of Google Ads ecommerce campaigns - Search, Standard Shopping, and Performance Max.

How to Create Search Campaigns

Here is a step-by-step process of creating search campaigns in Google Ads:

Once you’ve created your search campaign, it will go through a review process. Once your campaign is approved, it will start running, and your ads will appear in search results.

How to create Standard Shopping Campaigns

The steps to create a campaign remain the same until choosing the type of campaign. In this case, you select “Shopping” as your campaign type.

From there on, the steps are as follows:

After completing these steps, your Google Ads Shopping campaign will be set up and ready to go live. Review and monitor the campaign’s performance regularly for any necessary adjustments.

How to create a Performance Max campaign

Once you’ve created your Performance Max campaign, it will first go through a review process. After your campaign is approved, it will start running, and your ads will appear in search results and other Google channels, such as Display, YouTube, and Maps.

Remember, creating a campaign is just the beginning. Running successful ecommerce campaigns is all about testing, monitoring, and making optimizations based on your results. Once you have a good understanding of what’s working and what’s not, you can start to implement more advanced strategies like remarketing.

Remarketing for Google Ads Ecommerce Campaigns

Remarketing is a powerful way to reach people who have visited your website or interacted with your brand. Today, however,, it’s less about “following” users around and more about using your data intentionally to stay relevant.

With third-party cookies disappearing and AI playing a bigger role in ad targeting, your remarketing strategy needs to lean on first-party data, thoughtful segmentation, and creative that’s built to convert.

How to use remarketing strategically in ecommerce

By using remarketing to target people who have already shown an interest in your products, you can increase your chances of converting them into customers.

In addition to remarketing, there are several other best practices that you can follow to improve your Google Ads ecommerce campaigns. We have curated five tips from expert PPCers in the industry, and some valuable articles and user guides by Optmyzr.

5 Best Practices For Successful Ecommerce Google Ads Campaigns

Showcase your best products

Put the spotlight on your top-selling products. They’re the winners for a reason. Give them catchy titles, descriptions, and eye-catching images or videos to attract more buyers. Allocate a good chunk of your budget to these rock stars.

Learn more about it here.

💡Pro Tip: Stop wasting time treating every product the same. The Smart Product Labeler automatically sorts your catalog into performance tiers so you can double down on proven winners, give promising products the push they need, and cut wasted spend on underperformers with ease.

 

 

Set smart bids and budgets

Figure out your bidding strategy based on your profit margins and conversion rates. Smart bidding can be a game-changer, but keep an eye on it to ensure it works for your specific goals.

Check out Freya Laskowski’s advice on our recent blog here.

💡Pro Tip: With Optmyzr’s Optimize Budgets tools, you don’t have to keep shuffling money around manually. They automatically shift budget toward the campaigns and accounts that are performing best so your top performers never get starved, and your spend stays aligned with your goals

 

 

Keep out the irrelevant clicks

Use negative keywords to filter out searches that don’t match what you’re selling. Regularly review search terms to keep your ads from showing up where they shouldn’t.

Read Nicholas Woodward’s article on 5 effective strategies for negative keywords and how to use them in ecommerce PPC campaigns.

Create an optimization schedule

Optimization is the key to any campaign’s success, but it can be difficult to keep track of your campaigns and ensure they perform optimally, especially if you’re operating on a larger scale. That’s where a Google Ads optimization schedule can help. It helps you track your progress and make data-driven decisions.

Here’s a great article by Andrew Lolk on Google Ads optimization schedule.

💡Pro Tip: Optmyzr’s Account Blueprints let you set a recurring workflow, automating optimization tasks across campaigns so you never miss a step

 

Track your performance to optimize for success

Tracking your ecommerce website’s performance is essential for optimizing your Google Ads campaigns. And setting up conversion code is the key to unlocking valuable insights into your website’s behavior.

Check out Hukum Negi’s tip on using Google Ads conversion code.

We have another great resource for you to help you through this year’s ecommerce campaign management. Check out this PPC Town Hall episode on how to stand out in eCommerce advertising featuring Duane Brown and Andrew Goodman, who have been running top-quality eCommerce campaigns for years and helped brands exponentially grow revenue and smash prior financial records.

Streamline Your Ecommerce Google Ads with Optmyzr

Running ecommerce Google Ads can be a handful. It demands constant fine-tuning and attention to ensure your campaigns are at their prime. But there’s no need to stress. With Optmyzr, managing your ecommerce campaigns is a lot easier and more efficient.

Here are some of Optmyzr’s top tools and features to support you at every stage of your ecommerce campaign management journey.

Tools for creation

Shopping Campaign Builder 2.0

Structure your active shopping campaigns by creating multiple levels of product partitions through a single click. You can create hundreds of ad groups with thousands of product groups in a matter of minutes.

Shopping Campaign Builder 2.0 makes building Shopping or PMax campaigns easy based on performance. For example, you can group products with similar ROAS performance and set more targeted bids and budgets, leading to improved performance overall. And it helps you manage your campaigns more effectively by making it easy and quick to identify and address any low-performing campaigns.

Know more here.

Restructure Shopping Campaigns Tool

With this tool, you can restructure your shopping campaign groups created through Shopping Campaign Builder 2.0. You can also restructure campaigns not part of a campaign group created through Optmyzr.

Know more here.

 

Tools for performance analysis and optimization

Shopping Analysis

The Shopping Campaign Analysis tool from Google Ads is a powerful tool for getting insights into your Shopping and Performance Max campaigns. It allows you to aggregate data from your shopping feed by performance metrics and attributes, regardless of your campaign structure.

Know more here.

Shopping Feed Audits

These audits help you identify opportunities for enhancing your shopping and PMax Retail campaign structure and organization. For example, you can:

Know more here.

 

Alerts for monitoring

Know all about alerts here.

 

Tools for managing bids

Shopping Bidder Tool

The Shopping Bidder lets you make bulk bid changes for product groups based on performance with a single click. The tool enables you to set bids for thousands of product groups in a matter of minutes. New bids can be uploaded to AdWords with a single click.

Know more here.

Shopping Attribute Bidder

Manage your shopping bids in a more flexible way by aggregating and reviewing data from the attributes in your product feed. For example, you could change bids for product groups advertising the same product but with different attributes like size and color.

Know more here.

Stay on top of your Google Ads ecommerce campaigns with Optmyzr

Managing successful ecommerce Google Ad campaigns is an ongoing process that requires constant experimentation, testing, data analysis, and strategic thinking. It’s also important to be adaptable and willing to refine your campaigns based on changing market conditions and business goals.

And Optmyzr, with its array of solutions, helpful resources, and support team, is always there to assist you.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

How To Run Cross-Platform Ad Campaigns Without Losing Visibility or Control

Running campaigns across Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, and others feels less like marketing and more like managing a dozen open browser tabs.

Each platform has its own metrics, dashboards, and annoyances. The result? Marketers spend more time managing platforms than improving performance.

Optmyzr fixes that. It brings every account into one place so you can see what’s working, reallocate budget quickly, and share clean, cross-platform reports.

This guide walks through seven ways Optmyzr simplifies multi-platform advertising, so you can do less switching and more strategizing.

For a complete walkthrough of how Optmyzr simplifies cross-platform advertising, you can watch our latest Learn With Optmyzr session below:

 

7 ways Optmyzr simplifies cross-platform advertising

1. Simplify account management with unified portfolios

One of the biggest challenges in cross-platform advertising is simply keeping track of everything. It’s quite common for account managers to have to switch between multiple platforms to understand what’s going on with their campaigns.

Optmyzr solves this by giving you a Portfolio View on the All Accounts Dashboard.

 

Instead of logging into multiple platforms, you can see both aggregate metrics across accounts and platform-specific details in one place.

Additionally, you can even customize your view by adding performance metrics that matter to your goals, such as the conversion rate, ROAS, custom conversions, or cost.

Let’s take an example. Say you have a client running brand campaigns on both Google and Microsoft. Instead of switching between platforms or juggling multiple spreadsheets, you can group these accounts into a single portfolio in Optmyzr. Let’s call it the “Brand Campaign” portfolio.

Now the portfolio view will give you a unified view of all the campaign data across both platforms.

This setup is quite useful for account managers who spend a lot of time toggling between multiple interfaces.

And the best part? If you also run competitor or seasonal campaigns, you can create separate portfolios or budget groups for those, too. This gives you full control and flexibility across your entire PPC strategy.

2. Get clearer insights with a unified view of performance

Once your accounts are grouped under a single portfolio, the next step is to make that view as actionable as possible.

Like we discussed before, Optmyzr allows you to tailor your portfolio view with key performance metrics that align with your business goals. This way, you’re looking at insights that truly matter to you.

Now, from here you can drill down into performance by campaign, keyword, or search term across all the accounts in the portfolio. You can easily find out which campaigns are driving the most conversions or see which search terms are wasting spend.

For example, in one portfolio, 90% of the budget is spent on Google Ads, while the remaining amount is allocated to Microsoft Ads. However, surprisingly, you find that Microsoft contributes nearly 44% of the total conversions, almost as much as Google.

This kind of cross-platform insight enables you to rethink your media mix and intelligently reallocate budget where it drives the most impact.

 

To make these insights more actionable, Optmyzr even provides platform and channel-level distribution charts that show you where your spend is going— Search vs Display, Google vs Microsoft, and how it aligns with your impressions, clicks, and conversions.

3. Turn raw data into actionable answers with AI-powered insights

Managing cross-platform insights can be overwhelming. But, the good news is that Optmyzr’s AI assistant makes it quite easy to extract key insights from your available data.

You can ask natural-language questions like ‘Which account is the top performer in this portfolio’, and the AI assistant will evaluate key metrics across all linked accounts and then highlight the platform driving the strongest results.

 

These AI-driven insights are great if you’re preparing for client meetings, helping you turn raw data into strategic and actionable conversations.

4. Stay on track with smart budget monitoring and alerts

After setting up your portfolios, Optmyzr allows you to set target budgets for entire portfolios or even for specific campaign groups like brand, competitor, or seasonal campaigns. This way you can track spend in a way that matches your client or business objectives.

The Budget Dashboard also shows you the pacing status so you know if you’re under or overspending. For example, if you’ve spent only 25% of a $27,000 monthly budget by the end of the month, Optmyzr highlights that you’re underpacing and at risk of leaving money on the table.

If you want to stay proactive with your budget and how it’s being spent, a good practice is to set up automated alerts that are triggered when your spend hits critical thresholds such as 50%, 75%, 90%, or 100% of your target budget.

 

This way you’re never caught off guard, whether you’re spending too slowly or burning through your budget too quickly.

To make things easier, you can choose to receive your alerts over email, Slack, or Microsoft Teams so they appear where your team is already communicating.

5. Optimize spend with strategic budget reallocation

If you want a better way to reallocate budgets for maximum performance, the Budget Optimization tool allows you to create budget groups to organize campaigns by type, such as brand, competitor, or seasonal. This structure makes it easy to track pacing for each group individually instead of lumping all campaigns together.

You can then see how each group is performing against its target budget, with clear pacing indicators. If one group is underspending or overspending, you can quickly make adjustments to daily budgets.

If you have strict budget caps, you can configure the campaigns to pause automatically once they hit their limit and restart at the next cycle so you’re fully in control of your spend.

And when it comes to reallocation, you have the flexibility to manually adjust budgets using your own logic. Or you can let the tool suggest changes based on specific goals like clicks, conversions, or ROAS.

6. Uncover opportunities with cross-platform search term analysis

Knowing which search terms are driving conversions and which ones are draining budget is one of the most important parts in managing your PPC campaigns. The Search Term N-Grams tool in Optmyzr allows you to easily analyze performance across all connected accounts and campaigns.

The tool lets you group terms into 1-word, 2-word, or longer phrases so you can visualize their impact in an interactive word cloud. The largest words represent the highest cost while the darkest ones show the lowest ROAS.

 

When you want to dig deeper, simply click on a term to see a full cross-platform breakdown of cost and ROAS by campaign and account. This level of granularity helps you identify where a term is profitable and where it isn’t, so you can make smarter optimization decisions.

To make insights even more actionable, the tool also provides an AI-powered summary highlighting what’s working and what’s not, alongside a downloadable table view for detailed audits and reports

7. Save time with consolidated multi-account reporting

Now, if you want to get a consolidated report of what’s happening across the platforms and accounts you manage, Optmyzr’s multi-account reports are exactly what you need.

It pulls the data from Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Facebook, Amazon, and Analytics to give you a single, unified view.

The account selectors in the tool allow you to choose which accounts, campaigns, or labels to include. It can give you a high-level report of all campaigns across platforms or even something more granular, like a breakdown of brand vs. competitor campaigns within a single account.

You also have the specialized, multi-account widgets that aggregate spend, conversions, ROAS, and other critical metrics across every account you select.

For agencies and in-house teams managing dozens of accounts, this is a game-changer. It saves time, reduces reporting errors, and most importantly—provides clients and stakeholders with a clear, cross-platform picture of performance.

 

Simplify how you work across ad platforms with Optmyzr

Running PPC across multiple platforms doesn’t have to feel like juggling in the dark. With Optmyzr, you get a single, central hub to see what’s really happening—whether it’s budgets, performance insights, or reports.

Instead of reacting to problems after they happen, Optmyzr helps you stay ahead. You can spot when budgets are drifting, shift spend toward channels that are really delivering, uncover search terms that drive true value, and share clean reports that make sense to clients and teams. It allows you to make smarter decisions with less busywork.

Sign up for Optmyzr’s free 14-day trial and explore how you can streamline cross-platform PPC management.


New to Optmyzr? Here's What You Should Test In Your Free Trial Period (+ Free Checklist)

When you’re moving from one PPC platform to another, the trial period is your best chance to see if the tool is truly worth it. Along with the features, you want proof that the tool can save you time, cut wasted spend, and make account management easier.

That’s why this guide focuses on the real questions PPC managers struggle with every day, like “Why did performance change?”, “Am I paying for irrelevant clicks?”, or “Are my ads really working?” Each section shows how Optmyzr helps you answer those questions.

👉 If you want the full set of self-serve onboarding modules (with step-by-step instructions), you can find them all here.

Get quick wins with the All Accounts Dashboard

When you’re managing ads across Google, Microsoft, Facebook, or Amazon, the hardest part is keeping track of everything. Instead of juggling logins and reports, the All Accounts Dashboard consolidates all your data into a single view.

You’ll see performance trends at a glance, spot red flags quickly, and get nudges on where to take action.

The dashboard lets you star your most important accounts, filter by networks or devices, and pick your key metrics. You can even save a default or team view so every login starts with the data that matters most.

👉 Try this: Connect your accounts, star your top three, and save a custom view comparing “last 7 days vs. previous 7.”

 

Catch problems early with alerts

One of the toughest parts of PPC is that you often don’t know something’s wrong until it’s too late. Optmyzr’s alerts keep you one step ahead by flagging issues the moment they happen.

“How do I spot sudden spikes/drops before they waste my budget?”

Performance can shift overnight; clicks or conversions dip, or impressions spike because of irrelevant traffic. The Anomaly Detector Script monitors your accounts hourly and alerts you right away, no coding required.

 

👉 Try this: Set up anomaly detection for clicks, impressions, and conversions. Check your inbox for alerts the next time something unusual happens.

“How do I stay on top of KPIs without checking reports all day?”

Manually tracking CPC, ROAS, or budgets across platforms is nearly impossible. Setting daily KPI alerts in Optmyzr helps compare your metrics against client-set thresholds or automatically benchmarks them against the past 8 weeks.

 

👉 Try this: Create a daily alert for CPC/ROAS in one campaign. Let Optmyzr calculate the baseline and see how it compares to your client’s target.

“Can I get alerts tailored to my account’s weak spots?”

Yes, the Rule Engine lets you build custom alerts for what matters most, like disapproved ads, low-Quality Score keywords, or campaigns losing impression share.

And now, Optmyzr’s AI explains each pre-built strategy in plain language, so you understand exactly why a rule exists and when to use it.

 

👉 Try this: Use the Rule Engine to create an alert for any ad disapproved in the past 7 days. You’ll never miss one again.

 

💡Also Read: 8 Rule Engine Strategies: How Optmyzr Customers Bypass Google Ads Limitations

Stay in control with budget monitoring

Few things erode trust with clients faster than budget mismanagement.

Overspend too early, and campaigns burn out before the month ends. Underspend, and you leave valuable opportunities on the table.

Optmyzr’s budget monitoring tools ensure these questions don’t eat up your precious hours:

“How do I know if I’m overspending or underspending on ads?”

In the All Accounts Dashboard, you can set monthly budgets and enable pacing alerts. Connect them to Slack or Teams so you’ll get notified instantly instead of checking dashboards all day.

👉 Try this: Add a monthly budget target for one account and switch on pacing alerts. Watch how quickly overspending or underspending gets flagged.

“How can I predict if I’ll run out of budget before the month ends?”

Most managers only realize budgets are off-track at the very end of the month.

The Spend Projection tool gives you foresight with min, max, and projected spend, adjusted for seasonality and historical trends.

 

👉 Try this: Open Spend Projection for one campaign. Check if you’re projected to overspend or underspend halfway through the month.

“What’s the best way to reallocate budget between campaigns?”

Some campaigns always hit limits while others underspend. The Optimize Budgets tools help you rebalance. At the single-account level, you’ll see where impression share is being lost.

At the multi-account level, you can group budgets (e.g., brand vs. generic across Google, Microsoft, and Facebook) and shift spend where it performs best.

👉 Try this: Run Optimize Budgets for one account. Move budget from a low-performing campaign to one that’s losing impression share.

“How do I stop campaigns from overspending automatically?”

Even with pacing, things can slip. That’s why budget scripts work as safety nets.

The moment a campaign goes over the budget you’ve set, the Pause When Budget Exceeds script pauses it automatically. Similarly, the Reach Target Monthly Spend script adjusts daily spend so you stay close to your monthly target, avoiding both underspending and overspending.

👉 Try this: Add the “Pause When Budget Exceeds” script to a campaign with a strict monthly cap. Then add “Reach Target Monthly Budget” to one where spend is uneven. You’ll see how one prevents overshoot and the other keeps pacing balanced.

 

 

See why results changed and how to fix them

Once you’ve got control over budgets and alerts, the next question is:

“How do I actually improve my ad performance?”

Most PPC managers spend hours reviewing reports, trying to determine why results have shifted, where spend is being wasted, or which ads are actually working.

Optmyzr’s insights and optimization tools are designed to cut that work down to minutes. Here are some questions that our PPC automation software will help you answer:

1.“Why did my performance change, and what caused it?”

One of the most challenging aspects of PPC management is explaining sudden dips or spikes.

Did conversions drop because of device traffic, budget pacing, or something deeper?

Optmyzr helps you with a simple two-step workflow:

With our Performance Comparison tool, you can line up two sets of performance data side by side👇

 

For example, compare “last week” to the “week before” across the same campaigns.

You can filter by networks (Google Search, Display, YouTube, Search Partners) and devices (desktop, mobile, tablet).

This way, you’re able to isolate where exactly the performance changed.

Was the drop in traffic coming from mobile devices? Did YouTube spend increase while conversions dipped on Search? Did one campaign suddenly lose impression share?

When your numbers go up or down, whether it’s clicks, conversions, or costs, it’s not always clear why. That’s where the PPC investigator can trace the reason with two simple views:

Cause Chart: a big-picture map

The Cause Chart shows you how different metrics (like impressions, clicks, conversions) connect to each other.

If conversions dropped, was it because you got fewer clicks? Or because the same clicks converted less often? It helps you see that chain of events.

 

👉 Try this: Pick a metric that changed (for example, conversions last week vs. the week before). Open the Cause Chart and follow the path. You’ll see whether the dip came from traffic slowing down, costs going up, or conversion rates falling.

 

This way, you don’t just see what went wrong, you understand the sequence that led to it.

Root Cause Analysis: zooming in on the culprit

Once you know the chain of events, the Root Cause Analysis zooms in further. It tells you exactly which campaign, keyword, or ad group caused the change.

It even highlights the biggest “movers,” both positive and negative.

 

👉 Try this: After spotting a drop in the Cause Chart, click into Root Cause Analysis. You’ll see the top three contributors. For example, maybe one keyword lost 100% of its clicks, or one ad group suddenly drove more conversions.

 

Takeaway: Use the Cause Chart to see the story of what happened, and Root Cause Analysis to find the characters responsible. Together, they give you clear answers when performance changes.

 

2. “Why am I paying for irrelevant clicks?”

Every advertiser has wasted money on clicks that will never convert.

Sometimes it’s just one word in a search query, like “free” or “jobs,” that keeps triggering ads but brings in no real customers.

Catching these early means saving budget for clicks that matter.

Negative Keyword Finder

Negative keyword finder scans your search terms and finds keywords that don’t perform.

For example, if “free” keeps showing up in search queries but never leads to conversions, the tool will recommend adding “free” as a negative keyword.

 

👉 Try this: Run the Negative Keyword Finder, review the list, and add 2–3 irrelevant words as negatives. Upload them directly into Google Ads with one click.

 

Search Term N-Grams

Instead of combing through hundreds of search terms, N-Grams breaks queries into chunks (single words, two-word phrases, etc.) and shows you which ones drive clicks but don’t convert.

You’ll also see terms you should be targeting because they’re performing well.

 

👉 Try this: Look at the N-Grams word cloud for your top campaigns. Add one poor-performing term as a negative, and shortlist one strong phrase as a keyword idea.

 

Keyword Lasso

On the flip side, some queries convert really well but aren’t part of your keyword list yet.

Keyword Lasso spots these and lets you add them as exact keywords so you can control bids more effectively.

 

👉 Try this: Run the tool on one campaign and add at least one converting query as a keyword.

 

Takeaway: Together, these tools make keyword management simple:

Do this even once during your trial, and you’ll see a cleaner account with less wasted spend and more budget flowing to what works.

3. “Am I bidding the right amount?”

Bidding is one of the trickiest parts of PPC.

Finding the sweet spot manually is exhausting. Optmyzr gives you two quick ways to test smarter bidding in your trial:

First Page Bridger

Sometimes, good keywords with strong Quality Scores don’t even make it to page one because the bid is slightly too low. First Page Bridger finds those keywords and tells you the minimum bid increase needed to push them onto page one.

 

👉 Try this: Run First Page Bridger on one campaign. Pick a few high-quality keywords just below page one and let the tool suggest the right bid bump. Apply the change with one click.

 

Conversion Grabber

Other times, you have keywords that convert but don’t show often as they’re losing impression share. Conversion Grabber identifies these converting keywords with low impression share and suggests small bid increases to boost visibility.

 

👉 Try this: Run Conversion Grabber, filter for top suggestions, and increase bids for one converting keyword.

 

Adjust targets for automated bidding

If you’re using Google’s automated bidding (Target CPA or Target ROAS), you can’t manually tweak keyword bids. Instead, Optmyzr helps you optimize target CPA or ROAS at the campaign or ad group level to regain control.

 

👉 Try this: Pick one campaign on Target CPA, lower the CPA slightly in Optmyzr, and see how impression share responds.

4. “Are my ads really working?”

It’s easy to launch ads, but harder to know which headlines and descriptions work.

Some waste budget, others drive the clicks and conversions you want. Optmyzr helps you spot the difference fast.

Ad text optimization

The Ad text optimization tool breaks your Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) into their individual parts: headlines, descriptions, and even full ads to show you which ones are performing well.

You can edit any asset by clicking the edit icon; saving marks it as “modified,” but nothing is pushed to Google Ads until you review and finalize.

The tool also suggests AI-powered headlines, descriptions, and full ad drafts. You can apply these suggestions directly or customize them.

 

✨ Remember: AI-generated content is meant to support your decisions; always review before applying.

👉 Try this: Run Ad Text Optimization for one campaign. Look at which headlines and descriptions are getting the most impressions or best ratings, and note which ones are weak.

 

Ad A/B testing

A/B Testing for ads shows you which ads in an ad group perform best based on clicks or conversions, and lets you pause underperformers automatically.

 

👉 Try this: Run A/B Testing on one ad group with multiple ads. Pause one weak ad and create a new variation using suggestions from your stronger ads.

 

Get more from Performance Max (PMax)

PMax can drive great results, but only if you can see what’s happening and act fast.

Here are the exact questions Optmyzr helps you answer, plus what to try in your trial:

“Where is my PMax spend going (Shopping vs Display vs Video)?”

Use the PMax Channel Distribution widget from the Account Dashboard to see cost and ROAS by channel at a glance, then drill into a full table by campaign.

If “Other” is high (Search/Discovery/Gmail/Maps), you’ll know to review exclusions.


👉 Try this: Open Channel Distribution, click View Full Table, and flag any campaign overspending on Display for follow-up (e.g., placement cleanup).

“How do I get alerts when products are disapproved or top products start slipping?”

Create Feed-level alerts for % of products disapproved so you catch feed issues early.

Also set Product-level alerts when a top performer (e.g., top 10% by ROAS) falls into a low bucket (e.g., bottom 50%) over your chosen period. Both can be set in bulk across accounts.


👉 Try this: In Create KPI Alert, set Level = Feed for disapprovals; then another alert with Level = Products to catch drops from top→bottom performers.

“Is my feed hurting performance?”

Run a Merchant Feed Audit to get a letter grade and a one-page checklist of issues (titles/descriptions, length, missing attributes, disapproval reasons). Schedule it weekly or monthly so fixes don’t slip.

 

💡Learn More: The Complete Guide to Product Feed Optimization in Google Merchant Center

“How can I build and manage PMax campaigns faster?”

Instead of building campaigns manually, the Shopping Campaign Builder lets you create PMax structures in minutes.

 

You can segment by ROAS buckets, product types, or labels and keep them automatically synced with your feed so you never advertise out-of-stock products.

 

👉 Try this: Launch a ROAS-based structure with thresholds that match your goals; turn on the sync so products move buckets automatically.

“How do I see PMax search terms?”

Generate the PMax Search Terms Script (no coding). It sends PMax search terms to a spreadsheet so you can track KPIs per term, spot winners, and negate irrelevant traffic.

👉 Try this: Install the script for one account, review the sheet weekly, and add obvious negatives/audience tweaks from low-quality terms.

“How do I cut wasted spend in PMax?”

Optmyzr has tools to trim waste:

👉 Try this: Run the URL Checker and fix any broken pages it flags before they waste clicks.

Put it all together with a quick checklist

By now, you’ve seen how to:

That’s a lot to cover during a trial. To make it easier, we’ve created a Quick Optimization Checklist you can use to stay on track. It includes:

👉Download the checklist here

Need a hand? Our team is here to help!

That’s it, you now have the key steps to make the most of your Optmyzr trial.

From monitoring and alerts to budgets, insights, and Performance Max, you’ve got the tools to spot issues faster and take smarter action.

If you’d like a guided walkthrough, you can book a demo with our team, and we’ll be happy to show you the exact steps in your own account.

And if you ever get stuck, just reach out to us at support@optmyzr.com. We’re always here to help!

Avoid These 6 Common (and Costly) Mistakes When Migrating To A New PPC Platform

Migrating PPC platforms looks simple until you’re in the middle of it.

Lose account ownership, miss a legacy script, or skip a backup, and suddenly you’re facing broken tracking, underperforming campaigns, and frustrated stakeholders.

What should have been an upgrade turns into weeks of damage control.

In this guide, we’ll show you the most common (and costly) migration mistakes and how to avoid them.

We’ll also share how Optmyzr helps advertisers and agencies safeguard data, preserve automations, and keep campaigns running smoothly so you can switch platforms with confidence.

 

Mistake #1: Failing to secure account ownership before migrating

One of the biggest risks when switching PPC platforms is relying on vendor-owned MCCs (manager accounts) or business accounts. If your old vendor controls account ownership, you could lose access to valuable historical data, face gaps in reporting, or encounter compliance issues.

Beware of agencies that restrict account access.

If you decide to cancel, some may not return your accounts, leaving you without your data or campaign history. Always ensure you maintain full ownership so you stay in control no matter who manages your ads.

The Fix:

Before starting a migration, it’s critical to:

How Optmyzr helps

Optmyzr connects directly through your own Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or Facebook Ads manager account login.

This ensures from day one that you own the account, not a third party.

And because Optmyzr’s connection is secure and limited to your credentials, only you can make changes to your campaigns.

Our onboarding team guides advertisers through the verification of ownership and permissions, ensuring migration starts from a position of control.

Mistake #2: Forgetting to audit and remove legacy scripts & rules

When migrating to a new PPC management platform, many advertisers overlook the scripts, rules, and alerts left behind by their previous vendor.

These “ghost automations” not only clutter the account, but they can also actively conflict with new workflows, causing duplicate conversions, incorrect budget pacing, and even pausing campaigns.

The Fix:

To ensure a clean platform transition, it’s essential to:

How Optmyzr helps

Instead of relying on outdated scripts or leftover rules from your previous vendor, Optmyzr gives you full control with the Rule Engine. Before migrating, we recommend writing down the logic of your existing rules. Our Customer Success team can then help you rebuild them cleanly in the Rule Engine.

Here’s what the RE covers:

Automation Schedules further helps you quickly access automation settings, monitor performance, and even jump directly into the main tool if you need to make manual changes right away.

Also Read: Why Use Optmyzr When You Have Google Ads Editor, Rules, and Scripts?

Mistake #3: Not backing up historical data and custom dashboards

Historical performance data is the backbone of smart optimization. Yet during migration, many advertisers assume their new platform will handle all data transfers seamlessly.

The risk? Incomplete imports, missing dashboards, or lost attribution models make it harder to benchmark performance, optimize effectively, or reassure stakeholders that continuity has been preserved.

The Fix:

Even if your new platform offers import features, it’s essential to:

How Optmyzr helps

Optmyzr makes it simple to preserve and re-create the insights you depend on:

With AI-generated Reports, you can even go beyond templates, creating custom narratives, visuals, or summaries from a simple prompt.

That’s how Optmyzr ensures your history, insights, and reporting consistency are not lost in migration.

 

Mistake #4: Skipping feature mapping when choosing a new platform

Not all PPC management platforms are created equal. A common mistake during migration is selecting a tool without first confirming that it supports critical workflows, from automation and bulk edits to reporting and cross-account management.

Teams then discover missing capabilities after migrating, which leads to workflow breakdowns, wasted time recreating processes, and costly performance setbacks.

The Fix:

To avoid surprises, make sure to:

How Optmyzr Helps

One of the biggest fears in a migration is discovering after the switch that the new platform doesn’t support a workflow your team depends on. That’s where Optmyzr stands apart.

Not only does Optmyzr cover critical workflows like automation, bulk edits, advanced reporting, and cross-account management, but we also maintain a comprehensive Help Center with summaries of every supported tool, organized by category.

At any time, you can check exactly which workflows Optmyzr supports and how they work across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Amazon Ads, and Meta Ads.

We also treat customer feature requests as a core part of our product roadmap.

If there’s a capability you rely on that isn’t yet in Optmyzr, our product team takes your request seriously.

Many of our most impactful features came from advertisers and agencies like you.

So instead of being locked into a rigid tool, you get a platform that evolves with your needs, ensuring you’re never stuck without the features that drive performance.

 

 

Mistake #5: Underestimating training & knowledge transfer needs

Even the most powerful PPC platform won’t deliver results if the team managing it doesn’t feel confident using it. A common mistake during migration is assuming teams will “figure it out as they go.”

In reality, unfamiliar terminology, new workflows, and different reporting formats can slow adoption, create errors, and cause unnecessary performance drops in the early weeks.

The Fix:

Successful migrations build in structured knowledge transfer:

💡Optmyzr Tip: If you’re moving from the Google Ads UI to a software platform, try mimicking your existing workflows and rules in the new tool. Optmyzr’s Rule Engine makes it easy to automate tedious Google tasks, saving time and reducing errors.

 

How Optmyzr helps

Optmyzr is built with customer enablement at its core. Beyond the platform itself, we provide extensive resources to ensure your team transitions smoothly and confidently:

With these resources, advertisers not only migrate to a new PPC tool, but they also gain a partner invested in their success.

Mistake #6: Ignoring early performance data post-migration

After migration, some advertisers take a “set it and forget it” approach, assuming campaigns will stabilize on their own. The reality is that even small differences in tracking, automation, or reporting between platforms can lead to unexpected performance shifts.

Waiting too long to react means wasted budget, lost conversions, and missed opportunities to reassure stakeholders that the transition is under control.

The Fix:

A strong migration plan should include active monitoring:

How Optmyzr Helps:

Optmyzr’s Anomaly Alerts (Auto Alerts) give advertisers peace of mind by monitoring key metrics automatically across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Facebook Ads.

Without any setup, Optmyzr alerts you when spend, clicks, or impressions deviate significantly from expected trends; whether it’s a sudden spike or an alarming drop.

Combine anomaly alerts with Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to set custom thresholds, guardrails, and recurring checks.

Add extra layers of protection with the Anomaly Detector Script and run the PPC Account Audit to find deeper issues that may be holding performance back.

That’s the kind of proactive monitoring you need in the first 30 days post-migration.

It will help you catch disruptions early, keep stakeholders reassured, and protect performance continuity.

 

Migrate to Optmyzr without losing data or performance

Switching PPC platforms shouldn’t mean risking your campaigns, losing valuable data, or sacrificing performance.

The truth is, most migration mistakes are avoidable with the right strategy and the right partner.

At Optmyzr, we’ve designed our tools and support to ensure a seamless transition for advertisers and agencies. From preserving historical data to maintaining performance, our platform makes moving effortless.

Ready to experience it yourself? Try a fully functional 14-day free trial today! (no credit card needed)

FAQs

1. What is PPC platform migration?

A. PPC platform migration is the process of moving your paid search and advertising campaigns (Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.) from one management tool or vendor to another. It includes transferring account ownership, historical data, tracking setups, automations, and reporting dashboards to ensure continuity.

2. Why is PPC migration risky?

A. Without proper planning, migrations can lead to lost performance history, broken tracking, duplicate or missing automations, campaign downtime, and reporting gaps. These disruptions can harm ROI and undermine client or stakeholder trust.

3. How do I migrate PPC accounts safely?

A. The safest approach is to follow a structured migration plan:

4. What should I back up before switching PPC platforms?

A. Export campaign performance history, conversion data, audience segments, and any custom dashboards or reports. Even if your new platform imports some of this automatically, having your own backup ensures nothing is lost.

5. What happens to my automations, scripts, and rules?

A. Automations tied to your old vendor may not transfer. Audit existing scripts and rules, retire what’s no longer relevant, and rebuild workflows in the new platform. Tools like Optmyzr’s Rule Engine make this process faster and more reliable.

6. How do agencies manage PPC migrations for multiple clients?

A. Agencies need a standardized process: ownership audits, clear communication with clients, consistent data backups, and training resources for account managers. A checklist and migration framework help keep multi-account transitions organized.

7. How long does a PPC migration take?

A. Timelines vary based on the size and complexity of your accounts, but most migrations can be completed within a few weeks. Running parallel campaigns during this time ensures performance stability.

8. What support does Optmyzr provide during PPC migrations?

A. Optmyzr helps advertisers and agencies migrate with confidence by offering account ownership audits, anomaly alerts for early performance monitoring, automation rebuilding with Rule Engine, and extensive onboarding resources (Help Center, Learn with Optmyzr series, Automation Layering Masterclass, and a responsive support team).

How to Conduct A Google Ads Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide (+ Checklist)

Even the most carefully planned PPC campaigns can go off the rails when not monitored closely. You can be spending big on ads, and they may even be racking up clicks. But you’ll soon find they’re delivering little to no actual value.

That’s where a Google Ads audit comes in handy. It’s like a health checkup for your account. One that allows you to identify what’s working, spot inefficiencies, and maximize every dollar spent.

Without a clear auditing strategy, you run the risk of missing key optimization opportunities, poor campaign performance, and worse—wasted budgets.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step audit checklist to help you take control of your campaigns and make them work smarter.

When should you perform an audit?

A Google Ads audit is not just about fixing what’s broken. PPC audits are key to identifying growth opportunities and just making sure that your campaigns are working as intended. That being said, here are some of the most common scenarios where an audit is necessary.

During routine health checks

A routine, systematic audit of your account can help catch hidden inefficiencies, ensure your budget spends are in check, and prevent any major performance issues. A good practice is to schedule these checks depending on account size and campaign complexity.

For instance, an enterprise-level account may do well with quick weekly health checks, monthly deep performance reviews, and quarterly structural audits.

Here are some key elements to review during a routine audit:

In one of our PPC Town Hall episodes, Melissa Mackey from Compound Growth Marketing recommends auditing your accounts at least every quarter to prevent small mistakes from escalating into costly problems.

 

When you take over a new account

If you’ve recently started managing a new account, you may want to consider conducting a comprehensive account review to deep dive into historical performance data. This can help assess the account’s current health and identify quick wins. Focus on:

When you see a performance decline

Some audits are reactive—focused, on-emergency reviews triggered by sudden dips in performance. For example, when conversion rates drop by 50% overnight, you’ll want to:

But here’s the challenge: by the time you notice the drop manually, you’ve already lost valuable spend.

💡 Pro Tip: Automate anomaly detection with Optmyzr’s Anomaly Alerts. These built-in alerts scan your Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Facebook Ads accounts daily, and flag sudden spikes or drops in cost, clicks, impressions—or even feed disapprovals—before they spiral.

 

During campaign restructuring

If you’ve recently overhauled your campaign structure or targeting, an audit helps ensure the changes are doing what they’re supposed to—driving performance without overlap or waste. Be sure to:

For automated campaign types like Performance Max, don’t stop at structure. Audits should also evaluate the quality of foundational signals such as:

Modern campaigns run on inputs. An audit is how you make sure you’re feeding the machine the right ones.

When making seasonal adjustments

Audits during seasonal campaigns ensure aspects like messaging, budget allocation, and targeting are optimized for the season. During seasonal adjustments you’ll need to:

Here’s a step-by-step checklist for performing a Google Ads audit

If your account has structural issues, it can impact ad performance, reporting, costs, and CTR. For instance, if the same high-intent keywords are used in multiple campaigns, you may end up with a higher CPC since you’re essentially bidding against yourself. To avoid these misses, consider auditing two aspects of your account structure.

1. Assess your account structure

Effective campaign management starts with a well-organized account. During an audit, focus on both naming conventions and segmentation to ensure everything is aligned with performance goals.

Campaign naming conventions

Campaign segmentation

2. Conduct a thorough performance review

During a performance review, the goal is to spot underperforming campaigns and figure out how you can improve them. For this, you can:

Analyze key metrics to spot trends and identify areas for improvement

1. Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

CTR is a metric that measures the percentage of people who clicked on your ad after seeing it.

A low CTR means your targeting needs improvement or that your ads are not resonating with your audience. But you also want to be cautious of a high CTR with low conversions since you may inadvertently be advertising on brand terms or attracting irrelevant clicks.

2. Cost Per Click (CPC)

CPC is the cost you pay per click and is determined by the bidding strategy you choose (manual, automatic, or smart).

Achieving a higher quality score can help you secure cheaper CPCs. A high CPC might mean you’re getting pulled into auctions you don’t intend to be pulled into.

Conversely, lower CPCs might mean:

👉Remember: Quality Score based on expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience impacts both CPC and Ad Rank. Improving these elements can help reduce CPCs and improve your auction position.

 

3. Cost Per Action (CPA)

CPA is the average cost you’re willing to pay for an action the user takes after seeing your ad. This could include a purchase, registration, or signup.

A low CPA with high conversions indicates that your campaign is effective. You can consider scaling your budgets to increase conversions. On the other hand, a high CPA with low conversions means you’re spending too much. Review targeting settings, ad quality, ad messaging, and landing page experience so you’re able to resonate better with your audience.

4. Return on Ad Spend

ROAS is a measure of profitability. It compares the ROI you receive from your campaigns against how much you’re spending on them.

If you notice a low ROAS despite high conversions, it could signal that the audience you’re attracting isn’t valuable enough. You may want to refine your targeting settings to attract high-value customers to increase your conversion value. On the other hand, although a high ROAS is good, it doesn’t always mean better results.

For instance, a high ROAS with low conversion volume can mean you’re not reaching a wide enough audience even though your campaign is cost-effective. Similarly, a high ROAS with high spend means you’re not generating additional revenue. It may be a good idea to think of ways to make your campaign more sustainable.

Identify trends over time

According to Melissa, it’s also a good practice to set up alerts so you’re immediately notified if there are any sudden changes in your campaign performance.

“One way to catch issues early is to use tools like Optmyzr or scripts to set alerts. You want to know immediately if your CPCs, conversions, or impressions suddenly change.”

In such cases, if you want to dig deeper, Optmyzr’s PPC Investigator tells you why your account saw a sudden increase/decrease in clicks or conversions. There are two parts to the tool. One is the cause chart which essentially highlights the metric that impacted the performance.

PPC Investigator

 

The next part is the Root Cause Analysis which tells you the elements in your account (keywords, ad groups, campaigns) that contributed to the observed change.

Root Cause Analysis

 

Here’s a quick walkthrough of how this feature works for a better understanding.

 

5. Impression Share

Don’t overlook Impression Share (IS) and its derivatives:

Tracking these helps diagnose whether performance issues are due to budget limitations or competitive shortcomings.

3. Fine-tune your keyword strategy

Your keyword strategy should evolve with your audience’s behavior and search trends. Regularly auditing and refining keywords is key to staying competitive and relevant.

Monitor keyword alignment with search intent

Ensure your keywords reflect intent-driven phrasing—whether users are ready to buy, comparing options, or just researching. For example:

Label queries by intent using custom labels like “high_intent”, “comparison”, or “top_product”. These labels help segment your keyword data for better performance analysis and strategy refinement.

Negative keyword management

Avoid irrelevant or low-converting traffic by:

💡Pro Tip: Optmyzr’s Rule Engine (Search Terms Scope) can automatically detect and flag underperforming or irrelevant search queries for exclusion—saving time and preserving budget.

 

Match type audits

Balance match types to maximize reach while maintaining relevance:

Eliminate duplicate keywords

Wasted budgets and ad fatigue often stem from overlapping or duplicate keywords across ad groups or campaigns.

💡 Pro Tip: Optmyzr’s Keyword De-Duper checks within or across campaigns for duplicate keywords. It gives you an automatic recommendation of which ones to remove based on performance data.

 

4. Audit your ad creatives for better engagement and conversions

Strong ad creatives are essential for driving better engagement and increased conversions.

Navah Hopkins, one of our former in-house PPC experts also suggests pinning assets to specific spots in RSAs so you can control how they’re displayed in the final ad.

Unless you’re A/B testing landing pages, there’s no need to run multiple ads in the same ad group anymore. This is because RSAs (as well as PMax) have built-in testing in the format.

Instead, focus on pinning specific assets to certain positions and compare the performance of AI-generated creative with human-created content.

- Navah Hopkins, Former-Evangelist, Optmyzr

 

Read: How to Choose the Best PPC Audit Tool: 7 Top Picks for 2025

5. Monitor your landing pages

A strong landing page experience is essential for driving conversions and maintaining ad performance. During your audit, evaluate whether your pages are helping or hurting your results.

Check page health and functionality

💡Pro Tip: Use Optmyzr’s landing page URL checker to scan and verify the integrity of the landing pages in your Google Ads account.


Improve UX with behavior insights

Use heatmapping tools to monitor user interactions. Track where users click, how far they scroll, and where they drop off. These insights help pinpoint friction points that aren’t obvious through performance metrics alone.

Test and personalize

For high-traffic campaigns or top-performing audiences:

A consistent and frictionless post-click experience is as critical as the pre-click strategy. Optimize both to maximize results.

6. Fine-tune your budget allocation and bidding strategies.

Assess budget allocation

Review bidding strategies

Read more: How Google Ads bidding strategies impact performance

7. Track key performance metrics with the right tools.

Make sure your Google Ads and GA4 are properly linked so you can track and analyze the entire customer journey, all the way from ad clicks to conversions. If you want to get a closer look at conversions, bounce rates, and other KPIs, we recommend using the following tools.

1. Rule Engine
Define ‘if-and-then’ conditions using Rule Engine to automate campaign management tasks like pausing underperforming ads or allocating more budget to high-converting ones. This saves time and ensures your campaigns are consistently optimized.

2. Budget pacing tool
Avoid overspending and optimize your daily budgets with the budget pacing tool. It efficiently manages your campaign budget throughout the day or month so you don’t exhaust your budgets too early or miss out on important opportunities.

8. Check your audience settings

Validate your remarketing lists and audience settings so you’re targeting the right audience with your campaigns.

9. Validate scripts, recommendations, and automation logic

PPC automations are a game-changer for scaling audits and managing campaigns efficiently if used thoughtfully. Regularly reviewing and optimizing scripts, automated rules, and recommendations ensures they align with your goals and don’t create inefficiencies.

What comes after your PPC audit?

Once you’ve successfully ticked off the items in this checklist, it’s time to use your findings to refine your campaigns. Here’s how you can do this:

1. Prioritize your improvements

To start with, divide your insights according to their importance and urgency and assign a priority level to each of them. A good way to do this is to use the ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease) prioritization framework. This will help you differentiate your quick wins from long-term actions by evaluating and ranking your ideas. To do this, you need to:

Once you have the scores, see which actions have the highest score and prioritize implementing those first since they are likely to have the most impact.

If you find that some recommendations have a high impact score but lower overall ICE score, it could indicate a difficulty with implementation or a lack of confidence. In such cases you might want to consider going ahead with recommendations that are relatively easy to implement despite low confidence. You can test such ideas and measure their impact for better decision-making.

2. Create a roadmap for your post audit actions

After you’ve finalized your priorities, you’ll need to create a detailed roadmap to manage your implementation process. This would include:

3. Monitor the progress

Implementation is one part of the post-audit process. The other is to closely monitor the impact of the changes you’ve implemented. For this you’ll need to:

“For our monthly audits, we use a checklist that our team has created to go through the audit. We used Optmyzr’s PPC Audits once a month and work through changes on that list from the most impactful first.”

-Amy McClain-Ponder

Streamline your Google Ads audits with Optmyzr.

Regular audits are critical to the health of your Google Ads campaigns. They identify inefficiencies and missed opportunities that may be hiding in plain sight. Not only does this lead to better campaign performance and budget allocation, but it also ensures your ads are driving a higher ROI.

Tools like Optmyzr offer a comprehensive suite of features that take the complexity out of auditing. It takes care of the repetitive tasks while you focus on what’s important—getting the best out of your ad campaigns.

If you’re curious to know more about how Optmyzr can help you optimize your Google Ad campaigns, sign up for a free 14-day trial. Or you can even talk to one of our experts for a consultation call.


Google Shopping: 6 Ways to Structure Campaigns (+Best Practices)

Sales and profit are the ultimate goals of ecommerce and retail advertising. For brands and agencies pursuing these objectives through Google Ads, Shopping campaigns offer greater control, structure, and reporting visibility than Performance Max.

While Google continues its shift toward Performance Max, many advertisers still find Standard Shopping campaigns essential—particularly those who prioritize control, transparency, and margin-aware strategies.

Whether you’re switching back from Performance Max or building from scratch, your Shopping campaigns’ structure significantly impacts your ability to get the most out of your ad spend. Cobbling together products with varying profit margins, levels of demand, and supply chain constraints is a recipe for budget under-optimization.

Let’s go through:

The basics of campaign structure for Google Shopping ads

Shopping campaigns in Google Ads feature a four-tier hierarchy of elements:

Each level allows you to specify and modify certain parameters, which I’ll explain in the sections below.

Campaign level

Campaigns cover settings that apply across ad groups, product groups, and products. These include:

If you’re using smart bidding strategies like Target ROAS (tROAS) or Target CPA (tCPA), it’s important to set realistic performance goals. These strategies rely on high-quality conversion data and sufficient volume to optimize bids effectively. Without enough signals, even the most sophisticated bidding can fall short.

Ad group level

Google allows you to create multiple ad groups in Shopping campaigns. At this level, negative keywords (which filter out irrelevant queries, intents, and audiences) are crucial.

Negative keywords are one of the biggest advantages of Shopping campaigns. With Performance Max, your options are limited to account-level negative keywords, campaign-level brand exclusions, and a cumbersome form to manually request campaign-level negative keywords.

This limits your ability to sculpt traffic, requiring you to absorb more irrelevant visitors in order to get incremental conversions, affecting overall campaign profitability if your budgets are constrained.

To avoid waste, it’s critical to regularly audit your campaigns for irrelevant queries or expensive terms that aren’t driving performance. Keeping your negative keyword lists fresh helps your Shopping ads stay aligned with buyer intent. Tools like Optmyzr’s Rule Engine, specifically the Search Terms scope, can automate this process, helping you spot and exclude underperforming queries by analyzing aggregated performance across match types and keywords within each ad group.

Product group level

Product groups are collections of individual products that sit within an ad group. There are multiple ways to group products into categories and subcategories. The two broad approaches use:

Product grouping lets you exercise granular control over bids, keep campaigns profitable, and prioritize your most relevant and in-demand products.

By creating custom labels and using them to build product groups, you can align your bids and budgets more closely with your business goals, whether that’s promoting high-margin items, seasonal collections, or clearance stock.

Some advertisers also implement dynamic grouping strategies, where products are automatically moved between groups based on real-time performance or inventory levels. This helps ensure that campaigns remain agile and focused on what’s working.

Shopping campaign priority levels

You can assign your Shopping campaigns one of three priority levels: high, medium, and low. These priority levels govern which campaign enters the auction for a query and allow you to create multiple campaigns for the same products.

Campaign priority is a powerful tool for query sculpting—controlling which campaign wins a particular search query and ensuring the right message or bid is applied at each funnel stage.

Use priorities to build a tiered campaign strategy:

This setup allows you to allocate budget and bid intensity based on purchase intent, optimizing efficiency across the full customer journey.

6 ways advertisers set up their Google Shopping campaigns

There’s no right or wrong way to set up a Shopping campaign; only what works for your account’s budget, business goals, and available resources.

Here are six common tactics to consider when building your next ecommerce or retail campaign in Google Ads:

Single campaign, single ad and product group

Suitable for brands selling a single product line with similar pricing, such as flavored sparkling water

💡Pro Tip: Split traffic using search term reports—labeling queries as low-intent vs. high-intent, to improve efficiency, even for smaller catalogs. This allows tighter control over spend and more relevant ad targeting

Single campaign, multiple ad and product groups

2 or 3 campaigns using campaign priorities

Multiple campaigns, multiple ad and product groups with query sculpting

Automation tools are essential here—especially for maintaining negative keyword lists and adjusting campaign priorities dynamically to keep your sculpting strategy aligned with current inventory and performance

Performance-based approach

Margin-informed bidding—where smart bidding strategies are guided by live profitability data—helps ensure you’re not just chasing conversions but prioritizing the ones that actually drive returns. This approach is especially valuable for ROI-focused structures where every ad dollar needs to pull its weight

Groups of individual products

Read more: 3 Google Shopping Campaign Examples You Can Copy Now

Best practices for building Google Shopping campaigns

Now that you’ve chosen a structure for your Shopping campaign, these industry-standard tactics will help you shape traffic and keep campaigns organized:

Before you get started, remember: A best practice is only ‘best’ if it serves you. For the greatest results, use the theory behind these tactics but adapt them to your specific circumstances.

Product grouping

Organize your product groups based on what works for your business. You might use feed attributes (such as brand and color) to target queries that include those elements. Other effective strategies include grouping products by category or subcategory, bundling bestsellers to move inventory faster, or consolidating items with similar margins to support your bottom line.

For even more precision, build product groups using custom labels tied to dynamic data like profit margin, seasonality, and stock levels.

Tools like Shopping Campaign Management can automate this process—whether you’re setting up Standard or PMax campaigns—by syncing to your Merchant Center and recommending structure based on performance or feed attributes. This ensures your campaign structure always reflects real-time business needs.

Organize your product feed based on performance and build smarter campaigns:

Merchant feed audit and optimization

Product feeds are the lifeblood of your Shopping campaigns. Organized feeds make money, while incomplete or messy ones cost money.

It helps to periodically review your feed for issues, such as:

Clean up your source file to keep your campaigns error-free. Since feeds directly impact what gets shown (and how well it performs), ongoing audits are quite essential.

Optmyzr’s Shopping Feed Audit tool helps you stay ahead of common issues by automatically scanning your Merchant Center feed and flagging missed opportunities like disapproved products, missing data, and weak product group structures. The built-in dashboard widget gives you a quick view of feed health, so you can catch problems early.

For deeper monitoring at scale, the Rule Engine lets you set up proactive alerts and automated actions tied to feed quality, disapprovals, or underperforming groups—ensuring your campaigns stay efficient and aligned with your business goals.

Budget allocation and bid strategy

Managing your money well is critical in all forms of advertising, but particularly when selling physical goods on a comparison shopping platform like Google Ads.

Negative keyword management

Adding unwanted or irrelevant search terms to the negative keyword list for an ad group prevents all the associated products from showing up for those searches. Remember that negative keywords use the same match types as positive ones (broad, phrase, exact), so use the correct format for the match type you want to prohibit.

To keep your campaigns efficient and your spend clean, make it a habit to review search queries regularly. This helps you catch expensive or irrelevant terms that may be slipping through. Update your negative keyword lists accordingly and refresh your SKAGs (Single Keyword Ad Groups) to reflect evolving trends and product performance.

Conversion tracking

If the product feed is the beating heart of a Shopping campaign, then conversion tracking is its mind. It’s critical that you choose the right conversion actions (both micro-conversions, like cart additions, and final conversions, like purchases) and that you track them correctly.

Without these in place, your account will register and learn from incomplete or inaccurate data, causing it to optimize in the wrong direction for the wrong outcomes. Using an algorithmic layer like Smart Bidding will amplify these unwanted consequences by several orders of magnitude.

That’s why it’s essential to validate your tracking setup end-to-end. Regularly audit for pixel accuracy, attribution delays, and consent-mode consistency to ensure that Smart Bidding has a clean, reliable foundation to optimize from. Even small gaps in data capture can derail campaign performance.

Audience tracking

Use this setting if you’d like to target specific audiences, such as remarketing lists of people who’ve visited your website before. Audience tracking will then let you show up for searches from people who’ve already shown some level of interest in your brand or products.

To improve bidding precision, segment your audiences by customer lifecycle stage—from new visitors to cart abandoners to repeat purchasers. This allows you to assign more appropriate bids based on where users are in their journey.

Also take advantage of dynamic remarketing in Shopping, which pulls in product-level data to show users the exact items they viewed or left in their cart—boosting relevancy and increasing the chance of conversion.

Read more: 12 Best Practices to Optimize Google Shopping Campaigns

Faster, easier, error-free shopping campaigns with Optmyzr

Choosing the right campaign structure is important, but it’s still only one part of running a solid Google Ads shopping program. Maintaining a healthy feed, filtering out low-quality queries, and keeping campaigns synced with inventory are just as important to success.

Keeping up with the flux in your accounts and feeds can get overwhelming. That’s without factoring in multiple accounts and feeds, and additional campaign types and platforms to manage.

Optmyzr gives you full control over your Shopping campaigns. Automate maintenance and monitoring tasks with freedom and flexibility, while enjoying the full visibility and total control that ad platforms are taking away from you.

To see how we can support your advertising goals and business needs, speak to an Optmyzr expert or start a 14-day free trial.

People also ask

Q. What’s the best structure for a small product catalog?

A. For smaller catalogs, a single campaign with one or a few ad and product groups is usually sufficient. You can simplify setup while still exercising control by using search term reports to segment traffic by intent level—helping you tailor bids for low- vs. high-intent searches. Even small catalogs benefit from this layered approach to maintain efficiency and relevance.

Q. Can I still use Shopping Campaigns alongside PMax?

A. Yes. While Google is moving toward Performance Max, Standard Shopping campaigns remain valuable, especially for advertisers who prioritize manual control, budget segmentation, and negative keyword management. Tools like Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Management support both formats, allowing you to keep them in sync and maintain a unified strategy.

Q. How do I keep my shopping structure up to date as my inventory changes?

A. The key is automation. Manually shifting products between campaigns based on performance or inventory changes is time-consuming and error-prone. Tools like Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Management allow you to automatically restructure campaigns, sync with your Merchant Center, and dynamically adjust product groups as conditions evolve.

Q. What are some common feed issues that hurt Shopping Campaign performance?

A. Poor product feed quality is a major performance killer. Common issues include:

With Optmyzr’s Shopping Feed Audit, you can scan your Merchant Center for these problems and stay ahead of potential disruptions.

Q. How do campaign priority settings impact performance?

A. Campaign priority levels (high, medium, low) determine which campaign serves for a given query when the same products appear in multiple campaigns. This enables intent-based bidding strategies, where you bid lower on broad, high-funnel traffic (high priority) and more aggressively on bottom-funnel, product-specific searches (low priority). It’s also essential for query sculpting, a tactic that directs search traffic to the most relevant campaigns using negative keywords and priorities together.

These PPC Monitoring Tools Help You Catch Issues Early (2025 Guide)

Regular monitoring is crucial after you launch any new PPC campaign. It’s an ongoing process that helps you quickly identify and address campaign performance issues before they cost you budget or customers.

However, PPC campaigns have lots of moving parts (ads, bids, keywords, impressions, etc.) that can make monitoring a nuanced and time-consuming process. So, choosing a PPC monitoring tool that simplifies that process is important.

PPC monitoring tools help you track and analyze your campaign performance quickly and easily. The best monitoring tools go beyond the basics and tell you exactly what led to a performance change (like an increase or decrease in certain KPIs). They offer deeper analysis, detailed insights, and simplified reporting to help you understand campaign performance.

They also notify you of changes to your most important metrics and save you time by automating tedious tasks. This lets you identify and focus on what matters most to improve your campaign performance and make the necessary adjustments.

In this article, you’ll learn:

What should you look for in a PPC monitoring tool?

There are so many PPC monitoring tools available catering to different levels of expertise, campaign complexity, and budget constraints. So, choosing the right monitoring tool requires careful consideration.

We believe there are five factors to consider when choosing the right monitoring tool. They are:

Criteria

Description

Ease of use

The tool should have a user-friendly interface that guides you through the analysis process step-by-step. It should present data clearly to help you make quick decisions and spot issues (like a drop in conversions, underperforming ads, or landing page problems) that might negatively impact your campaigns.

Analytics capabilities

The tool should analyze KPI deviations (e.g., CTR, CPC, CPA, and ROAS). Additionally, competitor analysis is a vital feature, providing insights into your competitors' strategies. The tool should help you identify who is bidding on your keywords, brand name, and product names, as well as detect new competitors and monitor brands that have stopped competing on your search terms.

Account/campaign troubleshooting capabilities

The tool should help you understand exactly what led to a specific performance change, whether positive or negative. This allows you to uncover the root causes of any deviations, helping you correct course.

Alerts customization

The tool should allow you to configure alert thresholds according to your specific needs (for example, a 20% drop in CTR) so that you receive relevant and actionable data without being overwhelmed by unnecessary notifications. It should also support sending alerts through multiple channels where you and your team spend the most time.

Customized reporting capabilities

The tool should enable you to create easy-to-read reports with various templates, formats, and visualizations that align with your budget, campaign goals, and the needs of your stakeholders.

The best PPC monitoring tools on the market

Considering the factors listed above (on the condition that the tool satisfies at least four out of the five criteria), we’ve analyzed eight tools, including their key features and publicly available user feedback:

The listed tools offer these common features:

Optmyzr

Optmyzr homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn, and Amazon Ads

Pricing: From $209/month ($25K spend, up to 25 accounts), with a 14-day free trial

Rating: 4.6/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

Optmyzr is an award-winning PPC management software solution that gives paid media marketers the tools they need for auditing, optimization, reporting, and automation. It is built for accounts of any size, diversity, or complexity.

Optmyzr’s key features:

Watch how Optmyzr’s monitoring tools make the day-to-day job of every advertiser easier:

What do users think of Optmyzr?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Skai

Skai PPC homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn Ads

Pricing: On request

Rating: 4.0/5 on G2 and 4.3/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

Skai is an omnichannel platform performance marketers use to gather insights, streamline execution, and measure holistically across walled garden media.

Skai’s key features:

What do users think of Skai?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Read: How Skai compares to Optmyzr

TrueClicks

TrueClicks homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google and Microsoft Ads

Pricing: From $208/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: 4.6/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

TrueClicks is a cloud-based marketing solution for businesses to create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns on a unified portal.

TrueClicks’s key features:

Integrates with analytics tools like Looker Studio, Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Power BI, and Tableau for advanced data analysis.

What do users think of TrueClicks?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Read: How TrueClicks compares to Optmyzr

NinjaCat

NinjaCat homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta Ads, Amazon Ads, and more

Pricing: On request

Rating: 4.1/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

NinjaCat is a digital marketing performance management platform that helps marketers unify campaign data and automate reporting.

NinjaCat’s key features:

What do users think of NinjaCat?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Read: How NinjaCat compares to Optmyzr

Opteo

Opteo homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google Ads

Pricing: From $129/month ($25K spend, 10 accounts)

Rating: 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.9/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

Opteo is a Google Ads management tool that recommends optimizations based on continuous account monitoring.

Opteo’s key features:

Provides scorecards to help advertisers understand performance.

What do users think of Opteo?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Read: How Opteo compares to Optmyzr

Marin

Marin PPC homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta Ads, Amazon Ads, and more

Pricing: From $500/month (5 accounts)

Rating: 3.8/5 on G2 and 4.1/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

Marin is a campaign management tool that helps marketers create and optimize campaigns for Google, Facebook & Amazon Ads.

Marin’s key features:

Marin integrates data from multiple advertising platforms for a holistic view that may help you understand the customer journey across different channels.

What do users think of Marin?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Read: How Marin compares to Optmyzr

Adalysis

Adalysis homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google and Microsoft Ads

Pricing: From $127/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: 4.8/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

Adalysis is a PPC management solution designed to help marketers manage advertising campaigns on Google and Bing search engines.

Adalysis’s key features:

What do users think of Adalysis?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Read: How Adalysis compares to Optmyzr

Acquisio

Acquisio homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google, Microsoft, and Meta Ads

Pricing: On request

Rating: 3.8/5 on G2 and 3.9/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

Acquisio is an AI-powered solution for marketers, agencies, and local SEM resellers to scale their PPC offerings on advertising platforms like Google, Meta, and Microsoft.

What do users think of Acquisio?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Read: How Acquisio compares to Optmyzr

Choose a monitoring tool that keeps your accounts safe.

The right PPC monitoring tool can be the difference between catching a small issue before it snowballs and budget leaks that turn into costly problems over time.

So, take the time to carefully evaluate your needs and choose a tool accordingly.

If you think Optmyzr may be the tool for you, sign up for a 14-day free trial today. Thousands of advertisers worldwide—from small agencies to big brands—use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a PPC monitoring tool?

A PPC monitoring tool is software designed to continuously oversee your pay-per-click campaigns, tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) like CTR, CPC, CPA, and ROAS, and alerting you to performance fluctuations so you can intervene before budget or results are impacted.

Why is a PPC monitoring tool needed?

Continuous monitoring helps detect issues early—such as underperforming ads, rising CPCs, or loss of visibility—enabling quicker optimizations. Without it, you risk overspending, wasted clicks, and underperforming campaigns.

How do PPC monitoring tools provide more value than manual checks?

They automate the tracking and analysis of campaign performance, generate actionable alerts, and simplify reporting—replacing manual review processes and helping you respond faster and more effectively.

How quickly can a PPC monitoring tool alert me to critical issues?

The best tools offer real-time or near-real-time alerting, helping you act on sudden changes—like budget overruns, drop in conversions, or shifts in cost—before they escalate into larger problems.

12 PPC Reporting Tools That Tell the Story Behind Your Campaigns

Reporting is a must for PPC marketers, but it often turns into a time-consuming headache—especially when juggling multiple clients and ad platforms.

Native tools don’t cut it as they lack cross-platform insights. Looker Studio needs heavy customization, and Google Analytics isn’t built for PPC deep dives.

You need a reporting tool that not only saves time, but integrates data across platforms seamlessly and presents clear insights. With so many options available, let’s explore the best PPC reporting tools in the market.

But first, what should you look for in a PPC reporting tool?

You need to look at eight factors while looking for a PPC reporting tool irrespective of your business type and size.

Considering these factors here are the 12 best PPC reporting tools in the market.

Best PPC reporting tools

Name of the Tool

Top Feature

Pricing

Optmyzr

Drag-and-drop reporting with pre-built widgets, cross-platform data integration, and automated scheduling

From $209/month for $25K spend, up to 25 accounts

Skai

Unified platform for managing PPC campaigns across various channels

From $90,000/year

Adalysis

Automated PPC audits and health checks

From $149/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Marin

Cross-channel campaign management with advanced reporting

From $500/month for up to 50 accounts

TrueClicks

Comprehensive auditing and budget pacing tools

From $208/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Opteo

Continuous account monitoring with performance-based recommendations

From $129/month for $25K spend, up to 10 accounts

DashThis

Easy-to-use and attractive dashboard tool to stop wasting time gathering data

From $49/month

ReportGarden

Automate cross-channel reporting, manage campaign budgets, and create invoices

From $89/month

Supermetrics

Move data from various sources to preferred reporting, analytics, or storage platform

Pricing is platform-specific

Databox

Pulls all your data into one place to track performance and discover insights in real-time

Free plan available; paid plans from $59/month

Whatagraph

Automatically collects data from multiple channels and creates visual reports

On request

Swydo

Create, schedule, and share reports for your marketing campaigns

From $49/month

Optmyzr

Best ppc reporting tools - Optmyzr

Best for: PPC agencies & in-house teams from small companies to enterprises needing automated, cross-platform reports with real-time insights

Pricing: From $209/month ($25K spend, upto 25 accounts)

Rating: Rated 4.6/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 Capterra

Optmyzr is a powerful, award-winning PPC management software that gives search marketers the tools they need for detailed insights, optimization, reporting, and automation. It is built for accounts of any size, diversity, or complexity.

From search to shopping to Performance Max, you can run Google Ads campaigns the way each account demands with Optmyzr.

And if you think of PPC as more than just Google, you’ll advertise with creativity and insight across several platforms. Our proven automation capabilities mean you can supervise and run campaigns your way, even when you’re working on other things.

What kinds of teams use Optmyzr?

Optmyzr is used by a variety of teams such as:

Individual PPC consultants: Helps streamline their workflow and manage multiple campaigns without the need for extensive resources.

Optmyzr’s key reporting features

Read more: Optmyzr’s reporting capabilities

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Optmyzr?

Users have praised Optmyzr for its significant reporting and time-saving capabilities, particularly through custom-built automations in its Rule Engine, which effectively streamline tasks that would typically require a team of PPC managers.

The platform’s workflow design allows for systematic account management, ensuring comprehensive optimization without overlooking any tasks.

Additionally, users appreciate the user-friendly interface and the exceptional support team, which collectively enhance productivity and facilitate the implementation of tailored strategies.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Skai

Best for: Enterprise brands & agencies managing omnichannel media strategies

Pricing: From $90,000/year

Rating: Rated 4/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra

Skai is a cloud-based marketing solution, which helps organizations create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns on a unified portal.

Skai’s key reporting features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Skai?

Users praise Skai for its user-friendly interface, responsive customer support, and powerful automation features that streamline campaign management. They also value its actionable insights, robust analytics, and regular updates that keep the platform current and effective.

Read: How Skai compares to Optmyzr

Adalysis

Best for: Google Ads & Microsoft Ads specialists looking for automation and optimization tools

Pricing: From $149/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Rating: Rated 4.8/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra

Adalysis is a PPC management solution designed to help marketers manage advertising campaigns on Google and Bing search engines.

Key reporting features of Adalysis

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Adalysis?

Users have praised Adalysis for its ability to streamline PPC optimization by highlighting areas that need attention and automating ad testing. They also appreciate the platform’s capability to provide valuable insights and facilitate changes without the need to log into Google Ads.

Read: How Adalysis compares to Optmyzr

Marin

Best for: Large advertisers & agencies managing high-budget, multi-platform campaigns

Pricing: From $500/month for up to 50 accounts

Rating: Rated 3.8/5 on G2 and 3.4/5 on Capterra

Marin is a campaign management tool that helps marketers create & optimize campaigns for Google, Facebook & Amazon Ads.

Marin’s key reporting features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Marin?

Users praised Marin Software for its intuitive interface and custom reporting capabilities, which streamline campaign management. They also highlighted its versatility in creating and modifying diverse marketing components effectively.

Read: How Marin compares to Optmyzr

TrueClicks

Best for: PPC professionals needing an AI-driven tool to monitor and optimize campaign performance

Pricing: From $208/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

TrueClicks is a cloud-based marketing software, which helps organizations create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns on a unified portal.

Key reporting features of TrueClicks

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about TrueClicks?

Users have praised TrueClicks for its user-friendly interface, effective automation of routine tasks, and actionable suggestions that enhance campaign performance. Additionally, TrueClicks is recognized for its ongoing development and responsiveness to user feedback, continually updating the platform to align with industry best practices.

Read: How TrueClicks compares to Optmyzr

Opteo

Best for: Google Ads managers looking for easy, AI-driven recommendations and workflow automation

Pricing: From $129/month for $25K spend, up to 10 accounts

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.8/5 on Capterra

Opteo is a Google Ads management tool that recommends optimizations based on continuous account monitoring of account performance data.

Opteo’s key reporting features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Opteo?

Users praise Opteo for its time-saving features, user-friendly interface, and actionable recommendations that improve campaign performance. Additionally, its responsive customer support enhances the overall experience.

Read: How Opteo compares to Optmyzr

DashThis

Best for: Agencies & freelancers needing simple, automated marketing dashboards

Pricing: From $49/month

Rating: Rated 4.8/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

DashThis helps digital marketers and agencies by providing an easy-to-use and attractive dashboard tool so that marketers can stop wasting time gathering data, and instead do what they do best: make decisions based on that data.

Key reporting features of DashThis

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about DashThis?

Users appreciate DashThis for its excellent dashboards that are easy to understand and good for business analysis. However, some users feel that basic features, like improved chart manipulation, could enhance usability.

ReportGarden

Best for: Marketing agencies looking for an all-in-one reporting and invoicing tool

Pricing: From $89/month

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

ReportGarden is a dashboard & reporting tool for ad agencies to automate cross-channel reporting, manage campaign budgets, create invoices, perform SEO audit, and track keywords rankings for your clients.

ReportGarden’s key reporting features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about ReportGarden?

ReportGarden is valued for reducing the time spent on reporting, allowing for more productive work elsewhere. However, some users feel it takes time to get accustomed to the UI/UX, which is a common occurrence with such platforms.

Supermetrics

Best for: Data-driven marketers & analysts needing advanced data extraction for custom reports

Pricing: Pricing is platform-specific

Rating: Rated 4.4/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra

Supermetrics streamlines the delivery of data from sales and marketing platforms into the analytics and reporting tools marketers use to make better decisions.

Key reporting features of Supermetrics

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Supermetrics?

Supermetrics is praised for its ability to integrate multiple data sources into a single platform, which is beneficial for creating comprehensive dashboards and automating reporting. Some have encountered minor issues with data integration and connection bugs, although the platform generally enhances workflow productivity.

Read: How Supermetrics compares to Optmyzr

Databox

Best for: Marketing teams & business owners wanting a user-friendly, all-in-one analytics dashboard

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans from $59/month

Rating: Rated 4.4/5 on G2 and 4.7/5 on Capterra

Databox helps growing businesses know how they’re performing at all times, make better decisions, and find opportunities to improve their performance.

Databox’s key reporting features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Databox?

Databox is praised for its efficient setup process and intuitive dashboard that makes understanding traffic and analytics straightforward. However, some users mention the initial learning curve associated with understanding the platform’s full potential and how to best utilize its features. While generally user-friendly, it may take some time for new users to become fully comfortable with its functionality.

Whatagraph

Best for: Agencies & in-house teams needing customizable, automated multi-channel reports

Pricing: On request

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra

Whatagraph is an intuitive all-in-one marketing data platform that easily removes data-related manual work and hassle from a marketer’s day-to-day.

Whatagraph’s key reporting features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Whatagraph?

Users praise Whatagraph for its ease of use, intuitive interface, and robust ability to integrate multiple data sources like social media and web analytics tools. On the downside, some users feel that the pricing can be on the higher side, especially for small businesses, and there are occasional challenges with customization and integration with certain apps. Additionally, performance issues such as speed during report generation and the limited duration of stored historical data are noted as areas needing improvement.

Swydo

Best for: Agencies & freelancers looking for budget-friendly PPC & SEO reporting

Pricing: From $49/month

Rating: Rated 4.2/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

Swydo is an easy to use reporting and monitoring platform to retrieve data from multiple sources and create professional, customizable marketing reports.

Swydo’s key reporting features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Swydo?

Users praise its ease of use, seamless integration with major platforms like Google Ads and Meta, and ability to create visually appealing, customizable reports. However, some users express a desire for automated reporting on specific metrics and enhanced data source activity detection.

Track. Monitor. Report.

The best PPC reporting provides context, and analysis, and finds the reasons behind wins or losses. It serves as a source of meaningful data and insights, helping you to make informed decisions and optimize the overall effectiveness of your PPC campaigns.

And if you think Optmyzr is the tool for you, sign up for a 14-day free trial today. Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a PPC reporting tool?

A PPC reporting tool is software that aggregates and analyzes data from your pay-per-click campaigns across multiple platforms. It provides insights, helps you visualize performance trends, and simplifies campaign reporting across client accounts.

Why do I need a PPC reporting tool?

Native ad platform dashboards often fall short when managing campaigns across multiple networks. Reporting tools save time, centralize campaign metrics, and produce clear, actionable insights and visual reports—without heavy customization.

How do PPC reporting tools deliver broader value compared to manual reporting?

They enable:

How to Choose the Best PPC Audit Tool: 6 Top Picks for 2025

Regular PPC audits help maximize ROAS, but they can be time-consuming. That’s where PPC audit tools come in—they simplify analysis, automate tasks, and provide a clear audit roadmap, saving you time and effort.

The best tools go beyond basic checks. They offer deeper insights and actionable tips to improve your campaigns. In this guide, we’ll cover the top PPC audit tools that make the process easier and help you get better results.

What should you look for in a PPC audit tool?

There are so many PPC auditing tools available catering to different levels of expertise, campaign complexity, and budget constraints. So, choosing the right audit tool requires careful consideration.

We believe there are five factors you need to consider when choosing the right audit tool. They are:

Criteria

Description

Ease of use

The tool should guide you through the audit process, step-by-step, making it manageable even if you are a newer PPC professional. Plus, it should present data clearly, so you can quickly spot issues like irrelevant keywords, underperforming ads, or landing page problems that might drag down your campaigns.

Dedicated auditing features

The tool should focus on PPC auditing as its primary function or as a prominent feature within a broader suite of features. It must also offer detailed analyses of critical PPC metrics that matter to you.

Customized reporting

The tool should enable you to create reports with various formats and visualizations that align with your budget, campaign goals, and the needs of your stakeholders.

Transparent scoring and actionable insights

The tool should be transparent about its performance grading or scoring methodology. It should also be able to explain your campaign’s performance and provide actionable insights and recommendations suited to you.

Cross-platform auditing support

The tool should integrate with and retrieve data from multiple platforms seamlessly, since you may be running campaigns across various platforms. It should also give you the power to conduct comprehensive audits anytime, regardless of where your ads are running.

What are the best PPC audit tools in the market today?

Considering the factors listed above (on the condition that the tool satisfies at least four out of the five criteria), we’ve listed six tools, including their key features and publicly available user feedback:

Name of the Tool

Top Feature

Pricing

Optmyzr

Provides detailed audits via powerful rule-based automation

From $209/month for $25K spend, up to 25 accounts

TrueClicks

Offers insights and recommendations to enhance campaign performance

From $208/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Skai

Integrates with Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zapier for real-time notifications during audits

From $90,000/year

Opteo

Provides scorecards to understand performance, aiding in audit processes

From $129/month for $25K spend, up to 10 accounts

Madgicx

Offers an all-in-one automation and management solution for Meta Ads, facilitating comprehensive audits

From $31/month for the basic plan; 7-day free trial available

Adalysis

Provides audits via rule-based automation to identify campaign issues

From $127/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

1. Optmyzr

Best audit tools - Optmyzr

Best for: Agencies and in-house teams managing multiple PPC accounts who need advanced automation and deep audit insights

Platforms supported: Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn, and Amazon Ads

Pricing: From $209/month ($25K spend, up to 25 accounts), with a 14-day free trial

Rating: 4.6/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra

Built for accounts of any size, diversity, or complexity, Optmyzr is an award-winning PPC management software solution that gives paid media marketers the tools they need for auditing, optimization, reporting, and automation.

Optmyzr’s key features:

Watch Navah Hopkins explain how Optmyzr’s audit tools make every advertiser’s day-to-day tasks easier.

What users think of Optmyzr:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The Good:

The Bad:

2. TrueClicks

Best audit tools - TrueClicks

Best for: PPC managers who want a detailed, AI-driven analysis with clear recommendations to improve account performance

Platforms supported: Google and Microsoft Ads

Pricing: From $208/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: 4.4/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra

TrueClicks is a cloud-based marketing solution, which helps businesses create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns within a unified portal.

TrueClicks’s key features:

What users think of TrueClicks:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The Good:

The Bad:

Read: How TrueClicks compares to Optmyzr

3. Skai

Best for: Large enterprises and agencies that require integration with business intelligence tools and real-time audit notifications

Platforms supported: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn Ads

Pricing: From $90,000/year

Rating: 4.0/5 on G2 and 4.2/5 on Capterra

Skai is an omnichannel platform performance marketers use to unlock insights, streamline execution, and measure holistically across walled garden media.

Skai’s key features:

What users think of Skai:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The Good:

The Bad:

Read: How Skai compares to Optmyzr

4. Opteo

Best for: Small to mid-sized businesses looking for an easy-to-use tool that provides clear performance insights

Platforms supported: Google Ads

Pricing: From $129/month ($25K spend, 10 accounts)

Rating: 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.9/5 on Capterra

Opteo is a Google Ads management tool that recommends optimizations based on continuous account monitoring.

Opteo’s key features:

What users think of Opteo:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The Good:

The Bad:

Read: How Opteo compares to Optmyzr

5. Madgicx

Best audit tools - MadgicX

Best for: Advertisers focused on Meta Ads who want AI-driven audit insights and automation for ad performance improvement

Platforms supported: Meta Ads and Google Ads (limited)

Pricing: From $31/month for the basic plan. Offers a 7-day free trial.

Rating: 4.7/5 on G2 and 4.8/5 on Capterra

Madgicx is a cloud platform for Meta Ads ecommerce advertisers that offers a range of solutions to optimize multiple areas of their advertising, including Facebook tracking, automation, targeting, creatives, and ad management.

Madgicx’s key features:

What users think of Madgicx:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The Good:

The Bad:

6. Adalysis

Best audit tools - Adalysis

Best for: PPC professionals who prefer rule-based automation to streamline audits and identify optimization opportunities

Platforms supported: Google and Microsoft Ads

Pricing: From $127/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: 4.8/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra

Adalysis is a PPC management software designed to help marketers manage advertising campaigns on Google Search and Microsoft Bing.

Adalysis’s key features:

What users think of Adalysis:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The Good:

The Bad:

Read: How Adalysis compares to Optmyzr

Spend less time buried in audits and more time doing work that drives conversions.

The modern PPC advertiser’s job is no longer about pulling levers and pushing buttons in an ad interface. Your real value is your ability to contextualize, think creatively, and execute well. And a great PPC audit tool helps you do that.

If you think Optmyzr is the tool for you, sign up for a 14-day free trial today.

Thousands of advertisers—from small agencies to big brands—worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, schedule a consultation call today to talk to one of our experts.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a PPC auditing tool?

A PPC auditing tool is software that analyzes your pay-per-click campaigns—such as those on Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or Meta—to assess performance, identify inefficiencies, and recommend optimizations for better ROI.

Why do I need a PPC auditing tool?

Conducting PPC audits manually is time-consuming. A dedicated audit tool streamlines the process, automates analysis, uncovers issues more efficiently, and delivers actionable insights to boost campaign results and ROAS.

How do PPC audit tools deliver value beyond manual analysis?

They simplify audits by automating the evaluation of campaign structure, keyword relevance, ad performance, and landing pages—while producing clear scoring, recommendations, and visual reports that manual processes often lack.

How to Choose the Right PPC Bid Management Tool for Your Needs (+ 6 Top Picks)

PPC bid management is all about setting and adjusting bids to maximize ad performance while staying within your budget. As ad platforms become more automated, you need tools that provide visibility, control, and efficiency.

A reliable bid management tool provides you with those while automating optimizations and preventing overspending. But choosing the right tool is crucial. It should align with your goals, budget, and level of automation needed to drive the best results.

With so many options available, let’s explore the best bid management tools in the market.

What should you look for in a PPC bid management tool?

There are so many bid management tools available catering to different levels of expertise, campaign complexity, and budget constraints. So, choosing the right one requires careful consideration.

We believe there are ten factors you need to consider when choosing the right bid management tool. They are:

Factor

Why it matters

What to look for

Automation capabilities

Reduces manual work and optimizes bids in real-time

Auto-bid adjustments based on conversion data, anomaly detection, and budget pacing

Cross-platform support

Ensures seamless bid adjustments across various ad platforms like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta Ads

Seamless integration with multiple ad platforms for a unified bidding strategy

Real-time bid adjustments

Reacts quickly to competition and user behavior changes

Tools that update bids dynamically based on real-time data

Data insights and reporting

Provides transparency and actionable insights for better decisions

Customizable reports, conversion tracking, and integration with analytics tools

Budget management and pacing

Prevents overspending and ensures consistent performance

Features like budget pacing, forecasting, and spend distribution across campaigns

Ease of use and customization

Simplifies bid management without requiring technical expertise

Intuitive dashboards, drag-and-drop UI, and customizable rule-based automations

A/B testing for bid strategies

Helps identify the most effective bid strategies through testing

Tools with built-in A/B testing or bid experimentation capabilities

Anomaly detection and alerts

Notifies users of bid spikes or inefficiencies to prevent wasted ad spend

Real-time notifications and alerts for unusual performance trends

Scalability

Adapts as your business grows and manages larger budgets

A tool that supports different business sizes, from SMBs to enterprises

Pricing and ROI

Ensures the tool fits within your budget while maximizing return on investment

Transparent pricing with flexible plans for different levels of ad spend

 

What are the best PPC bid management tools in the market today?

Considering the factors listed above (on the condition that the tool satisfies at least seven out of the ten criteria), we’ve listed six tools, including their key features and publicly available user feedback:

Name of the tool

Top feature

Pricing

Optmyzr

Advanced bid optimization with powerful rule-based automation

From $209/month for $25K spend, up to 25 accounts

TrueClicks

Data-driven insights for bid adjustments

From $208/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Skai

Omnichannel bid optimization for enterprises

From $90,000/year

NinjaCat

Bid and budget automation with advanced analytics

Custom pricing

Adalysis

Automated bid suggestions and A/B testing

From $149/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Marin

AI-powered bid management across search, social, and ecommerce

From $500/month for up to 50 accounts

 

1. Optmyzr

Best ppc bid management tool - Optmyzr

 

Best for: Agencies and in-house teams looking to automate bid management, optimize PPC performance, and maintain control over budgets across multiple platforms

Pricing: From $209/month ($25K spend, up to 25 accounts), with a 14-day free trial

Rating: 4.6/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra

Built for accounts of any size, diversity, or complexity, Optmyzr is an award-winning PPC management software solution that gives paid media marketers the tools they need for auditing, optimization, reporting, and automation.

Optmyzr’s key features:

What users think of Optmyzr:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

Pros:

Cons:

2. TrueClicks

 

Best for: PPC agencies and consultants who need automated audits, optimization recommendations, and performance monitoring to ensure accounts follow best practices

Pricing: From $208/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: 4.4/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra

TrueClicks is a cloud-based marketing solution, which helps businesses create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns within a unified portal.

TrueClicks’s key features:

What users think of TrueClicks:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

Pros:

Cons:

Read: How TrueClicks compares to Optmyzr

3. Skai

 

Best for: Large enterprises and agencies managing omnichannel PPC campaigns and needing advanced AI-driven bidding, predictive analytics, and deep cross-platform insights

Pricing: From $90,000/year

Rating: 4.0/5 on G2 and 4.2/5 on Capterra

Skai is an omnichannel platform performance marketers use to unlock insights, streamline execution, and measure holistically across walled garden media.

Skai’s key features:

What users think of Skai:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

Pros:

Cons:

Read: How Skai compares to Optmyzr

4. NinjaCat

 

Best for: Agencies and multi-location businesses that require automated reporting, budget pacing, and campaign performance tracking across multiple PPC platforms

Pricing: Custom pricing

Rating: 4.1/5 on G2 and 4.3/5 on Capterra

NinjaCat is a unified marketing analytics platform designed for agencies, media companies, and multi-location brands. They acquired shape.io, a PPC management platform.

NinjaCat’s key features:

What users think of NinjaCat:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

Pros:

Cons:

Read: How NinjaCat compares to Optmyzr

5. Adalysis

 

Best for: Advertisers and PPC managers focused on data-driven bid adjustments, A/B testing, and automated optimizations for Google and Microsoft Ads

Pricing: From $149/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: Not enough reviews

Adalysis is a PPC management solution designed to help marketers manage advertising campaigns on Google and Microsoft Ads.

Adalysis’s key features:

What users think of Adalysis:

Users have praised Adalysis for its ability to streamline PPC optimization by highlighting areas that need attention and automating ad testing. They also appreciate the platform’s capability to provide valuable insights and facilitate changes without the need to log into Google Ads.

Read: How Adalysis compares to Optmyzr

6. Marin

 

Best for: Large advertisers and enterprises managing PPC, social, and ecommerce campaigns who need AI-powered bid management and cross-channel reporting

Pricing: From $500/month (50 accounts)

Rating: Rated 3.8/5 on G2 and 3.4/5 on Capterra

Marin is a campaign management tool that helps marketers create & optimize campaigns for Google, Microsoft, Facebook & Amazon Ads.

Marin’s key features:

What users think of Marin:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

Pros:

Cons:

Read: How Marin compares to Optmyzr

Choose a bid management tool that works for you.

Managing PPC bids effectively is about more than just automating adjustments—it’s about making smarter, data-driven decisions that align with your business goals. The right bid management tool helps you automate where necessary while keeping you in control of your budget and strategy.

If you think Optmyzr is the tool for you, sign up for a 14-day free trial today.

Thousands of advertisers—from small agencies to big brands—worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, schedule a consultation call today to talk to one of our experts.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a PPC bid management tool?

A PPC bid management tool is software that automates and optimizes the process of setting and adjusting bids for pay-per-click campaigns. It uses data and algorithms to help advertisers get the most clicks, conversions, or ROI for their budget.

Why do I need a PPC bid management tool?

Managing bids manually is time-consuming and prone to error, especially in large or multi-channel campaigns. A bid management tool saves time, improves efficiency, and ensures your bids respond to real-time performance changes—maximizing ROAS.

How do PPC bid management tools help prevent overspending while optimizing performance?

They adjust bids dynamically based on conversion data, budget pacing, and performance trends—helping you stay within budget while driving better results.

How to Choose the Best PPC Automation Tool: 10 Top Picks for 2025

In the past few years, PPC automation has gone from a nice-to-have to a must-have for advertisers looking for the best account performance. You need automation not only to increase efficiency and reduce costs but also to secure more control and greater visibility into your accounts, considering that the major ad platforms have become more of a black box in recent years.

However, the biggest challenge is finding the right automation tool for your needs. A tool is a good fit if it puts you in control instead of just being a reskinned—insert an ad platform editor name—UI.

There are so many tools available, each with its strengths and weaknesses, catering to different levels of expertise, campaign complexity, and budget constraints. Finding the right one requires careful consideration of factors like ease of use, automation capabilities, compatibility with your existing platforms, and pricing structures.

In this article, we’ll list the best PPC automation tools available in the market today with varying levels of capabilities.

What should you look for in a PPC automation tool?

You need to look at four areas while looking for a PPC automation tool irrespective of your business type and size.

 

Let’s look at some of the best PPC automation tools in the market. We’ve listed 8 tools here after a thorough research.

Best PPC automation tools

Name of the Tool

Top Feature

Pricing

Optmyzr

Powerful rule-based automation for optimization and reporting

From $209/month for $25K spend, up to 25 accounts

Skai

Unified platform for managing PPC campaigns across various channels

From $90,000/year

Adalysis

Automated PPC audits and health checks

From $149/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Marin

Cross-channel campaign management with advanced reporting

From $500/month for up to 50 accounts

Bïrch

Automated ad creation and management

From $99/month for $10K spend

TrueClicks

Comprehensive auditing and budget pacing tools

From $208/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

NinjaCat

Reporting and campaign management

Custom pricing

Opteo

Continuous account monitoring with performance-based recommendations

From $129/month for $25K spend, up to 10 accounts

Acquisio

AI-powered bid and budget management across multiple platforms

Pricing available upon request

Madgicx

User-friendly interface with automation and optimization features

From $31/month for $1K spend

Optmyzr

Best PPC automation tools - Optmyzr

 

Best for: Detailed insights, optimization, reporting, and automation across various campaign types

Pricing: From $209/month ($25K spend, upto 25 accounts)

Rating: Rated 4.6/5 on G2 and 4.7/5 on Capterra

Optmyzr is a powerful, award-winning PPC management software that gives search marketers the tools they need for detailed insights, optimization, reporting, and automation. It is built for accounts of any size, diversity, or complexity.

From search to shopping to Performance Max, you can run Google Ads campaigns the way each account demands with Optmyzr.

And if you think of PPC as more than just Google, you’ll advertise with creativity and insight across several platforms. Our proven automation capabilities mean you can supervise and run campaigns your way, even when you’re working on other things.

Optmyzr’s key features

What kinds of teams use Optmyzr?

Optmyzr is used by a variety of teams such as:

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Optmyzr?

Users have praised Optmyzr for its significant time-saving capabilities, particularly through custom-built automations in its Rule Engine, which effectively streamline tasks that would typically require a team of PPC managers.

The platform’s workflow design allows for systematic account management, ensuring comprehensive optimization without overlooking any tasks.

Additionally, users appreciate the user-friendly interface and the exceptional support team, which collectively enhance productivity and facilitate the implementation of tailored strategies.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Skai

 

Best for: Enterprises aiming to manage large-scale PPC campaigns across multiple channels on a unified platform

Pricing: From $90,000/year

Rating: Rated 4/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra

Skai is a cloud-based marketing solution, which helps organizations create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns on a unified portal.

Skai’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Skai?

Users praise Skai for its user-friendly interface, responsive customer support, and powerful automation features that streamline campaign management. They also value its actionable insights, robust analytics, and regular updates that keep the platform current and effective.

Read: How Skai compares to Optmyzr

Adalysis

 

Best for: Advertisers seeking automated PPC audits and health checks to maintain account performance

Pricing: From $149/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Rating: Rated 4.8/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra

Adalysis is a PPC management solution designed to help marketers manage advertising campaigns on Google and Bing search engines.

Adalysis’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Adalysis?

Users have praised Adalysis for its ability to streamline PPC optimization by highlighting areas that need attention and automating ad testing. They also appreciate the platform’s capability to provide valuable insights and facilitate changes without the need to log into Google Ads.

Read: How Adalysis compares to Optmyzr

Marin

 

Best for: Large enterprises requiring cross-channel campaign management with advanced reporting features

Pricing: From $500/month for up to 50 accounts

Rating: Rated 3.8/5 on G2 and 3.4/5 on Capterra

Marin is a campaign management tool that helps marketers create & optimize campaigns for Google, Facebook & Amazon Ads.

Marin’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Marin?

Users praised Marin Software for its intuitive interface and custom reporting capabilities, which streamline campaign management. They also highlighted its versatility in creating and modifying diverse marketing components effectively.

Read: How Marin compares to Optmyzr

Bïrch

Bïrch Revealbot

 

Best for: Agencies seeking to automate and optimize ad campaigns across platforms like Meta, Google, Snapchat, and TikTok.

Pricing: From $99/month ($10K spend)

Rating: Rated 4.4/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

Bïrch helps to simplify the automation of your ad campaigns running on the most popular platforms: Meta, Google, Snapchat, and TikTok.

Bïrch’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Bïrch?

Bïrch (formerly Revealbot) is highly regarded for its intuitive interface, which streamlines the creation and management of ad campaigns across platforms like Meta and TikTok.

Users commend its automation features, such as Bulk Creation and Post Boosting, for enhancing efficiency and simplifying complex tasks.

TrueClicks

 

Best for: Agencies needing comprehensive auditing and budget management across numerous accounts

Pricing: From $208/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

TrueClicks is a cloud-based marketing software, which helps organizations create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns on a unified portal.

TrueClicks’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about TrueClicks?

Users have praised TrueClicks for its user-friendly interface, effective automation of routine tasks, and actionable suggestions that enhance campaign performance. Additionally, TrueClicks is recognized for its ongoing development and responsiveness to user feedback, continually updating the platform to align with industry best practices.

Read: How TrueClicks compares to Optmyzr

NinjaCat

 

Best for: Agencies, media companies, and brands that need to produce comprehensive and consistent report presentations for clients or stakeholders

Pricing: On request

Rating: Rated 4.1/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra

NinjaCat is a unified marketing analytics platform designed for agencies, media companies, and multi-location brands. They acquired shape.io, a PPC management platform.

NinjaCat’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about NinjaCat?

Users appreciate the platform’s seamless integration with various data sources, enabling efficient consolidation of marketing metrics.

The platform’s automation capabilities are also praised, as they streamline reporting processes and save valuable time for marketing teams. Additionally, NinjaCat’s responsive customer support is frequently highlighted, with users noting prompt assistance and effective solutions to their queries.

Read: How NinjaCat compares to Optmyzr

Opteo

 

Best for: Small to medium-sized businesses seeking easy-to-understand performance recommendations

Pricing: From $129/month for $25K spend, up to 10 accounts

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.8/5 on Capterra

Opteo is a Google Ads management tool that recommends optimizations based on continuous account monitoring of account performance data.

Opteo’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Opteo?

Users praise Opteo for its time-saving features, user-friendly interface, and actionable recommendations that improve campaign performance. Additionally, its responsive customer support enhances the overall experience.

Read: How Opteo compares to Optmyzr

Acquisio

 

Best for: Marketers and agencies looking for AI-driven bid and budget management across platforms like Google, Meta, and Microsoft

Pricing: On request

Rating: Rated 3.8/5 on G2 and 4/5 on Capterra

Acquisio is an AI-powered solution for marketers, agencies, and local SEM resellers to scale their PPC offerings on advertising platforms like Google, Meta, and Microsoft.

Acquisio’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Acquisio?

Users praise Acquisio for its intuitive interface, responsive customer support, and AI-driven bid and budget optimization. Its comprehensive reporting tools also save time and enhance campaign management efficiency.

Read: How Acquisio compares to Optmyzr

Madgicx

 

Best for: Ecommerce businesses and agencies looking to optimize and automate their advertising campaigns across platforms like Meta and Google

Pricing: From $31/month for $1K spend

Rating: Rated 4.7/5 on G2 and 4.8/5 on Capterra

Madgicx is a cloud platform for Meta Ads ecommerce advertisers that offers a range of solutions to optimize all areas of their advertising - including Facebook tracking, automation, targeting, creatives, and ad management.

Madgicx’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Madgicx?

Users commend the platform’s comprehensive ads library, providing valuable inspiration for campaign creation.

Additionally, Madgicx’s customer support is frequently praised for its responsiveness and personalized assistance, enhancing the overall user experience.

Build a competitive advantage with automation

Automation is a net positive, says our Evangelist, Navah Hopkins. And it’s absolutely true. If you aren’t using it in 2025, you’re losing out.

The modern PPC advertiser’s job is no longer about pulling levers and pushing buttons in an ad interface. Your real value is your ability to contextualize, think creatively, and provide high-quality inputs. And a great PPC automation tool helps you do that.

 

If you think Optmyzr is the tool for you, sign up for a 14-day free trial today.

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is PPC automation?

PPC automation is the use of technology to maximize your time and resources by delegating mundane, repetitive, or time-consuming tasks to the machines while you focus on monitoring campaigns and overseeing the strategy.

Here are some examples of time-consuming tasks that can be automated:

Why do you need PPC automation?

Check out this chart below. It shows all the major changes and capabilities Google Ads has added from late 2020.

Google Ads automation updates

As you can see, Google has been on a roll with several updates in recent years thanks to the advancements in AI and machine learning. Microsoft Ads, Amazon Ads, Meta Ads, and the like have also followed suit in this department.

So advertisers wanting to drive the best results while keeping pace with so many changes have had to resort to automation. While a lot of advertisers have adopted these changes, a majority of them are not satisfied with the results.

That’s because there’s a sentiment amongst some advertisers that automation benefits the ad engines more than the advertisers.

The good news is you can make them work for you, with the help of automated scripts or a robust third-party PPC automation tool that understands the principle of automation layering: in other words, the tool you’re using should provide you with the control, security, and visibility you need for your accounts.

Find the Best Google Ads Tool in 2025 [Tried & Tested by PPC Pros]

Google Ads has become much more sophisticated — and more of a black box — in recent years, due to advancements in AI and machine learning.

Although the shift towards more automation is great for advertisers, Google has also reduced the control and visibility for you, the advertiser over your ad spend.

And, in light of the recent antitrust lawsuits and scrutiny over its ad business practices, advertisers are becoming more concerned that Google is overextending their ad budgets. That’s why savvy advertisers need to be vigilant to ensure they are getting true value from their ad spend.

The good news is that there are several tools out there that can help you take back control and manage your Google Ads campaigns the way that works for your business.

In this article, you’ll learn:

Best Google Ads management tools

Name of the tool

Top feature

Pricing

Optmyzr

Powerful rule-based automation for optimization and reporting

From $209/month for $25K spend, up to 25 accounts

Google Ads Editor

Bulk editing tools for managing multiple campaigns offline

Free

Opteo

Continuous account monitoring with performance-based recommendations

From $129/month for $25K spend, up to 10 accounts

TrueClicks

Comprehensive auditing and budget pacing tools

From $208/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Acquisio

AI-powered bid and budget management across multiple platforms

Pricing available upon request

Marin

Cross-channel campaign management with advanced reporting

From $500/month for up to 50 accounts

Skai

Unified platform for managing PPC campaigns across various channels

From $90,000/year

Adalysis

Automated PPC audits and health checks

From $149/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Adpulse

Visual workflow builder for custom automation

From $25/month for $3K spend

HubSpot Campaign Assistant

Copy generation for ads, landing pages, and emails

Free

Adzooma

User-friendly interface with automation and optimization features

Free plan available; premium features at additional cost

 

Optmyzr

Best Google Ads management tool - Optmyzr

 

Best for: Detailed insights, optimization, reporting, and automation across various campaign types

Pricing: From $208/month ($25K spend, upto 25 accounts)

Rating: Rated 4.6/5 on G2 and 4.7/5 on Capterra

Optmyzr is a powerful, award-winning PPC management software that gives search marketers the tools they need for detailed insights, optimization, reporting, and automation. It is built for accounts of any size, diversity, or complexity.

From search to shopping to Performance Max, you can run Google Ads campaigns the way each account demands with Optmyzr.

Mike Rhodes WebSavvy Optmyzr

Optmyzr’s key features

What kinds of teams use Optmyzr?

Optmyzr is used by a variety of teams such as:

Pros & cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Optmyzr?

Users have praised Optmyzr for its significant time-saving capabilities, particularly through custom-built automations in its Rule Engine, which effectively streamline tasks that would typically require a team of PPC managers.

The platform’s workflow design allows for systematic account management, ensuring comprehensive optimization without overlooking any tasks.

Additionally, users appreciate the user-friendly interface and the exceptional support team, which collectively enhance productivity and facilitate the implementation of tailored strategies.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Google Ads Editor

 

Best for: Beginners managing multiple campaigns offline with bulk editing capabilities

Pricing: Free

Rating: Rated 4.3/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

Google Ads Editor is a free, downloadable application for managing your Google Ads campaigns.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Google Ads Editor?

Users have praised Google Ads Editor for its robust bulk editing capabilities, which facilitate efficient management of multiple campaigns and ads simultaneously. Additionally, the user-friendly interface simplifies navigation and campaign management, making it accessible for both beginners and experienced advertisers.

Opteo

Opteo

 

Best for: Small to medium-sized businesses seeking easy-to-understand performance recommendations

Pricing: From $129/month ($25K spend, 10 accounts)

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.8/5 on Capterra

Opteo is a Google Ads management tool that recommends optimizations based on continuous account monitoring of account performance data.

Opteo’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Opteo?

Users praise Opteo for its time-saving features, user-friendly interface, and actionable recommendations that improve campaign performance. Additionally, its responsive customer support enhances the overall experience.

Read: How Opteo compares to Optmyzr

TrueClicks

TrueClicks

 

Best for: Agencies needing comprehensive auditing and budget management across numerous accounts

Pricing: From $208/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

TrueClicks is a cloud-based marketing software, which helps organizations create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns on a unified portal.

TrueClicks’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about TrueClicks?

Users have praised TrueClicks for its user-friendly interface, effective automation of routine tasks, and actionable suggestions that enhance campaign performance. Additionally, TrueClicks is recognized for its ongoing development and responsiveness to user feedback, continually updating the platform to align with industry best practices.

Read: How TrueClicks compares to Optmyzr

Acquisio

Acquisio

 

Best for: Marketers and agencies looking for AI-driven bid and budget management across platforms like Google, Meta, and Microsoft

Pricing: On request

Rating: Rated 3.8/5 on G2 and 4/5 on Capterra

Acquisio is an AI-powered solution for marketers, agencies, and local SEM resellers to scale their PPC offerings on advertising platforms like Google, Meta, and Microsoft.

Acquisio’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Acquisio?

Users praise Acquisio for its intuitive interface, responsive customer support, and AI-driven bid and budget optimization. Its comprehensive reporting tools also save time and enhance campaign management efficiency.

Read: How Acquisio compares to Optmyzr

Marin

Marin PPC

 

Best for: Large enterprises requiring cross-channel campaign management with advanced reporting features

Pricing: From $500/month (50 accounts)

Rating: Rated 3.8/5 on G2 and 3.4/5 on Capterra

Marin is a campaign management tool that helps marketers create & optimize campaigns for Google, Facebook & Amazon Ads.

Marin’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Marin?

Users praised Marin Software for its intuitive interface and custom reporting capabilities, which streamline campaign management. They also highlighted its versatility in creating and modifying diverse marketing components effectively.

Read: How Marin compares to Optmyzr

Skai

Skai PPC

 

Best for: Enterprises aiming to manage large-scale PPC campaigns across multiple channels on a unified platform

Pricing: From $90,000/year

Rating: Rated 4/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra

Skai is a cloud-based marketing solution, which helps organizations create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns on a unified portal.

Skai’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Skai?

Users praise Skai for its user-friendly interface, responsive customer support, and powerful automation features that streamline campaign management. They also value its actionable insights, robust analytics, and regular updates that keep the platform current and effective.

Read: How Skai compares to Optmyzr

Adalysis

Adalysis

 

Best for: Advertisers seeking automated PPC audits and health checks to maintain account performance

Pricing: From $149/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: Not enough reviews

Adalysis is a PPC management solution designed to help marketers manage advertising campaigns on Google and Bing search engines.

Adalysis’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Adalysis?

Users have praised Adalysis for its ability to streamline PPC optimization by highlighting areas that need attention and automating ad testing. They also appreciate the platform’s capability to provide valuable insights and facilitate changes without the need to log into Google Ads.

Read: How Adalysis compares to Optmyzr

Adpulse

Adpulse

 

Best for: Teams looking to create custom automation workflows through a visual interface

Pricing: From $25/month (3K spend, 100 accounts)

Rating: Not enough reviews

Adpulse provides PPC analysis, marketing automation, automatic testing, and 

shopping campaign management.

Adpulse’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Adpulse?

Adpulse has received positive feedback from users, highlighting its effectiveness in managing PPC campaigns. Users appreciate its user-friendly interface and actionable insights, which help in optimizing account performance and saving time.

Read: How Adpulse compares to Optmyzr

HubSpot Campaign Assistant

hubspot campaign assistant

 

Best for: Small businesses and solopreneurs looking to generate ad copy and ensure consistent messaging across marketing channels.

Pricing: Completely free to use.

Rating: Rated 4.4/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra.

HubSpot’s Campaign Assistant is simple, free, and effective. It’s a copy generator that allows you to generate texts across Instagram, Facebook, and Google Ads, as well as landing pages and emails — all in one go.

This makes the platform an excellent choice if you’re looking to develop cross-channel marketing campaigns and ensure your messaging remains consistent on each particular touchpoint.

HubSpot Campaign Assistant’s key features

Pros and cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Campaign Assistant?

Users enjoy Campaign Assistant’s simplicity and effectiveness, as the platform’s copy generator saves them a lot of time that would have otherwise been spent on copy editing and fine-tuning.

Adzooma

Adzooma

 

Best for: Small businesses seeking a user-friendly platform with optimization features, including a free plan option

Pricing: Has a free plan. The paid plan starts from $99 a month.

Rating: Rated 4.3/5 on G2 and 4.1/5 on Capterra

Adzooma provides PPC analysis, marketing automation, automatic testing, and shopping campaign management.

Adzooma’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Adzooma?

Users praise Adzooma for its intuitive interface and real-time campaign optimization insights. They also appreciate its multi-channel support and responsive customer service, making it a reliable tool for advertisers.

Read: How Adzooma compares to Optmyzr

Choose the right tool for your needs

Using a Google Ads management tool isn’t just about managing your campaigns better—though it absolutely does that. It also makes your life as an advertiser easier by many orders of magnitude. Hopefully, we did our part to help you find a tool that does that for you.

Optmyzr review

 

And after what you read here, if you think Optmyzr is the tool for you, sign up for a 14-day free trial today.

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Google Ads management tool?

A Google Ads management tool is third-party software that helps you create, monitor, optimize, and report on your Google Ads campaigns more efficiently—often offering features beyond what Google’s native interface provides.

What features should I look for in a Google Ads management tool?

Key features include:

Why you should use a Google Ads management tool

A third-party Google Ads management tool helps you create, optimize, and manage your campaigns more efficiently and effectively than you ever can using Google’s default platform. Here are a few reasons why you should use one:

1. Google doesn’t always have your best interests when making product decisions.

Google is a business. So its goal is to do what’s best for its shareholders. The more money you spend on its platform, the more beneficial that is for its shareholders. That’s a big reason for its push to increase ad prices, encourage broad match, and auto-applied recommendations so that your ads are shown for a higher number of search queries, which means more clicks and ultimately more money for Google.

2. Google’s native platform has extremely limited capabilities for advertisers.

A third-party tool can offer features that are not available or limited in Google Ads, such as competitor analysis, cross-channel integration, custom reporting, and AI-powered optimization. These features can help you gain more insights into your market and your campaigns and improve your ROI.

3. Third-party tools can save you time and money.

A third-party tool can automate many tasks that would otherwise take you hours to do manually on Google Ads, such as keyword research, bid management, ad creation, and performance tracking. This can free up your time to focus on much more important aspects of your business and reduce your advertising costs.

Mastering Negative Keywords and Ad Targeting

Negative keywords serve as the gatekeepers of your ad campaigns, allowing you to refine your targeting and ensure your ads are displayed to the most relevant audience. In this article, you will learn in detail about:

Whether you’re new to search advertising or seeking to optimize your existing campaigns, understanding negative keywords is essential for maximizing your ROI and achieving your advertising goals.

What are negative keywords?

Negative keywords are search terms that prevent your ads from showing when those words or phrases are part of a user’s search query in Google Ads or Microsoft Ads. They act as filters, helping advertisers exclude irrelevant traffic, reduce wasted ad spend, and improve campaign performance.

Standard vs Negative Keywords:

Example: A luxury travel agency might target “luxury vacations” but exclude terms like “cheap vacation packages” or “budget travel deals.”

With a well-structured negative keyword list, you ensure your ads reach the right audience, improving CTR, conversion rates, and overall PPC efficiency.

How to evaluate search terms to find negative keywords

Evaluating search terms is the first step in building an effective negative keyword list. The goal is simple: identify queries that waste budget, don’t match your audience, or have low conversion potential and exclude them.

 

💡Optmyzr Tip: Reviewing search terms one by one is slow and easy to get wrong. Optmyzr’s Negative Keywords Finder makes it easier by analyzing your Search Terms Report, breaking down queries into single words, and flagging the ones that consistently underperform.

You can quickly review these suggestions with data like impressions, clicks, CPC, and conversions, and add them as negative keywords (at the query, word, campaign, or even account level) in just a few clicks.

 

How do negative keyword match types work?

Negative keyword match types work similarly to regular keyword match types but in reverse, allowing you to control which search terms your ads are not shown for. There are three main types of negative keyword match types: broad, phrase, and exact.

The following table gives you an idea of how each of the match types functions for the keyword ‘free shipping’.

Negative Broad Match

Negative Phrase Match

Negative Exact Match

Search Term

Will the Ad show?

Search Term

Will the Ad show?

Search Term

Will the Ad show?

"free shipping options"

No

"free shipping options"

No

"free shipping options"

No

"shipping services with free returns"

No

"shipping services with free returns"

No

"shipping services with free returns"

No

"fast shipping options"

Yes

"fast shipping options"

Yes

"fast shipping options"

Yes

"get fast shipping"

Yes

"get fast shipping"

Yes

"get fast shipping"

Yes

"fast shipping near me"

Yes

"fast shipping near me"

Yes

"fast shipping near me"

Yes

"shipping services with fast and reliable delivery"

Yes

"shipping services with fast and reliable delivery"

Yes

"shipping services with fast and reliable delivery"

Yes

"overnight shipping services"

Yes

"overnight shipping services"

Yes

"overnight shipping services"

No

"overnight shipping tracking"

Yes

"overnight shipping tracking"

Yes

"overnight shipping tracking"

No

"fast overnight shipping"

Yes

"fast overnight shipping"

Yes

"fast overnight shipping"

No

 

Broad match negative keywords

Broad match negative keywords prevent your ads from showing for any search term that contains the keywords in any order, along with any additional words.

For example, if you add the negative keyword ‘free shipping’, your ads will not be shown for searches like ‘free shipping options’, ‘shipping services with free returns’, or ‘free express shipping’. This match type provides the broadest coverage but may also exclude some relevant searches.

Phrase match negative keywords

Phrase match negative keywords prevent your ads from showing only when the search term contains the exact keyword phrase, along with any additional words before or after it.

For example, if you add the negative keyword ‘fast delivery’, your ads will not be shown for searches like ‘get fast delivery’, ‘fast delivery options’, or ‘fast delivery near me’. However, they may still appear for searches like ‘delivery services with fast and reliable shipping’.

Exact match negative keywords

Exact match negative keywords prevent your ads from showing only for the exact keyword phrase specified, without any additional words before, after, or in between. For example, if you add the negative keyword ‘overnight delivery’, your ads will not be shown for searches like ‘overnight delivery services’, ‘overnight delivery tracking’, or ‘fast overnight delivery’, ensuring that your ads are not displayed for any variation of the specified phrase.

Using negative keyword match types effectively requires understanding the nuances of each match type and selecting the most appropriate option based on your advertising goals and target audience. Additionally, regularly reviewing and updating your negative keyword lists to reflect changes in search behavior and campaign performance is essential for optimizing the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.

Learn More: How to Choose the Best Keyword Match Type for Your Google Ads Campaign

How to add negative keywords to your campaigns

Account-level negative keywords

These apply across your entire ad account and are ideal for excluding broad, irrelevant queries, like “free,” “jobs,” “make your own,” or “shops near me.”

These keywords indicate search intents that are irrelevant to your ad and can include job searches, mistaken searches, address searches, brand-specific searches, etc. Building a list of account-wide negatives will save you a lot of time and money.

The benefits of this function will amplify with each addition to the list.

But here’s a warning from the experts: don’t overdo it.

PPC expert Andrew Lolk pointed this out in our town hall episode that account-level negatives can easily cut off valuable traffic without you realizing it, especially as your product lines evolve:

“Advertisers often forget to revisit old negatives, and those can quietly block exactly the audience you’re trying to reach today.” — Andrew Lolk

 

💡Action Step: Build a universal negative keyword list for terms you never want to trigger ads, then audit it regularly to ensure it still aligns with your current offerings.

 

 

Campaign-level negative keywords

Campaign-level negative keywords apply only to the specific campaign they are added.

If you implement a list of negative keywords at the campaign level, you’re telling the ad platform that you do not want to show ads to anyone searching for these keywords in the entire campaign.

These negative keywords will apply to all ad groups within the campaign.

They allow advertisers to tailor their exclusions to the theme or focus of each campaign. For example, a campaign promoting luxury watches may exclude terms related to inexpensive or budget watches.

🚨Update Alert: Google recently rolled out a long‑awaited update- you can now add campaign‑level negative keywords directly in Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. This change gives you far greater control over what traffic PMax drives and helps prevent wasted spend.

 

Want to catch up on what’s new with Google in 2025?

Watch our exclusive discussion with Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, where we break down the latest updates and what they mean for your campaigns. Spoiler alert: insider intel ahead!

 

Ad group-level negative keywords

Ad group-level negative keywords apply only to the ad group they are added to, providing even more granular control. Advertisers can use ad group-level negative keywords to further refine targeting within a campaign.

For instance, within a campaign promoting men’s clothing, an ad group focusing on suits may exclude terms related to casual wear.

You can also use negative keywords to ensure that different ad groups don’t overlap. You can use targeted keywords from one group as negative keywords for another to avoid wasting multiple ads on a single search.

💡Action Step: Use ad group‑level negatives to keep queries where they belong. Optmyzr's Traffic Sculptor can look at how search terms are matching across your account and recommend exact‑match negatives where queries are landing in the wrong ad group. Just a few clicks, and you can make sure the right ads are showing for the right searches.

 

Tips to find effective negative keywords

Reviewing thousands of search terms every week isn’t realistic. But that doesn’t mean you settle for a “good enough” negative keyword list.

Adam Gorecki from Intigress puts it simply:

“If you don’t have time to review everything, start with the search terms getting the most impressions — then move on to the ones costing you the most.”

In other words, prioritize by impact. Ignore the one-off impressions. Go after what’s driving cost and volume.

From there, make your list work harder:

Automate the heavy lifting. Driva, a fintech based in Australia, used Optmyzr’s Negative Keyword Finder to spot and eliminate non‑performing queries at scale. Their team freed up hours of manual review while actually improving results.

Here are some negative keyword strategies we’ve seen many experts using in their campaigns

These strategies come from seasoned PPC experts and regular practitioners like Navah Hopkins, Duane Brown, Melissa Mackey, and Nicholas Woodward.

Use match types effectively

Merely knowing match types might not be enough. Navah Hopkins points out that negative keywords do not account for close variants.

For instance, you add ‘cheap’ as a negative keyword to prevent your luxury hotel ads from showing for budget-related searches. If you use ‘cheap" as a phrase match or broad match negative keyword, it will block any search query containing the word ‘cheap’ along with additional words before or after it. This ensures that your ads won’t appear for terms like ‘cheap luxury hotel" or ’luxury hotel deals cheap’.

On the other hand, if you set ‘cheap’ as an exact match negative keyword, it will only exclude search queries that exactly match the word ‘cheap’ without any additional words. While this protects against direct mentions of ‘cheap’, it may still allow variations like ‘affordable luxury hotel’ to trigger your ads. Therefore, understanding the nuances of negative keyword match types is crucial for effective ad targeting and campaign optimization.

Look beyond the search terms report

Duane Brown from Take Some Risk Inc. offers insightful advice on expanding negative keyword strategies beyond the conventional Search Term report. He suggests “using synonym finder tools to identify closely related terms to add to your negative keyword lists”.

Additionally, GPT can be used to rank search terms by relevance. You can save a lot of time by using GPT’s AI to easily score long lists of search terms and find the ones with the lowest relevance for your business.

 

Exclude irrelevant keywords based on current events

Nicholas Woodward from Pack and Send says, “Major events, shocking news, and viral content can disrupt a search campaign like an earthquake. Take preemptive measures to ensure that current events or a sudden rise in related searches do not affect your campaign.”

For example, you’re running ads for ‘banana milkshake’. Meanwhile, some celebrity spills a banana milkshake on their dress and this incident goes viral in the news. Your ad campaign could experience unexpected fluctuations.

As your campaign is targeting the words ‘banana milkshake’, people searching for the celebrity mishap will also see your ad. Negative keywords can help you exclude all people searching for the celebrity.

Avoid competing with your own ads

If you’re planning to run Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) you might want to consider adding your active keywords as negatives in those campaigns. Many PPC experts including Navah have observed that despite Google’s stance that DSA campaigns won’t compete with keywords and ads from Standard campaigns, the results were much better when the two were not mixed and when negatives were used.

Leverage negative keyword lists

Despite their potential, negative keyword lists are often underutilized. Melissa Mackey says, “Every ads account should use negative keyword lists. Advertisers should have lists at least for Universal Negatives, Brand terms to negate from non-brand campaigns, and Competitor Negatives.” There might be a 20-list constraint, but they serve as valuable tools for managing extensive themed lists and maintaining campaign precision.

Additionally, Duane recommends building strong negative keyword lists to exclude irrelevant searches effectively- “Most brands can also look at building a source of truth negative keyword list and making sure they don’t show up for jobs, YouTube, video game and other odd searches.”

What are the advantages of using negative keywords?

Refined targeting

Negative keywords allow you to refine your targeting by excluding searches that are not relevant to your business or offering. This helps you focus your advertising efforts on reaching the most qualified audience for your products or services.

Improved quality score

By excluding irrelevant searches, your ads become more targeted, leading to higher click-through rates (CTRs) and improved ad relevance. This can, in turn, positively impact your Quality Score, resulting in better ad positions.

Relevant ads that convert better

Negative keywords help ensure that your ads are shown to users who are more likely to be interested in your offering. By filtering out irrelevant traffic, you increase the chances of reaching potential customers who are more likely to convert, leading to higher conversion rates and a better ROI.

Money saved on CPCs

Google’s control over ad auction pricing and changes in minimum bids are causing CPCs to rise year after year, and you should do what you can to safeguard your PPC campaigns against increasing costs.

One of the simplest ways to do that is by excluding irrelevant searches, in other words, by using negative keywords to prevent your ads from being triggered by users who are unlikely to convert. This helps you avoid wasting your budget on clicks that are unlikely to result in a desired action, ultimately saving you money on CPCs and improving the overall ROI of your ad campaigns.

Ready to implement? Use our comprehensive negative keywords worksheet

 

This is just a glimpse of our detailed negative keywords worksheet. Here’s a link to the full worksheet that can help you get rid of the stubborn terms eating away at your budget!

Find the positive impact of negative keywords

Finding negative keywords will always be a work in progress. The more campaigns you run, the more negative keywords you will discover, and each negative keyword helps you filter out people you don’t want. But it is important to strike a balance. If you have too many negative keywords, you might also filter out potential customers. Target keywords and negative keywords work like yin-yang. They are opposites, yet they function harmoniously.

With the right tools and strategies, you can navigate this delicate balance efficiently. Take control of your keyword management and overall account health with Optmyzr’s suite of solutions. Sign up for a 14-day free trial.

People also ask

Q. What is the primary purpose of using negative keywords in PPC campaigns
A. The primary purpose of using negative keywords in PPC campaigns is to prevent your ads from appearing for irrelevant search queries. It ensures your ads are shown only to users genuinely interested in your products or services, significantly improving ad relevance, click-through rates (CTR), and return on investment (ROI) by reducing wasted ad spend on non-converting clicks.

Q. How do negative keyword match types (broad, phrase, exact) differ, and when should each be used?
A. Negative keyword match types control how strictly your negatives block search queries:

Q. What are the key benefits of regularly using negative keywords in my ad campaigns?
A. Using negative keywords regularly helps you avoid showing ads to people who aren’t really looking for what you offer. That way, you are not stuck wasting money on irrelevant clicks. Instead, your ads reach the right audience, the ones more likely to engage and convert. Over time, this means better results, lower costs, and a campaign more in control.

Q. How often should I review my Search Terms Report to find new negative keywords?
A. You should review your Search Terms Report at least once a week, especially for new or actively managed campaigns. For mature, stable campaigns, a bi-weekly or monthly review might suffice.

The frequency depends on:

Q. Can using too many negative keywords negatively impact my ad campaigns?
A. Yes, using too many negative keywords or overly broad negative keywords can negatively impact your ad campaigns. Your ads might fail to show for relevant queries, reducing reach and impression volume. That’s where you need to ensure your exclusions are not unintentionally starving your campaign of the needed traffic.

 

Why Your Google Ads Might Not Be Working And How To Make Them Work (Expert Insights + Free Checklist)

There’s nothing more frustrating than launching a Google Ads campaign with carefully chosen budgets, precisely defined targeting, and ad copy you’re proud of, only to be met with… silence.

No clicks, no conversions, just the nagging question: “Why aren’t my Google Ads working?”

It’s a challenge that more advertisers are facing today. As Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin shared during our recent PPC Town Hall, “We’re experiencing a transformation as significant as the mobile revolution. Search queries are evolving from short keyword phrases to longer, more conversational queries.”

 

This makes traditional troubleshooting even more critical as the new shifts take over.

In this blog, we’ll break down the real reasons your Google Ads aren’t working and give you step-by-step solutions to turn things around.

Throughout this guide, we’ll also share exclusive insights and perspectives from our in-depth discussions with Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin for more informed decisions.

How to investigate if your Google Ads is actually working?

If you’re wondering, “Why aren’t my Google Ads showing or driving traffic?”, the first step is to verify whether they’re even running properly. Here’s how:

1. Review your campaign performance metrics

Go to your Google Ads and Google Analytics dashboards and check:

If impressions or clicks are consistently low, it’s a sign that your ads may not be serving effectively, or they are not resonating with your audience.

2. Check your ad status in Google Ads

Log in to your account, click “Ads & assets,” and look at the “Status” column. This tells you if your ads are:

Having an idea of your ad’s status gives you a starting point for troubleshooting, whether that means fixing targeting, adjusting bids, or resolving policy issues.

 

Now, let’s explore the common issues that can affect the performance of your Google Ads campaigns.

Why are my Google Ad campaigns not working and how to fix the issues?

Issues with the preliminary account setup

1. Your ad has been paused, removed, or disapproved

It may seem obvious, but ads, ad groups, and campaigns can get paused, removed, or disapproved quite often. Sometimes, these issues are overlooked, especially if multiple team members manage the account. In fact, users sometimes set up a campaign but forget to turn it on, leaving it in a “paused” or “disabled” state.

Solutions:

💡AI Tip: Optmyzr's new AI-powered Sidekick can now access change history information and handle advanced queries. Instead of manually digging through change logs, you can ask questions like "Which recent changes to the account could have contributed to the 5% decline in performance?" to quickly identify issues.

Check out more of our AI updates and how they simplify your PPC efforts here!

 

2. Your account is still under review

Google reviews ads to ensure they comply with its policies, but the system reviews most ads within one business day. However, more complex reviews may take longer.

Solutions:

3. There’s a billing issue

Addressing billing issues is vital as they can result in account suspension once Google’s grace period expires. Common billing challenges include:

Solutions:

4. Your IP address could be blocked

Some advertisers block their own IP addresses to study their competitors, inadvertently preventing their ads from displaying.

Solution:
In your campaign settings, check if your IP address is listed in the IP exclusions section. If found, remove it to ensure your ads show up as intended.

Issues arising from managing the account

 

1. Your keyword search volume is too low

Google Ads automatically pauses keywords with low activity to help advertisers focus on more relevant and impactful terms. This means if a keyword has received no impressions in the past 13 months, it will be automatically paused. If you re-enable a paused keyword, it could be paused again after 3 months if it remains inactive.

Solution:
Check the “Keywords” section in your account and review the “Status” column to identify low-search-volume keywords. Consider using broader terms or match types and targeting more relevant locations. Use Google’s Keyword Planner or Optmyzr’s high-performing search terms report for keyword ideas.

In the words of Google:

2. There’s an issue with ad scheduling

Overly narrow ad schedules can limit your ad’s exposure and traffic, causing it to not show to potential audiences.

Solution:
Conduct hourly analyses of your campaign’s performance and adjust ad schedules to maximize reach during the most relevant hours and days without exhausting your budget.

 

3. Landing pages are irrelevant or faulty

Poorly performing landing pages due to irrelevance, URL errors, or even hacking can negatively impact your ad ranking and cause your ads not to show on SERPs.

Solutions:

💡Google’s Update: Landing page issues have become even more critical following Google’s latest quality update. Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin revealed:

Check out the following PPC Town Hall episode that highlights the common mistakes you should avoid while creating high-converting landing pages.

 

4. Bid and budgeting issues

In Google Ads, how much you bid and budget can make or break your success:


 

5. Low keyword quality scores and CTR

Ad relevance to the search query and low CTR can harm the quality scores of your keywords, leading to decreased visibility on SERPs.

Solutions

Google’s approach to relevance hasn’t changed, but the execution has become more sophisticated.

As Ginny pointed out, “The whole goal is to serve an ad and a landing page that is highly relevant to the user, what their need is, what their problem is that they’re searching for.”

6. Negative keywords are canceling out positive keywords

Overlapping positive and negative keywords can prevent your ad from showing for specific searches.

Solution:
Regularly audit your positive and negative keyword lists to avoid overlaps and keep them updated. Optmyzr’s Negative Keyword Finder tool can help identify conflicting keywords and suggest negative keywords to add, ensuring your positive keywords aren’t being blocked by overly broad negative terms.

7. Using the wrong keyword match types: Google Ads Coach Jyll talks about how this impacts their client

Sometimes, when you use a Broad or Phrase match type for your keywords to capture more traffic, it could match with your competitor’s brand keywords and cause your top-performing campaigns to suddenly decline.

This happened with an e-commerce client that one of our customers, Jyll Saskin Gales (Google Ads Coach and Consultant at Jyll.ca), manages. Their top-performing brand search campaign saw a sudden dip in ROAS, though they hadn’t changed anything in their campaign.

On reviewing their search term report, they found that their Phrase match keywords started matching competitor brand names. These competitors had higher search volume and higher CPCs, which ate up the client’s budget without producing good results.

Solution:
“Rather than play whack-a-mole with negatives, we decided to change her brand keywords from phrase match to exact match, and performance stabilized within a few days. Phew!” - Jyll Saskin Gales, Google Ads coach & consultant, Jyll.ca

💡Google's perspective: According to Ginny, Google is addressing match type issues through AI improvements: "With automation advancements and AI advancements, we're now able to infer a lot more about what that query intent is" through AI-based keyword prioritization that helps select the most relevant keyword and ad combinations for user queries.

 

📖Also Read: How to Choose the Best Keyword Match Type for Your Google Ads Campaign

 

8. You are not providing Google with enough conversion data

One of the most overlooked reasons for poor Google Ads performance is inadequate data sharing. Smart Bidding algorithms rely heavily on conversion data to optimize your campaigns effectively. Without sufficient quality data, Google’s machine learning can’t properly identify your best customers or optimize toward your business goals.

As Ginny emphasizes, “Please give Google the data it needs to help you and your business succeed. The more you withhold information, the harder time you’ll have seeing success.”

Solutions:

9. Campaign structure is fragmenting your conversion data

If you have multiple campaigns targeting the same audience with identical ROAS goals but they’re separated unnecessarily, each campaign operates with limited conversion data. This prevents Google’s machine learning from understanding your best customers and optimizing bids effectively.

As Ginny explains, “What matters to your business should inform your structure. That would be if you have campaigns that necessitate different ROAS targets, for example, that will dictate a structure.

But if you look across your account now and have five, ten campaigns that essentially have the same goal, that could be an opportunity to consolidate under that one goal.”

Solutions:

Checklist used by most of Optmyzr’s power users to troubleshoot why their Google Ads aren’t working as expected

Now let’s take a look at the checklist used by our power users to investigate if their campaigns aren’t working as intended, whether it’s a sharp decline in cost or a drop in conversions. Sharing these tips below (most of them were discussed earlier too):

Along with the checklist our customer used, here’s a full, comprehensive step-by-step checklist covering every fix.

Download it for free here!

Take back control of your Google Ads campaigns with Optmyzr

While Google Ads can be a powerful tool for your marketing campaigns, various issues can hinder their performance. However, with regular monitoring and troubleshooting, you can address these problems and get your ads back on track, driving the results you desire.

Don’t let the frustration of underperforming Google Ads campaigns discourage you; instead, take action to optimize your campaigns and achieve your advertising goals.

If you’re looking for an efficient way to monitor and troubleshoot your Google Ads campaigns, consider scheduling a demo with Optmyzr. Their tools can help you quickly identify and optimize for these issues.

You can also explore their solutions by signing up for a 14-day free trial.

You will get all the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

FAQs

Q. Why is Google Ads not loading in Chrome?

A. One of the most common reasons Google Ads might not load in Chrome is due to ad blockers. Disable your ad blocker or add an exception for Google Ads to resolve this issue.

Browser settings, like pop-up blockers or JavaScript blockers, can also prevent Google Ads from loading. Adjust these settings to allow Google Ads to display.

Q. What are some common mistakes made in Google Ads setup?

Q. How long does it take for Google to start showing ads?

A. After activating your Google Ads account, it typically takes 24-48 hours for Google to review and approve it.

Following approval, Google gathers essential data about your business, learns about your target audience, and examines your desired topic. This process can take longer for larger or more complex businesses.

Q. Why are my Google Ads campaigns not showing at the top of the page?

A. If your ads aren’t appearing on the first page or at the top of search results, it’s usually because your bids are too low compared to competitors.

To fix this, check the “Est. first page bid” and “Est. top of page bid” for your keywords in Google Ads. Adjust your bids to meet or exceed these estimates to improve your ad position and ensure better visibility.

Q. Should I search for my own ads on Google to check if they’re appearing?

A. No, avoid manually searching for your own ads on Google’s search results.

When you or your team repeatedly search for your ads without clicking them, it artificially inflates impressions while lowering the click-through rate (CTR). This drop in CTR can hurt your Quality Score, leading to lower ad rankings. In some cases, it may even cause your ads to stop appearing altogether.

Instead, use Google’s “Ad Preview and Diagnosis” tool to see if your ads are showing for specific keywords. This tool simulates a search without increasing impressions, preserving your performance stats.

Social Media Advertising Tools: A Comparison Guide of 6 Leading Platforms

Managing paid social campaigns across multiple platforms is time-consuming, detail-heavy, and often more complex than it needs to be, especially if you’re juggling different formats, audiences, and budgets.

This is precisely why, whether you’re a seasoned marketer or a novice, having the right tools in place is essential for scaling your efforts efficiently.

Thankfully, there’s a wide range of social media ad tools that cater to the needs of every type of agency or brand. In this guide, we’ll explore native ad management platforms as well as the top social media advertising tools available, their key features, and how they can help you manage campaigns and achieve your business goals.

By the end, you’ll know whether a third-party platform makes sense for you and which ones are worth considering.

How to choose the best social media ad management tool for your needs

There are so many diverse ad platforms to choose from today, but there are even more tools to help with ad optimization. Picking the right one can be challenging, but aligning your marketing goals with the capabilities that these platforms offer is the best way forward.

Find a tool that meets at least most, if not all, of these basic criteria:

Native social media ad platforms: Pros and cons

Meta Ads Manager, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, X Ads Manager) are designed to serve their own social networks, providing features tailored to their specific channels.

While multi-platform social media advertising tools offer powerful features and capabilities, it’s important to recognize that not all businesses need these additional functions (and the costs that come with them). Native ad management platforms are effective for many users, especially if you’re only advertising on a single social channel, or Facebook and Instagram, as you can manage them both via Meta Ads.

LinkedIn Campaign Manager

LinkedIn Ads Manager, also known as Campaign Manager, is a platform for creating, managing, and optimizing advertising campaigns on LinkedIn. It offers features for setting up various ad formats, targeting specific professional audiences, and controlling budgets and schedules. You can track campaign performance with detailed analytics and reporting tools, helping you refine your marketing strategies to meet your business goals.

Advantages

Potential limitations

  • Audience targeting: Use over 20 audience attribute categories to reach the right audience.

  • Ad formats: Sponsored Content, Message Ads, Dynamic Ads, and Text Ads.

  • Budget and scheduling: Set and manage campaign budgets and schedules.

  • Performance tracking: Access detailed analytics to measure and optimize campaign performance.

  • Limited creative capabilities: The scope for creative and visually appealing ads is limited, when done directly on LinkedIn Campaign Manager.

  • Smaller audience pool: Focuses mainly on B2B audiences, limiting reach.

 

For more information, visit LinkedIn Ads Manager.

Meta Ads Manager

Meta Ads Manager can serve as your central hub for running advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or Audience Network. You can create ads, manage their scheduling and placement, and monitor the performance of your campaigns.

The platform offers detailed analytics and insights to help marketers optimize their ad strategies.

Advantages

Potential limitations

  • Audience targeting: Targeting options based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and more.

  • Ad formats: Access all Meta Ads formats, including video ads, carousel ads, slideshow ads, etc.

  • Budget and scheduling: Set ad budgets and schedules to control spending and timing.

  • Performance tracking: Monitor ad performance with detailed analytics and reporting tools.

  • Learning curve: The platform can be somewhat challenging for newcomers to master.

  • Target audience size: The minimum targetable audience size is 1,000 people (while the maximum is 50 million).

  • Manual optimization: Requires frequent manual adjustments to maintain optimal performance.

  • Integration limitations: May not seamlessly integrate with all third-party analytics and CRM tools.

 

For more detailed information, visit Meta Ads Manager.

X Ads Manager

Twitter Ads Manager (now X Ads Manager) is a comprehensive platform for creating, managing, and analyzing ad campaigns on Twitter. It offers detailed audience targeting with filters such as location, keywords, and behaviors.

The platform supports various ad formats to engage users effectively. Users can manage budgets and schedules for precise ad spend control and monitor campaign performance through customizable metrics and detailed analytics.

Advantages

Potential limitations

  • Audience targeting: Detailed audience breakdowns with filters like location, keywords, and behaviors.

  • Ad formats: Utilize various ad formats like image, video, text, and carousel ads for enhanced engagement and flexibility.

  • Budget and scheduling: Manage campaign budgets and schedules for precise control.

  • Performance tracking: Monitor campaign performance with customizable metrics and detailed analytics.

  • Less comprehensive analytics: Provides less detailed analytics, making it harder to measure precise campaign performance.

  • UI complexity: The user interface can be less intuitive, requiring a steeper learning curve.

  • Customer support: Slower response times and less accessible support for troubleshooting.

 

For more detailed information, visit X Ads Manager.

Top 6 social media ad management tools compared (2025)

While there are numerous social media ad management tools out there, we’ve shortlisted the top six tools available now. Take a look at what each of these platforms offers and choose the one that best aligns with your social ad management requirements.

Name of tool

Top features

Pricing

Optmyzr Social

Portfolio-based account grouping, cross-platform management (Meta + LinkedIn), performance alerts, custom automation, drag-and-drop reporting.

Starts at $99/month

Madgicx

AI marketer suggestions, pixel-based attribution, creative ad library.

Starts at $58/month

AdRoll

Cross-platform retargeting, ML-driven budget management, native ad creation.

Custom pricing

AdEspresso

A/B testing, auto post promotion, campaign approval flows

Starts at $49/month

Smartly.io

Dynamic creative optimization, AI campaign recommendations, creative/reporting suites.

Custom pricing

Semrush Social Media Marketing

Influencer analytics, social scheduling, community management.

Starts at $20/month

 

Before we take a deeper look at what each of these social tools offers, some features are common to all the tools mentioned above; these features include:

All-in-one performance management platforms

Optmyzr Social

Venturing into social ad management software, Optmyzr has launched Optmyzr Social. The platform supports Meta and LinkedIn Ads management and is currently available for everyone under public beta.

What you need to know about Optmyzr Social

Suitable for: Agencies, B2B marketing teams, ecommerce brands, enterprise brands

Cost: $99/month with unlimited accounts and ad spend. Optmyzr users can add it to their subscription for $79/month (20% off).

Payment model: Flat pricing irrespective of ad spend and number of accounts

Unique features:

Here’s what Anna P., Junior Online Marketing Manager, Elephant Digital, had to say about the toolset:

“I think it’s pretty cool that you can see the demographics (like how many impressions are coming from men or women), because it’s not too easy to find out in the Business Manager. It’s also cool that you can set up alerts.

I also liked the “Ad Analyzer”; it’s very helpful to see which ads are spending a lot of money, and decide which ads we want to pause.”

 

Madgicx

Madgicx has made a name for itself with AI and automation-based features to optimize Meta and Google Ads campaigns.

What you need to know about Madgicx

Suitable for: Ecomm brands, agencies, solopreneurs

Cost: All-in-one suite starting at $58/month

Payment model: Seven-day free trial; monthly, quarterly, and annual plans

Unique features:

Creative and campaign optimization tools

Smartly

Smartly offers three different suites, one for creative development, one to optimize campaigns, and the third to analyze reports. It leverages AI to optimize ad performance on most social platforms, including Meta, Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok, and Google Marketing Platform.

What you need to know about Smartly

Suitable for: Brand marketing, Creative teams, agencies, performance teams

Cost: Media spend percentage fee

Payment model: Demo request followed by paid subscription

Unique features:

AdEspresso

AdEspresso is designed to simplify the ad creation and management process for Facebook, Instagram, and Google. Known for its user-friendly interface, AdEspresso offers features like A/B testing and customizable templates.

What you need to know about AdEspresso

Suitable for: Agencies, ecomm brands, small- and medium-sized businesses

Cost: Starter pack starting at $49/month

Payment model: 14-day free trial; Starter ($1000/month spend limit), Plus, and Enterprise plans for unlimited ad spends

Unique features:

Retargeting and cross-platform reach tools

AdRoll

AdRoll specializes in retargeting and machine learning-based ad analyses. It provides cross-channel analytics, dynamic ad creation, and audience targeting for most social platforms, including Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, and X (Twitter) Ads.

What you need to know about AdRoll

Suitable for: Ecommerce brands, financial institutions, hospitality businesses, agencies

Cost: Pay-as-you-go for display and native ads

Payment model: Pay-as-you-go; monthly subscription

Unique features:

Semrush Social Media Marketing

Semrush offers a comprehensive social media marketing tool as part of its suite. It offers two different toolkits: Semrush Social and Influencer Analytics. While the platform does not have a creative building suite, users can manage and optimize campaigns across various social media platforms, providing features like content scheduling, analytics, and KPI tracking.

What you need to know about Semrush Social Media Marketing

Suitable for: Influencers, agencies, marketers, performance teams

Cost: Starting at $20/month

Payment model: Seven-day free trial, followed by plans based on company size

Unique features:

Level up your social media ad strategy, without the chaos

Choosing the right social media ad management tool isn’t just about features—it’s about finding a platform that supports the way you work. Whether you prioritize automation, cross-platform visibility, or deeper insights, the right tool can help you reclaim time, reduce errors, and get more from your ad spend.

By leveraging Optmyzr Social, you can focus more on the strategic planning and creative execution of your social ads. Explore Optmyzr Social with a free beta trial to elevate your paid social advertising strategy today.

People also ask

Q. What are social media ad management tools?
A. These tools help advertisers plan, run, and monitor paid campaigns across platforms like Meta and LinkedIn. They bring everything from setup to reporting into one place, making it easier to stay organized and efficient.

Q. How do these tools work?
A. They connect to ad platforms via APIs to let you:

Some tasks (like replying to comments or creative edits) may still need to happen on the native platforms.

Q. What are the best social media ad management tools for agencies in 2025
A. Some of the top tools are Optmyzr Social, Madgicx, AdRoll, AdEspresso, Smartly.io, and Semrush Social. Each one is good for different kinds of businesses.

Q. How do multi-platform social media ad tools help save time and improve results?
A. They let you manage everything in one place, automate common tasks, and help analyze data from different social platforms.

Q. What should I look for in a social media ad tool?
A. Focus on how easy it is to use, if it can grow with your business, how well it automates, reports, and connects with other tools you use.

Q. Are third-party tools better than using the platform’s own ad manager?
A. Third-party tools are a smart choice for managing ads across multiple platforms efficiently. They help you save time, scale your campaigns, and automate repetitive tasks even though a few advanced features might still need native platform access.

Q. How do advertisers choose the right tool for their specific goals (e.g., creative testing, automation, performance tracking)?
A. Start by identifying your biggest bottlenecks. If you’re spending too much time on manual tasks, prioritize tools with strong automation. For creative testing, look for platforms with dynamic creative features and clear A/B test reporting. If performance tracking is your focus, choose tools that offer customizable dashboards, real-time alerts, and integrations with your analytics stack.

Q. When should you choose a social media ad management tool?
A. When you’re managing campaigns across multiple platforms, need to automate tasks, or want faster, clearer insights. These tools help you stay ahead of algorithm changes, monitor performance in real time, and save time on manual work, making them ideal for advertisers looking to scale efficiently.

Amazon Exited Google Shopping Ads. Here’s How to Rebalance Budgets and Monitor CPC Shifts

Amazon has pulled out of Google Shopping ads in 20 global markets. For years, they’ve been a dominant force in the auction, accounting for up to 30% of impression share in many verticals.

 

Their absence changes the landscape. CPC trends may shift. Impression share could be redistributed. And advertisers will need to monitor performance more closely to stay on track.

Here’s how to respond and how Optmyzr can help.

Monitor campaign changes as they happen

When a major player exits an auction, campaign performance can shift quickly. Small changes in CPC or impression share can add up, especially across large accounts or portfolios.

Optmyzr helps you stay informed with:

KPI alerts for impression share, CPC, spend, conversions, and more

Get notified when something’s off with your campaigns, like unexpected underspending or overspending.

For example:

With Optmyzr’s Anomaly Alerts (also called Auto Alerts), you’ll get automatic notifications across any linked Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or Facebook Ads account.

You’ll find these alerts by default under the Alert Settings page in Optmyzr.

Notifications via email, Slack, or MS Teams

Track key metrics like impression share, CPC, spend, conversions, and more, and get notified when they move in the wrong direction.

For example:

 

 

You can customize these alerts in the Alert Settings page in Optmyzr.

Root-cause analysis with the PPC Investigator tool

The PPC Investigator is an insights tool that’ll help you find exactly which element in a given account caused a metric to increase or decrease, and whether it’s a keyword, placement, or an entire network that caused the changes.

It has two components:

  1. Cause Chart
  2. Root Cause Analysis

Cause Chart

The Cause Chart is based on the fact that the performance of every metric depends on the performance of other underlying metrics. It uses the relationships between different metrics to show potential causality.

Root Cause Analysis

After identifying which metric needs to be worked on, the Root Cause Analysis goes a step further and highlights the exact Campaigns/Ad groups/Product partition/Keywords, etc. that were responsible for the change in an account.

It shows top movers who are significant contributors to the change in the account when compared across the two date ranges. You can view the top three positive and negative movers for a particular account.

 

“It’s as if [Amazon] have completely disconnected from Merchant Center.”
— David Kyle, National Positions

These tools make it easier to catch unexpected changes early, before they impact broader performance.

Adjust budgets based on changing conditions

With Amazon gone, some sectors may see reduced CPCs. Others might see more aggressive bidding. Either way, advertisers should review budget pacing to ensure it still aligns with current performance.

Optmyzr’s budget tools include:

Effective budget pacing makes sure your campaigns stay on track throughout the month. You can use automated alerts to track monthly budgets across Google Ads combined, allowing for seamless cross-platform management.

In Optmyzr, these pacing alerts get automatically added on the Alert Settings page, where you can manage some more advanced options like notifying multiple users.

 

You can edit the Cycle Date or Monthly Budget target, and any update will get automatically reflected on the All Portfolio Dashboard.

For example: Monitoring spend by the 15th of the month to ensure campaigns hit 50-60% of their budget.

Why it matters: This prevents wild budget swings and makes sure the performance stays consistent.

“I always emphasize the importance of showing my clients how their budget is being utilized. The Budget Pacing tool has made this process so much easier for me, helping my team and me understand what to expect for the rest of the month and figure out where to invest the next advertising dollar for my clients.”

— Mike Rhodes, Founder, WebSavvy

“Amazon appears in ~30% of Shopping auctions across our client base — so this is a big shift. CPCs haven’t dropped… but it’s definitely one to review.”
— Josh Duggan, Vervaunt

Stay flexible while the market shifts

There’s some speculation that this exit might be temporary, possibly related to Prime Day, while others see it as a broader test. In either case, advertisers who can monitor trends and respond quickly will be better positioned.

Optmyzr can help teams:

“Now is the perfect time for brands and agencies to run their own Google Search to Amazon ads with attribution, since they no longer get free coverage via Google Shopping Ads from Amazon.”
— Brandon Yann, VML

Summary: What to focus on now

If you manage Shopping or Amazon Ads, consider these next steps:

✅ Review campaign performance for changes in CPC or impression share
✅ Set up alerts for key metrics across channels
✅ Monitor budget pacing to avoid overspending
✅ Compare results across platforms for short-term opportunities

Optmyzr helps advertisers respond effectively

Optmyzr’s tools support faster diagnosis, clearer reporting, and more controlled budget management across ad platforms.

In a changing market, that kind of visibility helps advertisers make practical decisions without scrambling to react after the fact.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Now’s the best time to sign up for a full functionality 14-day free trial.

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

 

Why Use Optmyzr When You Have Google Ads Editor, Rules, and Scripts?

“Can’t I just do all of this in Google Ads?”

That’s one question many PPC marketers ask us during a sales conversation. It’s a fair one. Google Ads has grown more sophisticated with tools like Editor, Automated Rules, and custom scripts.

So, where does Optmyzr fit in?

This article lays out the answer clearly and in depth. We’ll highlight what Google Ads does well, but also spotlight where it falls short and how Optmyzr fills those gaps. The reality is that Optmyzr doesn’t replace Google Ads. It complements it with automation, analytics, scalability, and workflow capabilities designed for modern paid media teams.

What Google Ads gets right and where it ends

Let’s start by acknowledging the strengths of Google’s native tools:

That said, Google’s tools often lack:

Example: A PPC manager at an agency wants to compare budget pacing across 15 ecommerce clients in one view, not jump between individual accounts. Optmyzr’s Account Dashboard solves this.

Example: A retailer wants to adjust bids based on profit margin per SKU, which exists in their Google sheet but isn’t available inside Google Ads. Optmyzr’s Rule Engine can ingest and act on it.

Example: Setting up layered logic like “Pause if CTR drops by 10% AND CPC rises by 10% AND ad relevance is below average” is impossible in native rules, but you can do the same as a simple drag-and-drop operation in the Rule Engine.

Example: A client’s conversions dropped 40% last week. Instead of pulling 5 different reports, PPC Investigator identifies that it’s due to PMax shifting budget from a high-ROAS asset group.

Example: An agency wants its analysts to review all automated changes before they’re applied. Optmyzr enables scheduled suggestions with human-in-the-loop review via Blueprints.

As teams scale, these gaps turn into bottlenecks.

What you can’t do in Google Ads but can in Optmyzr

Feature

Google Ads

Optmyzr

Campaign grouping by performance

❌

✅

Feed-based automation

❌

✅

Cross-entity analysis

❌

✅

Creating Shopping campaigns at scale*

❌

✅

Industry insights

❌

✅

Multi-account dashboards

❌

✅

Team task assignment and SOPs

❌

✅

Real-time anomaly detection

❌

✅

Integrated competitor insights

❌

✅

Channel-specific PMax audits

❌

✅


Example: *Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Management tool lets you build campaigns with hundreds of ad groups and thousands of product groups in minutes, not hours. It’s impossible to do this manually in Google Ads without risking errors and delays.

What you can do in Google Ads but tediously

Google Ads doesn’t make certain workflows easy. You can technically complete them, but only with time, spreadsheets, and workarounds. Here’s where Optmyzr streamlines the process:

Task

Google Ads

Optmyzr

Finding high- and low-performing keywords

Manual spreadsheets

Search Terms N-Grams

Investigating why CPAs rose

Multi-report exports

PPC Investigator

PMax asset-level auditing

Click through 1-by-1

Optmyzr Express (Audit in bulk)

Forecasting and budget reallocation

A long, multi-step process

Spend Projection, Optimize Budgets tools

Google’s Automated Rules let you:

Optmyzr’s Rule Engine is built for powerful automation. It allows you to:

✅ Combine multiple rules

✅ Use multiple or custom date ranges

✅ Relative comparisons

✅ Pull external data

✅ Review or schedule

✅ Exclude recent changes

“Rule Engine is certainly one of the amazing sections of Optmyzr because it’s really like your dedicated, highly flexible, and scalable optimization hub where you can automate a lot of very valuable optimizations for your clients with infinite customizations.” - Matthieu Tran-Van

Learn how Matthieu Tran-Van saw a 10x productivity boost & a 28% revenue surge through Optmyzr

Scriptless automation: A safer way to scale

Scripts offer flexibility, but they come with challenges:

Optmyzr’s automation approach matches the logic of scripts, with a visual builder, version control, audit logs, and support.

Google Ads scripts

Optmyzr

Technical expertise required

No-code logic builder

No audit trail

Version history + UI preview

Must maintain yourself

Supported + updated regularly

Rule Engine, Campaign Automator, and Optmyzr Express offer 90% of what scripts can do, with 0% of the overhead.

Campaign Automator helps SearchLab Digital boost their client’s conversion rate by 42%

Optmyzr offers automation with accountability (what we like to call PPC insurance)

Score philosophy: Transparent, not self-serving

Google’s Optimization Score often nudges advertisers toward recommendations that increase ad spend, not always results. In contrast, Optmyzr offers its own scoring framework that:

This matters when your job is to balance performance with cost efficiency, not simply to check off Google’s to-do list.

Google’s AI-driven recommendations and campaigns like PMax have introduced helpful features, but also unexpected risks:

“Google re-enabled expanded targeting without notice and cost us thousands.” — Melissa Mackey

Learn more: How to protect your Google Ads account from glitches

Optmyzr’s platform is designed as a safety net:

These features help you spot Google-initiated changes before they become costly.

Optmyzr is built for scale and teams

Reporting that goes beyond Google

Optmyzr supports multi-channel, branded reports that:

For agencies, this means less time formatting spreadsheets and more time showing value to clients.

Built-in workflows and safeguards

Optmyzr goes beyond single-user control to support complex PPC teams:

Example: An analyst sets up a budget reallocation in Rule Engine. Instead of applying immediately, the task is queued for approval from the account lead.

Optmyzr was designed for agencies and enterprises, not just individual account managers.

For agencies:

For in-house teams:

Optmyzr doesn’t compete with Google Ads. It complements it.

If you’re a solo advertiser managing one account, Google’s native tools might be enough. But if you’re:

…then Optmyzr becomes indispensable.

Use Google’s tools where they shine. But when you need clarity across accounts, custom automations that scale, protection from black-box automation, and workflow visibility for teams, Optmyzr is your edge.

Why Competitor Audience Targeting Is the Future of PPC (And How to Do It Right)

Are you noticing that your PPC budget doesn’t go as far as it used to, while targeting options now seem more limited than ever? You’re not alone, and you’re certainly not imagining it.

Google’s recent GML2025 updates made one thing clear: the rules of audience targeting are changing fast. We now have AI Max, a new keywordless campaign type that expands on the automation model of Performance Max.

With these shifts, traditional account management approaches like keyword targeting and general lookalike audiences are no longer sufficient.

This calls for an audience-first PPC strategy: one that focuses on understanding and targeting specific audience segments, and tailoring ads to match their behaviors and preferences.

A more impactful tactic in this new era is competitor audience targeting. It’s a strategic shortcut to reaching high-intent prospects faster. This guide covers what it is, why it works, and how to do it right to lower CPC, boost ROAS, and future-proof your PPC strategy in 2025.

What is competitor audience targeting in PPC?

Competitor audience targeting involves building highly targeted custom audiences based on the websites your competitors are attracting traffic to. Unlike competitor keyword targeting, which focuses on bidding for the same search terms, this approach targets actual audiences that have shown interest in your competitors.

This is one of the most powerful audience targeting tactics available today, since it can be associated with campaign types that don’t use keyword-based targeting, like Performance Max, Demand Gen, Display, etc., to get more control on their reach and spending.

Why traditional keyword targeting alone isn’t enough

1. Auction saturation and cost inflation

As CPCs rise and market competition intensifies, relying solely on keyword targeting and bidding, especially during peak seasons like BFCM, can quickly drain your ad budget. Overcrowded auctions drive costs sky-high, often without delivering proportional returns, particularly if your ad rank isn’t competitive.

2. Limited control in AI-led campaign types

Campaign types like Performance Max and Demand Gen don’t support keyword targeting and offer limited visibility into search term data. Relying on them without strong audience input means surrendering control to Google’s algorithm. While you may hit your conversion goals, it often comes at the cost of wasted spend on irrelevant audiences across multiple channels.

3. Keywords show queries, not people

Traditional competitor keyword targeting may help you compete on the same search terms, but it doesn’t reveal who you’re actually reaching. Without visibility into the audiences behind those queries, you’re missing the chance to target high-intent users directly. You need tools that turn competitor engagement into actionable audience segments for your own campaigns.

Why competitor audience targeting works

1. Behavioral affinity > guesswork on intent

Unlike traditional audience targeting, which covers a wide spectrum of users across different stages of the funnel, competitor audience targeting zeroes in on users who are already solution-aware. These users are actively considering alternatives.

Your goal? Persuade them that your solution offers more value than your competitor’s. This approach boosts advertising efficiency by focusing the budget on those most likely to convert.

2. Unlocks smarter audience seeds for Google’s algorithms to target

In AI-driven campaign types, the quality of your inputs determines the quality of your outputs. Competitor audiences act as high-quality seeds that inform Google’s machine learning models more precisely, leading to more efficient budget use.

3. Reduces waste and speeds up results

Starting with audiences that are already high-probability converters shortens the learning curve of black-box campaign types like Performance Max. It leads to faster stabilization, improved ROAS, and reduced spend on irrelevant impressions.

Real use cases for competitor-based audience targeting

1. Prospect smarter (not broader)

Launching a Display campaign for a SaaS project management tool? Instead of going broad with interest-based targeting, build a custom audience of users who visit competitors like Zoho Projects or Asana.

The result? Lower CAC, better CTR, and more marketing-qualified leads within the first two weeks.

2. Boost PMax performance with external audience signals

A DTC apparel brand runs a PMax campaign and adds a custom audience built from URLs of top competitors. This arms Google’s machine learning algorithms with more relevant audience signals, accelerating learning for asset groups and improving cost efficiency across placements.

3. Run win-back or contrast campaigns

Suppose you’re managing an account of a fintech startup. Build campaigns targeting audiences from larger players like Intuit. The ad messaging should focus on speed, agility, and personalized support, contrasting the pain points associated with larger companies.

Result: Higher engagement from users open to alternatives.

4. Category expansion

Suppose you’re managing campaigns for a meal delivery service that’s expanding into wellness-related products. Identify adjacent competitors and target their audiences. This opens up new revenue streams via cross-category interest, with less money spent on prospecting.

How to build competitor-targeted audiences

1. The manual approach

To create competitor URL-based audience segments in Google Ads, you need to create a custom segment within the Audience Manager, selecting “people who browse types of websites” and adding your competitor’s URLs. This allows you to target users who have recently visited those websites.

Here’s a step-by-step guide:

  1. Access Audience Manager: Navigate to your Google Ads account. Go to “Tools & settings” > “Audience manager”.
  2. Create a Custom Segment: Click the “Custom segments” tab, then the plus button to create a new custom segment.
  3. Define the Audience: Choose “People who browse types of websites”. Enter your competitor’s URLs and, optionally, relevant search terms. These segments are inferred by Google based on user behavior, not direct visits.
  4. Name and Save: Give your segment a clear name (e.g., “Competitor A Visitors”) and save.
  5. Add to Campaign: In your chosen campaign or ad group, go to “Audiences” > “Edit audience segments” > select your new segment > click “Save”.

While powerful, this process is fragmented and manual. Here’s an easier way.

2. The smarter way: Building competitor audiences through Optmyzr

We recently introduced a new feature that makes it easy to create targeted custom audiences using competitor website URLs, right from the Top Competitors Widget on your Account Dashboard.

This widget identifies competitor domains based on overlapping keyword activity. You can immediately build an audience by clicking “Create Audience”, opening a side-tray where you can:

Competitor Audience Targeting

 

This turns a previously complex, multi-step task into a streamlined workflow, giving you smarter reach in minutes.

Why this matters now (and what’s coming next)

Ad platforms are increasingly adopting keywordless targeting models like AI Max and Demand Gen, where traditional controls no longer apply. In this landscape:

It’s time to move from keyword strategy to audience strategy

PPC success in 2025 is not just about showing up for the right searches; it’s about showing up for the right people.

If you’re ready to avoid broad guesswork and start using your competitors’ success as your targeting strategy, Optmyzr can help. If you’re not an Optmyzr user yet, sign up for a free trial to explore this feature and see how it gives you a competitive edge.

Key questions answered

Q. What is competitor audience targeting?

A. It’s the strategy of creating audience segments from competitor website URLs, allowing you to target users already interested in similar products or services.

Q. How does competitor audience targeting improve ROAS?

A. By targeting high-intent users who have already engaged with competitor sites, you reduce wasted impressions and increase the likelihood of conversions.

Q. What are common tools or methods for competitor audience targeting?

A. You can use Google Ads Custom Segments and Optmyzr’s new feature to build competitor-targeted audience segments.

Q. Why is this feature not available in my Optmyzr plan?

A. The “Create Audiences Using Competitor Websites” feature is available only in Premium and Enterprise plans. Contact support@optmyzr.com to upgrade.

Q. How does competitor audience targeting help with PMax campaigns?

A. It feeds Google’s machine learning with high-quality audience signals, accelerating learning and improving performance across asset groups.

Q. What challenges does competitor audience targeting solve?

A. It solves inefficiencies in targeting by focusing ad spend on known high-intent segments, improves relevance, and provides greater control in AI-led campaigns.

The 7 Most Frustrating Amazon PPC Challenges And How Optmyzr Fixes Them

“I’m running ads, adjusting bids… so why isn’t performance improving?”

It’s a question many Amazon advertisers ask right after realizing their ad budget’s nearly gone and performance isn’t keeping up.

Sure, Seller Central covers the basics when you’re managing Amazon ads. It helps you set up campaigns, manage budgets, and monitor ad performance. But when it comes to making sense of the why behind a sudden ACOS spike, missed keyword wins, or wasted spend, it’s often not enough.

That’s where Optmyzr steps in.

It adds a powerful layer of insights and automation on top of your Amazon Ads so you can fix inefficiencies faster, scale what’s working, and stay proactive instead of reactive.

In this article, we’ll unpack key challenges Amazon advertisers face and show how Optmyzr helps you go from manual firefighting to confident, data-backed decision-making.

7 challenges with running Amazon ads and how Optmyzr helps

1. Burning your budget without ROI

Problem: “My campaigns are overspending and I don’t know why.”

Leaving your budget spend unchecked is one of the fastest ways to erode your profit margins when advertising on Amazon. Without proper visibility and guardrails, you run the risk of burning through your monthly or daily budgets, sometimes on non-converting keywords or irrelevant placements. Often, you may find yourself reacting after the damage is done, instead of proactively controlling spend.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅Budget monitoring

Set monthly budget targets for each account and monitor daily pacing against those limits. In Optmyzr, you can configure the budget cycle (e.g., reset on the 1st of each month) and receive overpacing/underpacing alerts directly via email or Slack. This setup ensures real-time visibility and control without interfering with Amazon Ads platform configurations.

✅Spend projection

Using current spend trends, Optmyzr forecasts whether you’re on track to hit or exceed your monthly budget. This lets you proactively adjust bidding or pause inefficient campaigns before budget overruns happen.

 

✅Account alerts

Real-time alerts flag anomalies like a spike in spend or a drop in return, letting you intercept issues before they spiral. You can configure alerts based on ACOS, spend thresholds, or CTR drops, making them actionable and tailored to your KPIs.

📌Example: Midway through the month, your Budget Monitor shows high pacing, and an alert flags rising costs with flat conversions. Spend Projection confirms you’re on track to overspend. A quick dive into campaign metrics points to a generic campaign—high CPC, zero conversions, and broad targeting that’s driving low-intent traffic. It’s burning the budget fast with no return. You pause it, adjust bids, and reallocate spend to a high-ROAS branded campaign.

 

Also read: 5 optimizations to boost Amazon PPC profitability

2. ACoS eating into your profits

Problem: “My ACoS is too high.”

High ACOS eats into profitability, especially for low-margin products where even small inefficiencies can negate your returns. Without a structured way to optimize bids, you risk wasting budget on keywords that fail to convert at a sustainable cost.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅Suggested bids

This tool uses Amazon’s API to recommend bid changes based on current keyword performance. You can:

It’s ideal for routine tuning and works best when run every 7–14 days to account for performance lag.

📌Example: You’re tuning a high-traffic campaign and spot keywords where Amazon recommends higher bids. Using Optmyzr’s Suggested Bids, you apply a +10% increase to top performers with strong CTR and conversion volume. For a few, you tweak bids manually. In minutes, your bids are updated in bulk.

 

✅Bid adjustment optimization

Optmyzr offers two rule-based strategies here:

📌Example: You notice ACOS creeping past 80%, far above your 30% target. Using Optmyzr’s “Change bids based on ACOS”, you set your target and a conversion threshold, so only data-backed keywords are adjusted. Optmyzr automatically lowers bids on the overspenders.

For newer campaigns, you switch to “Set bids to reach target ACOS”, define your bid range, and let Optmyzr calculate the ideal bid to hit your goal.

 

3. Blind spots costing you performance

Problem: “I don’t have enough visibility into what’s working or failing in my campaigns.”

When you don’t know which campaigns, keywords, or settings are delivering value, you can’t optimize confidently. You end up reacting to performance drops instead of preventing them, and potentially miss opportunities to scale what’s working.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅Account dashboard

Your performance command center. Switch between account, campaign, and ad group views to instantly see top-level KPIs. The dashboard highlights trends, helps spot optimization opportunities, and tracks shifts in performance at a glance.

 

✅Performance comparison

Easily compare campaign or ad group performance across two custom date ranges. For Amazon Ads, this tool highlights changes in key metrics like ACOS, ROAS, conversions, and cost, broken down by campaign or ad group.

Each result includes:

Use it to:

Perfect for reviewing post-sale periods, new campaign launches, or monthly performance shifts.

✅Magic Quadrant

Get a visual snapshot of your top 100 campaigns, keywords, or ad groups—plotted into four categories:

Customize the axes (e.g., ACOS vs. ROAS) and filter by scope. It’s a great way to see what you need to scale, fix, or pause, at a glance.

📌Example: You open the Account Dashboard and notice a spike in spend but no lift in conversions. To investigate, you head to Performance Comparison and compare this week to last. The results show that one ad group’s ACOS jumped 35% while conversions dropped, flagging it as a concern.

Next, you check the Magic Quadrant. That same ad group appears in the “Laggards” quadrant—low ROAS, high spend. Meanwhile, a previously overlooked campaign shows up in “Stars,” delivering strong ROAS with low ACOS.

Based on this, you reduce bids and pause keywords in the underperformer, then reallocate the budget to the top performer.

 

4. Wasting budget on irrelevant clicks

Problem: “I’m paying for traffic that doesn’t convert.”

Every click that doesn’t lead to a sale drains your budget. Whether it’s shoppers searching for “free samples” or traffic from irrelevant product queries, these wasted clicks reduce efficiency and inflate your ACOS, especially when they go unnoticed across large keyword sets.

How does Optmyzr help?

Optmyzr’s Rule Engine for Amazon Ads includes pre-built strategies specifically designed to reduce wasted spend and improve ad group targeting:

✅ Non-Converting Keyword and ASIN Search Terms

Get suggestions to block keywords or ASINs that fail to convert after a set number of clicks, defined by you. This helps filter out underperformers before they drain your budget.

✅ Expensive Search Queries

Find search terms that have high spend but no conversions. The strategy uses pre-set thresholds to flag them and recommends adding them as negative keywords, so your ads stop showing for those queries.

✅ Rule Automation

These strategies can run on a scheduled basis—daily, weekly, or monthly—so you can keep your account clean without doing the heavy lifting.

📌Example: You enable the Expensive Search Queries rule and set a spend threshold. The next week, Optmyzr flags terms like “free sample mug” and “cheap ceramic alternatives” that spent significantly without sales. These are automatically suggested as negatives, helping you cut wasted spend without manual reviews.

 

5. Missing keyword opportunities

Problem: “I’m missing valuable keyword opportunities.”

If converting search terms aren’t added as keywords, your ads may miss high-intent traffic. It means less visibility, lower relevance, and lost revenue, especially if those terms are already driving sales.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅ Keyword Lasso (Query Management)

This tool helps you turn converting search queries into keywords—quickly and efficiently. It aggregates performance data from similar queries by ad group and match type, and uses conversion and impression thresholds to ensure suggestions are based on statistically meaningful data. You can filter to focus on search terms with strong performance, then add them to existing or new ad groups.

✅ Add New Keywords (Rule Engine Strategy)

Automatically identifies converting search terms and suggests adding them as new keywords in your account. You can define when the rule runs (weekly, monthly) and set thresholds so only meaningful terms are suggested—keeping keyword lists fresh without manual effort.

✅ Keyword Report

Analyze which keywords are generating impressions, clicks, and sales—and which ones are underperforming or inactive. It’s a quick way to clean up low-value terms and double down on what works.

📌Example: You run the Add New Keywords strategy and it surfaces queries like “custom engraved coffee tumbler” that have converted three times but aren’t in your keyword list. Using Keyword Lasso, you filter by conversion count and add them to a dedicated ad group—boosting relevance and capturing more high-intent traffic.

 

6. Poor campaign structure or hygiene

Problem: “I’m not sure if my campaigns are set up right or if they need to be improved.”

Without a solid campaign structure, your Amazon Ads account becomes inefficient. Poor naming, keyword clutter, or conflicting negatives can lead to wasted spend, limited visibility, and missed growth opportunities.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅ PPC Account Audit for Amazon

Optmyzr provides a library of audits that highlight issues across campaigns, ad groups, keywords, products, and placements.

Some examples:

📌Example: You run the “Conflicting Keywords” audit and find that some phrase match keywords are being blocked by exact match negatives in the same ad group, preventing your ads from showing on valuable queries.

Then, the “Campaigns with Zero Sales” audit flags a Sponsored Products campaign that spent over $500 without generating a single order. You fix the keyword conflicts, pause the non-performer, and reallocate budget to better-performing campaigns—improving structure and reducing wasted spend.

 

7. Reporting takes too long

Problem: “Reporting takes hours every week.”

Manually compiling reports eats into valuable time that could be spent optimizing campaigns. And when you’re managing multiple accounts or stakeholders, it’s even harder to deliver timely, consistent insights.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅ Create & Edit Reports with the Report Designer

Optmyzr’s Report Designer lets you create and automate beautiful, data-rich reports in minutes.

You can even create multi-account reports or filter performance by campaign type, geography, or targeting strategy.

📌Example: You set up a weekly executive summary that includes KPIs, top campaigns, ACOS trends, and AI-written performance highlights. Every Monday, it’s delivered automatically to your CMO’s inbox—saving hours and keeping leadership in the loop without effort.

 

Run Amazon Ads like a pro with less manual effort

Managing Amazon PPC doesn’t have to be reactive or overwhelming. With Optmyzr, every part of your workflow, from controlling spend and optimizing bids to uncovering keyword gaps and automating reports, is transformed into a proactive, data-driven process. Tools like Rule Engine, Budget Monitor, Keyword Lasso, and Report Designer empower you to act fast, stay efficient, and scale with confidence.

Explore Optmyzr’s Amazon PPC toolkit today. Sign up for our 14-day free trial and see what smarter advertising looks like.


8 Rule Engine Strategies: How Optmyzr Customers Bypass Google Ads Limitations

Managing multiple ad accounts can feel like an endless to-do list—analyzing search terms, avoiding wasted spend, monitoring performance, and keeping track of audiences. And that’s just the start.

When the holiday season hits, the workload multiplies. The common solution? Automation Layering.

Our customers rely on the Rule Engine to handle this, but we know that with so many new features available, it can be tricky to unlock its full potential.

We analyzed several high-performing customer accounts to compile a list of innovative strategies they’ve used to boost performance. These customers are enterprise brands and agencies managing hundreds of accounts across industries (with a heavy focus on e-commerce PPC strategies).

We’ve also included setup instructions so you can build them for your own accounts.

Pro tip: Set your favorite strategies as Global ones by clicking on the “3-dot” menu—this allows you to create one template and apply it across multiple accounts without setting them up individually.

For example, apply a global budget management strategy across all your e-commerce accounts to save time during the holiday season. This will give you an extra layer of automation and save countless hours!

What is the Rule Engine?

For those new to the Rule Engine, here’s a quick overview: it combines the best of both worlds—control over your campaigns with automation working behind the scenes to keep everything running smoothly. It uses simple “If-This-Then-That” rules to monitor your campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and more, with minimal effort on your part.

If Google Ads’ automated rules feel too limiting and you want more control, the Rule Engine is the perfect tool. Need help getting started? Check out our resources below!

Here’s how you can navigate to the Rule Engine:

Manage & Optimize > Rule Engine > View & Create Strategies

To make things easier, we also offer pre-built strategy templates that you can add to your accounts and customize as needed.

And don’t forget, you can automate your strategies to save time. You can choose whether to let the system make changes for you or just notify you with suggestions for review.

Here’s what our Pro Plus $500K customer and Google Ads expert, Matthieu Tran-Van, had to say about the Rule Engine:

“Rule Engine is certainly one of the amazing sections of Optmyzr because it’s really like your dedicated, highly flexible, and scalable optimization hub where you can automate a lot of very valuable optimizations for your clients with infinite customizations.”

Matthieu saw a 28% revenue increase at the same ROAS through automated optimizations and saved 20 hours per client weekly using automated custom strategies. Here’s a video where he explains popular automations that save him time and prevent burnout:

 

Now, let’s dive into those innovative strategies!

1. Find products that previously converted

Rule Engine scope: Shopping/PMax Products

This strategy helps you identify products that aren’t currently converting but performed well in the past. Set conditions to check how much they’ve cost and how many clicks they’ve received.

This generates a report of non-converting products that converted in the past. You can place these in performance-based campaigns and give them a budget boost to revive their performance if necessary.

Sample Conditions:

 

Recommendation: Duplicate this rule to compare product conversions across different time frames—e.g., last 30 days vs. last 90 days, or last quarter vs. previous quarter.

2. Monitor ad copy relevance to season

Rule Engine scope: Ads

Ensure that your ad copy remains relevant to the current season. This strategy provides automated reports of RSAs and/or ETAs containing text related to holiday sales like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Valentine’s Day.

However, it’s important to note that you’ll need to manually adjust the trigger phrases (like “Black Friday”) for each season or event. The Rule Engine can’t automatically detect the time of year, so setting the right conditions is key for ensuring your ad copy aligns with the season.

Sample Conditions:

Recommendation: Duplicate this rule for each holiday season by swapping text (e.g., from “Black Friday” to “Valentine’s Day”). You can also add KPIs to evaluate performance and adjust low-performing ads to boost engagement.

3. Adjust ROAS/CPA targets based on the weather

Rule Engine scope: Campaigns

This strategy is especially useful because spending ad budget on weather-sensitive products like air conditioners during the US winter is unlikely to drive conversions. Conversely, snow boots will perform better in colder climates, so making weather-related adjustments can help you focus your spend where it matters most.

Set conditions to check the temperature and weather forecasts in your target locations and automatically modify ROAS/CPA targets based on these conditions.

Sample Conditions (if you’re selling winter equipment, for example):

 

Recommendation: Set up similar conditions to adjust keyword bids, ad group bids, and campaign budgets, or generate reports based on weather data. If your goal is to change campaign statuses and/or location targeting alone based on weather conditions, try our Weather-Based Campaign Optimization tool!

4. Stay on top of budgets

Rule Engine scope: Budgets

4a. Simple strategy to monitor spending

Overspending is always a concern, especially during high-spend seasons. Set up a rule to pause campaigns when they exceed your budget by a certain percentage.

Sample Conditions:

 

Recommendation: Add additional conditions to check if campaigns are converting or hitting your ROAS targets. You can also create reports for campaigns that exceed different spending thresholds, such as 150% of your daily budget, or check for underspending campaigns that could benefit from a budget boost.

If you prefer not to auto-pause, you can choose to receive daily reports or alerts instead by selecting the action “Include in Report”.

4b. Advanced budget monitoring strategy that considers campaign-level metrics

How do you modify campaign budgets based on metrics like impression share (which are available at the campaign level only)? Since Google Ads treats campaigns and budgets as separate entities, you can’t directly create rules to adjust budgets using campaign-level metrics.

But there’s a workaround! Use a 2-strategy approach with the advanced “Key Value Pairs” feature in the Rule Engine:

For a clearer explanation, we’ve recorded a video based on a real use case from one of our customers. Check it out here:

 

4c. Automating budget pacing for Demand Gen campaigns

Looking for a smarter way to manage budgets for Demand Gen and Performance Max campaigns?

Google’s native budget scripts don’t support these newer formats and often lead to overspending or underspending due to rigid assumptions about daily budget pacing. Manual checks take time, increase the risk of errors, and add stress, especially at month-end.

Our customer, Heather Darab from Blue Yarn Media created a strategy that offered more control and adapted to real-time campaign performance. Her setup essentially evens out budget pacing across the month using a formula-driven approach, with no manual checks or custom scripts required.

Sample conditions inspired by her strategy:

 

You can use custom metrics in both the conditions and actions of your rule, such as Monthly Budget, Days Remaining in Month, etc., using data recorded in a sample sheet like this:

 

“With a Rule Engine strategy I’ve set up to manage budgets for Demand Gen, I would say I save at least an hour a week. But beyond that, there’s also the intangible stress, wondering if I missed a campaign going over budget or whether we’ll hit the client’s goals because a detail was missed.

Peace of mind is a huge benefit. Now, there’s much less manual work and fewer errors, which helps maintain client trust too.” - Heather Darab, Founder, Blue Yarn Media

5. Monitor account changes made by your team

Rule Engine scope: Change History

Tracking changes in large teams is tough, especially during busy seasons. This rule generates a report of all changes made, including the email addresses of those making the changes and when they were applied.

Why do this?

Having a regular report of all changes helps you identify what made a campaign shine during the last month or troubleshoot underperforming ones.

Sample Conditions:

 

Recommendation: For large accounts, create separate rules for specific campaigns or team members by using conditions like “Campaign Name contains XYZ” or “User Email contains abc@example.com”. Pull these reports into a spreadsheet, using separate tabs for different accounts or team members.

6. Monitor keyword match types

Rule Engine scope: Keywords

Using this strategy ensures your keyword match types are correctly aligned with your campaign structure. This is crucial because keywords in the wrong match type groups can drastically affect your performance. Broad match types, for example, might bring in too many irrelevant searches if not carefully placed, and exact matches might restrict traffic if misused. This strategy flags such instances, helping you maintain a cleaner account structure.

Sample Conditions:

 

Recommendation: Apply this approach to monitor branded vs. non-branded keywords, ensuring they’re placed in the correct campaigns. Create conditions like “Campaign Name contains <Brand name>” & “Keyword does not contain <Brand name>” for this strategy.

Set these strategies up in your accounts now

This list barely scratches the surface of what’s possible with the Rule Engine, but it’s a great starting point to take your optimizations to the next level and stay ahead of competitors this season.

Need help setting up these rules? Reach out to our Support team!

If you’re not an Optmyzr customer yet, start a 14-day free trial and explore how Rule Engine can supercharge your campaigns.

FAQs

1. What is the Rule Engine?

The Rule Engine is Optmyzr’s custom rule builder, allowing you to generate reports, perform optimizations, and set custom alerts using “If-This-Then-That” rules. You can also automate these rules to run at your preferred frequency, combining automation with control.

2. What ad platforms does Rule Engine support?

You can use Rule Engine to optimize and analyze Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Amazon Ads, and Facebook Ads.

3. Does the Rule Engine automation directly apply any changes to the ad platforms without my approval?

You can choose whether the system directly applies changes based on your rules or sends you email or Slack/MS Teams notifications with suggestions, allowing you to review and apply changes manually.

 

The Cookieless Future That Wasn't: Why First-Party Data Still Reigns Supreme

In July 2024, Google hit pause on its plan to kill third-party cookies in Chrome.

After years of working on replacements like Privacy Sandbox and the Topics API, they quietly walked it back. Why? Legal headaches, industry pushback, and probably a dose of reality.

But this doesn’t mean we’re going back to business as usual.

It means first-party data is now even more important. If you want reliable, future-proof marketing that plays nice with privacy laws, collecting your own data is the way forward.

However, this has been the trend across the industry for quite a while now. Here’s a quick run-through of important events related to first-party data.

Period

Event

2015

Apple introduces Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) in Safari to limit cross-site tracking using third-party cookies.

Oct 2017

Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) to allow users to block known trackers and third-party cookies.

Oct 2018


Firefox 63 introduces content-blocking features for third-party cookies.

Sept 2019

Firefox 69 enables ETP by default, blocking third-party tracking cookies and cryptominers.

Jan 2020

Google announces plans to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome by 2022, launching the Privacy Sandbox initiative.

Mar 2020

Safari 13.1 becomes the first mainstream browser to block all third-party cookies by default.

June 2021


Google delays cookie phase-out in Chrome to 2023, citing the need for more testing and collaboration with stakeholders.

July 2022

Google again delays the phase-out of third-party cookies in Chrome, pushing the deadline to the second half of 2024.

Jan 2023

Google begins testing third-party cookie deprecation for 1% of Chrome users to assess the readiness of Privacy Sandbox APIs.

Apr 2024

Google delays third-party cookie deprecation to early 2025 to address regulatory and industry concerns.

July 2024

Google rolls back its plan to remove third-party cookies completely from Chrome, opting instead to offer user-level controls.

2025 (Ongoing)

Marketers increase focus on first-party data strategies as the preferred privacy-compliant method for targeting and personalization.

 

Of course, the real marketing Gs know that the solution to all this is to invest in first-party data, where you own the relationship with your audience directly.

What is first-party data?

First-party data is information you collect directly from your audience with their consent. It is information based on how they interact with your website: behaviors, actions, and interests.

How is first-party data different from third-party data?

Third-party data is compiled by independent researchers and companies that aggregate information from various websites and applications. Based on individual users’ online activity, this data is often sold to businesses for marketing and advertising purposes.

Here are some differences between the two, and also how first-party data is better than third-party data.

Criteria

First-Party Data

Third-Party Data

Accuracy and Reliability

Highly accurate and reliable, reflecting real customer interactions

Often less accurate, lacks depth, and lacks context

Understanding Customers

Allows granular understanding of personalized marketing campaigns

Generic and lacks depth for effective targeting

Privacy and Trust

Generally compliant with privacy regulations, building trust with customers

Raises privacy concerns, potential legal challenges, and erodes trust

Ownership and Control

Owned and fully controlled by your business, allowing management according to privacy policies

Owned and controlled by external entities, making your business vulnerable to changes and restrictions

Data Enrichment

Can be enriched with additional information over time, enabling accurate segmentation and personalization

Lacks flexibility for easy enrichment, limiting personalization options

Building Customer Relationships

Easier to build long-term relationships through personalized shopping experiences

May result in fewer personal interactions and lower customer loyalty

So, what is second-party data?

Second-party data is someone else’s first-party data. You borrow your neighbor’s cookies, freshly baked and privacy-focused, but you gotta ask nicely (or pay).

How to make the shift toward first-party data?

First-party data is often misunderstood and underutilized. Many businesses freeze in the face of privacy regulations and need help understanding its concept and impact.

Ronan Carrein, a former Google executive and current partner at the agency, Better & Stronger emphasizes that first-party data should not be perceived as a constraint, but rather as a driver of better business hygiene and higher ROI.

“There are several roadblocks preventing businesses from fully adopting and leveraging first-party data. Lack of data governance, intent, planning & understanding, and specialized skill sets are major obstacles.” - Ronan Carrein

He spoke to our Co-founder & CEO, Frederick Vallaeys on PPC Town Hall and discussed how businesses can effectively collect and work with first-party data.

 

In the episode, Ronan shared five tips for effective first-party data collection.

People talk about GDPR “compliance”, for example, as if it’s not a whole-company initiative and is just something to do with their analytics. First-party data should be something your entire business should run on and not just something only your marketing team cares about.

How to collect and use first-party data for your PPC campaigns?

Watch the PPC Town Hall episode featuring Kerri Amodio - Director, of Digital Advertising at Closed Loop, and Navah Hopkins - Former Evangelist at Optmyzr below to learn how to collect and manage first-party data.

 

You first need a solid strategy to collect first-party data effectively. Here are four steps to build one.

1. Be clear about how you want to use your first-party data.

Identify how you want to use your first-party data. Are you aiming for increased sales or seeking to boost customer loyalty?

Then, set clear objectives to track progress and quantify its impact. Did your targeted ads lead to higher conversions? Did personalized recommendations contribute to a reduced churn rate?

Some examples of first-party data goals:

2. Figure out how to collect and manage that data.

Identify what data you already collect: website visits, email signups, purchase history, etc. Then find more sources. Here are some common ones.

Remember: User consent is crucial for collecting first-party data.

Doug Thomas of Magniventris, an ethical digital marketing firm, emphasizes user consent. He says ->

“Managing first-party data starts with knowing what you’ve collected and what you have. It’s important to understand what data is useful for marketing and what isn’t.

And the next question is “Has the person consented to that use of their data?” It’s your call as an advertiser what “consent” means, but asking this question is an important one.” - Doug Thomas

Next, determine where this data is stored. Experts suggest using a CRM or a CDP (Customer Data Platform) or a marketing automation platform.

Navah Hopkins says using a CRM is necessary for any business.

“A common misconception in the e-commerce industry is that a CRM is unnecessary if you’ve already received payment from customers. This misconception often arises from the belief that the platform itself will handle everything.

However, neglecting to implement a CRM can hinder your ability to generate repeat sales and maintain a loyal customer base.” - Navah Hopkins

Duane Brown, CEO & Head of Strategy at the agency, Take Some Risk (which works with ecommerce, DTC, and retail brands) also recommends using a CRM to store and manage user data.

He adds they use Zapier to connect their clients’ Shopify accounts to Google Ads for managing ad campaigns and automating the data moving back and forth.

While collecting data, understand that different stages of your customer journey call for different tactics.

Chris Murray, Performance Marketing Manager at Kolekti talks more about it.

“We’re making first-party data collection a key part of our PPC strategies, actively valuing building the data pool, and pushing campaigns optimizing towards these ‘micro’ conversions.

Somewhat counterintuitively, we’re still opening up more content and upping production of this to provide value early, but then adding gates or contact requests to pages and content that sit lower down the funnel.

We’re also investing in new content tools to help, waving goodbye to static PDFs and creating more engaging destinations for our campaigns.”

However, your tactics should also vary depending on the type of client or business you work with and seasonality.

Meriem Nacer, Consultant at 4M Digital Consulting Ltd. breaks down how they approach it differently for ecommerce and B2B clients in their agency.

“Many of our ecommerce clients utilize loyalty schemes. Q4 presents a prime opportunity for us to enhance these schemes, especially since those who are already signed up can gain early access to Black Friday deals. Outside of Q4, we try to entice new sign-ups with birthday surprises and early access to sales.

In the case of B2B clients, the focus involves sharing knowledge and whitepapers, often gated behind a sign-up wall. While this strategy effectively builds our email list, unfortunately, these emails are typically the work domain. To utilize these lists in Google Ads, we usually need three to four times the data volume compared to ecommerce.”

While you’re gathering data from your audiences, you can begin analyzing their behavior. Let’s take website analytics as an example of a data source from the above list of data sources and understand the insights we can draw from our analysis.

The next you should do is analyze user trends. Your previous customers who purchased your products or services can help you learn valuable insights. Let’s take your CRM as an example to know what insights you can derive from them.

These trends help you refine your target audience and narrow down your ideal customer profile for targeted marketing campaigns.

4. Apply the findings from those insights and regularly review your data strategy.

One of the first steps in running an effective campaign is linking your accounts and setting up conversion tracking.

Here’s Navah Hopkins and Kerri Amodio talking about how advertisers can apply first-party data insights to their campaigns with proper conversion tracking.

 

Working with first-party data is a continuous process. You need to regularly review your strategy and make the necessary adjustments. 

You also need to make sure there’s no data decay and that the customer data is staying up-to-date. Doug Thomas of Magniventris further adds,

“For decay, the best thing to do is to cross reference and update on collection. If you’re doing it manually, you can have someone’s name be their index. If you’re doing it automatically, maybe email or a customer ID would be a better path.”

And you need to create a communication plan that involves multiple teams in your company to encourage data-driven decision-making across all of them.

Here’s Chris Murray again ->

“I’d suggest clear data governance processes and open lines of communication are the key to preparing for first-party data decay. Top priority, make friends with your Customer Success Managers, Sales teams, or anybody who’s in regular touch with your end customer.

They’re closest to this data as they speak to customers and leads daily, so they know whether that enterprise company’s contacts you want to add to a retargeting audience are still up to date or if there are new names and addresses.

If you’re in close communication with Email Marketers, CRM Admins, Customer Success, and Sales, you can be confident you’re working with up-to-date first-party data.”

Working with first-party data has lots of moving parts and many variables. And you can expect more policies around user privacy in the future. That’s why you also need to stay informed and adapt accordingly.

AI and privacy-centric marketing are going to be the two difference makers for businesses to grow in 2024.

 

You’ll likely see speed bumps on the road. But, a shift to first-party data can lead you to a better understanding of your customer journey, better decision-making, and ultimately greater results for your business.

And if you’re a business that spends money on advertising, and is looking to get better control over your ad campaigns while valuing user privacy, give Optmyzr a try. Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for a 14-day free trial today. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

How to Lower ACoS with the Right Amazon Bid Type

Bidding on Amazon isn’t just about picking a number and hoping for the best. With so many options: Up & Down, Down Only, Fixed, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or fall into autopilot. However, the best results don’t come from chasing the lowest ACoS or blindly increasing bids.

They come from aligning your bid strategy with your actual goals. Whether you’re launching a product, protecting your brand, or chasing profitability, the right bid type can make all the difference.

Amazon’s bid types

Not all bid types are created equal, and they’re definitely not interchangeable. Amazon gives you three core bidding options, and the trick isn’t to pick the most aggressive or conservative one. It’s to choose the one that aligns with what you’re actually trying to achieve.

At the center of Amazon’s bidding model are dynamic bids, letting Amazon raise or lower your bid based on the likelihood of a conversion, and fixed bids, where you retain full control. Here’s how they break down:

Bid Type

Strategic Function

Best For

Dynamic - Up and Down

Amazon raises bids (up to +100% for top placements and +50% for others) when a click is likely to convert, and lowers bids (up to –100%) when it is not. Essentially doubles your bid in high-conversion cases or drops it to preserve budget in low-conversion cases. Most flexible/ aggressive.

Aggressive growth: product launches, visibility pushes, ranking campaigns.

Dynamic - Down Only

Amazon lowers bids (up to –100%) for low conversion likelihood, but never increases above your set bid. You always pay your max bid or less, depending on the predicted conversion chance. Conservative/efficiency-focused.

Efficiency-driven goals: profit margins, cautious scaling, seasonal dips.

Fixed Bids

Amazon uses your exact bid every time (plus any manual placement adjustments). No automated changes based on conversion probability. Predictable/control-oriented.

Control-focused campaigns: branded keywords, tight margins, A/B testing.

 

Beyond these, Amazon also supports rule-based bidding, where you set custom rules to adjust bids based on performance, budget thresholds, or time-of-day trends. In Sponsored Display, you can go deeper with audience-based bidding, fine-tuning bids based on who’s seeing your ads (like past buyers or high-intent viewers).

Aligning bid types to business objectives

One of the most common missteps in Amazon ads is choosing a bid type out of habit, or worse, guessing. Too often, advertisers overlook how each bid type interacts with Amazon’s algorithm.

Amazon prioritizes relevance, user intent, and conversion likelihood. When your bid type aligns with your campaign objective, whether that’s profitability, brand visibility, or new product launches, you’re giving the algorithm the right signals to work in your favor.

Misaligned bids don’t just underperform, they waste impressions, burn budget, and leave growth opportunities on the table.

Smart bidding starts with strategic intent, not just settings.

How to use a bid type based on the outcome you’re targeting

Objective: Profitable Sales

Recommended Bid Type: Dynamic Bids – Down Only

Why it works: When profit margins matter, control is key. Down Only lets Amazon lower your bids when it predicts a low likelihood of conversion, helping you avoid wasted spend. It’s not about pulling back reach entirely, it’s about trimming the fat. For advertisers looking to protect ROI, this is your safest bet.

👉Trade-offs: The downside to Down Only is that it won’t capitalize on every high-value opportunity.

If a certain search or placement is very likely to convert, Amazon won’t exceed your original bid to win that auction aggressively.

Thus, you might miss out on impressions or sales in extremely competitive moments.

Objective: Keyword Ranking

Recommended Bid Type: Fixed Bids

Why it works: Climbing the ranks on Amazon requires volume and consistency. With Fixed Bids, Amazon won’t reduce your exposure just because early clicks don’t immediately convert. This matters during ranking pushes, when your goal is visibility and share of voice, not short-term efficiency. You’re trading precision for momentum, and that’s a smart call in this phase.

👉Trade-offs: Fixed Bids won’t lower the price for low-value clicks, which means you can overpay significantly in many auctions.

Without dynamic adjustments, a fixed bid might apply equally to a great query and a marginally relevant one.

For instance, if you bid $2 for a keyword, you’ll pay up to $2 whether the click converts or not, whereas Down Only would have trimmed that for a low-conversion scenario.

Objective: Product Launch

Recommended Bid Type: Dynamic Bids – Up & Down

Why it works: Launching a new ASIN? You need flexible reach. Up & Down bidding lets Amazon lean in when signals look promising, while dialing back in low-quality auctions. It fuels Amazon’s learning phase, helping you ramp faster without throwing budget at poor placements.

👉Trade-offs: Your cost-per-click can rise, and you must be comfortable spending up to 100% more per click in those high-conversion scenarios.

If Amazon’s predictions are too “enthusiastic” or if your conversion rate falters, Up & Down can lead to higher ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales) and spend. Close monitoring is critical, and you’ll want to watch if the extra spend is delivering proportional sales.

The good news is Amazon does cap the increases (doubling at most for top-of-search). Still, be sure your margins and budget can support the potential bid spikes.

Objective: Brand Protection

Recommended Bid Type: Fixed Bids

Why it works: Branded terms convert well, but they’re also where competitors love to poach. With Fixed Bids, Amazon won’t downscale your visibility based on perceived efficiency. You stay visible, dominant, and in control of your brand defense strategy.

💡Optmyzr Tip: With Rule Engine, you can create logic-based strategies that automatically increase bids for high-performing keywords or pull back when ACoS climbs. Just set your targets, and let the system recalibrate based on real performance.

 

Placements vs. Bids: Don’t default to bid increases

When performance dips, many advertisers instinctively raise bids. But that’s not always the smartest, or most cost-effective move. Instead of blanket increases, Amazon gives you a better option: placement modifiers.

Placement modifiers let you boost bids selectively based on where your ad appears, offering more control without overspending across the board. The two key placements you should care about:

Instead of applying the same bid across every auction, placement modifiers let you layer intent, raising bids only where it matters most. It’s a smarter way to scale performance without lighting your budget on fire.

💡Optmyzr Tip: The Placement Performance Audit shows you exactly which placements are driving conversions, clicks, or wasting spend. Combined with your campaign-level ACoS or sales data, you can decide where to add (or reduce) Top of Search modifiers, intelligently and confidently.

 

Most advertisers optimize too early

One of the most costly mistakes in Amazon advertising? Optimizing too soon.

It’s easy to panic when you’ve spent money and haven’t seen conversions roll in. The knee-jerk reaction is to pause keywords, slash bids, or shut the campaign down entirely. But here’s the truth: Amazon doesn’t operate in real time.

When you act too early, you’re making decisions based on incomplete data. Worse, you could interrupt Amazon’s learning process and shut down campaigns that might have performed well if given the chance.

It’s better to build in a delay before optimizing. Give new campaigns or bid strategy shifts at least 3 to 7 days before making adjustments.

Let the data breathe. Let Amazon learn. Then step in with structured changes, not reactive ones.

Use Amazon’s suggested bids

When it comes to setting bids, intuition isn’t strategy. Amazon Ads provides real-time, data-backed bid recommendations, more likely to achieve better results.

What are suggested bids?

These aren’t random numbers; they’re Amazon’s best estimate of what it will take to stay competitive in a given auction environment.

Use these as your baseline, not your ceiling. For example, if the suggested bid is $1.20 and your campaign is converting efficiently at $1.05, stick with what works.

But if performance lags, consider moving closer to the upper end of the range.

Keyword match types and their role in bidding strategy

Your keyword match type doesn’t just define who sees your ad; it also shapes how you should bid. Think of it like casting a net: the wider you go, the more cautious you need to be with your budget. The narrower the focus, the more you can afford to be aggressive.

Here’s how to align bidding strategy with match intent:

Exact match

Best For: Branded searches or high-converting, well-known keywords.

Why: You want your ad to show only when someone searches for a specific, high-intent term, like your product name or a top-performing keyword.

Bidding Strategy: Use Fixed Bids or high Dynamic Bids to dominate impressions. This is ideal for brand protection and ranking pushes, where visibility is non-negotiable.

Phrase match

Best For: Mid-funnel discovery and niche targeting with moderate intent.

Why: Phrase match lets you appear for queries that include your keyword in order, giving you more reach without sacrificing too much precision.

Bidding Strategy: Use moderate Dynamic Bids (Down Only) or rule-based bidding to scale efficiently while keeping ACoS in check.

Broad match

Best For: Exploration and data gathering in the early stages of a campaign.

Why: Broad match casts the widest net, capturing long-tail and unexpected search terms. But with that reach comes risk.

Bidding Strategy: Bid low and cautiously. Layer in negative keywords early, and consider using Optmyzr Express to block irrelevant traffic and promote high-converting terms quickly.

When to trust Amazon’s automation and when not to

Use automation when:

Use manual control when:

Optmyzr Express can further help you make manual control scalable. It uses a 45-day lookback (with a 3-day offset) to surface:

You stay in charge; nothing changes unless you click ‘Apply’. Or hit ‘Snooze’ if you’re not ready.

Ad format-specific bidding rules

Not all Amazon ad formats play by the same bidding rules, and that matters when structuring your campaigns. Each format offers different controls, objectives, and data visibility, so your bid strategy should adapt accordingly.

The most versatile format, Sponsored Products supports all three bid types: Dynamic Up & Down, Down Only, and Fixed Bids. It also allows placement modifiers and keyword match types, making it ideal for performance optimization, A/B testing, and scale.

Use it to drive conversions at the ASIN level and to test bidding strategies across different goals.

🔄 Feature update: New-to-Brand (NTB) audience targeting is now available within Sponsored Brands campaigns. You can apply a dedicated bid boost for shoppers who haven’t purchased from your brand in the past 12 months.

 

With this, you can:

NTB bid boosting aligns especially well with dynamic bidding strategies when aiming to scale brand visibility and acquisition during competitive shopping periods.

Sponsored Brands campaigns, those headline ads with logos, are designed for brand awareness and top-of-funnel visibility. They support Fixed Bids and Dynamic Bids – Up & Down only.

Since Sponsored Brands often target broader audiences, they benefit from higher bids on high-converting terms but should be monitored closely for ACoS performance.

Geared for retargeting and audience targeting, Sponsored Display supports Fixed Bids or audience-based bidding, depending on the targeting type (e.g., views, interests, purchases).

While you lose keyword-level control, you gain precision through behavioral signals, making this format great for cross-selling, brand defense, or re-engaging past shoppers.

Knowing what each format allows and what it’s best suited for lets you plan campaigns that actually align with your strategy, not just your spend.

Make every Amazon bid count with Optmyzr

Smart bidding on Amazon isn’t about tweaking numbers all day; it’s about knowing what success looks like for your business. Instead of asking, “How much should I bid?”, ask, “What am I trying to achieve?” Whether that’s increased visibility, improved margins, or saving time, the right strategy begins with clear goals and the right tools.

Optmyzr helps you stay focused on what matters—your goals, not the grunt work.

Curious to see it in action? Try it for free for 14 days and decide if it’s a fit for you.

Amazon Ads and Inventory: When to Hit Pause and Why

One of the most important rules of selling on Amazon is not to run out of stock. Yet even the best-organized brands can’t always ensure this when unexpected factors like port delays or sales spikes occur.

If you’re running ads for such products on Amazon, the most important thing is to turn them off before the inventory runs out. Now, you might be wondering: Doesn’t Amazon automatically stop ads when a product is out of stock? So then, why is this relevant?

Well, there are a few reasons for that:

  1. If stock is low but more inventory is on the way, temporarily pausing ads and discounts helps sellers stretch existing supply and buy time until the restock arrives, avoiding last-minute scrambles or disruptions to campaign momentum.
  2. If you’re about to run out of stock, turning off ads helps you make more profit on the last few items, since they’ll likely sell without extra push
  3. When inventory is low, your products might not be available in every warehouse. That means some customers will see longer delivery times, which can make them less likely to buy, driving up your ACOS.

If you only have about two weeks or less of inventory left, it’s a good idea to pause your ads to avoid selling out too quickly.

How to pause ads in Optmyzr when inventory runs low

Keeping an eye on inventory is essential, especially to avoid wasting spend or pushing products that are about to stock out.

With Optmyzr, you can set up a Rule Engine strategy to automatically pause ads when inventory levels fall below a certain threshold. The process starts with uploading your FBA inventory report (available through Amazon Seller Central) into a spreadsheet. This sheet then acts as the data source for Optmyzr’s Rule Engine strategy.

Here’s how the workflow typically looks like:

  1. Download the FBA Inventory Report from Amazon Seller Central
  2. Transfer key data (like ASIN and days-of-supply) into a simplified Google Sheet. This sheet will serve as the source for your Optmyzr strategy
  3. Create a Rule Engine strategy in Optmyzr that checks this Google Sheet and pauses ads for ASINs that fall below your inventory threshold

Once the data is in place, Optmyzr checks product inventory against your defined thresholds and automatically pauses ads that need attention. This helps you:

Getting inventory supply levels from Amazon

The most reliable way to track inventory levels for this strategy is through Amazon’s FBA Inventory Report. Since this report isn’t available as a scheduled export, you’ll need to pull it manually or set up a method to retrieve it as needed.

Depending on your tech setup and team bandwidth, there are a couple of ways to do this:

Preparing your inventory data in Google Sheets

Once you’ve downloaded your FBA Inventory Report, the next step is to extract only the columns you need to inform your ad decisions—typically ASIN, available inventory, and days of supply. Copy this filtered data into a new Google Sheet, which will serve as the reference file within Optmyzr.

Remember: If you manage both FBA and merchant-fulfilled SKUs in separate campaigns, and your ad structure is SKU-based rather than ASIN-based, make sure to filter and match data accordingly by SKU.

 

You can do this step manually or use a script to automate the transfer, depending on how frequently the inventory data changes. Before proceeding, rename the column that contains your product identifier (typically ASIN or SKU) to “Key”—this allows Optmyzr to correctly match inventory status with the corresponding ASINs.

Selecting the correct report columns

Creating the rule in Optmyzr will be easier if you only include relevant columns in the Google Sheet you are going to use to run the rule.

We recommend using the “days-of-supply” column for this automation, as it reflects available inventory based on forecasted demand. Avoid using Total Days of Supply (including open shipments)—while it may look more optimistic, those units aren’t sellable yet, and relying on them can hurt performance.

Amazon’s FBA Inventory Report has similarly named columns—this table highlights the key differences to help you choose the right one for your Optmyzr rule.

Column Name

Amazon Definition

Notes

Days-of-supply

The estimated number of days that your current inventory supply will last based on the projected demand for your product

Short-term historical days of supply

Short-term historical days of supply (last 30 days)

Long term historical days of supply

Long-term historical days of supply (last 90 days)

Using this date can be useful if you want to have a longer lookback period. It will be less accurate coming into or heading out of a high sales period.

Total Days of Supply (including units from open shipments)

Total Days of Supply (including units from open shipments)

Using this data will not provide the same results and is generally not recommended.

 

Building strategies in Rule Engine for smarter ad control

With Optmyzr’s Rule Engine and a connected spreadsheet, you can create a smart, responsive system that automatically pauses ads for low-stock items and re-enables them when inventory is replenished.

The Rule Engine allows you to match inventory metrics from an external spreadsheet to entities like ads, campaigns, or product groups. This is done using Key Value Pairs, where:

The Rule Engine uses the Key to match ASINs to their corresponding inventory levels and then evaluates the Values (like Days of Supply) to decide whether to pause or re-enable the ads for those ASINs.

Learn more: How Optmyzr customers use the Rule Engine to build powerful automations

Strategy 1: Pause ads when inventory is low

Goal: Avoid spending on products that are nearly out of stock.

How it works:

The rule checks if:

  • Days Supply (ASIN) ≤ Low Inventory Threshold (e.g., 50)

  • AND the ad is currently Enabled

Then: Pause the ad.


Using Key Value Pairs, the rule knows which ad corresponds to which ASIN and applies the pause logic only when the condition is met.

Strategy 2: Reactivate ads for restocked products

Goal: Resume ads for products that are back in stock without delay. Here we apply three mandatory conditions for the ad to be re-enabled.

First, the product must have over 50 days of supply, above the low inventory threshold, to safely resume ads. Next, the ad must currently be paused, so active ads aren’t affected. Finally, the rule applies only to ads in a specific list: those previously paused by Optmyzr due to low inventory.

How it works:

The rule checks if:

  • Days Supply (ASIN) > Low Inventory Threshold (e.g., 50)

  • AND the ad is currently Paused

  • AND the Ad ID exists in the spreadsheet

Then: Re-enable the ad.


In the next section, we give you a step-by-step walkthrough of how you can implement this in Optmyzr

Setting up the rules in Optmyzr

Once your inventory data is cleaned and added to a Google Sheet, with ASIN or SKU labeled as “Key” you’re ready to build a rule in Optmyzr that uses this external data to pause ads for low-stock products.

In the Rule Engine, create a rule that looks up your campaign or product data against the Google Sheet. The condition you’ll typically set is to pause ads when “Days of Supply” falls below a defined threshold (e.g., 14 days). This approach gives your team more proactive control over spend and margin, especially during periods of tight supply

You can tailor this rule depending on whether you want campaigns to pause immediately when stock runs low or if you’d prefer a buffer window. Many brands choose to be conservative, pausing ads slightly before stockouts occur, to avoid poor delivery experiences and rising ACOS caused by delayed fulfillment windows.

Remember: Don’t forget to set up a corresponding rule to resume ads once inventory recovers, typically when Days of Supply goes back above your threshold. This ensures campaigns restart without manual intervention when products are restocked.

Setting up the Google Sheet to add inventory data to the Rule Engine

1. In Seller Central, go to Reports > Fulfillment

2. Click Request .csv download and then ‘Download’

 

3. Open ‘Upload into New Google Sheet’ or ‘Copy and Paste over existing Google Sheet’

4. Click ‘Share’ to update share settings

5. Delete all other columns except for ASIN and quantity available. You should be left with Column A showing ASIN.

 

6. Change ASIN to Key and quantity available to Days Supply

 

How to set up the Rule Engine strategy to pause ads when inventory runs low

Once you have the inventory data ready to be linked to Optmyzr, simply follow the steps in this walkthrough to set up the rules to pause and re-enable ads using the Rule Engine.

 

Wrapping up: Smarter ad decisions when inventory runs low

By anticipating stockouts and adjusting ad visibility before they happen, you can protect margins, preserve campaign efficiency, and avoid disappointing customers. Using data from Amazon’s FBA Inventory Report and combining it with campaign-level controls in Optmyzr gives you a practical way to stay ahead of low-inventory risks, without having to make manual changes every week.

If you’re looking for a smarter, faster way to manage your Amazon ads alongside performance data, give Optmyzr a try. Sign up for our free 14-day trial, so you can see how easy it is to set up rules that work the way your business does.

Author Bio

Robyn has been heralded as one of the country’s foremost leaders on the topic of selling and marketing products on Amazon.com. Robyn has been a guest on shows like Entrepreneur on Fire, Confessions of A Marketer, and regularly speaks at shows all over the world about marketing on Amazon including SMX Munich, Pubcon, Prosper, and more.

Robyn is the co-founder of Marketplace Blueprint, a digital agency that specializes in listing optimization and advertising on Amazon. She has over a decade of experience of selling online on Amazon, eBay, and other eCommerce venues.

This article is a reflection of the author’s experiences and opinions. Optmyzr believes that there are many ways to win in digital advertising, and is committed to presenting a diverse range of ideas and approaches.

8 Common Amazon Ads Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

Amazon ads can be incredibly powerful, but not always predictable.

Sometimes your strategy is solid, but it’s the overlooked patterns that quietly drain performance: brand terms showing up where they shouldn’t, auto campaigns running on autopilot, or decisions made too quickly on partial data.

This blog lists common mistakes in Amazon ads and how to troubleshoot them, the kind of fixes that actually improve efficiency, visibility, and return, not just check a box.

8 Mistakes Amazon advertisers make and how to fix them

Mistake #1: Mixing match types and goals in one campaign

One of the most common and costly mistakes advertisers make on Amazon is combining different match types and campaign goals in a single campaign or ad group. Think broad match for discovery, exact match for conversions, and phrase match for consideration, all lumped together.

The result? A confused algorithm and inefficient ad spend.

Amazon optimizes at the campaign level. So if your campaign is juggling discovery and brand defense keywords, the algorithm doesn’t know whether to go wide or go deep. It might pour budget into broad terms, which get clicks but rarely convert.

Meanwhile, exact match keywords, which are primed to convert, get sidelined.

To fix this, structure campaigns by match type and intent. Create separate campaigns for exact, phrase, and broad match keywords and align each with a specific goal.

For discovery, use broad match with tight controls. For conversions, use exact match and bid accordingly. This segmentation gives you cleaner data, smarter bids, and far better performance.

Mistake #2: Graduating keywords from auto campaigns too soon

Seeing a few conversions from an auto campaign can feel like a green light to move that keyword into a manual campaign. But acting too soon can backfire. Auto campaigns don’t just convert, they discover.

They surface valuable long-tail variations and let Amazon’s algorithm optimize bids dynamically. Prematurely pulling a keyword disrupts that discovery and may inflate costs in a manual campaign.

To avoid this, follow a deliberate three-step approach:

Step 1: Mirror the keyword.
When a search term shows consistent conversions and a healthy ACoS over time, add it as an exact match in a manual campaign. Do not remove it from the auto campaign yet.

Step 2: Validate performance in parallel.
Let both campaigns run side by side and look for clear, consistent wins in the manual setup.

Step 3: Move only after proof.
Once the manual version outperforms, apply a negative exact match in the auto campaign to avoid bidding overlap. This ensures smooth graduation without sacrificing discovery.

A tool like Optmyzr’s Magic Quadrants is invaluable here. It can help you visually map keywords across performance metrics like conversion rate and cost to help you identify which ones are ready to scale.

Say a coffee brand sees “Ethiopian Yirgacheffe whole bean” convert a few times in auto. Before graduating it, they check the quadrant view: if it lands in “Potentials” or “Stars” (strong conversion rate, sustainable cost), that’s the signal it’s ready to scale.

 

If it’s in “Laggards,” it needs more refinement before moving.

This visual, data-backed validation ensures you’re not promoting premature performers and sets your Amazon campaigns up for long-term profitability.

Mistake #3: Blending branded and non-branded keywords

One of the most overlooked mistakes in Amazon Ads strategy is combining branded and non-branded keywords in the same campaign. While it might seem efficient, this blending distorts performance data and undermines your ability to scale.

Branded terms, like your product or company name, naturally convert better because users already know you. Non-branded terms are used by shoppers still in the discovery or consideration phase.

When these keywords are lumped together, high-performing brand terms inflate overall metrics, masking the true efficiency (or inefficiency) of your acquisition efforts.

Here’s how to fix it:

 

💡Pro Tip: Set up custom segments in your reporting dashboards to analyze performance, excluding branded traffic. This allows you to benchmark true customer acquisition costs (non-brand ACoS) and identify which keywords or products are driving incremental growth, essential for scaling profitability.

 

Mistake #4: Letting auto campaigns run on autopilot

Auto campaigns are powerful, but only when used with purpose. A common mistake advertisers make is treating them as a permanent traffic source rather than what they truly are: a research and discovery tool.

Left unchecked, auto campaigns often pull in loosely related or irrelevant search queries.

Without regular oversight, this leads to wasted spend, inflated ACoS, and bloated search term reports filled with noise instead of insight.

On the flip side, relying too heavily on auto campaigns can stall your keyword strategy by keeping you reactive instead of proactive.

Here’s the fix:

💡Optmyzr Tip: Run the “Sponsored Products: Manual vs Automatic Targeting” audit in Optmyzr to evaluate your campaign mix. If your account relies heavily on automatic targeting, it’s a red flag that you may be underleveraging the control and efficiency of manual campaigns.

Use this audit to guide rebalancing, gradually shift top-performing search terms into structured manual campaigns while tightening auto campaign controls to drive smarter discovery.

 

Mistake #5: Advertising products that are out of stock

Running ads for products that are nearly or completely out of stock is one of the most expensive (but avoidable) mistakes in Amazon ads.

While Amazon does stop ads when a product is fully unavailable, it often happens too late.

Meanwhile, your budget bleeds into campaigns that can’t convert efficiently, and shoppers may encounter delayed shipping, leading to poor user experiences and higher ACoS.

Even worse, if inventory is running low but hasn’t hit zero yet, your ads may continue to serve aggressively, driving demand you can’t fulfill.

This disrupts campaign momentum and can damage organic ranking if stockouts occur.

With Optmyzr’s Rule Engine and a connected inventory spreadsheet, you can build a responsive system that automatically pauses ads for low-stock ASINs and re-enables them when inventory recovers.

Here’s how it works:

This goes beyond what native tools offer, adding automation and customization that adapts to your goals.

💡 Remember: Don’t just pause ads. Set up a re-enablement rule too. Once Days of Supply rises above your threshold (e.g., back over 50 days), Optmyzr can automatically restart ads, ensuring you never miss out on momentum once stock returns. Learn more about it here!

 

Mistake #6: Relying on ads to make up for weak listings

High-performing Amazon ads don’t work in isolation; they depend on strong, optimized product listings to convert. Even the most finely tuned campaign can fall flat if the landing page experience doesn’t match shopper expectations.

When listings are incomplete, poorly written, or missing visuals, Amazon’s algorithm penalizes them with low relevance scores and poor click-through rates. That means fewer impressions, higher costs, and underwhelming return on ad spend. Ads might drive traffic, but they can’t fix a broken listing.

Here’s how to fix it:

Make listing optimization part of your ad strategy, not an afterthought. Clear, keyword-rich titles, compelling bullet points, and high-quality images all play a direct role in improving ad delivery and conversions.

Here are a few listing optimization tips that directly impact ad performance:

👉 For a full walkthrough on what to fix and why it matters, read How to Optimize Your Amazon Listings to Boost Ad Performance.

Mistake #7: Slashing bids to improve ACoS

A high ACoS can be alarming, but slashing bids across the board isn’t the solution.

In fact, lowering bids without context can make things worse. Lower bids often mean your ads show less frequently or in less competitive placements, which hurts CTR. And when fewer (and less qualified) shoppers click, your conversion rate suffers too.

That’s where you spend less per click but sell fewer products, pushing your ACoS even higher at times.

A better approach:

 

⚠️Avoid Overcorrecting: Don’t rely solely on short-term ACoS data to make bid decisions. Sudden drops or spikes may reflect anomalies like seasonality, stockouts, or one-time promos.

Always pair bid changes with context from sales trends, listing health, and campaign goals to avoid overcorrecting.

Mistake #8: Making decisions based on same-day data

Amazon Ads data doesn’t tell the full story right away, and acting on it too quickly can do more harm than good. Sales attribution on Amazon can take 3 to 5 days to fully settle. Conversions often appear with a delay, especially in categories with longer purchase cycles.

So, when advertisers make bid or campaign changes within hours of launch, they risk disrupting performance based on incomplete or misleading data.

Read more: Amazon Ads reporting delay is killing your conversions. Here’s the fix (lessons from studying 14,991 campaigns)

✨Consider this scenario: A brand launches a new Sponsored Products campaign for a seasonal product. By the end of Day 1, the ad appears to be underperforming, with zero sales and a high ACoS. In response, the campaign is paused.

But over the next few days, as delayed-attribution purchases are logged, the data reveals a strong ROAS and several conversions tied directly to those initial clicks. The early decision cut short a promising campaign based on a false negative.

 

The better strategy:

💡Optmyzr Tip: Use Optmyzr’s Amazon Account Alerts to set alerts at the account or campaign level, covering key metrics like ACoS, ROAS, CTR, clicks, conversions, and more.

While anomaly detection isn’t supported (due to delayed attribution), the alert system ensures meaningful changes don’t go unnoticed, even when data takes time to settle.

 

Fix what’s holding back your Amazon Ads with Optmyzr

The most common Amazon ads mistakes often aren’t dramatic; they’re subtle, recurring issues.

Bidding too soon, ignoring inventory signals, trusting same-day data, these are the habits that quietly drain performance over time.

But they’re fixable with the right structure, automation, and visibility.

Start by tightening campaign structure, reviewing data over time (not just today), and using tools that help catch what manual checks often miss.

Optmyzr’s pre-built strategies and intelligent automations are designed to help advertisers do exactly that!

Want to catch more of the small issues that lead to big wins? Sign up for a fully functional 14-day trial today.

How to Run a Seasonality Analysis of Your PPC Data Using ChatGPT

Most people assume Q4 is the busiest time of year. But assumptions aren’t analysis.

Every business experiences seasonality differently. Understanding your specific demand patterns—when performance surges or slumps—is how you allocate budgets smarter, optimize campaigns, and predict what’s next.

You don’t need a data science team. You don’t need a PhD in statistics. You need a clean export, a bit of prep, and GPT. Let’s break down how to do seasonality analysis using ChatGPT.

This approach draws heavily on insights shared by Cory Lindholm during one of my PPC Town Hall podcasts, where he talked about seasonality analysis, offering a straightforward way to sharpen your PPC strategy.

What is seasonality analysis?

Seasonality analysis is about pattern recognition. It uncovers recurring spikes and dips in performance over time, helping you stop reacting and start planning.

If you’ve ever wondered:

Then you’re already looking for seasonality. A formal analysis just answers those questions with data, not guesswork.

What is seasonality decomposition?

It’s the process of splitting your time series data into three parts:

  1. Trend – the long-term movement (up or down)
  2. Seasonality – the predictable ups and downs (e.g., Q4 spikes)
  3. Residual – the randomness (e.g, a one-off campaign anomaly)

Two models are commonly used:

That’s the math out of the way. Here’s how GPT does the heavy lifting for you.

How to perform a seasonality analysis using GPT

Here’s the step-by-step process I followed, including a few important checks to ensure reliable results.

Step 1: Export your weekly PPC data

Start with Google Ads Report Editor. Create a report that includes the metrics you want to analyze, such as clicks or conversions, and include “Week” as a row dimension. This creates the time series structure needed for analysis.

Export the report as a CSV file. To get the most out of GPT’s analysis, use at least one full year of weekly data. Seasonality decomposition relies on repeated patterns, so anything shorter may produce misleading or incomplete results.

Step 2: Ensure your data is clean and complete

Before uploading the file, review your data for inconsistencies. Check for missing weeks, duplicate entries, or formatting issues such as commas in column headers or entity names.

In my test, GPT detected and corrected formatting problems automatically. However, starting with clean input data improves reliability and reduces the chances of errors during analysis.

Step 3: Upload the dataset to GPT-4o

Use GPT-4o with the Advanced Data Analysis model. After uploading your CSV, use a prompt like: “I have weekly ads data. Can you perform a seasonality decomposition on it?”

GPT will load your data and ask which metric you want to analyze. You can choose clicks, conversions, or any other time-based KPI included in your report.

 

Then it asked me which of the KPIs I wanted to analyze for seasonality and replied with: “The data has been cleaned and displayed for your review. Now, I’ll perform the seasonal decomposition on one of the metrics, like Clicks or Conversions, depending on which one you’d prefer to analyze. Should we proceed with Clicks, or would you prefer a different metric?”

I responded with the prompt: “Please perform decomposition on Clicks.”

GPT then responded with the following chart:

Additional tips:

If you want to explore the underlying trends, seasonal patterns, and residual variations in your dataset (like clicks, conversions, or other metrics) across weekly time periods, you can perform time series decomposition.

There are several ways to expand on this.

Analyze by product lines or business segments

Brand vs. Non-brand analysis

Agency-level analysis: Vertical vs. advertisers

Forecasting PPC budget requirements

Seasonality insights for inventory management

Optimize marketing strategies

Cross-compare channels

This process is made easier by simply swapping the datasets you use for each channel. Whether you’re analyzing clicks, impressions, or conversions for Google Ads or Facebook Ads, the same approach applies; just change the dataset to reflect the relevant channel.

Fine-tune your PPC campaigns for maximum efficiency.

You already have the data. Seasonality analysis turns it into leverage.

It’s how you stop chasing performance and start anticipating it. With a single GPT prompt, you can surface trends your competitors are still guessing at. Forecast demand. Time your spend. Outsmart seasonality instead of getting blindsided by it.

No more “gut feels.” No more blown Q4 budgets. No more surprises.

Just sharper campaigns, better timing, and marketing that actually plans ahead.

You’re not just reacting to seasonality. You’re using it.

Google Ads Gets You Seen. Amazon Ads Gets You Sold. Here's How To Use Them Together.

Brands selling across multiple channels are adapting to how people actually shop — blending performance with discovery, and tailoring touchpoints around real behavior. A journey might start with a Google search, continue through a YouTube ad, and end with a purchase on Amazon.

But here’s the problem: these campaigns are often run in silos. Separate budgets, separate teams, and disconnected strategies.

This creates friction.

A shopper might click a YouTube ad, read your blog, then buy on Amazon—yet your data shows three disconnected actions. Attribution breaks, messaging misaligns, and worse, you may end up bidding against yourself for the same customer.

This is why advertisers who run both shouldn’t just run them side-by-side. Instead, they should consider a dual platform strategy.

It’s not just about doubling your spend. Rather, it’s about aligning platforms to the right funnel stages, routing traffic based on intent, and retargeting users where they’re most likely to convert.

In this blog, we’ll show you how to leverage a cross-platform ad strategy for your business and turn it into a smart system for better ROI.

Why combine Google and Amazon ads?

As consumers, we rarely move neatly from search to purchase. Instead, we zigzag between discovery and research, backtrack, and switch between tabs like the digital window shoppers we are.

Both Google and Amazon represent two distinct stages in this journey.

🔎Google: Often, where the journey begins, customers type in questions, compare different options, read reviews, and scan prices. It’s the platform for intent-based discovery and top-to-mid funnel engagement. You catch them while they’re curious.

🛒Amazon: Here, the mindset shifts. Shoppers come here with a higher intent to purchase. This is the platform for transactional behavior where searches more often than not translate into purchases.

🔑Key takeaway: If you’re looking to maximize visibility while guiding intent toward action, the strategic move is to leverage both platforms in tandem. When you show up at both the moment of consideration and the moment of conversion, you build a presence that moves with the customer across the funnel.

 

Mapping the funnel: Google + Amazon

An efficient ad strategy combines both Google and Amazon so that they complement each other. The goal is to align each platform with the stage of the customer journey it best supports.

Top of funnel

This is where discovery happens.

The goal is not to really convert but to spark interest and highlight your USP. A great place for your brand story to shine.

Use YouTube, Display, and broad-match Search ads to build awareness around your brand, especially for category-defining terms.

📌Example: A prebiotic granola brand runs a YouTube ad titled “Why Your Breakfast May Be Missing Gut Health Support”, paired with broad-match Search ads targeting queries like “healthy cereal alternatives” or “foods for digestion”. The goal is to educate and attract interest from wellness-conscious shoppers who may not know the brand but are open to the category.

Mid-funnel

This is the consideration phase where shoppers are evaluating their options.

The objective is to reinforce the interest you’ve earned. That means reminding shoppers why they engaged with your brand in the first place. Serve ads that help customers make informed decisions. It could be through product comparison pages, customer reviews, or even a ‘why choose us’ page.

Retargeting through Google Display campaigns brings them back to your product or educational pages, while your Amazon Storefront acts as a trust-building touchpoint, offering social proof, pricing, and delivery clarity.

📌Example: A shopper who searched for “healthy granola for gut health” is retargeted with a Display ad linking to a blog post titled “3 Reasons Our Prebiotic Blend Works”. Meanwhile, they visit Amazon to compare reviews and see Prime delivery. The brand stays top-of-mind across both platforms.

Bottom funnel

Here the goal is simple— conversion.

Once the shopper knows what they want, Amazon becomes the closer. Sponsored Product and Sponsored Display ads work well here—capturing high-intent searches like brand or product names and retargeting users who’ve already shown interest.

📌Example: A shopper who previously viewed a prebiotic granola brand on Google now searches “[Brand Name] granola” on Amazon. A Sponsored Product ad appears at the top of results. It features a familiar name, a Prime badge, and a discount! One click, and they convert.

 

How to launch a dual-platform funnel

Step 1: Set up your Google ads for broad reach and high-intent targeting

💡Pro tip: Use Optmyzr’s Keyword Lasso to identify high-performing search queries from the Search Terms Report and add them as mid-funnel keywords or SKAGs. This helps capture proven intent and tighten campaign structure as performance data grows.

 

Step 2: Optimize your Amazon storefront to function like a high-converting landing page

💡Pro Tip: Use the “ASINs with Higher Orders” audit in Optmyzr to identify your top-selling products and prioritize them in your Storefront layout—feature them in hero sections, comparison blocks, or as bestsellers to increase shopper trust and drive faster conversions.

Step 3: Route traffic smartly to get the best out of your ads

💡 Pro Tip: Use custom conversions in Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to identify high-interest, low-purchase search terms. These users are still in the research phase. Route them to brand.com for nurturing, not to Amazon, where conversion pressure is higher.

Step 4: Stay visible and relevant after shoppers show interest

💡Pro Tip: Use Explore Traffic Segments to identify high-engagement audience groups from Google Analytics and score them by performance. Sync top segments into Google Ads (via Customer Match or audiences) for behavior-based retargeting and smarter routing decisions.

 

Pitfalls to avoid

Launching a dual-platform strategy without proper guardrails can be a dangerous gamble and hurt your ROI before you can even catch it. Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Overlapping audiences

Avoid targeting the same set of users in both brand and Amazon campaigns without segmentation.

For example, say you run a Google Ads campaign targeting “gut health granola” and direct users to brand.com. Simultaneously, you run a YouTube campaign using the same Custom Intent audience and drive that traffic to your Amazon Storefront.

Without exclusions, the same user could be shown both ads, driving up CPMs and CPCs across platforms. Plus, if they convert on Amazon, it’s unclear which campaign deserves credit, and your attribution gets muddled.

✅The fix: Use clear audience exclusions or labels to make sure each campaign targets the right people with the right message. This way you make sure every stage of your marketing funnel targets the right users with the right message and that your ad budget is being used smartly.

2. Poorly designed landing pages

When a user clicks on your ad, especially if it’s for a high-intent search, they’re definitely expecting a page that gives them all the information they need and makes it easy to convert.

A landing page with no clear explanation of benefits, reviews, trust signals, or product details can create doubt and may cause the user to bounce. You’re wasting a very valuable click and hurting your return on ad spend (ROAS).

✅The fix: Think of the landing page as your salesperson. Make sure you highlight the value props, include customer reviews and ratings, add FAQs, and use high-quality images and benefit-focused descriptions.

3. Gaps in internal readiness

You run great ads and manage to attract several high-intent customers. But all of this amounts to nothing if your backend systems aren’t running properly. Even the best ads won’t convert effectively, and worse, you’ll end up creating a poor customer experience.

✅The fix: The most important thing is to make sure your Amazon inventory levels are healthy. Avoid running ads on products that are or on the verge of going out-of-stock. Also ensure shipping, handling, and customer support are ready to handle increased volume.

 

Measuring what matters across platforms

So you’ve set up a cross-platform ad strategy across the funnel. Now you want to measure how this adds value over time.

Here are a few different things you can do to measure and optimize your ad strategy.

1. Amazon Attribution

This is essentially a free, advertising and analytics measurement solution that gives you insights into how your marketing strategies across non-Amazon channels like search, social, display, video, email, and other campaigns helped customers discover and purchase your products on Amazon.

You can simply add Amazon Attribution tags to your Google ads to understand whether upper- or mid-funnel Google campaigns are assisting conversions that close on Amazon.

📌Example: You discover that 25% of users who clicked your Google ad didn’t buy on brand.com but later bought the product on Amazon. This makes it clear that your Google Ads are influencing Amazon sales.

2. Google Analytics

Pair Amazon Attribution insights with Google Analytics to map user journeys and track how many touchpoints it takes before a user converts. You can also see whether your brand content plays a role in educating or nurturing a customer before a purchase.

📌Example: GA shows that users often visit your blog before they buy, indicating that your brand.com content plays a key role in assisting customers during their purchase journey even when the final sale happens on Amazon.

3. Amazon’s New-to-Brand metrics

New-to-brand metrics allow you to measure orders, sales, and detail page views of your products generated from first-time customers of your brand on Amazon. They can help measure customer acquisition and tailor your campaign strategies.

📌Example: Amazon’s dashboard reveals that 60% of purchases from Sponsored Brand ads are from first-time customers. This means your Amazon ads aren’t just converting but they’re also acquiring new customers, which boosts long-term value.

 

Align your ad strategy to match shopper behavior and not just platforms

Instead of treating Amazon ads and Google ads as two separate platforms, sequence them according to your shopper’s mindset. This allows you to keep up with your customers with the right messaging as they move from discovery to consideration and finally, conversion. It lets you capture high-intent traffic, track them, and optimize better so you aren’t simply spending more but actually driving results from your ad campaigns.

Optmyzr comes with a comprehensive set of tools that can be used to automate your campaigns, segment audiences, and even run-rule based optimizations to keep your funnel efficient across platforms.

Try out Optmyzr’s free 14-day trial and explore how you can scale your campaigns the smart way.

Amazon Buy Box Basics: What It Is and Why It Matters to Your Ads

If you’re running Amazon ads without keeping an eye on the Buy Box, you’re flying blind.

Your campaigns are active. Your budget’s burning. And conversions? They’re going to whoever happens to own the Buy Box at that moment, which might not be you.

It’s not that your ads are broken. It’s that your strategy isn’t synced to the most important piece of the puzzle.

Optmyzr helps fix that. It gives you the automation and visibility you need to connect Buy Box status with ad performance, so you’re only spending when you’ve actually got a shot at the sale.

Let’s dig into what the Buy Box really controls and how to build smarter campaigns around it.

The Buy Box: Amazon’s shortcut to the sale

The Amazon Buy Box is the section on the product page where shoppers can choose to ‘Add to Cart’ or ‘Buy Now’. The box contains information about the price, when the item will be delivered, and the quantity you’re ordering.

What is the significance of the Buy Box?

Multiple sellers often offer the same product on Amazon, but only one can win the Buy Box at a time, which is the most prominent call-to-action on the page. This spot drives the majority of sales.

When you click “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now,” you’re buying from the seller currently holding the Buy Box. Check back later, and a different seller might be in that spot, based on real-time performance and pricing.

 

Other sellers can still be found under “Other Sellers on Amazon,” but the Buy Box winner gets prime placement, which is crucial for visibility and conversions.

How does Amazon select the Buy Box winner?

Only one seller at a time can “win” the Buy Box because Amazon wants to streamline the buying experience.

Instead of making the shopper compare multiple offers, Amazon automatically selects the seller it deems best based on factors like:

Why the Buy Box deserves your attention

1. Ads can still show even without the Buy Box

Your ads will run even if you don’t currently occupy the Buy Box position. It can drive traffic, but not conversions.

The impact: Unless you win the Buy Box on the product detail page, your offer won’t be the one customers check out with. That sale often goes to a competing seller. So you’re paying for visibility, but someone else is closing the sale.

2. Conversion rates can drop without the Buy Box

Amazon’s Buy Box streamlines the shopping experience for customers. In fact, 83% of all sales go to the seller occupying the Buy Box position.

The impact: Even with strong ads and optimized product listings, sellers without the Buy Box may see a significant decline in sales.

3. Low Buy Box Win Rates = Higher Ad Costs, Lower Visibility

Amazon’s algorithm considers your Buy Box win rates when determining ad relevance and performance. A low win rate can lower your ad’s quality score since your offer may seem less competitive.

The impact: A lower quality score often results in higher CPCs since Amazon needs more incentive to show less competitive ads. Aside from this, Amazon might assume that your offerings are less relevant to shoppers, and this can impact your organic rankings.

 

The 5 Buy Box factors that can make or break your ads

Winning the Buy Box is all about strategically balancing different factors so your offering is the most competitive and reliable option for Amazon shoppers.

1. The pricing strategy

Amazon looks at something called the landed price (item price + shipping cost) and checks if it is competitive enough to win or retain the Buy Box. Offering the cheapest pricing doesn’t guarantee you the Buy Box. In fact, if the price drops too low, your listing can be suppressed or the Buy Box may go to another seller.

👉 Watch out for pricing mismatch across channels—offering a better deal on your own site or another marketplace can cause Amazon to pull your Buy Box.

2. Fulfillment

If you’ve outsourced shipping and logistics to Amazon (called FBA or Fulfillment By Amazon), you’re likely to get some preferential treatment over sellers who handle shipping in-house. They are also eligible to win the Buy Box but unlike FBA sellers, these sellers will also need to rely on other factors like shipping speed, order defect rate, seller ratings, and on-time delivery rates.

3. Inventory

If your inventory on Amazon runs out of stock frequently, Amazon can delist your products even if you offer the lowest price. This is because Amazon prioritizes sellers who can consistently fulfill orders quickly and reliably.

💡Pro Tip: Optmyzr’s Rule Engine allows you to set up a strategy so you can automatically pause/re-enable ads based on your inventory levels. This way you’re not paying for clicks that cannot convert and avoid negative signals that can impact your Buy Box eligibility.

4. Account health

Amazon doesn’t just look at what you sell or how much—your day-to-day seller behavior matters as much. This makes it very important to closely monitor account health metrics like order defect rate, late shipment rate, cancellation rate, and on-time delivery.

When your account metrics stay within Amazon’s performance thresholds, you stay eligible more often, even against sellers with slightly lower prices.

5. Listing quality

Your Amazon product listing is the first thing shoppers see when they’re browsing for something. Poor images, weak titles, and low relevance can impact your conversions and ranking, both of which play a role in higher buy box win rates. Make sure you use richer visuals, detailed product storytelling, and highlight benefits to improve your listing score.

A strong listing creates a positive feedback loop by increasing conversions. This in turn tips the scale in your favor with stronger metrics, more visibility, and subsequently more Buy Box wins.

How to align your ads with the Buy Box

Running Amazon ads without owning the Buy Box means compromising your ad spend, conversions, and CPCs.

Here are a few tips on how you can adopt a smarter ad strategy around the Buy Box.

1. Understand the Buy Box status

Check your Buy Box status at the moment you plan to activate or scale your ads. If you’re not winning it, especially for high-competition or shared listings, you may want to consider delaying your ads or adjusting the ad investment. This ensures you’re only spending when you have a real shot at converting and owning the sale.

📌Example: You launch a new product. You don’t have reviews yet, so your Buy Box share is unstable.

Instead of launching a full campaign, you:

  • Start with low-budget branded ads or video ads for awareness.

  • Monitor if you gain Buy Box ownership through organic or test conversions.

  • Once you see Buy Box stability at certain hours, ASINs, or fulfillment regions, you increase your ad investment.

2. Monitor the Buy Box daily for active campaigns

When you’re actively advertising your products, it’s important to keep a daily check on your Buy Box status to see whether you’re winning or not.

This makes sure you don’t miss windows where your ads are burning the budget and helps in diagnosing sudden performance drops. More importantly, if you have a record of daily data, you can actually use automation to pause ads or lower bids based on the Buy Box share.

You can check your Buy Box share or percentage on Amazon’s Business Reports.

📌Example: If your Buy Box share drops to 25%, only 1 in 4 shoppers can actually buy from you. With Optmyzr’s Rule Engine, you can automate your ad strategy based on Buy Box data. Just feed your Business Reports into Optmyzr via custom data integration, then set up rules like:

Tactic 1: If Buy Box % < 30% AND ROAS < 2 THEN reduce bid by 40%

Tactic 2: If Buy Box % > 80% AND CPC is stable, THEN Increase bid by 15%

3. Let ad data guide pricing

Noticed your CPCs suddenly spiking but conversions staying flat? That’s often a sign you’ve lost the Buy Box or your price isn’t competitive anymore.

When that happens, Amazon sees your offer as less relevant, so CPCs go up, and shoppers start buying from someone else.

Keeping an eye on your ad data can help you spot this before it reflects in your Buy Box report.

Use Optmyzr’s Account Alerts to notify you whenever there is a spike in CPC, a decline in ROAS, or a rising ACoS.

Any changes in these metrics may mean you need to reassess your pricing strategy. It may also mean that Amazon sees your offer as less competitive, which can cause your relevance to drop.

4. Run Sponsored Product ads to protect visibility

Say you lose the Buy Box but still want to keep your listing in the game till you win it back to protect organic rankings, traffic, and sales.

Instead of disappearing completely, a good strategy is to run Sponsored Product ads so you still show up in searches and protect your brand presence. Even if conversion is lower, you stay top-of-mind and may still pick up sales from comparison shoppers.

5. Use brand defense strategies

If your competitor wins the Buy Box on your listing, you’re no longer the default seller. In such scenarios, you want to retain shopper attention, reduce sales to low-quality sellers, and protect your brand.

This is where you can run brand defense strategies such as:

6. Manage ad performance during inventory transitions

If you’re transitioning from FBM (Fulfilled By Merchant) to FBA or waiting for an FBA restock, your chances of winning the Buy Box decrease temporarily. This is because during this period, your fulfillment method is weaker or delayed.

During such periods, it’s best to scale back on your ads or switch tactics to protect campaign and budget performance. What you can do is:

How to review Buy Box impact over time

Once your ad strategy is aligned with the Buy Box, the next step is to track performance consistently. It’s always best to establish a proper reporting cadence so you can continuously optimize your ad efficiency and spot issues before they escalate.

Here are a few tips on how you can structure your reporting frequency.

1. Weekly reviews

Buy Box winners can rotate daily, sometimes even hourly, based on different factors. Weekly reviews can help you identify patterns that may be affecting your ad performance.

During weekly reviews, look out for:

2. Monthly reviews

While weekly checks catch short-term fluctuations, monthly reviews reveal structural trends, like why you’re consistently losing the Buy Box on certain SKUs.

During monthly reviews, keep an eye out for:

3. Quarterly reviews

Quarterly reviews help you zoom out and optimize ad spend at the portfolio level.

What to look for:

Smarter Amazon ads start with Buy Box awareness

The Amazon Buy Box is a critical feature that can directly impact a seller’s sales and profitability. But winning the Buy Box depends on a combination of factors. The most important takeaway for sellers is that it’s absolutely essential to make sure that every part of your ad strategy is strategically aligned with your pricing, inventory, fulfillment, and real-time Buy Box status, so you’re only spending when you have the best shot at winning the sale.

Optmyzr offers several advanced capabilities that allow you to automate ad decisions, monitor key metrics, and stay ahead of costly surprises.

Sign up for Optmyzr’s 14-day free trial to see how you can easily turn your Amazon ads into a profit engine.

How to Launch Social Media Campaigns Faster and Beat the Trend Cycle

If you’re running social media campaigns, you know speed isn’t optional; it’s the edge.

Top brands aren’t just moving fast; they’re structured to do so.

They cut the clutter, target their audience precisely, and automate social media campaigns to maintain sharp performance.

When your campaign depends on seasonal trends, product drops, or cultural moments, there’s no time to wait. Miss the moment, and you miss the engagement and the revenue.

In this article, we break down the three tactics that help launch social media campaigns faster, enabling you to move with precision, adapt at speed, and stay ahead of the feed.

Why timing is crucial in social media advertising

Campaigns tied to holidays, product launches, or seasonal pushes live and die by timing.

Marketers need to be equipped with real-time campaign management, ready to ride viral trends or pivot fast when social platform algorithms shift. If you don’t, you miss the surge of interest that drives clicks, conversions, and brand lift.

The reality is that competition never hits pause.

New offers flood feeds every day. Fresh, creative, and aggressive bidding strategies fight for attention, and slow campaign launches get drowned out by louder, quicker messages.

On top of that, social platforms constantly change their algorithms.

These shifts can suddenly impact how ads are prioritized and delivered, making agility not just an advantage but a necessity to optimize social ad performance.

Consequences of delayed social media campaigns

Running successful social media campaigns requires you to show up right when attention and intent peak. When campaign launches lag, the impact ripples across performance, operations, and brand perception.

Here’s what’s at stake with delays during cross-platform ad management:

How to manage social campaigns faster: 3 key tactics

From rapid campaign builds to smarter audience segmentation and automated optimizations, here are three tactics that can help you launch social media campaigns faster.

1. Rapid campaign creation tools & workflows

In paid social, it’s not about launching fast once, it’s about doing it consistently at scale.

Using a multi-platform campaign builder lets marketers skip the repetitive setup work and focus on strategy. When a trend breaks or a competitor drops big news, the brands that launch fastest capture visibility, clicks, and conversions.

A 24-hour delay can mean fewer clicks, missed momentum, and a tougher climb to results.

Take a B2B software company promoting a webinar. They need to reach decision-makers on LinkedIn and broader influencers on Meta.

Instead of a multi-channel campaign launch strategy, their team wastes hours duplicating work across ad platforms with different UIs, creative specs, and targeting rules.

The result? Fewer eyes on your message and fewer opportunities to make your moment count.

Optmyzr’s Paid Campaign Launcher eliminates this fragmented workflow and enables teams to build once and launch everywhere.

Here’s how that webinar campaign can be tailored for all platforms: The marketing team sets their creative theme, configures brand profile details (brand colors, CTAs, logos), and tailors the campaign to each platform’s specifications, all from one interface.

 

They preview everything, fix inconsistencies before launch, and push campaigns live on multiple platforms simultaneously.

 

Instead of juggling disconnected workflows, they focus on what actually drives results: strategy, timing, and performance.

This edge in speed pays off across campaign types, from high-stakes launches to everyday optimizations:

💡 Power Shortcut: Let AI handle the basics. Optmyzr’s AI can auto-scan your website and pre-fill your brand profile, suggesting CTAs, USPs, logos, and visuals in seconds. Go from blank canvas to launch-ready in a fraction of the time.

 

Also Read: How to Manage Meta and LinkedIn Ads Together Without Losing Your Mind

2: Smart audience targeting for better social ROI

Impressions alone don’t drive results; relevance does. Many marketers still spend their budget targeting audiences too broad or too cold, leading to ads that rack up views but fall short on engagement and conversion.

As ad costs climb and third-party data becomes harder to access, marketers increasingly rely on meta ads targeting strategies that use first-party audience targeting built from real behavior and engagement. These strategies not only improve ROAS on social media, but also ensure your budget flows toward users most likely to convert.

Instead of relying solely on platform-level targeting presets, they build layered audience structures that mirror the customer journey.

We call this the Audience Ladder: a four-tiered framework that helps marketers prioritize budget and messaging for maximum efficiency.

📍Cold Prospecting: Broad or lookalike audiences used for awareness campaigns

📍Warm Re-engagement: People who interacted with content, visited key pages, or engaged with your social channels

📍High-Intent Targeting: Returning visitors, cart abandoners, CRM segments, or app users showing strong intent

📍Loyalists & Cross-Sell: Existing customers who can be upsold, reactivated, or rewarded

 

Each stage calls for tailored creative, precise messaging and a clear sense of what success looks like. The goal isn’t just to move people through the funnel but to avoid wasting spend on users unlikely to take action.

Optmyzr’s faster approach to building and activating custom audiences can support this strategy by helping advertisers define and deploy more granular segments.

This includes the ability to:

📌Example: Let’s say a skincare brand launches a new product line. They want to re-engage users who watched a tutorial on Instagram but didn’t convert. Combining engagement data with promotional messaging can help them retarget a warmer segment with more personalized creative. This leads to more relevant impressions and potentially stronger results.

This kind of audience segmentation supports:

💡 Optmyzr Tip: Set performance-based alerts on your audiences. If your “lead form openers” segment suddenly sees a spike in cost per conversion, Optmyzr flags it instantly, so you can pause, tweak, or reallocate spend before budget gets burned.

3. Real-time social ad optimization

Campaign performance isn’t static, and in social advertising, even small delays in response can have an outsized impact. Whether you’re running a 3-day flash sale, a time-bound product launch, or a registration push for a webinar, waiting too long to optimize can mean wasted spend and missed outcomes.

Marketers today require more than just scheduled reports. They need real-time visibility and actionable insights across every layer of their campaigns to keep performance on track.

That’s where prioritizing these three things becomes essential:

Here’s how you can do it with Optmyzr’s paid social automation tools:

1. Detect ad-level issues early

Performance issues often begin at the ad level, and catching them early can prevent wasted spend. The Ad Analyzer helps you:

 

You can export these insights, share them with your team, or save customized views to monitor specific goals.

One of our early users told us:

“Personally, I found the Ad Analyzer perfect, because I don’t really have any tool that does that for us at the moment… and this is one of the things that I don’t really see in any other tools either.”

— Laura L., Senior Consultant Social Media, morefire GmbH

2. Make campaign-wide changes quickly

Optimization doesn’t stop at the ad level. The Social Campaign Manager provides a consolidated view of performance across campaigns, ad sets, and audiences, letting advertisers:

 

This centralized control helps teams act faster without wasting time switching between interfaces.

3. Automate recurring fixes at scale

For larger teams or advertisers managing multiple campaigns, responding in real time isn’t always feasible. The Rule Engine provides scalable automation by allowing users to build strategies that trigger actions based on performance logic.

You can build rules like ‘pause high-spend, no-conversion ads’—then decide if Optmyzr should flag it, fix it, or file it.

 

This ensures that even in complex environments, campaigns remain aligned with performance goals.

💡What You Can Automate with Custom Rules

  • Pause high-spending ads or ad sets with zero conversions

  • Increase budgets for top-performing campaigns

  • Lower bid caps when the cost per result exceeds your target

  • Flag ads with declining CTR for quick review

  • Pause campaigns with lots of impressions but no results

  • Boost budgets for winning ad sets during promotions

  • Add underperformers to a report for action tracking

  • Adjust the target cost per result when performance dips

  • Automatically stop weekend campaigns after Sunday

  • Send weekly reports on all converting ads

 

Launch social campaigns faster with Optmyzr.

Fast execution isn’t just a competitive edge in social advertising, it’s the baseline. What sets teams apart is how efficiently they get there.

Streamlining campaign creation, refining audience strategy, and responding to performance in real time lets you stay ahead of trends, competition, and wasted spend.

Optmyzr’s suite of cross-platform paid social tools brings together creation, targeting, and optimization into one seamless workflow.

Curious how fast your team could move with the right social media automation tools?

Explore Optmyzr with a 14-day trial and see how much easier and faster social campaign management can be.

Introductory pricing starts at just $99/month after the trial.

FAQs

1. How can I speed up the creation of social media campaigns across multiple platforms? Ans. The best way to speed up social media campaign creation is by using a cross-platform ad management tool that lets you build once and launch everywhere. These tools support brand profile templates, dynamic variables, and live ad previews to help you launch faster without compromising quality or consistency.

2. How can I monitor campaign performance in real-time without manual checks? Ans. To monitor campaign performance in real time, use paid social tools with real-time ad optimization features. These platforms automatically surface performance shifts like rising CPAs or dropping CTRs, to help you act immediately instead of manually refreshing dashboards.

3. How do I ensure consistent messaging across different social media platforms? Ans. Use a centralized social campaign builder that supports platform-specific customizations. Start with a unified brand message and then adapt it per channel using tools that preserve core CTAs, visuals, and tone while fitting each platform’s format and audience behavior.

4. What steps can I take to improve the overall efficiency of my social media campaigns? Ans. To improve campaign efficiency, first simplify your workflow. Then use automation tools for social media ads to handle repeatable tasks, like pausing underperforming ads or reallocating budget.

5. How do I automate social media campaigns without losing control? Ans. Use platforms that offer performance-based triggers, real-time feedback, and cross-platform preview tools. The best systems let you set up rules and alerts without sacrificing strategy.

 

How to Manage Meta and LinkedIn Ads Together Without Losing Your Mind

If you’re someone managing Meta and LinkedIn Ads across multiple accounts, you’re juggling disconnected dashboards, duplicate reports, and platforms that refuse to play nice.

Budgets are shrinking. Costs are climbing. And you’re wasting hours just trying to answer one simple question: What the heck is working?

It’s not a tooling problem. It’s a fragmentation problem. And it’s badly affecting your performance.

Optmyzr fixes that. It unifies your paid social campaigns across Meta and LinkedIn, giving you one clean control center for strategy, reporting, and optimization. No more platform ping-pong. No more spreadsheet gymnastics. Let’s break down how it works—and how it puts you back in control.

1. The chaos: You’re managing ads in silos.

If you’re managing multiple Meta and LinkedIn Ads accounts across different regions or brands, you may be grappling with multiple logins, spreadsheets to reconcile, and performance trends scattered across platforms.

💡The fix: All Portfolio Dashboard

Optmyzr’s All Portfolio Dashboard brings all your portfolios into a single, centralized space. Each portfolio can contain any number of Meta and LinkedIn Ads accounts.

You get to visualize performance data and find optimization opportunities for ALL your accounts.

Plus, accounts can be grouped into portfolios based on brand, geo, funnel stage, or business unit. This simplifies the way you work.

📌Example: If you have Meta and LinkedIn ad accounts for Nike campaigns in the U.S., group them into one ‘Nike - US’ portfolio. This lets you track performance, budgets, and trends for all U.S. campaigns across platforms in one place.

Similarly, you can group Meta ad accounts in different European countries into one portfolio— ‘EU Meta’. This lets you analyze and compare performance across the whole region instead of looking at each country or account individually.

Other key features of the all portfolio dashboard include:

💡Pro Tip: If you want to avoid alert fatigue, use ‘Allowed Deviation’ in alerts to set a tolerance range around your target metric. This prevents constant alerts for minor, normal shifts in performance and helps you focus only on significant changes that may need action.

2. The blind spot: You can’t see what’s actually driving results.

Smart decisions come from context. So you know which campaigns are performing. But do you know where the results are coming from and why they’re happening?

What you need is a way to compare key metrics like engagement rate, cost per unique user, and ROAS across platforms, portfolios, and time periods so you can pinpoint exactly where to invest for the best returns.

💡The fix: Cross-channel performance clarity

The portfolio dashboard provides clarity into cross-channel performance. You can filter by campaign type, customize date ranges, and build side-by-side views that make trends and gaps immediately visible.

📌Example: Imagine running Nike campaigns in France and Germany. The Portfolio Dashboard shows side-by-side performance: France has higher engagement, Germany has better ROAS. With these insights, you can reallocate budget to boost sales or optimize weaker campaigns. The dashboard provides a unified view for smarter, data-driven decisions.

If you want to dig even deeper, the dashboard lets you:

3. The reporting problem: You’re wasting hours on a slide that says nothing.

Every report is a copy-paste marathon. You’re juggling screenshots, CSV exports, and half-baked conclusions. And most of it isn’t actionable.

💡The fix: Automated, actionable reporting

With Optmyzr’s Reports, you can build reports quickly and easily. It features several pre-built, plug-and-play widgets that you can use to create comprehensive, performance-driven reports.

Here’s how you can use each of these widgets can be used in your reporting workflow:

1. Portfolio summary

Get a snapshot of overall account performance for a selected date range to highlight cross-platform results.

📌Example: If you're running awareness campaigns for a client on both Meta Ads and LinkedIn Ads, you can use this widget to compare how each platform performed during that time, all in one view.

2. Performance comparison

Compare the performance of two segments of information, like two date ranges or different campaign types, for the accounts in your portfolio for the same date range.

📌Example 1: Compare how your Meta Ads account performed this month vs. last month to track improvement or spot drops in key metrics. This is a use case for time-based comparison.

📌Example 2: Evaluate how ‘Awareness’ campaigns on Meta stack up against ‘Brand Awareness’ campaigns on LinkedIn to identify which channel drives better visibility. This is an example ofa campaign type comparison.

3. Time-wise stats

Break down performance by day, week, or month to spot trends and seasonality in your portfolio.

📌Example: You're reporting performance for the last 6 months. Use the Time Wise Stats widget to break down your portfolio’s results by month to quickly spot trends like rising CPC in February, a steady drop in conversions in March and April, etc. This way, you can link changes to specific campaigns or events.

4. Top Campaigns in Portfolio

Identify high-performing campaigns by sorting and filtering based on your most important KPIs.

📌Example: Meta and LinkedIn lead gen campaigns side by side using key metrics like cost, conversions, and ROAS to quickly spot which ones to scale or fix.

5. Top Ads in Portfolio

Drill down to your best-performing ads across accounts to double down on winning creatives.

📌Example: You review the top ads across your Meta and LinkedIn accounts in a portfolio. By including key metrics like click-through rate, conversions, and cost per conversion, you quickly spot which ads are driving the best results and identify underperforming ads to optimize or pause.

6. Metric Trend Chart

Visualize performance trends for selected metrics over time using flexible chart options.

📌Example: Use the Metric Trend Chart to compare impressions and conversions over the last three months. By visualizing both metrics side-by-side, you easily spot periods where impressions rose but conversions didn’t, helping you identify when and why campaign performance dipped.

7. Distribution by Accounts

Compare how each account contributes to total performance to identify strong or weak performers.

📌Example: You’re managing multiple client accounts in one portfolio. Using the Distribution By Accounts widget, you spot that Account A is driving 60% of your total conversions, while Account B lags behind. With this insight, you can focus your optimization efforts on underperforming accounts to boost overall results.

4. The scaling struggle: You don’t know which ads to kill or boost.

When you manage Meta and LinkedIn ads together, it can get challenging to isolate which ads are driving results and which ones are draining your budget.

💡The fix: Ad Analyzer

The Ad Analyzer helps you drill down across multiple campaigns and platforms to easily spot your top performers, expensive ads, or those struggling to engage.

You just have to select the campaigns you want to review, and the Ad Analyzer will instantly show you key metrics like impressions, clicks, cost, conversions, and CTR—all in one customizable table.

Aside from this, with Ad Analyzer, you can:

✅Use preset filters like Top Spending Ads, High Converting Ads, or Ads with Declining CTR to narrow your view

✅Build custom filters tailored to your unique goals

✅Click any ad to open a side panel with a live preview, performance trends, and platform-specific insights like Meta’s Quality Score and placements

Simplify your social campaigns with Optmyzr.

When you’re running ads across Meta and LinkedIn across multiple accounts, it’s easy to get slowed down by scattered data and time-consuming reports.

But, with Optmyzr, you wouldn’t.

Optmyzr’s social ad management tools bring important insights and key metrics across different campaigns and accounts into a single, cohesive space. This way, you can quickly spot what’s working, fix what’s not, and make smarter decisions.

Try Optmyzr free for 14 days and explore how you can start managing Meta and LinkedIn Ads the smart way.

The 4-Part Amazon Ads Strategy to Drive Real Profit and Scale With Confidence

Amazon advertising can be complex, and success comes down to mastering a few critical elements. It begins with a product listing engineered to convert interest into decisive purchases.

From there, a focused keyword strategy ensures budgets are spent on terms that truly deliver results. A clear campaign structure then provides the control needed to scale efficiently.

Finally, disciplined optimization uncovers opportunities before they slip away.

This guide breaks down the four essential pillars of an Amazon Ads strategy that drives sustainable growth and profitability.

Before you dive in: Key terms to know

  • ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale): ACOS tells you how much you’re spending on ads for each sale you make. Lower ACOS means you're spending less on ads to make more sales.

  • ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): ROAS shows how much money you make for every dollar spent on ads. A higher ROAS means your ads are bringing in more money than they cost.

  • TACoS (Total Advertising Cost of Sale): TACoS looks at both your ad sales and organic (non-ad) sales. It helps you understand the overall impact of ads on your total sales, not just the ads themselves.

  • CTR (Click-Through Rate): CTR is the percentage of people who click on your ad after seeing it. A higher CTR means your ad is interesting and relevant to people.

  • Conversion Rate: Conversion rate tells you how many people buy your product after clicking on your ad. A higher conversion rate means more people are buying after seeing your ad.

  • Impression Share: Impression share is the percentage of times your ad shows up compared to the total number of opportunities for it to show. A high impression share means your ad is often seen by your target audience.

1. Make sure your listing can actually convert before you increase ad spend.

Before increasing ad spend, it’s worth stepping back to ask: Is the listing built to convert?

Ads can drive traffic, but it’s the product page that needs to close the deal. Without a compelling listing, those clicks often lead nowhere.

What to optimize first

These are the essentials to dial in before scaling ad efforts:

🧠Pro Tip: Don't underestimate the impact of video on your product listings. While you're optimizing your images and text, consider adding high-quality product videos. Shoppers today often prefer to see a product in action. Think about including product demos, lifestyle shorts in video format, or customer testimonials in video.

Why this matters

When conversion rates improve, Amazon takes notice. Strong listings can earn better ad placements and lower CPCs, creating a healthier feedback loop for growth.

Before scaling spend, a listing audit is often the first (and smartest) move.

💡Optmyzr Tip: Our Amazon-specific audits can help catch issues that might be hurting conversion rates. Test out audits like Products not Delivering to catch ASINs with zero impressions, Campaigns with Less ROAS to find underperformers that might be tied to weak product pages, and Expensive Keywords to spot where you're spending without seeing returns.

2. Start broad with keywords, but refine quickly based on real performance.

Keyword strategy can make or break Amazon campaigns. It’s not about adding more keywords, it’s about focusing on the ones that drive results.

It can be helpful to start broad and then refine. Automatic campaigns can provide insights into how shoppers are searching, and some search terms might be different from expectations.

Once you have some data, get intentional with your targeting.

Keyword strategy tips

Use negatives when needed

Cleaning up traffic is just as important, as not all visits may lead to the desired outcomes. It can be useful to evaluate spend efficiency, especially if certain terms consistently use a significant portion of a product’s price without generating conversions.

This could be a signal to reconsider those terms.

Negative keywords, when applied at the right level, whether campaign or ad group, can help curb unnecessary spend.

Regular audits are a good practice, as keywords that didn’t convert last month may still be affecting the budget, making it worth checking in on performance periodically.

To make this process easier, Optmyzr’s Rule Engine includes a pre-built strategy that flags non-converting search terms and ASINs, so you can quickly add them as negatives and keep your campaigns efficient.

{{< figure src="/forestry/optmyzr-amazon-ads-non-converting-keywords-and-asin-terms.webp" >}}

Similarly, missing out on converting search terms means leaving potential revenue on the table.

That’s where another pre-built strategy, “Add converting search terms as keywords,” helps you capture these valuable opportunities.

{{< figure src="/forestry/optmyzr-amazon-ads-add-new-keywords.webp" >}}

This way, you’re not just spending efficiently, but also driving real profit from terms that convert.

3. Structure your Amazon Ads account like a blueprint for scalable growth.

A messy campaign structure leads to wasted spend and missed opportunities. If you want to scale efficiently, your account needs to be clean, organized, and easy to optimize.

Think of structure as your growth blueprint. It’s what gives you visibility, control, and the ability to scale what’s working

Here’s a simple but effective framework:

1. Start with discovery through Automatic Campaigns.

Automatic campaigns in Amazon Ads are campaigns where Amazon decides which search terms and product pages your ads show up for, based on your product listing content (title, bullets, description, backend keywords, etc.).

These campaigns act as search engines. Use them to uncover real search terms your customers are using, often different from what you expect.

Let Amazon match your products to related queries and ASINs. Watch what gets clicks, what converts, and where your wasted spend is going. Then mine those insights for manual targeting and negatives.

2. Get specific with manual keyword targeting.

Once you’ve identified high-performing search terms, move them to manual campaigns where you can optimize bids, match types, and placements. This gives you full control over your strategy, enabling you to maximize ROI.

For example, let’s say a brand sells wireless smart speakers. After running automatic campaigns, it discovers that terms like “best wireless speaker for home,” “smart speaker with Alexa,” and “portable Bluetooth speaker” are generating solid clicks and conversions.

These high-performing keywords can now be transferred to a manual campaign, where the brand can adjust bids for each term.

3. Outsmart competitors with product targeting.

Product targeting offers a more direct approach than traditional keyword targeting.

While keyword targeting involves bidding on search terms that potential customers might use, product targeting lets you place your ads alongside specific products, categories, brands, or product features.

You can compete directly with other brands by showing your ads on their product pages. This strategy can help draw attention away from their listings and direct it toward yours.

For example, if a brand sells premium coffee makers, they could use product targeting to display ads on product pages for similar coffee makers or within categories like “coffee machines” or “home brewing equipment.”

Moreover, it’s not limited to Amazon’s platform. Sponsored Display ads extend your reach beyond Amazon, appearing on external websites or apps that your potential customers visit.

4. Double down on what works with winner campaigns.

Don’t let your best keywords or targets stay buried in broader campaigns. Once a product or term consistently hits your performance benchmarks, move it into a dedicated campaign.

This gives you tighter budget control, clearer reporting, and the ability to scale spend without interference from underperformers in the same campaign.

Best practices for a manageable and scalable structure

💡Optmyzr Tip: When scaling winning campaigns, budget caps can create unexpected slowdowns. Optmyzr’s Spend Projection Tool forecasts which campaigns are on track to max out before it happens. It analyzes trends, seasonality, and recent performance to deliver a smart spend range and help adjust budgets proactively to keep top performers running strong when it matters most.

4. Use automation and alerts to respond faster to performance shifts.

Success on Amazon isn’t a one-time effort, it’s about ongoing analysis and action. Regular optimization ensures that you’re staying ahead of the competition and making the most out of your ad spend.

Track and act on these key metrics:

💡Optmyzr Tip: Set up account alerts to get notified instantly when key metrics such as ACoS, ROAS, and Conversion Value shift. This helps you react quickly to changes, avoid overspending, and seize new opportunities without monitoring your campaigns manually.

What to do & when

Take control of your Amazon Ads with Optmyzr.

Amazon Ads success largely depends on four things: listings that convert, keywords that work, campaigns built to scale, and constant optimization that protects your profit.

But managing all these components can quickly become complex and time-consuming.

That’s where Optmyzr makes a difference. Our tools simplify campaign management by uncovering high-impact keywords, organizing account structure for scalability, and automating routine optimizations, freeing you up to focus on strategy and growth.

Ready to take control of your Amazon advertising performance? Start your fully functional 14-day free trial today!

Amazon Ads Strategy 2025: How to Boost Visibility, Sales & Organic Rankings

Amazon is one of the largest product discovery and shopping platforms globally, with millions of high-intent shoppers searching every day.

For ecommerce sellers and advertisers, this offers real-time access to a vast, ready-to-buy audience. The key advantage? Most shoppers on Amazon are already deep in their purchase journey. Advertising here means reaching the right customers when they’re most likely to convert.

In this blog, we look at why Amazon advertising is a must-have strategy in 2025, how different ad types impact visibility, and the key tactics sellers can use to improve rankings, scale performance, and grow profitably on the world’s biggest ecommerce stage.

Why advertisers cannot ignore Amazon ads in 2025

Research shows that the average conversion rate for Amazon Ads is approximately 9.5 to 10%, significantly outperforming the average ecommerce conversion rate of around 1.33% on non-Amazon platforms.

This high conversion rate is attributed to Amazon’s ability to target users who are deep in the decision-making phase, increasing the likelihood of purchase and making it attractive to sellers.

Aside from this, Amazon’s algorithm is designed to promote:

So when you run ads, it directly influences both of these factors, which in turn influence your organic rankings.

Amazon’s unique edge lies in its first-party data. Advertisers get insights into shopping behavior from the data collected directly from customers who use Amazon and its services. You get to target specific customer groups, customize the data for advanced analytics, and even track off-Amazon conversions.

How to get seen: Winning visibility in competitive categories

The average customer probably sees dozens of listings for a single search. This is not surprising since it is common for thousands of brands to sell similar products on Amazon, sometimes even in the same price range.

To stand out, you would need a strong strategy that drives visibility for your products.

But before we dive into this, it is important to understand how different Amazon ad types impact visibility.

What are the different types of Amazon-sponsored ads, and how do they work

1. Sponsored Products

These are targeted ads that appear in search results and product detail pages. They are shown to shoppers actively searching for a product. Sponsored Products can be used to capture high-intent traffic and drive direct conversions.

For example, if a shopper searches “wireless earbuds,” your Sponsored Product ad can show up at the top of search results if you bid on that keyword.

Sponsored Products

2. Sponsored Brands

Sponsored Brands focus on brand awareness and allow businesses to customize ads by including their brand logo, a custom headline, and multiple products within product detail pages and shopping results.

Sponsored Brands

 

They are great for increasing awareness across your product line and driving traffic to your Amazon store.

3. Sponsored Display

This is a type of display advertising where you can target specific audiences based on their browsing behavior on Amazon. Ads will be displayed on Amazon as well as on third-party websites and apps for a wider reach. You can reach customers who viewed your products but didn’t purchase, or even shoppers browsing competitor products.

Sponsored Display

 

Sponsored Display ads can be used to stay top-of-mind and bring shoppers back to your offerings.

4. Sponsored TV

Sponsored TV is Amazon’s premium video ad format that lets brands appear on streaming content via Amazon Freevee, Fire TV, and other connected TV (CTV) placements. These are non-skippable, full-screen ads that reach audiences watching shows, movies, and live sports.

Sponsored TV

 

Sellers can use Sponsored TV for building brand awareness at the top of the funnel, especially for launches or seasonal campaigns.

Key levers to boost visibility and sales on Amazon

1. Understand Amazon’s A9.

The Amazon A9 algorithm is the system that determines which products should rank within search results. Since Amazon’s goal is to sell products, the algorithm will prioritize products with high-performing ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Number).

The A9 algorithm also prioritizes listings based on:

When you understand these ranking signals, you can optimize your listing and advertising strategy to trigger them. For example:

Optimizing your listings for conversions by working on product images, title, bullet points, description, A+ content, and price, and growing your review count.

💡Pro Tip: Use Optmyzr’s automated reports to identify keywords that are bringing in the most visibility and sales so you can prioritize them in your product listings. You can use pre-built strategies in Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to automate the report delivery so you don’t need to manually set up anything.

2. Study competitor pricing strategy.

Amazon shoppers often view multiple product listings to compare prices before making a purchase. If your pricing does not match your customers’ expectations or what your top competitors are offering, you risk losing clicks and sales.

To improve your pricing strategy:

3. Use Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display strategically.

Sponsored Product ads are displayed to shoppers who are actively searching for a product, making them great for conversions. But if you’re in a crowded market, it’s very important to build brand recognition and trust.

A stronger strategy may look like this:

This allows you to cover every stage of the buyer journey, improving visibility and conversions, especially in competitive categories.

💡Pro Tip: Optmyzr allows you to identify campaigns hitting budget limits— ones that could scale further if given more budget. You can then use Optimize Budgets to allocate more budgets to these high-potential campaigns.

 

Optimize budgets

4. Maintain stock availability.

One of the most important principles when selling on Amazon is that you don’t run out of stock. However, unexpected spikes in sales or port delays can cause stockouts even for the most well-planned brands.

During such instances, it’s important to pause your ads before your stock runs out.

While Amazon automatically stops ads once a product is out of stock, proactively pausing them helps preserve margin and gives your incoming inventory time to be received and restocked, avoiding wasted ad spend and poor customer experience.

You can set up a strategy on Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to automatically turn off ads when your inventory levels are running low.

Define the threshold for low inventory using your preferred metric, such as days of supply, and link a Google Sheet that lists ASINs below that threshold. Campaigns associated with those ASINs can be paused until inventory recovers.

Pause ads

 

You can also create a complementary rule to re-enable ads once inventory levels rise above the defined threshold, ensuring your campaigns resume without manual effort.

Watch: Supercharge Your Amazon PPC Campaigns with This Toolkit

Using ads can boost organic growth on Amazon

Amazon’s algorithm, like we discussed before, ranks products based on their sales velocity, conversion rates, and customer experience.

There’s a catch, though. New listings will struggle to rank because they lack reviews, sales, and CTR data.

Without visibility, it would be harder to get the momentum needed to improve rankings.

In scenarios like this, using ads can help you kickstart the performance of your listings and help them rank higher. Here’s how you can use them strategically:

How to amplify what’s working for you

Once you’ve identified what’s driving results, the next step is to double down on high-performing campaigns and product lines. Here’s how brands can scale smartly:

1. Use Amazon ads to amplify top-performing products.

2. Cross-sell and upsell with Sponsored Brand and Display ads.

3. Scale profitable campaigns.

4. Use Amazon Attribution to get the full funnel picture.

5. Use dynamic bidding and placement adjustments to scale.

Power up your Amazon PPC with data-driven automation.

Running Amazon ads in 2025 is a crucial growth lever for e-commerce businesses. Ads can boost organic rankings, improve visibility, and drive high-intent traffic that converts into sales.

However, running successful campaigns on Amazon means making sure you have the right data on what’s working and what’s not and then using those insights to optimize performance and scale your winning strategies.

With automation tools like Rule Engine, budget optimization, and custom reporting, Optmyzr makes it easy to identify high-performing campaigns, scale them intelligently, and eliminate wasted spend.

Sign up for Optmyzr’s free 14-day trial and explore how you can scale your Amazon PPC campaigns for success.

 

Why Layering Automation on Native Bidding Can Outperform Proprietary Systems

When it comes to PPC bidding, the conversation can sometimes sound more divided than it actually is. Native bidding, proprietary algorithms, and manual rules each have their place, and for many advertisers, the real strategy lies in how you blend them.

Most campaigns don’t succeed by choosing one method and sticking to it rigidly.

Instead, layering different levels of automation helps you adapt to changing goals, data availability, and platform dynamics.

Maybe your campaign isn’t ready for Smart Bidding yet. Maybe you’re migrating from a platform that offered more control.

Or perhaps even with automation in place, you’re still spending too much time micromanaging it.

This article breaks down when and why Smart Bidding makes sense, where it can still fall short, and how automation layering gives you a smarter way to guide rather than surrender to machine-driven strategies.

What is proprietary bidding?

Proprietary bidding refers to third-party bidding systems that use their own custom algorithms to manage bidding in online ad auctions.

Each proprietary algorithm has its distinct logic, mathematical models, and optimization strategies. These are the intellectual property of the developing entity and are often a key differentiator in the market.

These systems operate outside the ad platforms’ native Smart Bidding and typically require campaigns to run on manual strategies such as Manual CPC.

That’s because they need direct access to keyword-level or ad group-level bids to function, whereas Smart Bidding automatically adjusts bids in real time during the auction. The key distinction is that external systems make bidding decisions through API-based rules or scripts, rather than participating directly in the ad platform’s real-time bidding process.

Why do advertisers choose proprietary bidding?

Advertisers often turn to proprietary systems when they need more control, customization, or flexibility than native Smart Bidding allows.

This can include applying specialized industry knowledge, enforcing business-specific rules, optimizing for custom KPIs, or addressing a lack of trust that Smart Bidding will bid as efficiently for their specific needs.

However, proprietary systems face some limitations.

They don’t have access to many of the ad platforms’ real-time auction signals, which can impact their ability to optimize bids as precisely as Smart Bidding.

Some platforms have developed partial workarounds to layer proprietary logic on top of certain Smart Bidding strategies, but these approaches often come with constraints and are typically best suited for specific, well-defined scenarios.

How smart bidding stacks up

Let’s clear one thing up: Smart Bidding isn’t a “set it and forget it” strategy. It’s more like “set it, guide it, and check in regularly.”

At its core, Smart Bidding is auction-time bidding. That means ad platforms adjust your bid in real time, right as the auction happens, based on what they know about the person seeing your ad.

It taps into hundreds of signals, many of which you’ll never see in the Google Ads UI or even through the API.

That’s where Smart Bidding shines: it reacts instantly to signals humans (or rules) can’t process fast enough. In many cases, it outperforms even the most well-crafted manual strategies or proprietary bidding rules.

But not always.

Smart Bidding has important limitations you need to account for.

Limitations of Smart Bidding

To its credit, Smart Bidding has improved significantly over time, especially in handling multiple conversion types, new customer acquisition goals, and broader campaign types like Performance Max.

But it’s still not a perfect fit for every advertiser or every campaign.

Sometimes Smart Bidding needs a nudge. Sometimes it needs to be tested against your legacy approach before you can trust it. Sometimes it just needs better inputs and oversight.

That brings us to the automation dilemma: how to get the best of Smart Bidding without giving up your ability to guide and refine it.

Finding the middle ground: where strategy meets automation

Automation was supposed to save time, and in many ways, it does. However, for a lot of advertisers, it’s become a new type of time sink.

Instead of adjusting bids manually, you’re now fine-tuning automated settings, testing scripts, unpausing rules, and double-checking if ad platforms’ automation really aligns with your goals.

Our CEO, Frederick Vallaeys, calls this the binary trap in his book Unlevel the Playing Field: The Biggest Mindshift in PPC History. You either give the ad platforms full control and risk mediocrity, or you micromanage every lever and lose scalability.

Some try to break out of this trap by turning to proprietary bidding platforms. These solutions offer specialized capabilities, particularly for certain industries or campaign types where more customized approaches deliver value.

However, there are important trade-offs to consider when using systems that operate independently from ad platforms’ native automation.

Ad platforms analyze numerous auction-time signals for each search in real time. These signals include everything from device type, location, time of day, to historical conversion likelihood and beyond.

While proprietary algorithms bring their own strengths, they may face challenges accessing the full range of real-time data that Smart Bidding utilizes directly.

That’s why many successful advertisers aren’t choosing between external solutions and native automation: they’re layering their own logic on top of native automation, combining the strengths of both approaches.

That’s where automation layering changes the game.

Automation layering: the smarter middle path

Automation layering is the antidote to that binary thinking. It’s a strategy-first approach that embraces native automation like Smart Bidding but surrounds it with intelligent, customized layers of control.

It’s a way to avoid blindly trusting the ad platform while still taking advantage of what it does well.

Instead of handing over the keys or constantly fighting the system, you guide automation in the right direction. You define the strategy. You intervene when needed. You keep your campaigns from drifting into inefficiency.

Think of it this way: if Smart Bidding is the engine, automation layering is your steering system.

The beauty of this approach is its flexibility.

Your automation layering strategy can be tailored to your specific situation, whether you’re managing high-volume ecommerce campaigns requiring minimal oversight or specialized B2B campaigns where every lead requires careful qualification.

You can dial the degree of control up or down based on factors like conversion volume, business seasonality, and your competitive landscape.

And it’s not just theory, it’s increasingly the go-to strategy for savvy advertisers looking to scale without sacrificing performance.

Four primary ways to layer automation

Google Ads has a wealth of automation options, but these principles are adaptable across other platforms like Microsoft, Meta, or Amazon.

While we’ll focus on Google Ads here, you’ll find that many of the same concepts can be applied wherever you’re managing campaigns.

Google’s built-in tools

These are native to the platform, meaning they don’t require third-party integrations or external platforms, but they do require advertiser input for setup and configuration.

Examples:

Great for: Simple safeguards or when you want to stay entirely within Google Ads

Imported scripts

Google Ads scripts let you automate using JavaScript, either by writing your own or importing them from an external library. These scripts provide more flexibility and customization compared to the built-in scripts in the Google Ads UI.

Examples:

Great for: Mid-level customization, fast deployment, and tasks that need daily checks or actions

Third-party tools

Tools like Optmyzr, Skai, and Adalysis offer prebuilt automations, alerts, and optimization features that go beyond what the ad platforms provide.

Examples:

Great for: Advertisers and agencies who want powerful features without writing code

Custom solutions using the Google Ads API

For brands with dev resources or unique use cases, the Google Ads API enables full control.

Examples:

Great for: Advanced users or large-scale advertisers with unique business logic

What can automation layering help with?

Automation layering gives you the best of both worlds: the speed and scale of Smart Bidding, plus the strategic oversight and customization you need to hit your goals.

Let’s now go through some specific scenarios where automation layering makes a dramatic difference, along with the Optmyzr tools that make these strategies accessible. 👇

Catching performance fluctuations early

Automation layering is a powerful way to stay on top of performance changes and catch fluctuations before they turn into bigger issues.

With the right automation in place, you can get alerts the moment something goes off track.

Signal to watch:

How to layer in control:

Set up automated alerts for core metrics across campaigns.

Native Google Ads tools like custom rules can flag these changes, or third-party solutions like Optmyzr’s Anomaly Alerts can detect and notify you automatically.

You don’t need to manually set them up as they are automatically triggered by the system.

📌Example: A sudden 40% drop in impressions on a top campaign could signal a budget cap, a bidding issue, or ad disapproval. Catching it early can help prevent a bigger revenue dip.

Adjusting targets without disrupting campaigns

When managing smart bidding strategies like Maximum Conversions or Maximum Conversion Value, you can’t manually adjust bids for individual keywords or product groups.

Instead, you optimize your campaigns by tweaking your Target CPA or Target ROAS.

However, it’s crucial to adjust these targets carefully. If you make drastic changes, you risk throwing your campaigns into learning mode, which can disrupt performance and cause delays as the system re-adjusts.

Signals to watch:

How to layer in control:

When adjusting Target CPA or Target ROAS, make small, incremental changes (5–10%) to avoid sending campaigns back into learning mode.

That’s where tools like Optimize Target CPA and Optimize Target ROAS come in. These tools let you adjust targets at the ad group level without upsetting the balance.

 

Here’s how it works: If an ad group is converting well but losing impression share due to a low ad rank, the tools will help increase the target CPA or lower the target ROAS.

 

This allows Google Ads to bid higher, improving ad rank and capturing more impressions.

On the flip side, if an ad group is already performing well, exceeding the target CPA or ROAS, you can gradually reduce the target CPA or increase the target ROAS.

This helps avoid over-allocating the budget and maximizes ROI.

Avoid budget surprises with smart pacing alerts

Budgets don’t usually fail all at once; they quietly drift off course. Maybe you overspend in the first half of the month and scramble to rein things in later.

Or you underspend and leave conversions on the table. Either way, performance takes a hit.

Signals to watch:

How to layer in control:

Set up automated pacing alerts that track your spending against monthly targets and expected patterns. Configure these alerts to notify relevant team members when spending deviates from the expected pace.

Set up budget pacing alerts using Optmyzr’s custom alerts

 

It’s a simple way to keep your campaigns consistent and avoid those end-of-month surprises.

Pausing underperforming keywords

There’s a hidden cost to keeping underperforming keywords active for too long.

They don’t just waste money but dilute your campaign performance, slow down learning, and make it harder for automated bidding to focus on what actually works.

Yet, many accounts still let these keywords run unchecked because manually reviewing them takes time.

This is where automation layering can make a real difference.

Signals to watch:

How to layer in control:

Implement systematic reviews that identify and pause non-converting keywords once they’ve received statistically significant traffic. Use tools like Optmyzr’s Pause Non-Converting Keywords that automatically identify keywords that have received enough traffic but haven’t converted during a selected date range.

Make hyper-specific DSAs doable at scale

Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) are powerful for capturing long-tail traffic, but they can quickly become a mess if everything’s lumped into one ad group. Microsoft Ads supports standalone DSAs, offering advertisers a valuable tool for campaign structure.

That’s why advanced advertisers go granular and create one ad group per product detail page (PDP) to align ad copy, keywords, and landing pages for better relevance and higher conversion rates.

Signals to watch:

The problem? Doing that manually for thousands of products isn’t practical.

How to layer in control:

With Microsoft Ads, you can still use feed-based automation to build and maintain granular DSA campaigns that mirror your product structure. Tools like Optmyzr’s Campaign Automator can help you build these granular campaigns in under an hour.

It pulls directly from your product feed to create ad groups and ads that reflect the actual product name, price, and promo, so you stay relevant and efficient.

Trigger campaigns based on real-world signals like weather

For seasonal businesses, showing ads at precisely the right moment can dramatically improve performance. Yet standard automation alone can’t respond accurately to external factors like weather conditions.

Signals to watch:

How to layer in control:

Use weather APIs and geo-targeting rules to activate campaigns only when conditions are ideal for purchases. Combine these environmental triggers with Google’s native automation for maximum impact.

For example, Matthieu Van-Tran, a Google Ads consultant who has managed over $350M in ad spend, shared an interesting approach.

For a premium swimwear brand, he implemented weather-triggered automation that activates Performance Max campaigns only when temperatures reach 27°C or higher in top-converting cities. The system pushes fresh seasonal creative across Google’s network precisely when shoppers are most likely to buy, resulting in more sales.

Matthieu shares plenty of real-world advice on how he uses automation layering for his clients. If you want to learn more, check out the session here.

Excluding irrelevant YouTube placements

Excluding irrelevant YouTube placements is crucial to ensure that your ads only appear in front of the right audience.

Signals to watch:

For example, let’s say you’re launching a premium business software campaign, and you’ve allocated a significant portion of your advertising budget to YouTube.

But instead of reaching professionals, your analytics reveal that your ads are appearing on gaming channels, kids’ content, and other irrelevant placements, with minimal conversions to show for it.

How to layer in control:

Create automated rules that analyze placement performance and content categorization to exclude underperforming placements.

Use Google Ads exclusion lists or tools like Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to systematically refine placement quality.

Here’s a simple yet effective rule used by Amy McClain-Ponder, Group Director of Paid Search at Beeby Clark+Meyler (BCM), to deal with irrelevant YouTube placements:

 

The Rule Logic:

The Action:

 

💡Optmyzr Tip: Rule Engine also has pre-built strategies to exclude Gaming and Kids placements for PMax campaigns to prevent wasted spend. Check out our full list of pre-built strategies here.

When Smart Bidding isn’t the right fit (yet)

Not every campaign is ready for Smart Bidding out of the gate. Maybe it’s too new. Maybe there’s not enough conversion data.

Or maybe you just want a little more control while things ramp up.

That’s where rule-based bidding can still play a big role, especially if you’re coming from a platform like Marin or have a performance-focused workflow you’re trying to replicate.

When you might need rule-based bidding

Before diving into the specific rule-based moves, let’s set the stage:

If any of these sound familiar, rule-based bidding could be the right choice for now, with the flexibility to transition to Smart Bidding as you gather more data and insights.

Smart rule-based moves you can set up in Optmyzr

Now, let’s look at a few powerful rule-based automation strategies that you can create using Optmyzr’s Rule Engine. These rules are pre-built but fully customizable to suit your specific needs.

You can set your own thresholds, so you have the flexibility to refine them as you see fit.

Here’s what you can do:

Modify device bid adjustments at the ad group level

Some devices perform better than others in converting your ad clicks to actual sales or leads.

This rule helps you automatically adjust your bids to push more budget toward the devices that are performing well and away from those that aren’t.

How It Works:

Reduce bids for expensive keywords

Even with all your keyword research and testing, some keywords just end up being budget drains. This rule automatically identifies and reins in keywords that are costing too much compared to their performance.

How It Works:

 

And if you’re seeing similar performance issues at the product group or ad group level, you’re covered there too.

Optmyzr has prebuilt rules for adjusting bids on underperforming product groups and ad groups based on the same logic, whether it’s a high CPA, too many clicks without conversions, or just general inefficiency.

Set audience bid adjustments to target cost/conversion

The cost per conversion can sometimes fluctuate wildly across campaigns. This clever pair of rules helps you automatically keep your bids in check without constant checking.

The more expensive your conversions, the more aggressive the correction.

How It Works:

 

The adjustments only trigger when you have meaningful data (minimum 100 impressions, 10 clicks, and 3 conversions).

And that’s not all! You can create additional tailored rules for gender, age range, household income, and device targeting to refine your approach even further.

 

Creating these demographic-specific rules helps by allowing you to automatically shift budget toward high-performing segments and away from underperforming ones.

Optimize bids to target ROAS

This clever sequence of rules automatically adjusts your ad group bids to hit your target return on ad spend (ROAS) based on the freshest reliable data available.

What makes this approach so brilliant is the progressive lookback windows.

The system first checks your most recent 7-day performance, then expands to 14 days, 30 days, 60 days, and finally 90 days until it finds enough conversion data to make confident decisions.

How It Works:

 

The rules only trigger when you have at least one conversion in the lookback period and when your campaign uses CPC bidding. This prevents crazy bid adjustments when there’s insufficient data or when you’re using different bidding strategies.

There’s also a similar rule for keywords that works on the same principle.

It lets you set keyword-level bids to help you meet your target return on ad spend, using the same progressive lookback windows.

Optimize bids to Target CPA

This rule automatically sets your ad group bids to achieve your target cost per acquisition (CPA) goals based on reliable performance data.

How It Works:

And just like with target ROAS, there’s another strategy that lets you set keyword bids to optimize for a target CPA.

Reduce bid gaps in Shopping campaigns

In Shopping campaigns, bid gaps (where your bids are higher than what you’re actually paying) can lead to unexpected cost spikes.

This rule helps close those gaps to keep your bids in line with actual costs, which prevents overspending.

How It Works:

Striking the Balance: layering automation with strategic insight

When it comes to PPC, automation is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s essential. But it’s not just about letting the system run on autopilot.

Relying solely on Smart Bidding or any one-size-fits-all automation can leave room for inefficiencies and missed opportunities. The real power comes from combining the ad platforms’ automation with your own strategic insights.

Think of it as finding the balance: automation handles the repetitive tasks while you steer the campaign with your expertise. And with the right tools, you can apply this smarter, more flexible approach no matter the size of your account.

Want to see how? Sign up for a full functionality 14-day free trial

How to Use Portfolio Bidding and Campaign Groups (And Actually Track Their Impact)

Managing bids across multiple campaigns shouldn’t feel like a daily firefight. But it often does. One campaign burns through the budget overnight. Another gets zero conversions.

Smart bidding helps, but only to a point. Especially when campaigns are isolated and goals aren’t aligned.

That’s where portfolio bidding and campaign groups come in. They help you group campaigns by goal, share data more effectively, and make smarter decisions with less micromanagement.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

Let’s break it down.

What is Portfolio Bidding?

Portfolio bidding is a feature available in both Google Ads and Microsoft Ads that lets you group multiple campaigns, ad groups, or keywords under a single automated bidding strategy, like Target ROAS (tROAS) or Target CPA (tCPA). The platform then uses real-time signals to adjust bids across the portfolio to hit your shared goal.

It’s especially useful for advertisers who want to let Smart Bidding distribute budget and optimize bids across campaigns based on performance potential, instead of managing each one in isolation.

Even if you’re not grouping multiple campaigns, portfolio bidding is how you unlock features like bid caps and bid floors. So it’s common to set up a portfolio strategy for a single campaign just to gain that control.

Here’s what makes it powerful:

Example: A B2B advertiser on a tCPA strategy sees CPC spikes up to $25 on low-demand days. By switching to portfolio bidding and adding a Max CPC of $9, they put a “guardrail” in place to prevent budget blowouts, while still giving Smart Bidding enough flexibility to optimize toward their $30 CPA goal.

Is Portfolio Bidding right for any advertiser?

No. Portfolio bidding isn’t for everyone. It’s a smart way to unify and stabilize your bidding if you’re running multiple campaigns with the same conversion or revenue goals, or your campaigns suffer from low data volume.

When to use Portfolio Bidding?

When..

Example: You’re managing five ecommerce campaigns all targeting a ROAS of 700. With portfolio bidding, the platform treats them as a single unit, reallocates budget as needed, and Optmyzr helps you enforce smart guardrails using bid min/max automation.

When not to use Portfolio Bidding?

When..

What are Campaign Groups?

Campaign Groups in Google Ads are a way to organize and evaluate multiple campaigns that share a common business objective. You can think of them as a container that holds campaigns together so you can track their combined performance using shared KPIs like conversions, CPA, or ROAS.

They don’t influence bidding, but they provide a higher-level performance lens and let you define specific targets across all included campaigns.

Example: An ecommerce brand runs a mix of Search and Shopping campaigns to promote its seasonal product lines. They create a campaign group for all campaigns focused on summer inventory and set a performance target of 500 conversions with a target ROAS of 4.5. Within a week, they monitor the group’s performance and spot one campaign with a much lower ROAS. They quickly adjust product targeting and bids, helping the group trend back toward the overall goal.

When to use Campaign Groups?

When…

Example: You’re running 6 campaigns for a Mother's Day promo across YouTube, Search, and Display. Use a campaign group to track conversions and CPA from all of them combined.

When not to use Campaign Groups?

When…

How to measure success at the portfolio and group level?

This is where most people get stuck. You’ve turned on tCPA across five campaigns, grouped them under a portfolio… now what?

Here’s how to make sure you’re tracking the right outcomes:

💡 Pro tip: Use Optmyzr to create deviation-based alerts. You can set alerts to flag campaigns that are underperforming the portfolio average by, say, 50%, so you can course-correct quickly.

 

For campaign groups, Google lets you set performance targets that track your progress over time. You can define conversion goals, CPA ceilings, ROAS floors, and even track by time periods (monthly, quarterly, or custom windows).

Here are some common mistakes to avoid

1. Setting a Max CPC cap that’s too tight

In portfolio bidding, especially with tCPA, setting a Max CPC can be a smart guardrail. But if you set it too low, you’ll end up constraining smart bidding altogether.

Tip: Don’t treat Max CPC like a strict ceiling. Instead, use it as a flexible limit that allows for variation. Setting it at 50–100% above your average CPC gives enough breathing room for algorithms to work effectively without overspending.

2. Combining campaigns with unrelated objectives

When using portfolio bidding or campaign groups, mixing campaigns with different goals (like one focused on visibility and another on sales) can confuse Google’s algorithms and skew your results.

For example, if you group a brand awareness campaign with a performance-driven campaign in a portfolio, you’ll get inconsistent signals that make it harder for Google to optimize toward any one outcome​​.

Tip: Keep your groups clean. Align on goal type, like all campaigns driving purchases, or all campaigns aiming for a specific ROAS.

3. Optimizing only at the campaign level

One of the biggest missed opportunities with portfolio bidding is continuing to analyze performance campaign by campaign. The whole point of a portfolio strategy is that Google uses cross-campaign insights to optimize toward the shared goal.

If you don’t look at aggregate outcomes, you might mistakenly pause a campaign that’s strategically helping the portfolio overall.

Tip: Regularly review the overall performance of the portfolio (conversion volume, CPA, ROAS, and how budget is distributed). Use tools like Optmyzr’s deviation-based alerts to flag outliers so you can spot issues without losing sight of the bigger picture​.

4. Failing to revisit performance targets regularly

Campaign group targets, like conversion or CPA goals, can drift out of alignment if market conditions change. If you’re not updating these benchmarks quarterly or after key campaigns, you could be aiming at the wrong outcome.

Tip: Use historical benchmarking in tools like Optmyzr to compare current performance against past time periods. This gives context to what’s working and what needs adjusting.

How Optmyzr helps you, the way Google Ads doesn’t

While Google Ads gives you the basics, Optmyzr adds advanced control, visibility, and automation to make portfolio bidding and campaign groups easier to manage and scale.

Here’s what you get:

  1. Performance alerts for campaign portfolios based on deviation ratios
  2. Cross-campaign monitoring via dashboards and KPIs
  3. Quick identification of outliers to help make informed decisions on adjusting budgets, targeting, or tactics accordingly
  4. Automated rules and scripts to adjust bids when metrics fall outside target ranges

1. Performance alerts based on deviation ratios

Why it matters:

Optmyzr’s alerts help you catch campaigns that aren’t pulling their weight, like one that’s spending three times more than others but failing to deliver results.

 

📈 Optmyzr’s strategic alerts trim Morefire’s workload by 15% per account

Use it for:

Learn more: How to set up your alerts to monitor KPIs

2. Cross-campaign dashboards and KPI tracking

Why it matters:

View performance across all your campaigns in one place using the All Accounts Dashboard. It makes it easier to compare trends and track progress without jumping between multiple accounts or spreadsheets.

 

Use it for:

Learn more: How the All Accounts Dashboard gives you a bird’s-eye view

3. Quickly identify outliers to make informed decisions

It’s not just about tracking totals. Benchmarking helps you quickly spot which campaigns in a group are outperforming or falling behind so you can adjust strategy before small issues become big problems.

 

“Our entire team loved the PPC Investigator tool for its capacity to deliver clear insights into the root causes of changes in campaign performance.”

- Mike Rhodes, WebSavvy

📈 Optmyzr empowers WebSavvy to prioritize client profitability over Google’s interests

Use it for:

Learn more: How PPC Investigator helps you clearly identify performance changes

4. Automated bid rules and scripts

Why it matters:

You can adjust bids automatically based on how your campaigns are performing, so you don’t have to make changes manually every day. The Rule Engine is one of Optmyzr’s most powerful tools that allows for complex and customized bid management strategies.

{{< youtube id=“DKbQIYLEy98” title=“Rule Engine for PPC Automation” >}}

 

“At Anicca Digital, we use Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to manage bids to a target ROAS.”

- Holly Kelly

📈Anicca boosts ROAS with rule-based bids for an energy broker using the Rule Engine

Use it for:

Learn more: 6 Rule Engine Strategies: How Optmyzr Customers Bypass Google Ads Limitations

What does the data say about bidding strategies?

Our 2024 bidding strategies data study offers some guidance on choosing a bid strategy:

So instead of asking “which is best?”, ask:
“Do I’ve enough conversions?" “Are my goals realistic?” “Am I giving Google enough to work with?”

That’s when automation (and portfolio bidding) really starts to pay off.

It’s time to get strategic with automation.

Using portfolio bidding and campaign groups isn’t about giving up control. It’s about replacing micromanagement with strategy. These tools help you streamline bidding, share learnings, and prioritize what matters most—business goals.

With the right setup and the right tools (hey, Optmyzr), you can:

So if you’ve been hesitant to give portfolio strategies a shot, or if you’ve used them but haven’t measured success properly, now’s the time to rethink your approach.

And if you want the best of both worlds — powerful optimization and clear reporting — use Optmyzr to fill the gaps with alerts, rules, and portfolio-level insight you won’t get natively in Google Ads.

Sign up for a 14-day free Optmyzr trial today.

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Let your bidding strategy scale with your ambition.

 

How to Build Inventory-Based PPC Campaign Templates That Scale

Inventory moves fast. If your campaigns can’t keep up, you’re either missing revenue or wasting spend.

In today’s market, PPC teams are facing tighter budgets, shifting consumer demand, and mounting pressure from leadership to justify every dollar spent. With unpredictable costs and cautious spending across industries, there’s little room for error.

If you’re managing products or listings that change often, or juggling multiple accounts, manual campaign creation quickly becomes unsustainable. Rebuilding campaigns every time your inventory updates is a time sink. And if you’re transitioning from an older tech stack that no longer meets your needs, you’re likely searching for something more reliable and scalable.

You need a smarter, more adaptive system: one that responds in real time to changes in your inventory so your ads stay relevant, accurate, and efficient. This guide shows you how to do just that by creating inventory-based campaigns that update themselves using dynamic templates and your live product feed.

You’ll learn how to personalize messaging at scale, stay in control, and stop rebuilding from scratch. Whether you’re promoting cars, clothing, properties, travel packages, or job listings, this approach helps you save time, boost performance, and scale your campaigns without the chaos.

What are inventory-based campaigns?

Inventory-based campaigns are created using a live feed of your products or services. Instead of manually updating every ad, you build a reusable template that pulls in real-time attributes like price, availability, or model. As the feed changes, your ads update automatically.

If your stock changes daily or you manage many campaigns across accounts, manual updates aren’t practical. Automated campaigns built from templates keep your ads accurate, timely, and efficient—perfect for industries like ecommerce, travel, real estate, jobs, and automotive.

Glossary: Key terms in this guide

Why templates are the smartest way to scale

Let’s say you manage thousands of SKUs, like sports gear or seasonal products. Manually creating campaigns for every category or product line would take days. One catch-all campaign might be faster, but it gives you zero control.

Templates solve this. You set one campaign structure, define how to pull in key data from your feed, and let automation do the rest. You get targeted ads, organized ad groups, and relevant keywords—without starting from scratch.

You’re not locked into generic messaging. You can create dynamic rules like: “Prices starting from $<min(Price)>” or insert values like {Brand}, {Category}, or {Discount}. That’s flexible, scalable, and personalized automation.

Building campaigns that adapt automatically

Templates are only useful if they stay in sync with your inventory. That’s where Optmyzr’s Campaign Automator comes in:

Example: Add a new product line to your feed? A new campaign is auto-created with the right structure, ads, and targeting.

Inventory filters: Show what’s relevant

You don’t need to advertise everything. With Inventory Filters, you can:

Inventory Filters

 

This keeps your budget focused on what really matters.

Dynamic ads, assets, and keywords

Templates shine when paired with dynamic content—this means using placeholders in your campaign setup that pull live data from your feed. For example:

Dynamic Insertion

 

Your campaigns stay relevant, even as inventory and pricing evolve.

Automating without losing control

Automation doesn’t mean giving up control. Campaign Automator includes helpful features that let you stay on top of everything:

Use cases by industry: What this looks like in the real world

Ecommerce

Automotive

What our customers achieved:

These aren’t just improvements—they’re proof that smarter automation leads to bigger wins.

Real estate

Travel

Job listings

DSA campaigns

Matthieu Tran-Van saved 96% of the time he used to spend on campaign creation using Campaign Automator to launch DSA campaigns. Structured feed data powered fully dynamic ads—without losing quality.

Why Campaign Automator makes this easier

Campaign Automator is purpose-built to create, manage, and scale inventory-based campaigns without compromise:

Campaign Automator is just one part of Optmyzr’s all-in-one PPC platform. That means you don’t need separate tools to build, monitor, or improve your campaigns. You can create search, display, or DSA campaigns from your inventory, track performance trends using built-in reports, and use tools like Rule Engine to analyze what’s working and update your templates to make everything better.

It’s a full loop of creation, optimization, and scale—all in one place, without the chaos. And because everything is trackable and adjustable, you’re not only saving time. You’re also making smarter, more defensible decisions. So when your CFO asks how your ad budget is driving growth, you’ve got clear, data-backed answers.

Next steps: Build it once, evolve it always

Templates aren’t a hack, they’re a strategy. One that supports Optmyzr’s core philosophy: automation layering with PPC insurance. You scale fast, but stay safe.

You’re not stuck with rigid black-box automation or bloated workflows. You get:

No more manual rebuilds every time your catalog changes. Just evolving campaigns that do the heavy lifting without losing relevance, performance, or visibility.

Assets Created

Try Optmyzr’s Campaign Automator now

Launch your first dynamic inventory-based campaign in under 30 minutes—no repetitive work, no stress. Campaign Automator turns your product feed into high-performing, real-time ads with zero manual rebuilds.

Start your 14-day free trial and use our plug-and-play templates, designed for common industry verticals, so you can pick what fits and customize it quickly to get started.

Already a customer? Campaign Automator is free for one Google or Microsoft Ads account, and you can easily upgrade to manage more.

Need help? Check out our detailed user guide, or contact support@optmyzr.com to get a guided demo for easier setup.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is an inventory-based campaign, and how does it work?

A campaign built using your live product or service feed. Templates dynamically update ads based on real-time attributes like price, availability, or product type.

2. How do I create scalable PPC campaigns from a product feed?

Use a tool like Optmyzr’s Campaign Automator to turn your feed into dynamic campaigns using templates, filters, and real-time syncing.

3. What is Campaign Automator, and how much does it cost?

It’s Optmyzr’s tool for automating the creation and update of inventory-based search, display, and DSA campaigns. It’s free for one Google or Microsoft Ads account for existing Optmyzr customers. For non-customers, pricing starts at $89/month.

4. Is Campaign Automator a good fit for managing large or complex inventories?

Yes. It’s built for advertisers managing frequent inventory updates across ecommerce, automotive, real estate, travel, and job verticals.

 

Simplify PPC Analysis: Proven Frameworks, Checklist & Trends in One Guide

Analysis plays a critical role in modern PPC advertising. Right now, where there’s less insight into your data and more control being taken away by the ad platforms, it becomes even more important to understand what’s happening in your account.

However, most advertisers struggle with it. Some of them don’t know where to start. Some don’t have the time or the expertise to do it themselves. And some make costly mistakes while performing an analysis.

In this article, you’ll learn:

What is PPC analysis?

PPC analysis is the process of examining and evaluating the performance of your PPC campaigns. It involves tracking and measuring key metrics such as clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), quality score, conversion rate, cost per click (CPC), etc. By analyzing this data, you can identify areas where your campaigns are performing well and where they need to improve.

What is the purpose of PPC analysis?

The purpose of PPC analysis is to:

And how does it help? It helps you prove ROI, track progress and trends, and brief leadership or clients on the performance of your campaigns.

A framework for analyzing PPC reports

The way you present your PPC analysis report can impact the rest of your project.

If your clients don’t understand your analysis, it can lead to more questions for everyone involved, even if you’re doing a great job.

For starters, you’ll need to know where to look and what to look for.

Where to look?

The ad platforms already offer a bunch of reporting tools. But if you need better insight into what’s going on with your account performance, you can use a third-party tool.

What to look for?

During the analysis, look at the key metrics that are relevant to your goals. These metrics will vary depending on your specific business, but some of the most common metrics include:

3 tips to cleanly interpret PPC reporting data

1. Segment your data: Segmenting helps you identify specific areas of your campaigns that need more detailed evaluation. For example, you can segment your data by campaign, ad group, or keyword and find where things need to improve.

2. Identify causes for performance swings.

This is where you can flex your PPC expertise. If an important metric sees a rise or a fall, it’s time to find the reason that caused that shift.

Why the Google Ads editor isn’t ideal for PPC analysis

If you run Google Ads, chances are that you use the Google Ads editor to evaluate those shifts. Although it is a decent tool to help you with simpler analysis tasks, it’s not the ideal tool for deeper analysis like pinpointing the exact problems with your campaign performance.

A manual investigation of why performance in an account changed involves several steps in the Google Ads interface.

Here’s a video where Juan, our Senior Customer Success Manager explains it in detail.

 

The data we’ve shown in the video is only from a demo account that only has a few ad groups. Imagine analyzing campaign performance in a bigger account with dozens of campaigns, hundreds of ad groups, and hundreds of keywords. It can be as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack.

Optmyzr’s Root Cause Analysis tool can help you evaluate those performance shifts with ease.

Optmyzr’s Root Cause Analysis

 

3. Compare your performance to benchmarks: How your campaigns compare relative to your competitors or your industry is an area you can’t overlook. If you need help with this, look no further than Optmyzr’s PPC Vertical Benchmarks dashboard which lets you compare the performance of your account against other accounts in the same industry vertical or across verticals.

 

Tactics to improve your PPC campaigns + a post-analysis checklist

We reached out to a few experts and daily practitioners to learn what they do to improve their campaigns. Here’s what they suggest.

Amy McClain-Ponder, Group Director - Performance Media at Beeby Clark+Meyler said you should regularly check in on your Search Partners’ performance and exclude low-performing search queries. And speaking about if you should go broad, she said exact match worked wonders for them over broad and phrase match.

Related: Is It Time to Re-Evaluate Your Broad Match, Exact Match, and Smart Bidding Strategies? An Optmyzr Google Ads study

Here’s more detail into her tactics.

Benjamin Sulka, Paid Search & Acquisition Coordinator at Cleveland Clinic suggests tweaking your campaigns regularly.

“On a day-to-day basis, make sure all your efforts are approved. Any disapprovals should be addressed and fixed immediately. Analyze the search term report to ensure that your keywords match with relevant searches and the correct search intent.

Exclude all that are irrelevant and add them to your negative keyword list. And checking notifications for disapprovals and other issues allows you to make fixes as soon as they come up.” - Benjamin Sulka, Cleveland Clinic

He also listed several other tips below:

After consolidating all these tips, here’s a daily, weekly, and monthly PPC analysis checklist for you.

Daily PPC analysis checklist

  1. Check Ad Spend: Review your daily budget to ensure you’re not overspending. Monitor for any unexpected spikes in spending.
  2. Monitor CTR: Monitor your CTR daily to catch any sudden drops or spikes in click performance.
  3. Keep an eye on search query performance: Keep an eye on the performance of your high-value or high-cost keywords to prevent overspending or identify opportunities for bid adjustments.
  4. Check Ad Position: Check your ad positions to ensure they remain within your target range. Adjust bids as needed to maintain position.
  5. Review Search Term Report: Regularly review search term reports to identify irrelevant or costly search terms. Add negative keywords to filter out unwanted traffic.
  6. Review Negative Keywords: Review your negative keyword list and add any new negative keywords based on the week’s search term report.
  7. Review Ad Extensions: Check the performance of ad extensions, such as site links and callout extensions. Optimize or pause underperforming extensions.
  8. Adjust bids: Make real-time bid adjustments based on performance data. Increase bids for top-performing keywords or decrease bids for low-performing ones.

Weekly PPC analysis checklist

  1. Conduct a performance review: Assess the overall weekly performance of your campaigns. Look for trends and changes that need further investigation.
  2. Review A/B tests: Review the results of any A/B tests you’re running, such as ad copy, landing pages, or bidding strategies. Make adjustments based on your findings.
  3. Check Quality Score: Check Quality Scores for your keywords. Identify keywords with low scores and work on improving ad relevance and landing page quality.
  4. Review ad copy performance: Evaluate the performance of different ad copies and test new variations based on the data.
  5. Monitor competitors: Monitor competitors’ ads and strategies to stay competitive. Identify new competitors or changes in ad copy.
  6. Monitor budget allocation: Ensure your budget is being allocated efficiently. Shift the budget to campaigns or ad groups that are performing well.
  7. Review geographical performance: Analyze how different regions are performing and adjust geo-targeting settings as needed.
  8. Review device performance: Check how your ads perform on various devices (desktop, mobile, tablet). Adjust bids and ad copy for each device based on performance.

Monthly PPC analysis checklist

  1. Conduct a comprehensive monthly performance review: Conduct a comprehensive review of your monthly performance comparing it to previous months and assessing progress toward your goals.
  2. Conduct ROI Analysis: Calculate the ROI for your campaigns to ensure they align with your business objectives.
  3. Analyze your conversion funnel: Review the customer conversion journey and identify potential areas for improvement in the funnel.
  4. Check your audience segments: Analyze audience data and create or refine custom audience segments for more targeted advertising.
  5. Review all landing pages: Evaluate the performance of your landing pages. Make any necessary improvements to enhance user experience and conversions.
  6. Plan budgets: Plan your budget allocation for the upcoming month based on the performance data and goals.
  7. Adjust ad schedules: Review ad scheduling performance. Adjust the timing of your ads as needed based on monthly insights.
  8. Review ad messaging: Refresh your ad copy and messaging to keep it relevant and engaging.

Easily identify performance changes in your PPC account using the PPC Investigator and PPC Policy & Audits

PPC Investigator

The PPC Investigator is an insights tool that’ll help you find exactly which element in a given account caused a metric to increase or decrease, and whether it’s a keyword, placement, or an entire network that caused the changes.

Optmyzr’s PPC Investigator

 

It has two components:

  1. Cause Chart
  2. Root Cause Analysis

 

Cause Chart

The Cause Chart is based on the fact that the performance of every metric depends on the performance of other underlying metrics. It uses the relationships between different metrics to show potential causality.

Root Cause Analysis

After identifying which metric needs to be worked on, the Root Cause Analysis goes a step further and highlights the exact Campaigns/Ad groups/Product partition/Keywords, etc. that were responsible for the change in an account.

It shows top movers who are significant contributors to the change in the account when compared across the two date ranges. You can view the top three positive and negative movers for a particular account.

Optmyzr’s PPC Investigator testimonial

 

Here’s an example of how you can use the PPC Investigator. You can ask, “Why did my clicks change during this quarter as compared to the previous quarter?”

How to use Optmyzr’s Root Cause Analysis

 

Or, if you want to be specific about the date range, you can construct a question like, “Why did my Cost per conversion change during Aug. 10, 2023, and Aug. 15, 2023, compared to July 5, 2023, to July 10, 2023?”

And then wait for the tool to give you a visual answer.

You can see in the image above how the tool starts with one question or one ‘Why’ from you and then charts out the reasons by asking multiple whys in the process automatically.

Or if you’d like to know how your traffic from mobile devices has changed over say the last 30 days, this tool can figure out the root causes for the improved performance on mobile devices. This insight will help you plan future strategies for different devices.

Now, you need not necessarily use this tool only to identify problems in performance. You’d also want to know why something was working for you. For example, in the same image above, the display impression share has actually increased, which helps you understand what you are doing right.

The PPC Investigator is a favorite among our users and we don’t doubt why. If you’re serious about learning how your campaign performance has changed, you should give this tool a try.

PPC Policy and Audits

The PPC Policy and Audits is a tool to audit your accounts, specifying the parameters to be considered, and receiving an overall average performance grade to see how everything is doing.

PPC Policy and Audits

 

 

The tool lets you find if you have the right number of ads and keywords based on the latest best practices and suggests fixes if there are any issues. It can also detect missing RSAs, duplicate keywords, conflicting keywords, and more.

A way toward effective PPC performance analysis

Analyzing your campaigns is an ongoing process. It requires continuous evaluation, strategic thinking, and a commitment to adapt and refine campaigns based on changing market conditions and business goals.

However, many advertisers still neglect it, either because they don’t have the time or expertise to do it themselves, or they haven’t found an effective tool that can make it easier for them, or because they don’t see the value in it.

We would advise this: Start small. Focus on the most important metrics that matter to your bottom line. Don’t try to analyze every aspect of your campaigns at once.

And if you need help, make use of the Optmyzr tools mentioned in this article.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Amazon PPC Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide to Cut Wasted Ad Spend

Wasted ad spend doesn’t just hurt campaign performance, it slows growth.

When ACoS rises and sales stall, scaling becomes harder. Even experienced Amazon advertisers often struggle to trace where the budget is leaking or which campaigns are pulling their weight.

That’s why audits matter. They’re not just a fix — they’re PPC insurance. Regular audits safeguard your budget, protect performance, and catch issues early. It’s part of Optmyzr’s approach to campaign management: keeping your account resilient with layered automation that flags inefficiencies before they snowball.

This guide walks through what to check, how often, and why, so you can reduce waste, align with your TACoS goals, and keep your Amazon ad strategy as efficient as it is scalable.

What wasted spend looks like in Amazon PPC

If your ACoS is climbing and your ROAS is dipping, something’s off. Here’s how wasted spend typically shows up:

Often, the problem isn’t what you’re doing — it’s what you’re missing, like overlooked negative keywords or campaign structures that don’t match buyer intent because of poor audience targeting.

Let’s fix that.

Amazon PPC audit framework: a step-by-step guide

Step 1: Monitor key performance metrics regularly

Start by tracking the basics:

It’s not just about watching them — it’s about understanding how these metrics are trending and what they mean for your profitability.

💡 Pro tip: Set up automated alerts to catch changes early. You don’t want to discover a runaway ACoS after you’ve already blown through half your monthly budget.

If you’re looking for a platform to help you with this, Optmyzr’s Alerts Management System is a great place to start. You set the threshold, and the system flags metrics that are off-track.

Triggered Cost Alert

Step 2: Identify expensive keywords and search queries - and add negatives

Few things bleed budget more quietly than irrelevant traffic.

Pull your Amazon Search Term Report regularly. Flag:

Regularly adding negatives based on this data prevents repeat waste — this is where implementing a strong harvesting strategy and search term isolation comes in.

Want to speed this up? Optmyzr generates automated reports for:

The best part? These are pre-built strategies available in Optmyzr’s Rule Engine. You can customize them to match your goals and automate the report delivery with just a few clicks — no manual setup required.

Step 3: Audit non-converting products

Some ASINs just don’t perform well in ads — and that’s okay. But they shouldn’t drain your budget.

Review ASIN performance to identify products that:

Note: This isn’t always a “pause it” situation. Sometimes, it’s a signal to:

You can use Amazon’s Advertised Product reports for this, or audit faster with Optmyzr’s Audit tool, which flags inefficiencies like poor ASIN performance, low-converting placements, and missed opportunities tied to weak retail readiness.

Open SKU Performance Audit

 

Step 4: Review budget pacing and bid strategy

Budget pacing often gets overlooked, but it’s one of the fastest ways to either waste money or miss growth opportunities.

Ask yourself:

It’s worth setting alerts to monitor budget burn and checking spend projections mid-month. Even better, build automation safeguards that continuously monitor pacing and flag bid inconsistencies early.

If you manage bids manually, keeping everything aligned can get tedious fast, especially across multiple campaigns. That’s where automated budget pacing and smart bid rules can save time and protect spend.

As Inés Martín, Head of Performance at Línea Gráfica, puts it:

“My favorite aspect of managing Amazon Ads with Optmyzr is how easy it is to manage manual bidding compared to how tedious it is to do it directly on Amazon Ads.

With Optmyzr, in just a glance it’s easy to understand which bids I’m interested in modifying and how, without requiring cumbersome and time-consuming analysis.”

Step 5: Check campaign structure for hidden inefficiencies

Your campaign structure directly affects ad delivery, budget allocation, and ROI.

Watch for:

Structure issues can swing both ways — either you’re overspending on poor matches or starving your top performers. Both cost you.

Beyond that, strong Amazon campaign structures often align with product lifecycle stages (launch vs. scale) or repeat-purchase behavior, ensuring ads are matched to how people actually buy.

Use Amazon’s Campaign Reporting or Ads Console to regularly spot these inconsistencies, especially around suppressed listings or Buy Box loss.

Metrics that reveal wasted spend

Track these Amazon PPC performance metrics closely:

As a baseline, CTRs below 0.3% often indicate targeting issues, while ROAS under 2x typically signals poor campaign efficiency.

Mistakes advertisers make during manual audits

You’re not alone — we’ve seen these over and over:

1. Overlooking Amazon’s auto-suggestions

These reflect what customers actually type in. Reviewing them can validate your keyword strategy (or reveal what needs to be negated).

2. Reacting too slowly to KPI changes

Catching the issue is one thing. Fixing it quickly is another. Build workflows to take action fast — like adjusting bids on overvalued placements that aren’t converting.

3. Only auditing before client reviews

Audits should be monthly or even weekly. If you’re only doing them before a stakeholder check-in, you’re missing growth opportunities — and probably bleeding budget in the meantime.

4. Over-relying on Amazon’s default recommendations

While helpful, Amazon’s default suggestions often prioritize visibility over profitability. Blindly applying these can lead to inflated ACoS and wasted spend.

How to automate and scale Amazon PPC audits

Running manual audits across multiple accounts? Painful. That’s where audit automation makes a huge difference — and not just in time savings.

Platforms like Optmyzr help automate:

Watch this quick video to see how Optmyzr helps you audit and optimize during peak seasons.

 

And here’s what that looks like in practice: Morefire was able to cut 15% of their account management hours per week using Optmyzr, with audit automation playing a key role in that time savings. That’s not just time saved — it’s bandwidth reallocated toward growth-driving tasks.

The ROI of eliminating wasted spend

Cutting waste improves profitability across the board:

Final thoughts: Get audit-ready, gain efficiency

Audits aren’t just a maintenance routine — they’re your PPC insurance. Regularly checking for spend leaks, structural inefficiencies, and underperforming ASINs helps you safeguard your budget and performance. That’s the idea behind automation layering: setting up proactive systems to catch issues early, before they snowball.

Here’s what you should consistently track:

Whether you’re managing one account or a portfolio, structured audits are how you stay competitive and profitable.

And if you’re ready to scale without the manual slog, start your free Optmyzr trial and run a smart, automated Amazon Ads audit — covering 25+ performance and structure checks in minutes.

People Also Ask

1. How do I identify wasted ad spend on Amazon?

Start by reviewing key performance metrics like ACoS, ROAS, CTR, and Orders. Look for keywords, search terms, or ASINs that are spending budget but not driving conversions. Regularly audit your campaigns to catch issues like irrelevant queries, underperforming SKUs, or poor budget pacing. Use tools like the Amazon Search Term Report and Advertised Products Report — or automate the process with audit platforms that flag inefficiencies across keywords, products, and structure.

2. What are the most common causes of poor ROAS in Amazon Ads?

Poor ROAS is often caused by irrelevant keywords, weak negative keyword management, poor product targeting, and underperforming ASINs receiving too much budget. Other common issues include campaigns running out of budget too early, misaligned bids, and weak campaign structure. Regular audits help catch these problems before they impact profitability.

3. What does out-of-budget mean in Amazon Ads?

In Amazon Ads, “out-of-budget” means a campaign has exhausted its daily budget and is no longer eligible to show ads for the rest of the day. When this happens, Amazon may stop ad delivery entirely or significantly throttle impressions for the rest of the day. Either way, you risk missing out on valuable traffic, especially during high-converting hours. Monitoring budget pacing helps you avoid these drops and make sure your best campaigns stay live when it matters most.

Why Quality Score Still Deserves Your Attention in 2025

Coke vs. Pepsi, ketchup vs. mustard, caring about Quality Score vs. ignoring it – some debates are as old as time itself.

With more advertisers relying on first- and third-party automation to deliver great performance with less hassle, everybody has access to the same bid management tools. The assumption is that ad rank is impacted solely by bids and so the effort that goes into raising Quality Score (QS) is less important or rewarding.

Now, before going into the details, let’s back up a bit and understand what quality score actually is and the factors that contribute to it.

What Is Quality Score?

According to Google,

Quality Score is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Higher quality ads can lead to lower prices and better ad positions.

How is Quality Score calculated?

Image courtesy Instapage.com

Factors affecting Quality Score

Advertisers tend to depend largely on bidding strategies to gain a winning position in the ad auction, but overlooking Quality Score can actually harm your position. That’s because the things that improve your QS also make your ad more appealing to search users:

1. Ad Relevance

This component looks at how close your ad is to the search query. Google is looking at how closely the message in your ad matches the search term and its intent. This component is something you can manage more easily than the others on this list.

2. Expected Click-Through Rate (CTR)

This component is based on the historical performance of your keywords and ads. Google estimates how likely your ad is to be clicked based on things like ad text relevance, ad creativity, keyword relevance, and historical performance.

3. Landing Page Experience

Are your customers happy with what they see after clicking on your ad? Google is looking at how relevant your landing page is to the keyword and ad. But it also takes into account factors like transparency, ease of navigation, original content, and page load times, as they affect the overall user experience.

Google compiles these three factors to assign a score of 1 through 10 to every keyword. What this means is that this number is only a representation of the aggregate relevance of the keyword across auctions. It is not used to rank ads as a whole.

Since your ad rank is recalculated each time your ad is eligible to appear, your ad position can fluctuate each time. This makes auction time QS more granular than a 1-10 number.

It depends on several other factors, which not only fluctuate all the time but are also different for every single search that happens on Google. These contextual elements include:

Because QS is so granular and volatile, ignoring your ads (even ones that started out with a great score) can harm your performance over time. But what it also means is that you can always improve your ads and revitalize your low QS. All you have to do is keep optimizing your ads.

Essentially, Google’s machine learning algorithms monitor how and what users interact with on the SERP to make predictions about future interactions. User behavior is constantly changing, so what may be relevant today may not seem so in the next few months. In other words, a history of not caring about your ad relevance and putting all your eggs in the bid basket will count against you.

Keep an eye on how relevant your ads are to users, how closely they relate to what people search for, and their experience after the click.

Why is Quality Score still worth your time?

Here are 3 reasons why you should still care about Quality Score:

The finer points of Quality Score calculation might seem complex, but that shouldn’t discourage you. Quality Score still plays a significant part in ad rank calculation. Unless your brand has bottomless pockets and can afford to bid crazy amounts to rank first, neglect Quality Score at your own risk.

Max Bid x Quality Score = Ad Rank

The above formula is a simplified version of the actual calculation, but the core principle behind it is still valid, and Ad Rank is still based on these two components – Quality Score and Maximum Bid – so a low Quality Score can hurt your position as much as a low bid. Of course, the upside is that paying attention to Quality Score can bring down your CPC.

That’s because the ad in the highest position generally needs to bid less for a click than the ads below it. Advertisers with an excellent Quality Score get a discount that’s something of an open secret in PPC Land.

Want proof? Our customer Zeller Media managed to achieve a Quality Score of over 9.0, lower CPCs by 18%, and save $36,000 a month by using our Quality Score Tracker.

Not only does Optmyzr’s Quality Score Tracker show you the data that Google Ads gives you for quality score, but it goes above and beyond with great visuals while also aggregating account, campaign, and ad group quality score data.

No need for us to go into the details here, our CEO, Frederick Vallaeys has already done that by writing down Five Ways That Optmyzr Tracks Quality Score that Google Ads Can’t.

How do I get a high Quality Score in Google Ads?

It’s simple (if not easy) to get a high Quality Score: make your ads more relevant, target the right keywords, build a track record of ads with high CTR, and improve your landing page experience.

Improving keyword quality is probably the most crucial. If historical data shows that a keyword has a low CTR, that’s an indication to Google that users haven’t found your ad relevant to that search. This calls for more specific keywords and improved account structure.

Here are 5 simple ways to improve your Quality Score.

Never stop optimizing your ads

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again (and again and again, until the heat death of the universe) – never stop optimizing your ads. Use Quality Score as an indicator, not the end result. You know what’s best for your account, so don’t be afraid to deviate from our advice if your particular situation demands it.

Ultimately, all advertisers are looking to deliver the best possible performance within their available budget. So it’s almost a no-brainer to do things that can get you more clicks within the same budget. If you end up making the search and purchase experiences better for users along the way, all the better!

And if you need help with improving your Quality Score and reducing your CPCs, take our 14-day free trial today.

Google Ads Bid Management 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Higher Conversions

Whether you’re looking to drive more traffic, raise brand awareness, or boost conversions using Google Ads, your bid management strategy can make or break your results.

Choosing the right bidding strategy and scaling it properly can make a huge difference in getting the best results from your campaigns.

However, with so many bidding strategies to choose from, constant updates, and the delicate balance between automation and manual tweaks, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

In this article, we discuss the different bid strategies in Google ads and provide tips on choosing the best one for your business and scaling it for the best results.

A step-by-step guide to setting up bid strategies

We’re starting with a guide on how you can access and configure bid strategies in your Google Ads account. Feel free to skip ahead if you’re already familiar with the setup.

  1. Sign in to your Google Ads Account.
  2. Choose ‘Campaigns’ from the menu on the left.

 

  1. Choose the campaign you want to modify, hover your mouse over the campaign name, and click on the gear icon. Alternatively, you can also click the campaign and access the settings at the top.

 

  1. In the menu that opens up, click on ‘Bidding’.

  1. Click on ‘Change Bidding Strategy’.

In the dropdown menu that appears, you’ll be able to choose between Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Values.

6. There are also some hidden bidding strategies. To opt for these, click on ‘Select Bid Strategy Directly’.

7. Here you will be able to choose from Maximize Clicks, Target Impression Share, and Manual CPC.

 

To make the best out of your Google Ads budget, it’s always best to understand how these bidding strategies work for different campaign types. And that’s what we’ll cover below.

Examples of bidding strategies for different campaign types

Google offers various types of bidding strategies based on different campaign types and business goals. Choosing the right strategy is highly dependent on whether you want to increase brand awareness, maximize conversions, drive traffic, or achieve a specific ROAS (return on ad spend).

Here are some practical examples to illustrate this:

1. Search campaigns

A B2B SaaS company wants businesses to sign up for a free demo. Since each demo could be a potential customer, the company would want to bring in as many sign-ups as possible within a defined budget.

Opting for tCPA (target cost per acquisition) is telling Google to strive for a target CPA while getting as many conversions as possible. You get the most sign-ups without exceeding your cost per lead.

If your campaigns don’t have enough conversion data (~30 conversions in the past 30 days), our latest study on bidding strategies finds it effective to start with Maximize Clicks with a bid cap (so you don’t spend too much per click) to gather the initial conversion data. You can figure out what your traffic costs and if it fits within your budget.

When setting a bid cap, ensure it’s not more than 10% of your daily budget or you’ll risk not getting enough clicks. Also, since Maximize Clicks focuses more on volume of clicks, ensure you’re only running Google search, opting out of search partners and display expansion.

💡Optmyzr Tip: Configure Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to adjust keyword bids based on campaign-level CPA. For example, if a keyword’s CPA is 50% higher than the campaign average, lower its bid by 20%.

 

2. Shopping campaigns

An online ecommerce store selling gadgets has an inventory in which some products have higher profit margins than others. Their aim is to sell enough of the right products to maximize revenue without sacrificing profitability.

Setting a tROAS (target return on ad spend) translates to Google trying to bid higher for products or users that are likely to generate high-value transactions. Instead of simply prioritizing more sales, tROAS optimizes for more revenue.

💡Optmyzr Tip: Use the Smart Product Labeler to segment your products based on their performance — targeting top sellers with higher bids and lowering bids for others. This ensures budgets are allocated according to product potential, increasing the overall ROAS.

 

3. Display campaigns

A company selling an online course on its website wants to retarget users who’ve started enrolling but did not complete it. Since these users have shown a high level of interest in the course, the company uses a display retargeting campaign for two reasons.

  1. A user who has abandoned the enrollment is just a few steps away from converting. Visual ads with clear USPs might be more effective in nudging such users to complete their enrollment than text ads.
  2. Display campaigns can re-engage qualified users and remind them to complete the enrollment by reaching them across websites, apps, and even YouTube even if they’re not searching

Since a successful enrollment counts as a conversion, the company calculates it can afford $100 per conversion. Based on this, they choose Target CPA bidding, allowing Google to optimize bids at $100 or lower for placements most likely to drive enrollments.

Ensure Google tracks the right conversions. In this case, completed enrollments would count as the primary goal, while actions like clicking “Enroll Now” or viewing the course page count as secondary conversions. This helps the algorithm optimize for actual enrollments and not other website interactions.

It is also important to secure user consent according to regulations like GDPR before using cookies and other tracking technologies for retargeting and other remarketing audience types such as video RLSA.

4. Video campaigns

A business just launched a new product and they use a video ad to create brand awareness. Since people are not aware of the product and not actively searching for it, the aim is to push the video ad to a large audience for maximum visibility.

Using tCPM (target cost per thousand impressions) maximizes the number of people who see your ad within the budget you’ve defined. It increases visibility and is good for brand recall but may not result in immediate clicks or engagement.

💡Pro Tip: Layering tCPM with YouTube remarketing audiences can be useful in converting viewers to customers. Link your YouTube channel to your Google Ads account and create data segments based on different actions like viewing a specific video. Use these lists in your Google Ads campaigns to target them with relevant ads.

5. Performance Max campaigns

A custom home decor brand wants to maximize profitability by reaching potential customers across various Google platforms like Search, YouTube, and Display.

Since they want to maximize ad efficiency across these channels with minimum manual intervention, the seller considers running PMax campaigns to automate ad placements according to their revenue goals.

Opting for Maximize Conversion Value in this case allocates budgets across channels so as to prioritize high-value sales and increase revenue. Bids are optimized more aggressively on customers who are more likely to indulge in high-value purchases.

To enhance this strategy it is important to connect your CRM with Google Ads. This helps in tracking actual customer conversions and their revenue, allowing Google to optimize bids based on real sales value rather than low-value actions.

How to make the most of Google’s Smart Bidding strategies?

Smart bidding is a subset of automated bidding that focuses on conversions. Also known as auction-time bidding, it optimizes bids based on real-time auction insights.

Bids are optimized based on 60+ signals exclusive to Google’s smart bidding, including:

Smart bidding uses these signals to adjust bids in real time to optimize ad spend. This means that the algorithm might increase bids if a user is more likely to convert. Conversely, it can also lower bids in cases where the likelihood of a conversion is low.

This is why advertisers switching from manual (where they have more control over individual bids) to smart bidding may see fluctuations in their CPC.

Now if you want some degree of control, smart bidding allows you to set bid floors and ceilings (min and max bid limits) through portfolio bidding so you avoid overspending without sacrificing profitability and visibility.

When to use smart bidding for maximum results

1. When you have enough conversion data
Since smart bidding utilizes machine learning and historical data, you need to have sufficient data to optimize conversions. Google recommends at least 15 conversions over a month or longer for every campaign for target ROAS. But, we found that most advertisers clear 50+ conversions in a 30-day period and see better performance compared to accounts with fewer conversions.

This is because smart bidding strategies need extensive historical data to identify the patterns and signals that correlate to conversions. Our study shows that campaigns with more conversion data and stable performance give better results with smart bidding.

If you don’t have enough conversions, start with simpler strategies like Maximize Clicks to collect initial conversion data and then switch.

2. When you have a relatively stable ad spend
Smart bidding strategies require something called a ‘learning period’ which is the time it takes for Google’s algorithm to adjust to changes in your campaign.

If your campaigns have predictable patterns in spends, it becomes easier for the algorithm to identify what works and adjust bids in response. This is especially important for Target ROAS or Target CPA where consistent spending is key to predicting the likelihood of conversions.

On the other hand, inconsistent ad spend results in longer learning periods, delaying bid optimizations.

Our studies indicate that the sweet spot for ad spend when it comes to smart bidding seems to be between $10K-$50K.

3. When you want to maximize revenue and not just conversions
If your primary business goal is to grow your revenue rather than simply increasing the volume of conversions, smart bidding is a good strategy since it can optimize for both conversion count and value.

Accurately tracking conversion values will give you a clear picture of the revenue generated by your ad campaigns. This is key to testing out different strategies to figure out how to strike a balance between profit and volume.

4. When you have clearly defined and properly valued conversion actions
Some advertisers think that smart bidding works only for higher ad spends. However, this is not entirely true. Smart bidding can be used effectively even if you have lower budgets if your conversion tracking is set up accurately.

For instance, you can consider including micro-conversions in your conversion tracking if you have limited data to work with. But each action needs to be assigned an appropriate value so Google allocates budgets to actions that matter most.

Practical advice on how to make smart bidding work for you

Bid smarter, not harder: Solutions to common bidding issues

Effective bid management can be a useful tool to maximize the ROI of your PPC campaigns. However, when bids are not optimized correctly, they can lead to wasted spend, missed opportunities, and poor campaign performance.

In such instances, you need to first identify your underperforming bids.

Signs your bids are underperforming

Fixing overbidding and wasted ad spend

Overbidding your ads can deplete your budgets too quickly and reduce profit margins. It can even result in your ads showing up for loosely related searches, attracting low or mismatched-intent audiences. To fix this:

💡Optmyzr Tip: Use geo-bid adjustments in Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to identify locations that have higher CPA or no conversions at all and reduce bid adjustments on them to reduce wasted ad spends.

 

Solving underbidding and lost opportunities

Keeping your bids too low your ads may not show up at all or have reduced visibility in high-traffic areas. This results in lower CTR, reduced conversions, and put you at a disadvantage if your competitors are bidding higher for valuable ad placements.To counter this you can:

When to use automated vs manual bidding in Google Ads?

As an advertiser, it’s easy to be confused between choosing automated or manual bidding for your campaigns. The key is to understand your goals and the type of campaign you want to run. Here’s a quick overview of both approaches to help you choose the right bid management strategy for your ads.

Criteria

Automated Bidding

Manual Bidding

Control

Less granular control, more automation

Full control over each bid

Efficiency

More efficient for large-scale campaigns

Requires constant monitoring and adjustments

Data dependency

Needs sufficient historical conversion data

Doesn’t rely on a lot of data

Adaptability

Highly adaptive to changes in auction dynamics

Less adaptive to real-time changes

Complexity

Simplifies bid management

More complex since it requires manual adjustments

Best for

Large campaigns, goal-based objectives, businesses with consistent data

Niche campaigns, specific keywords, small budgets

Automated bidding

Pros:

Cons:

Manual bidding

Pros:

Cons:

When to use automated or smart bidding for ads

Best practices for scaling bids based on campaign performance

Scaling bids too quickly can exhaust your budgets while doing it too slow can make it difficult to reach your campaign goals. The key is to make gradual, informed decisions that drive growth without overspending. Here’s how you can do it.

1. Leverage performance data

Identify strengths and weaknesses in your campaigns by tracking metrics like CTR, CPC, ROAS, and CPA. Regularly tracking these metrics can give you insights into trends or patterns that can inform bid adjustments.

If you individual campaigns don’t have enough data to make informed data, Optmyzr’s bid management capabilities allow you to pull up data for similar campaigns so you can study them. It puts data into easy-to-visualize formats like charts or graphs so its easier to understand and spot opportunities.

Tip: Segment performance data based on factors like device, audience, and location to identify where the highest value conversions occur and refine bid adjustments

2. Use incremental bid increases

Scaling your bids too fast can push you into expensive auctions and spike your costs. It’s always best to increase your bids gradually (e.g. 10-15%) and then monitor the impact of changes for a few days before adjusting it even further.

Optmyzr customers can use if-then statements in Rule Engine to automate bid increases. For instance, if a campaign achieves a 10% increase in ROAS, then raise bids by 10%.

Tip: Instead of making bid adjustments across several campaigns at once, try running tests on a subset of ad groups or keywords to minimize risks. It also gives you a glimpse into what works before you implement the changes at scale.

3. Prioritize high-converting segments

If you find that certain keywords or audience segments are giving you consistent conversions at a lower cost, you may want to consider increasing bids for these high-converting segments. Even a slight increase in bids can capture more clicks, conversions, and impressions and scale without losing profitability.

Tip: Use audience bid adjustments to increase or decrease bids based on conversion data. For instance, you can increase bids for users who have visited your site or fall into the demographic profile of high-converting audience segments.

4. A/B test bid adjustments

Run experiments to find out which bidding strategies are the most effective for you (e.g. manual vs smart bidding). For instance, you can target ROAS in smart bidding against manual bidding to see which one delivers better ROI.

Similarly, if you find that retargeting audiences are converting well, you might want to try increasing bids for them first before doing it for a broader segment.

Tip: For an effective A/B test, choose a campaign with consistent traffic and conversion volume—this ensures you use statistically meaningful results when comparing smart bidding vs manual bidding strategies.

Maximize your Google Ads performance with effective bid management

Effective bid management in Google Ads is a blend of strategic planning, continuous optimization, and leveraging automation where appropriate.

Whether you’re opting for manual, automated, or smart bidding, the key is to make careful, data-driven adjustments, balancing automation with manual control so your campaigns stay agile and you’re getting the most out of your ad spend.

Try Optmyzr’s bid management tools to streamline your Google Ads strategy. Sign up for a 14-day free trial today!

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

 

The Secret to Lower CPCs and Higher Conversions: PPC Bid Management Explained

Every time you advertise online, you’re entering an auction. And like any auction, winning or losing comes down to your bidding strategy.

As platforms like Google, Microsoft, and Meta advance, we’re at a fascinating crossroads between human intuition and machine learning. Some campaigns thrive on smart automation that processes thousands of signals in real time. Others benefit from a more hands-on approach to strategy.

So, how do you manage bids in a way that drives results? When does manual bidding make sense, and when should you let automation take over? Let’s break down what goes into a winning bid strategy.

What is PPC bid management?

PPC bid management is the process of strategically setting and adjusting bids for your ads in platforms like Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, etc. The goal is to maximize ad visibility while controlling costs, ensuring you get the best ROI for every click.

And bids matter—they help determine both where your ad shows up and how much you’ll actually pay when someone clicks. The challenge is that bidding is dynamic. What works today might be too expensive tomorrow or too low to keep your ad visible.

Effective bid management means staying ahead of these shifts, using automation wisely, and making data-driven adjustments to ensure your campaigns deliver results.

Types of bid management

There are three primary approaches to managing bids, each offering different levels of control and automation. The right choice depends on your campaign goals, available data, and how much hands-on management you prefer.

1. Manual bidding

Manual bidding gives you complete control over your bids. You set and adjust your bids at the keyword, ad group/ad set, or campaign level based on your own analysis.

This is ideal for advanced advertisers who know their bids should be and are comfortable adjusting bids based on market conditions. You can layer in bid adjustments, such as for device type or location, but it requires ongoing monitoring and frequent tweaks.

The strategy requires time and expertise, but that doesn’t mean you must do everything by hand. Many advertisers build their own automated bidding systems using scripts and rules. Optmyzr makes this even easier with ready-to-use strategies that help you stay on top of shifting factors like seasonality, competitor activity, and user behavior.

2. Automated bidding

Automated bidding simplifies bid adjustments by using predefined strategies to optimize for specific goals, such as increasing traffic or maintaining ad visibility. Instead of manually setting bids, advertisers choose a strategy that aligns with their objectives, and the system automatically adjusts bids based on performance signals.

Unlike Smart Bidding, which focuses on getting conversions, automated bidding is more about hitting broader goals. You choose a strategy that fits your goal, whether it’s getting more clicks, showing your ads more often, or staying within a budget, and the system adjusts your bids accordingly.

Different platforms offer a variety of automated bidding strategies. Here’s the breakdown:

📌Google Ads: Options like Maximize Clicks (aims to get the most clicks within budget) and Target Impression Share (adjusts bids to maintain ad visibility in a specific position) help advertisers optimize for reach and traffic

📌Amazon Ads: Features like Dynamic Bidding – Up and Down automatically increase bids when an ad is more likely to convert and decrease them when it’s less likely. This approach helps sellers compete for high-intent traffic while controlling cost

📌Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram): You can use Lowest Cost Bidding (bids are set to get the most results at the lowest cost) or Bid Cap (sets a maximum bid to maintain cost control). These strategies focus on balancing reach, engagement, and cost efficiency

📌Other Platforms (LinkedIn, TikTok, Microsoft Ads, etc.): Each platform has variations of automated bidding, often with options to maximize clicks, impressions, or engagement based on advertiser goals

Choosing the right automated bidding strategy for your goals

3. Smart bidding (conversion-driven)

Smart Bidding is all about helping you get more conversions, like sales or sign-ups, by automatically adjusting your bids in real-time. Instead of manually setting bids, it uses machine learning to figure out the best bid for each situation based on the chances of a conversion happening.

It looks at things like user behavior and auction data to make sure your ads are shown to the right people at the right time. This makes it a great choice if your main goal is to drive more valuable actions from your ads.

📌Example: You're running an eCommerce campaign for a seasonal sale on winter jackets. With Smart Bidding, the system can analyze data such as whether someone is using a mobile device or desktop, their location (are they in a cold area?), and even the time of day.

If it's a chilly evening and someone is searching for jackets on their phone, Smart Bidding can increase your bid for that specific user, maximizing the chances of conversion.

 

While Smart Bidding can be highly effective, many advertisers default to it without checking if they have enough data. Our research revealed that smart bidding works best with at least 50+ conversions per month. Without this, performance can be volatile and unpredictable.

It also revealed that many advertisers start with one strategy and then transition to the other as their campaign picks up. This approach allows them to maintain control early on and switch once they have enough data for automation to work effectively.

If you’re considering Smart Bidding, here are the key strategies to know:

📌Maximize Conversions (with optional Target CPA): This strategy automatically adjusts your bids to get the most conversions (sales, sign-ups, leads) possible within your budget. It’s a good option if you are focused on driving volume and have a consistent budget.

While it aims to maximize conversions, it’s often beneficial to pair this strategy with a Target CPA. This tells Google the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for each conversion, and it will try to get you as many conversions as possible at that cost.

The combination is ideal when you have a specific CPA goal in mind and want to maximize conversions within that cost constraint.

📌 Maximize Conversion Value (with optional Target ROAS): Instead of just increasing the number of conversions, this strategy focuses on driving the highest total revenue from your ad spend. It’s ideal if you have different conversion values (e.g. different purchase amounts) and want to prioritize higher-value conversions.

It’s often recommended to use this strategy with a Target ROAS. Target ROAS lets you set a specific return you want to achieve on your ad spend (e.g., a 300% ROAS). Smart Bidding will then optimize your bids to maximize conversion value while trying to hit your target ROAS.

This combination is best when you have a specified ROAS target and want to maximize the overall value of your conversions.

Conversion-focused bidding strategies on other platforms

While Google Ads offers Smart Bidding, other advertising platforms also provide automated bidding strategies designed to help you achieve similar conversion-focused goals. Here’s a look at what some other platforms offer:

📌Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram): If your goal is to drive conversions or maximize the conversion value of Facebook and Instagram, Meta Ads offers several relevant bidding strategies. Highest Value Bidding optimizes your bids to target users most likely to make high-value purchases.

This is particularly useful for eCommerce businesses with varying product prices. Meta also offers other conversion-focused strategies like Lowest Cost and Value Bidding.

📌Amazon ads: For sellers on Amazon, Dynamic Bidding can help optimize conversions. The Up and Down variation automatically adjusts your bids on the likelihood of a conversion, increasing them when a sale is highly probable and decreasing them when it’s less so. This allows you to compete effectively for high-intent shoppers.

📌LinkedIn ads: If your focus is on lead generation or other B2B conversions, LinkedIn’s Bid for Conversions is designed to optimize your campaigns for specific actions, such as form submissions, sign-ups, or website visits.

📌Microsoft ads: Microsoft ads offer a similar suite of conversion-focused bidding strategies. Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize Conversions, and Maximize Conversions Value function much like their Google Ads counterparts, allowing you to optimize for specific cost or return targets.

Choosing the right conversion-focused bidding strategy for your goals

💡Pro Tip: Use express optimization suggestions in Optmyzr to test smart bidding strategies like Maximize Conversion Value, Target CPA, or Target ROAS before fully committing to a strategy. It reviews Google’s recommendations and lets you run trial campaigns to measure performance before making full-scale changes.

 

Manual Bidding vs. Automated Bidding vs. Smart Bidding: When should you choose which?

Choosing between manual, automated, and Smart Bidding depends on your goals, experience, and the level of control you need.

When to use manual bidding?

Manual bidding can be suitable in the following instances:

📌Limited data availability: Smart Bidding relies on conversion data to optimize bids. When there’s not enough data, bids may be set too high or too low based on incomplete signals. In such scenarios, manual bidding gives you control to align bids with actual auction conditions rather than relying on uncertain automation

📌Targeting brand keywords: For campaigns targeting brand-specific keywords, manual bidding can offer tighter control over bids, ensuring optimal positioning without over-reliance on automated systems.

📌Resetting data: When there’s a need to reset or clear historical data, manual bidding can be employed temporarily to establish a new performance baseline before transitioning back to automated strategies.

📌Ensuring specific ad positions: If maintaining a particular ad position is crucial, manual bidding provides the control necessary to achieve and hold desired placements.

📌Managing low-performing segments: In scenarios where certain segments underperform, manual bidding allows for targeted adjustments to improve efficiency and performance.

Shawn Walker of Symphonic Digital suggests manual bidding can be especially valuable when you’re just starting with a new campaign: * *

“A lot of the time if we’re starting a brand new campaign where there’s not much background and the client doesn’t know exactly who the audience is, we will start with manual bidding… just to get some volume out there.”

When to use automated bidding?

Automated bidding is ideal when you want to optimize for clicks or visibility without constant manual adjustments. It’s a great fit:

📌 When your goal is traffic or visibility (brand awareness campaigns) – Strategies like Maximize Clicks and Target Impression Share prioritize getting the most clicks within your budget or securing a specific ad placement. However, remember that more clicks don’t always equal more conversions. These strategies are less focused on direct conversions and more on expanding reach.

📌 When you don’t have enough conversion data – If you lack sufficient conversion data to leverage Smart Bidding, automated bidding can be a good starting point. It allows you to optimize for clicks or impressions while you gather more conversion data. However, note that these strategies do not optimize for conversions. They are a stepping stone towards conversion-focused bidding once you have enough data.

📌 When you’re managing large-scale campaigns – If you’re running campaigns with a lot of keywords and ad groups, it can be overwhelming to adjust bids manually. Automated bidding can help by adjusting bids across all your campaigns to save you time. However, if you have enough conversion data, Smart Bidding can take it a step further and optimize specifically for conversions, helping you meet your goals more effectively.

📌When competition and costs keep changing: In industries where CPCs are constantly shifting, automated bidding can help you stay on top of things by adjusting bids quickly. One big advantage is the ability to set bid caps, which let you control the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for a click. This helps prevent overspending while still keeping your bids competitive.

That said, if the market is really volatile, you’ll still want to check in regularly to make sure your strategy is working.

When to use smart bidding?

Smart Bidding works best when:

📌 You have enough conversion data – While the minimum threshold can vary, more conversion data generally leads to better performance. Aim for a significant number of conversions (e.g. 50-100+ per month per conversion action) for more reliable optimization. The more data, the better Smart Bidding can understand patterns and predict future conversions.

📌 Your tracking is accurate – Smart bidding works best with precise conversion tracking. Make sure your setup is correct across all platforms.

Each platform has its own tracking system. Check their documentation to ensure accurate data collection. The better your tracking, the smarter your bids.

📌 You’re optimizing for revenue, not just traffic volume– If your goal is to maximize the value of your conversions, Smart Bidding strategy like Maximize Conversion Value is the way to go. It focuses on getting the highest value for each conversion, even if that means you get fewer conversions overall.

On the other hand, Max Conversions aims to drive as many conversions as possible, so it’s important to make sure that those conversions (and the leads they generate) are actually profitable.

📌 You’re in a competitive market – Smart Bidding’s real-time adjustments are especially useful in competitive markets with fluctuating CPCs. While automated bidding adjusts based on general trends and manual bidding relies on constant manual adjustments or scripts, Smart Bidding makes real-time adjustments using auction-time signals.

This makes Smart Bidding particularly effective when your goal is to drive conversions or revenue, not just clicks or visibility. It adapts quickly to market changes and targets high-value actions, making it ideal for competitive environments.

Still, it’s important to monitor performance, particularly during major market changes.

💡 Pro Tip: Smart Bidding helps automate your bids, but it’s not always perfect. Sometimes, your best ad groups don’t show up as often as they should. Since Smart Bidding controls bids, you can’t change them directly, but you can adjust the targets to guide it in the right direction.

 

Lowering Target ROAS or raising Target CPA can increase volume, while stricter targets improve efficiency but may limit traffic. Since Smart Bidding factors in signals not available in manual bidding device, location, and time of day, adjusting targets for these variables can improve results.

 

Optmyzr’s Rule Engine helps by identifying when your targets need adjusting and providing data-backed suggestions, so you can keep your campaigns performing at their best.

 

How to choose the right bid strategy?

When it comes to selecting a bid strategy, it’s essential to choose one that aligns with your campaign goals. Below are some of the most common bid strategies, each tailored to different objectives.

Maximize Clicks

Ideal for: brand awareness campaigns, new campaigns where you want to drive early traffic, and building an audience list for future retargeting

The Maximize Clicks strategy is designed to drive as much traffic to your site as possible within your budget. It’s useful for:

✔️ Growing an audience list for future retargeting
✔️ Driving early traffic before optimizing for conversions
✔️ Understanding auction dynamics and keyword costs

However, not all clicks turn into conversions, so monitor engagement metrics like bounce rate and time on site.

📌Example: If you’re launching a new campaign and need to attract a broad audience, Maximize Clicks will help you generate traffic to your site, gathering valuable data before shifting to a more conversion-focused approach.

 

When to switch: Once you’ve gathered enough data (typically a few weeks or a certain number of clicks/impressions) and have a clearer understanding of your target audience and keyword performance, it’s time to consider switching to a more conversion-focused strategy. Look for patterns in which keywords or audiences are driving the most engaged traffic, even if it’s not the most traffic.

Conversions (CPA/ROAS - Cost Per Acquisition/Return On Ad Spend)

Ideal for: eCommerce, SaaS, subscription services, performance marketing, app installs and in-app actions

Conversion-focused bidding strategies including Target CPA (Cost per Acquisition) and Maximize Conversions, are ideal when your primary objective is to drive specific measurable actions on your website or app.

These strategies empower the ad platforms to automatically optimize bids for maximum conversions within your budget or at your desired cost. They are particularly well suited for businesses with clear conversion goals and accurate tracking.

📌Example: For an online course platform, you could use CPA bidding to pay only when a user registers and completes a course purchase. This ensures that your ad spend is focused on actual conversions, not just clicks.

 

When to switch: Begin with Maximize Conversions/Value when you have sufficient conversion data, well-defined goals, and accurate tracking. Refine this strategy by adding a Target CPA/ROAS constraint when you want to:

➡️Stabilize spending: If your cost per acquisition or return on ad spend is too volatile, a target constraint will create more predictable spending

➡️Increase efficiency: If you’re achieving a good volume of conversions but believe you can do so more cost-effectively, a target constraint will optimize your budget

➡️Meet profitability goals: If you need to maintain a specific profit margin, a target constraint allows you to directly manage customer acquisition cost

You’re not necessarily switching strategies; you’re enhancing Maximize Conversions/Value with a target constraint to balance conversion volume with cost control. Later, you can adjust or remove the constraint if you want to prioritize volume growth.

Brand Awareness (CPM - Cost Per Thousand Impressions)

Ideal for: New product launches, entering a new market, building brand recognition, reputation management, programmatic display ads

Brand awareness campaigns have a different objective than direct response campaigns focused on conversions. They’re about getting your name, product, or message in front of a broad audience to increase familiarity and recognition.

With CPM bidding, you’re paying for impressions rather than clicks or conversions. This approach is ideal when your focus is on maximizing visibility, ensuring your ads reach as many people as possible rather than driving direct interactions.

📌Example: A streaming service launching a new show could run CPM ads on YouTube, Instagram Stories, and connected TV platforms (Roku, Hulu) to build hype. They’d prioritize high-impact placements, such as homepage takeovers or in-feed video ads.

 

When to switch: Brand awareness campaigns are often ongoing. However, you might consider switching to a different strategy for specific campaigns focused on driving direct response or conversions, such as limited-time promotion. You may also switch to a different awareness-focused strategy like CPV if you’re shifting to a video-centric approach.

Views (CPV - Cost Per View)

Ideal for: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram Reels, in-stream video ads

CPV is an ideal bidding strategy for video campaigns, where your goal is to drive views and engagement with your video content. You only pay when a user watches your video or engages with it (such as liking, commenting, or sharing).

This strategy is particularly valuable for campaigns focused on building engagement with video ads rather than driving immediate conversions.

📌Example: A fitness brand launching a new workout app could run CPV ads on YouTube, paying only when users watch 30+ seconds. To boost engagement, they might A/B test different video hooks and CTA placements.

 

When to switch: If your video campaign objective shifts from views to conversions (e.g. app installs or website visits), you’ll want to switch to a conversion-focused bidding strategy like CPA or ROAS. If you find your CPV is too high, you might want to experiment with different video creatives or targeting options.

Goal

Clicks (CPC)

Conversions (CPA)

Brand Awareness (CPM)

Views (CPV)

Increase Website Traffic

✅

❌

❌

❌

Drive Sales or Conversions

❌

✅

❌

❌

Boost Brand Visibility

❌

❌

✅

❌

Maximize Video Engagement

❌

❌

❌

✅

Poor bid management can cost you dearly

Bid management isn’t just about adjusting numbers—it’s the difference between a profitable campaign and one that drains your budget. Without the right strategy, you risk:

❌ Overpaying for low-quality clicks that don’t convert
❌ Losing valuable traffic because your best keywords aren’t getting the bids they deserve
❌ Wasting time on manual adjustments that never quite hit the mark

That’s where Optmyzr can help by putting your bids on autopilot—without losing control. Instead of manually adjusting bids and hoping for the best, it helps you automate the process based on your specific goals, so you don’t have to worry about missing the mark.

Here’s how:

 

Choose the bid strategy that works for your goals

The right bid strategy really comes down to what you’re aiming for and how much control you want. If you’re an experienced advertiser, manual bidding gives you total control to adjust bids based on things like device, location, and time.

Automated bidding is perfect if you want to drive traffic without worrying too much about conversions. And if your main goal is to drive conversions, Smart Bidding is the way to go.

Still unsure which bidding strategy truly delivers: manual, auto, or smart?

Stay tuned for our next article, where we’ll walk you through the best strategies for each campaign goal and share valuable insights from analyzing over 14,000 accounts to help you choose the winning approach.

Or, skip the wait and try Optmyzr free for 14 days. Test different bidding strategies, optimize faster, and see what works (before competitors do).

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

 

Optmyzr’s Customer Favorites: Top 6 PPC Tools of 2024

2024 has been an eventful year for PPC, with several interesting trends shaping the advertising landscape. A couple of the most critical ones include:

In response, we’ve been hard at work, adding innovative new features and enhancing the existing ones to match the evolving needs of the PPC community.

For instance, our recent Performance Max study provides insights into effective strategies for maximizing ROI with Performance Max campaigns.

While our Ad Strength & Creative study analyzes over one million ads to identify optimization strategies that drive meaningful performance improvements.

These studies, in combination with our comprehensive suite of tools, have helped advertisers stay ahead of the curve throughout the year.

If you’re curious about what we’ve been up to, keep reading for a quick walkthrough of Optmyzr’s standout tools and updates this year. You’ll also get insights into how you can use these popular features and improvements to maximize your campaign performance and set the stage for the year ahead.

Newly launched features by Optmyzr in 2024

1. Amazon and Microsoft Ads updates

With Amazon’s global ad revenue climbing up to $49 billion in 2023 and Microsoft gaining steady momentum with around $12.58 billion in search advertising revenue (2024), it’s no surprise that these platforms are playing a crucial role in reaching a bigger audience.

But if you’re someone handling all these campaigns at scale and doing it all manually — you’re probably losing time and maybe even money.

To help you deliver better results on these platforms but with less effort, we’ve expanded support for them.

Amazon Sponsored Brands support

Handling multiple ad groups or legacy setups on Amazon’s native ad platform means a lot of work — pausing underperforming ads, updating budgets, or having to frequently analyze campaign performance. These tasks simply drain time and resources that could be better utilized elsewhere.

Optmyzr now helps you:

 

Non-Endemic campaign creation for Amazon Ads

Even if you don’t directly sell your products on Amazon, you can still leverage its vast audience base and data to drive traffic to your website. This is called non-endemic advertising.

You can make use of its display ads, video ads, or even create custom solutions if you want. Non-endemic campaigns run on wide-reach platforms like Amazon Prime Video and third-party partner sites like IMDB and Twitch.

The only catch is that if you’re new to non-endemic advertising, it can be challenging to set up and manage these campaigns on Amazon.

But with Optmyzr, you can set them up within minutes from an existing Google Ads or Microsoft Ads account (the data gets automatically imported to Amazon).

Once your campaigns are in full swing, Optmyzr offers detailed insights on performance. You can combine this with rule-based automations and ensure that your campaigns are always optimized to drive relevant traffic to your website.

URL Checker for Microsoft Ads

A broken landing page is a huge no-no for two reasons — it’s frustrating for the user and wastes precious dollars from your budget.

With the Landing Page URL Checker, you don’t have to worry about invalid pages. It is a nifty solution designed to analyze landing pages for 404 errors or indicators of product unavailability.

 

You can use the tool to either generate scheduled reports of such pages or take it a step further and auto-pause them.

 

Campaign Automator for Microsoft Ads

Imagine creating ads for a large inventory of products, each with its own unique attributes. You’d have to manually enter product details for each SKU into Google Ads, constantly update their availability, and tweak ads to reflect seasonal price changes. It’s a never-ending manual grind.

But thankfully, you don’t have to do it that way. Instead, you can integrate your product catalog as a whole into Optmyzr’s Campaign Automator to automatically generate ads for every product in your inventory.

 

The tool pulls product titles and descriptions directly from your product feed and updates them in real-time whenever there is a change in product availability or pricing.

SearchLab Digital Boosts Client’s Conversion Rate by 42% With Campaign Automator

2. Optmyzr for Social

Managing social media campaigns whether it’s on Meta or on LinkedIn requires precision and efficiency.

With Optmyzr for Social, you get a robust set of tools that can help you seamlessly run high-performing campaigns on Meta, LinkedIn or both. They are designed to help you simplify your workflows, track anomalies, and get actionable insights so you can focus on driving impactful results.

Optmyzr for Social is priced at a $99/month flat rate with unlimited ad spend and accounts. And if you’re an existing Optmyzr customer, you get a 20% discount, bringing down the price to just $79/month.

Learn More About Optmyzr for Social Here.

3. Shopping and PMax Campaign updates

Smart Product Labeler

If you manage a large product catalog, segmenting products by performance is crucial for smart budget allocation. Otherwise, all the products are grouped together and you end up spending the same budget and setting similar budgets for all of them irrespective of how they’re performing.

But product segmentation can quickly become tedious if you plan on doing it manually. Even if you decide to use Google Ads scripts, you will need some level of coding knowledge to implement it correctly.

You can make things easier by creating a segmentation strategy with the Smart Product Labeler.

 

Set up rules to differentiate products by their performance or other attributes like product type, price, availability, etc. The Product Labeler uses these rules to group the products in your feed.

This differentiation makes it easier to create product-specific advertising strategies to maximize ROI. For instance, you can bump up the bids on high-performing products to increase visibility while dialing back the bids on underperforming ones to reduce wasted spend.

Excluding expensive PMax listing groups

Underperforming listing groups can eat up your budgets and that means there is less money to allocate to your high-performing segments.

To tackle this, we’ve introduced a new pre-built strategy that identifies underperforming or expensive listing groups with Rule Engine (a custom rule-based strategy builder). Users can customize the rules of this strategy so it aligns with their specific campaign goals.

This way your budgets can be allocated to ads that actually drive conversions, maximizing your ROI on campaigns.

Search term reporting for PMax

With PMax campaigns, advertisers find it challenging to get search term reports that can help them narrow down:

But, we now have a dedicated PMax Search Term reporting tool that gives you more granular control over your PMax campaigns. It automatically pulls data from your campaigns and then compiles them into a spreadsheet.

Once you have this data, you can easily manipulate it for custom analysis and look for search term patterns that tell you how to optimize your PMax campaigns better.

4. AI Updates

Ask custom questions in Optmyzr Sidekick

Think of Sidekick AI as your personal PPC assistant that can help you save time and simplify ad management. You can ask custom questions about your campaigns. For instance, how specific ads or keywords in a campaign are performing.

 

Sidekick delivers AI-driven insights at every level — account, campaign, ad, or keyword instantly. It’s like having an expert at hand, ready to help you make smarter decisions to optimize our PPC campaigns.

AI-powered Blueprints

Advertisers managing large accounts may find that a good chunk of their time gets caught up in tackling repetitive, but critical tasks.

Optmyzr’s Account Blueprints is like a built-in task manager that you can use to streamline and automate your workflows so nothing gets overlooked.

 

Blueprints can be used to create checklists for any process — onboarding clients, assigning tasks, optimizing campaigns, and more.

The best part is, instead of creating a whole Blueprint of tasks from scratch, you can simply mention your goal, and Optmyzr’s AI will create a relevant Blueprint for you. It can be customized according to your needs, saving that much more time.

5. Optmyzr Labs - our new innovation hub

Optmyzr Labs is where you can find the latest experimental features that could potentially shape our platform in the future. You can test our projects like the Magic Quadrants Tool to visualize account performance on an interactive quadrant chart or evaluate how well your landing page aligns with your target audiences using the Web Page Audience Fit Analyzer.

While all of our features are key to driving performance, some in particular have stood as absolute favorites among our customers.

Here’s a quick overview of the top six audience favorites:

1. Optimize budgets: Get recommendations to reallocate budgets across multiple accounts and platforms. Ensure you never over or underspend on any campaign and allocate budgets according to campaign performance.

 

2. Rule Engine: Exercise better control over your campaigns by leveraging Rule Engine’s simple “if-this-then-that” automation. Create custom optimizations or use pre-built templates to make bulk changes to ads.

 

3. A/B testing for ads: Conduct A/B testing for both RSAs (Responsive Search Ads) and display ads. Test out different ad variations and identify which ones resonate best with your audience.

4. PPC Investigator: Find out why your account showed a sudden increase or decrease in clicks, conversions, and other metrics with the PPC Investigator. Understand which metric caused the change and why.

 

5. Shopping campaign management: Create your shopping campaigns and ensure they’re always synced with the latest feed data, all in one hub. Get thorough insights into performance, and configure automated rules to take care of repetitive tasks.

6. Reports: Track the impact of your PPC campaigns using custom reports or simply use one of our pre-built templates. Get a bird’s eye view of everything happening with your account in a visually engaging manner. Don’t forget to create a report schedule to save time on creating the same report every month or week.

 

“I think all features make Optmyzr a powerful tool to gain a competitive advantage. We didn’t take time to dig deep into the features and that was a mistake. Encourage your account managers to make use of all the different tools and features, it was a total game changer for us.”

- Alexander Sperber, CEO, United Ads

Bonus - A hidden gem of Optmyzr you shouldn’t miss out

Optimizing budgets for your PPC campaigns based on performance can be tricky since Google does not allow you to link insights at the campaign level to budgets. For example, if you’d like to set a rule to change budgets automatically based on impression share, you might not be able to directly do it, because impression share metric isn’t available at the budget level.

But there is a workaround using a feature called ‘Key-Value Pairs’ in Optmyzr’s Rule Engine. It’s a two-step process where you use campaign insights or the ‘key’ to set up a rule to perform a certain set of actions at the budget level (the ‘value’).

To explain this better, here’s a demo based on a real use case from one of our customers:

Start 2025 with smarter PPC management

The tools added to Optmyzr’s platform in 2024 are specifically meant to help advertisers across industries make their daily work much easier, while also seeing their ROAS soar. They’ve been thoroughly used by our customers with some remarkable results on campaign efficiency and ROI.

From smarter automation to deeper insights, Optmyzr has everything you need to manage your paid marketing campaigns with greater precision and control.

Looking ahead to 2025, now is the perfect time to explore some of these tools and see how Optmyzr works for you.

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, you can talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

Sign up for our free 14-day trial today.

 

Google Shopping Campaigns: 3 Examples You Can Copy Now

For a business, Google Shopping ads are a new channel to reach customers. Half of the top retail advertisers are already using it.

50% of top retail advertisers use Google Shopping ads

50% of top retail advertisers use Google Shopping ads

But not every Google Shopping campaign will get people bombarding the ‘‘Add to cart’’ button. It might help to look at a Google Shopping ads example for inspiration.

Lucky for you, we discuss three examples below.

What Makes a Google Shopping Ads Example Worth Following?

Every Google ads campaign has two notable phases.

A common mistake many marketers make is that they focus solely on the pre-click phase. Their ads look stellar with great copy and graphics.

However, when the audience clicks on the ad, they are directed to a terrible landing page.

And that’s when it all falls apart.

A model-worthy Google Shopping campaign should have both phases working together like a well-oiled machine. It should also have the following components:

By persuasive copy, we mean that the language should be compelling enough for a customer to take action.

For instance, a lawyer could use a persuasive CTA on their landing page. Instead of saying, “Sign with us!” say, “Click Here for a Free Case Evaluation!”

This creates a sense of urgency and highlights the benefits the customer can get.

This is what the Patel Firm does on their homepage:

Keeping these components in mind, we’ve selected three Google Shopping campaigns you can learn from.

3 Google Shopping Ads Campaigns for Inspiration

For any Google Shopping campaign, there are three main steps:

Let’s see how the following companies have perfected these steps.

1. DW Candles

DW Candles is a scented candle brand that also makes home fragrances. The company has a wide range of candle options, such as pillars, votives, jars, etc.

The thing about the candle market is that it’s pretty saturated. Big brands like Yankee Candle and Bath & Body Works dominate the market.

DW Candles uses Google Shopping ads to increase its reach and attract new customers.

DW Candles Google Shopping ads

DW Candles Google Shopping ads

In the pre-click phase, you can see that the brand has an assorted collection of candles on their Google Shopping ad. Here are some noteworthy things about these ads:

Note that potential customers can see all of this without even clicking on anything. That’s brilliant!

You want to give your customers enough information to make up half their decision right at the pre-click phase.

Now, let’s look at the post-click phase of this Shopping Campaign. You click on a candle — let’s say the Tierra Santal — and go to the landing page.

DW Candles landing page

DW Candles landing page

First impression: it’s sleek and easy to navigate. There’s only one CTA — Add to Cart.

We also see the fragrance details. The copy is concise and crisp. Also, the important details, such as burn time and weight, are also right there.

Takeaways

Here are some takeaways from this campaign:

2. Paper Culture

Paper Culture is an eco-friendly stationery company that produces 100% recycled products.

In talks with Google, the CEO of Paper Culture, Chris Wu, said that a challenge they face as a small business is that they don’t have the ‘‘brand of our larger competitors.’’

Google Shopping Ads helped the company bridge this gap. Paper Culture used this campaign in addition to the search ads strategy.

Let’s look at why this campaign helped the company increase its return on investment by 3x compared to any other channel.

Like DW Candles, Paper Culture also shows high-quality images of the company’s products. Again, we see generous use of keywords. For example, keywords like ‘’Paper Culture,’’ ‘’stationery,’’ and ‘’cards,’’ ensure a higher chance of these ads popping up when someone searches for these products.

Since the products are on promotion, there’s a Sale tag on the ad. The prices (new and old) are clearly evident. One thing that you’d notice is consistent is the social proof.

Paper Culture also displays the product rating along with the number of reviews. Again, most people are likely to believe that a product with 1.6k positive reviews MUST be good.

One way Paper Culture takes the Google Shopping campaign a step further is by showing the estimated delivery time. That’s a good touch. Here’s why.

The products Paper Culture makes (cards, etc.) often have a lot of emotional value attached to them, especially when purchasing for occasions like birthdays or anniversaries. Also, these are event-specific products and not everyday-use items like candles or shoes.

So, the customer has no use for them if the product doesn’t arrive on time. Therefore, displaying the estimated delivery time helps build trust and reassures customers that they will receive their products in time for their special occasions.

Onto the post-click phase!

As soon as you click on a product and come to the landing page, you see an offer: 50% off on your first purchase if you sign up for emails.

Paper Culture landing page

Paper Culture landing page

Moving forward, again, you see a single CTA: Personalize. The landing page is super easy to navigate. Everything from the product images to the customization options is right there without the need to scroll even once.

Paper Culture product page

Paper Culture product page

If you have a similar business model where customers can personalize items, we recommend having a live chat widget on the landing page. It will resolve customers’ personalization-related queries in real-time.

Takeaways

The takeaways from this campaign are:

3. Buttercloth

Buttercloth is a mid-range clothing brand known for its soft and high-quality men’s shirts.

They worked with an agency called MuteSix, which was responsible for creating the brand’s Google Shopping campaign. One of their primary goals was to reduce budget wastage through efficient campaign segmentation.

Campaign segmentation helped the brand optimize its budget allocation and pitch top-selling products. As a result, Buttercloth saw an 8% increase in return on ad spend and a 1.25% click-through rate, which was higher than the 0.8% they got from their Main Shopping campaign.

Buttercloth’s Google Shopping campaign goes beyond what you see above. For instance, the company knows social proof matters.

What did they do to get it?

They started a tiered rewards system. Customers get points to share their reviews. If they add pictures and videos, the rewards are even higher.

The system really helped the brand get reviews to show on the Google Shopping ads.

Also, the product titles are keyword-rich and give the viewer enough information about the product. Let’s take ‘’Buttercloth Executive Position in Icy Cotton - M Regular Fit.’’

Without even clicking on the link, we know this product will be high-quality (cue the name). It has a regular fit, and it’s in an icy blue color.

The price, rating, number of reviews, and estimated delivery time are all mentioned in the ad.

One thing Buttercloth does differently from Paper Culture or DW Candles is that they display the ‘’Buy Now’’ button on the ad. That’s one less step for the customer to reach the checkout page.

For products that are on sale, the ad shows ‘’$x below typical’’ to let the customer know how much money they’re saving. It just saves a lot of mental gymnastics for the customer.

As for the post-click performance, all you have to do is click the ‘’Buy Now’’ button, and you’ll come to the checkout page.

As evident, Buttercloth really makes Google Shopping what it’s supposed to be: Google Shopping. You don’t even go to their product page. You basically shop on Google and pay on the company’s website.

Takeaways

These are the takeaways from Buttercloth’s campaign:

Wrapping it Up

By drawing inspiration from some great Google Shopping ad campaigns, you can run better ads for your business. If you liked this article and want to learn how to optimize your shopping campaigns for better performance, read this article.

And if you’re in need of a solution to run better shopping campaigns, give Optmyzr a try. Our tools provide you with great automation capabilities giving you the control.

You can sign up for a 14-day free trial here.

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

How to Find, Add, and Use Negative Keywords to Target the Most Relevant Audiences

Ever feel like your ads are getting clicks, but not the right kind? If your ad budget feels like it’s vanishing without seeing those sales or leads, you could be falling victim to irrelevant searches.

Here’s the good news: We’ve managed millions in ad spend for ecommerce businesses just like yours and have picked up a few tricks for maximizing your results. It’s time to introduce you to one of the most underutilized weapons for success – negative keywords.

By the end of this guide, you’ll know exactly how to harness negative keywords to send irrelevant traffic packing. Your budget, your campaigns, and your ideal customers will thank you!

Negative Keywords – Your Budget’s Best Friend

Think of negative keywords like bouncers at the hottest club in town. Their job is to keep the line free of riff-raff and ensure only your target audience gets through the door. They stop people who are just browsing, have the wrong style, or aren’t looking to spend serious money. It’s the same with your ads – negative keywords block the wrong kind of searches.

Benefits of Negative Keywords for Ecommerce Businesses

Types of Negative Keywords & When to Use Them

The bouncer analogy still holds up – with the added twist that you get to hire three different types of bouncers, each with different levels of strictness. Let’s break them down.

Picking the right bouncer for the job is key - a balance between keeping out the wrong crowd and welcoming those ready to spend their money with you!

How to Hunt Down Bad Keywords?

It’s time to pinpoint those wasteful clicks and send them packing. Here’s where to start your search:

1. Search Terms Report: This treasure trove, found in your Google Ads account, shows you every search that triggered your ads. Use this to spot irrelevant terms or phrases to block.

2. Google Suggest: Start typing something related to your products into Google to see what autocomplete suggestions pop up (ex: ‘buy home decor…’). This often surfaces search terms you wouldn’t have thought of!

3. Negative Keyword Finder (Search): This tool analyzes the search terms report from your Google Ads and Microsoft Ads accounts. It identifies individual words that are part of the search queries and are not performing well. It recommends adding them as negative keywords because they may not be relevant to your account.

4. Traffic Sculptor: This tool helps you show more relevant ads and direct traffic to the ad group that matches the search term exactly. You can use it to find the ad group that wrongly matches a search term and add the search term as an exact match negative.

Get strategic about the search terms that aren’t right for your ideal customer:

The more precise your negative keywords are, the easier it is for your ideal shoppers to find you.

The Negative Keyword Workflow

It’s not enough to just hunt down bad keywords - you need a system to keep them from wreaking havoc! Here’s a simple workflow to keep you organized:

1. Research: Start digging for negatives using the tools we discussed. Think about those categories we mentioned – irrelevant product types, misspellings, etc.

2. Categorize: A jumbled mess of negative keywords is as bad as none at all. Create different lists with clear themes. These might be based on ‘Competitor Names,’ ‘Freebie Seekers,’ or even ‘Misspellings.’

3. Implement: It’s time to actually add your organized lists to the relevant campaigns or ad groups within your ads account. Don’t forget to use the right match type (broad, phrase, or exact) depending on how broad a “block” you need.

4. Monitor: Don’t assume the job is done. Regularly review your Search Terms report to see if any new pesky search terms pop up. Be ready to add them to your negative lists. As your business evolves, refine your lists – maybe something that was irrelevant last month is now perfectly okay thanks to new product lines.

Pro Tip: Many ad platforms allow you to create shared negative keyword lists. This means instead of manually adding the same negatives to multiple campaigns, you do it once, and voila! – consistency reigns supreme. Time saved is extra money in your pocket.

Keep in mind that negative keyword management is an ongoing process of discovery and refinement. The more time you invest in this, the smarter your ads become!

Avoid “Negative” Overkill

It’s easy to get carried away cleaning up those irrelevant searches. There’s a fine line between laser-focusing your campaigns and suffocating them with too many restrictions. Here’s how to do it right:

The goal is to create a healthy, sustainable keyword ecosystem where quality shines while potential budget drains are quickly eliminated.

Every Irrelevant Click Is a Missed Opportunity

By using negative keywords, you’ll focus your campaigns in the right direction and make the most of your ad budget. You’ll drive targeted traffic, improve campaign performance, and ultimately connect with those customers who are ready to buy.

And if you think Optmyzr is the tool for you, sign up for a 14-day free trial today. Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Start Strong, Sell More: A Beginner’s Guide to Google Shopping Ads

In this post, you’ll learn

What are Google Shopping Ads?

Remember the last time you turned to Google to search for a product — let’s say, “Air Jordans.” You would have come across something like this:

This is Google Shopping Ads at work. The product listings you see on the top of Google search results and the Google Shopping tab are all Google Shopping Ads.

When customers search for a product online, these ads display relevant products from ecommerce businesses, along with their prices, images, and merchant information.

The purpose of Shopping ads, like all other ad formats, is to connect users with a purchase intent to relevant products and deals from retailers. And for ecommerce businesses, shopping ads are a way to get their products in front of people searching for what they sell.

How Much Do Google Shopping Ads Cost?

Figuring out the cost of Google Shopping ads can be tricky since there is no one-size-fits-all answer. But here are some factors that can give you an idea of how much they might cost you:

Source

While it’s impossible to predict an exact cost-per-click, understanding these key factors provides a better sense of what to expect and allows you to allocate a budget for your Google Shopping campaigns accordingly. Apart from these factors, closely monitoring performance and making data-driven decisions is also crucial to maximizing ROI.

How Do Shopping Ads Differ From Traditional Search or Text Ads?

While both are PPC ad formats served by Google, Shopping ads have some key differences from regular text-based search ads:

FeatureGoogle Shopping AdsGoogle Standard Text Ads
Ad TypeProduct-basedText-based
Primary UsePromoting specific products and their features. Ideal for ecommerce sites looking to promote and sell products directlyPromoting a website or service through text. Ideal for businesses aiming to increase site visits, calls, or spread awareness
Ad VisualsIncludes product images, title, price, store nameNo images, only text
PlacementGoogle Shopping tab, Google Search results, Google Display Network, YouTube, and GmailGoogle Search results, Google Network sites
TargetingBased on product data submitted through Google Merchant CenterBased on keywords chosen by the advertiser
Pricing ModelCost-Per-Click (CPC)Cost-Per-Click (CPC), others depending on campaign settings
Campaign ManagementManaged through Google Merchant Center and Google AdsManaged through Google Ads
Ad CreationGenerated automatically from the product data in Google Merchant CenterCreated by the advertiser
Required Account(s)Google Merchant Center account is required in addition to Google Ads accountOnly a Google Ads account is required
Audience TargetingBased on user searches, product categories, and more detailed product attributesBased on keywords, user interests, demographics, etc.
Optimization & Bidding StrategiesFocuses on product groups, feed optimization, and bidding strategies specific to product categoriesFocuses on keyword selection, match types, and ad copy effectiveness

When to Use Shopping Ads?

For ecommerce advertisers, Shopping ads have several benefits over other ad formats. The comparison between shopping ads and search ads often boils down to competitiveness and cost-effectiveness. Shopping ads tend to be more competitive and pricier in terms of cost-per-click (CPC). However, they often result in higher conversion rates, making them a worthwhile investment despite the higher CPCs.

On the other hand, search ads can sometimes be overlooked as a tool for ecommerce brands. While they generally come at a lower cost compared to shopping ads, they may not always attract as much attention from searchers. This is because searchers are more inclined to click on shopping ads, potentially overshadowing search ads in terms of visibility and click-through rates.

Shopping ads allow multiple product ads in search results, giving more real estate.

Most ecommerce verticals are price and impression-sensitive, and they might benefit from Shopping ads more than text ads. For example, if you’re selling shoes, people are more likely to click on a picture of a nice pair of shoes rather than an ad that says “Comfortable sports shoes.”

Ultimately, the choice between shopping ads and search ads depends on various factors, including budget, target audience, and campaign objectives. Finding the right balance between the two can lead to a comprehensive advertising strategy that maximizes ROI and drives sales effectively in the competitive digital landscape.

You can also split your budget between Shopping and Search Campaigns to drive traffic to your site. Shopping and text ads can also appear together, doubling your visibility.

Types of Google Shopping Campaigns

You can create two types of Google Shopping Campaigns: Standard Shopping Campaigns and Performance Max Campaigns. Let’s discuss more about these two in detail:

1. Standard Shopping Campaigns

Standard Shopping campaigns have been a part of Google Advertising for a long time now. You organize ad groups in a campaign, each group bundling similar products with matching settings like location and language. Inside these ad groups, you can showcase ads for individual items.

To use Standard Shopping campaigns, you set up a Merchant Center account and submit your product data feed. Then, within your shopping campaign, you can create ad groups and add products to them from your feed. This approach allows granular control over your campaigns and ad group settings.

2. Performance Max Campaigns

Performance Max is Google’s automated campaign type that accesses all of a user’s advertising inventory from one campaign.

It uses advanced automation and machine learning to optimize bids, ad placement, budget allocation, and other factors to maximize ROI. It also shifts spending to better-performing ads and products to drive results.

The key difference between Standard Shopping and Performance Max is that, in the latter, Google handles targeting and optimization for you. You provide assets such as ads and landing pages, while Google’s AI decides how the ad is served.

Both Standard and Performance Max Shopping campaigns can be effective. While Standard campaigns give more control over the ads, Performance Max takes a broader cross-channel approach with automation.

We’ll take a broader look at the differences between the two types of Shopping Ads in the following section.

Differences Between Performance Max and Standard Shopping Campaigns

Here are some key differences between Standard Shopping campaigns and Performance Max campaigns:

AspectPerformance Max CampaignsStandard Shopping Campaigns
Setup ProcessModerately complex setup  process. You will have to create a campaign in Google Ads, set campaign objectives, and configure bidding strategy, integrate with Merchant Center and other Google services. You will also have to set up ad creatives and assetsRelatively straightforward. You will have to create a campaign in Google Ads, link your Merchant Center account, define campaign settings, create product groups, and set bids and negative keywords
Level of AutomationAlmost full automation using Google's AIFull manual control over campaigns, along with the option to run with automated bidding
Ad PlacementAds are displayed across the Google network- Search, Display, YouTube, etc.Limited to Google Images, Shopping tab, and Search
OptimizationRelies fully on Google's automation for optimizationsManual control allows granular adjustments and optimizations
ReportingLimited reporting information is currently availableDetailed reports available on search queries and performance
Negative KeywordsCan add negative keywords only at the account levelCan add negative keywords at the ad group, campaign, and account level
Targeting AccuracyPotentially less accurate unless relevant audiences are addedHighly accurate, product-based targeting
Bid AdjustmentsNot possible to make manual bid adjustmentsFull control to make bid adjustments as and when needed

Should You Run Standard Shopping and Performance Max Together?

There has been some debate on whether Standard Shopping campaigns can run successfully alongside Performance Max campaigns or if Performance Max takes priority and pauses Standard Shopping.

Dhiraj, our in-house Shopping expert at Optmyzr says, “Technically speaking, if the same products are being advertised through both campaign types, Standard Shopping is likely to not get anything.

The debate is that if you’re using products from the same Merchant Center, will Performance Max cannibalize standard shopping even though they advertise on different products?

It’s possible, especially if the final URL expansion is ON. But even if it is not, there is a possibility that with the way Performance Max works, it can broadly match with other products too. If the final URL expansion is OFF, you can use Performance Max and Standard Shopping for different sets of products and it should ideally work better.”

If you run a Performance Max campaign concurrently with a Standard campaign for the same set of products, Google’s algorithm kicks into action to ensure your advertising investments produce the best output for you. This means that ad prioritization is likely to favor the Performance Max campaign and is most likely to take precedence over the Standard one.

So should you run Standard Shopping and Performance Max together? It really depends on your specific goals and strategies.

Ryan Wilton from The Co-operative Group says, “We run standard shopping alongside Performance Max in all of our accounts. They get traffic if the Performance Max budget is exhausted or for whatever reason don’t trigger in the auction. (Running them simultaneously can also come) handy to get some search term data too.”

Running these campaigns together can help you maximize exposure and use Google’s advanced algorithms for ad prioritization. However, it is important to monitor and optimize your campaigns regularly to make the most of this combination.

Advertisers have seen some advantages of running Performance Max campaigns with brand negatives and then running Standard campaigns with exact-match brand keywords.

Nibha Gupta from Digital Champ says, “I have always run Performance Max with shopping ads as that setup has helped me limit Performance Max to only non-brand keywords. Once I solely ran a Performance Max campaign with brand negatives and another Performance Max campaign without any, I saw that the overall ROAS I got from this setup was lower than when I had a shopping brand campaign.”

Requirements for Setting up Google Shopping Ads

There are a few requirements you’ll need to meet to be able to set up Shopping Campaigns using the Merchant Center feed:

1. Merchant Center Setup

Product Data: Ensure your product data is accurate and up-to-date according to Google’s product data specification guidelines. This includes details like titles, descriptions, images, prices, and availability.

Policy Compliance: Verify that your business type, products, promotions, and website comply with Google’s Shopping ads policies to avoid disapproval or suspension.

2. Connect Google Merchant Center and Google Ads

Link your Google Merchant Center and Google Ads accounts to enable seamless transfer of product data and campaign management. This integration allows you to create and optimize Shopping campaigns directly from Google Ads, utilizing the product feed from Merchant Center.

You can read more about the policies and guidelines here.

What is Google Merchant Center?

Simply put, the Google Merchant Center account, allows you to upload and manage your product data so that your products appear across Google Search, Maps, YouTube, and more.

How to Set up a Google Merchant Center Account?

You can find a quick walkthrough of how to set up your Merchant Center Account in this video.

For further assistance and details regarding the Merchant Center, you can refer to this article.

Merchant Center Next Is Replacing Merchant Center

Google unveiled a more simplified version of the Merchant Center at the Google Marketing Live 2023. Apart from a simpler look and easier navigation, Merchant Center Next also allows you to populate products on the campaign directly from your website.

You can read more about what to expect from Merchant Center Next in this article.

How to Create a Google Shopping Campaign?

Using Google Ads

You can create and manage Shopping campaigns, including updating campaign settings and product groups directly in your Google Ads account.

1. Start a New Campaign:

2. Connect Merchant Center:

3. (Optional) Select Feeds:

4. Choose Campaign Settings:

5. Click “Save and continue” to proceed.

6. Create Ad Group:

7. Manage Product Groups:

You can find a quick video walkthrough of the steps here:

Using Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Builder

The Optmyzr Shopping Campaign Management tool simplifies the creation and oversight of Shopping and Performance Max Retail campaigns. By integrating it with your Merchant Center, you can streamline repetitive tasks and free up your time for more meaningful tasks

Here’s how you can do it:

Creating a Shopping Campaign with Optmyzr takes significantly less time compared to using Google Ads. This means less hassle and more opportunity to focus on refining your campaign strategies.

Automation from Performance Max and Merchant Center Next has made running ads accessible and convenient to more advertisers than ever before.

And Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Management Tool gives you the ability to create your own automations that you can control and security over your ad spend, bidding, and targeting, instead of relying on those created by Google’s platform.

A strategic approach to Shopping Campaigns is what can set you apart from PPC novices who depend on system automations, and help you unlevel the playing field yet again.

How to Sync Your Shopping Campaigns With the Merchant Center Feed?

Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Management Tool offers customizable automations that complement Google Ads’ existing platform features.

You can refresh product groups and listing groups manually or schedule automatic syncs using the tool. Refreshing or syncing your campaigns/campaign groups will allow you to

The Automatic Sync Schedule option allows you to set up automated sync at intervals of your choice. You can also use the tool to see if a sync schedule has been set up, and when it’s scheduled to run if no automation has been set up, or if the automation has been paused.

You can create and edit schedules based on various parameters including automation type, frequency, and more.

Go From Setup to Sales

Google Ads has become very competitive over the years. But it’s still a tremendous channel for high growth if you do it right. Combine automation layering with that and you will be able to run campaigns where you hold the control.

And if you need help with that, try using Optmyzr’s toolkit. You can sign up for a 14-day free trial here.

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

How to Generate Performance Report of Products Overlapping Across Standard Shopping and PMax Campaigns

Have you ever wondered how many products you have overlapping or present in your various shopping (Standard or Performance Max) campaigns?

In Optmyzr, we have a set of tools that provide rich insights at different levels, to not only solve the question about overlapping but also help you make better decisions on your campaigns.

Here’s a 3-step process to help you compare your products’ performance across those campaigns.

Step 1: Get an Audit of the Products and Campaigns.

In Shopping Feed Audits, you can get among other relevant audits from your merchant feed, a list of products active in various campaigns in the same ads account; just make sure to enable this individual audit before you run the preview mode:

Image 1 - Sample feed policy product level

In the full audit report, you will find this audit in the Product level section, along with the full list of item IDs, number of repetitions (campaigns), and the campaign names. You can download this audit individually as well:

Image 2 - Download audit

For the next step, we recommend creating a Google Sheet with the information on the product IDs.

Step 2: Load Your Results in Rule Engine.

With the help of our solution for custom optimizations and automation - Rule Engine, you can create a strategy and report your products from shopping and Performance Max campaigns.

Under Rule Engine, create a new strategy at the Shopping/PMax Product scope:

Image 3 - Create new strategy

If you have a Google Sheet ready with the information from the previous audit, you can connect it to the Rule Engine strategy with the help of External List Data and use the column containing the item IDs:

Image 4 - Connect data from spreadsheet

This attribute will help us report the products with the same IDs from the audit results.

In your first rule, you can create a condition in the form of “Item ID (aggregated by Account) in (ignore case) list (column from the Google Sheet)”:

Image 5 - External list data column

Once this is ready, you are free to add more conditions in the rule with performance metrics at the product level, such as impressions, clicks, ROAS, cost, etc, and the thresholds you prefer (for example >= 0).

Image 6 - Products in multiple campaigns

Something worth mentioning is that products with no impressions during the selected date range will be excluded from the analysis. Plus, it’s important to consider a date range similar to the audit to have consistency in the analysis.

Step 3: Compare the Products’ Performance Across the Campaigns.

Finally, on the View Suggestions page, you can visualize all the matching results.

Here we recommend clicking on the “Product Item ID” header so the sorting groups the same IDs in the list:

Image 7 - Product item IDs list

Based on this view you can easily identify in which campaigns the products performed better and then apply the adjustments or decisions you prefer.

So, those are 3 simple steps that’ll help you compare your products’ performance across your Standard Shopping and Performance Max campaigns.

If this looks like something you’re interested, go ahead and try it out in Rule Engine. And if you have any questions, or if you’d like us to have a look at your recipe before you start running it just email us at support@optmyzr.com – we’ll be glad to help you.

Top 10 tools 10,000+ advertisers used in 2023 to maximize their PPC ROI

PPC in 2023 was a whirlwind, fraught with dynamic shifts and challenges. From the widespread adoption of Performance Max to Google’s continuous pursuit of automation, advertisers faced a landscape that demanded adaptability. However, amid these transformations, Optmyzr emerged as a steadfast partner, empowering advertisers through innovation and support.

We also celebrated a decade of commitment and success, bagging the prestigious Global and US Search Awards 2023. The year witnessed a surge of tools and enhancements, revolutionizing the way advertisers navigate and optimize their campaigns. 

In this article, you’ll learn about ten tools advertisers loved to use in 2023 for their PPC management and optimization workflows. You’ll also get a peek into what lies ahead in 2024.

Optmyzr Express - Get quick, actionable optimization suggestions across multiple accounts 

Optmyzr Express shows you optimization suggestions for your Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Amazon Ads accounts. It is designed to work as a to-do list for you to breeze through multiple optimization tasks in minutes.

Picture it as your digital advertising checklist, effortlessly guiding you through a spectrum of optimizations, from re-enabling converting keywords to refining PMax asset group targeting.

Here’s what PPC Expert Matthieu Tran-Van had to say about Optmyzr Express:

“I love features embedded in the Optmyzr tool like Optmyzr Express, which gives you an overview of all the kinds of optimizations that you can take right now in your account to improve the hygiene of the account and also enhance its performance.”

The tool underwent a transformative upgrade in 2023. Three exciting suggestions added to it are:

Optmyzr Sidekick: Your AI PPC Assistant

Meet the Optmyzr Sidekick, your AI PPC assistant! Found on the Account Dashboard, it analyzes various aspects of the account and KPIs, provides quick optimization suggestions, and even answers your custom queries. 

Bid farewell to surfing through hundreds of account and campaign performance reports; the Sidekick simplifies it. Just ask for what you need! 

Remember, the Sidekick is always learning. Share feedback, integrate it into your PPC workflow, and experience a dynamic, AI-powered boost for your PPC endeavors!

Wondering how Generative AI can help you manage your campaigns? Here’s a Town Hall on leveraging ChatGPT in PPC.

Invalid Traffic Protection - Your ultimate budget guard

Shield your budget from unwarranted depletion with Optmyzr’s Invalid Traffic Protection. Newly integrated into the Account Dashboard, this vigilant widget is your trustworthy companion, ensuring your budget stays intact.

In collaboration with Cheq, a top-tier invalid traffic detection technology, it helps you effectively monitor and block invalid traffic to discern how much of your budget is spent on non-converting clicks.

You can activate traffic monitoring and blocking by simply clicking on the widget and following the tool’s steps, which include adding a code snippet to your website URL for seamless monitoring. What’s more, Optmyzr goes beyond traffic monitoring; you can use the Smart Exclusions tool to detect and exclude invalid placements before they start accruing costs, ensuring significant savings as you kickstart your year.

Optimize campaigns based on weather forecast

For those marketers managing weather-dependent products or services, Optmyzr unveils a sophisticated campaign optimization tool meticulously designed to align with your weather-conscious strategies. Yes, it boasts advanced features, yet its essence lies in inherent simplicity. Our customers have simply loved using this tool for various use cases ranging from managing clients selling firewood, to air conditioning-related businesses.

Creating weather-based rules through this tool takes almost no time at all; simply target or exclude locations, and pause/enable campaigns in response to real-time weather condition changes.

Envision your ads seamlessly adapting to sunny days or pausing during thunderstorms - pure magic! You can even automate the process, setting it to run on a schedule or activating it later with a simple click. 

For those seeking more granularity, the Rule Engine enables customized conditions, allowing advanced actions like budget adjustments, ad group target CPA modifications, and campaign target ROAS settings based on weather forecasts. After all, advertising should mirror the dynamic nature of the weather!

Change History - Easily spot why your account performance changed

Efficiently managing Google Ads campaigns depends heavily on tracking performance changes and reaching desired objectives. Yet, sifting through hundreds or thousands of “Change History” entries can be a daunting task.

This long process is now easy for you; just use Optmyzr’s “Change History” feature! For instance, while analyzing performance insights with the PPC Investigator, you can easily unveil recent changes across ad groups, campaigns, and keywords made by different account managers. What’s more, you can even automate “Change History” reports through the Rule Engine!

Why is this beneficial? 

It helps you quickly assess auto-applied optimizations by Google and Microsoft Ads, track team-driven account alterations, enhancing accountability and control. This tool not only uncovers the ‘what’ but also the ‘why’ behind account performance, offering valuable insights to elevate future campaign management. A smarter way to learn from successes and setbacks!

PPC Vertical Benchmarks - Get insights about the industry your account belongs to

The next tool in our list, PPC Vertical Benchmarks, is your pivotal asset in the competitive PPC landscape. This tool serves as a compass, providing nuanced insights into your Google Ads campaign performance relative to industry peers. You can explore your account’s performance via key metrics - Average CPC, Conversion Rate, CPA, CTR, and ROAS, to refine your advertising strategy accordingly.

Additionally, you can go beyond standard evaluations and delve into keyword-specific data, comparing your match type spread with industry benchmarks for finely tuned keyword strategies. This tool unfolds insights and provides strategic advantages like:

Shopping Campaign Management - Create and manage e-commerce campaigns in one page

In our ongoing commitment to enhancing e-commerce management, Optmyzr proudly presents the new “Shopping Campaign Management” tool - an all-in-one solution for seamless control and analysis of all shopping and PMax campaigns on a single page.

Navigating the tool is a breeze. Simply locate the “Create new campaign” option and swiftly set up Standard Shopping Campaigns, Optmyzr Smart Campaigns, and PMax Retail Campaigns, both with and without assets.

The real gem lies in Optmyzr’s latest update to this tool. Crafting performance-based Shopping or PMax Campaigns has long been a go-to strategy. In the traditional process, multiple steps were involved, ranging from obtaining product reports to incorporating custom labels in campaigns.

Here’s how the tool’s newest update streamlines this entire process. 

This update ensures a more efficient and intuitive approach to crafting and managing performance-driven Shopping and PMax campaigns, offering advertisers a simplified yet powerful tool for navigating the complexities of e-commerce.

Here’s what Byron Trzeciak, Director, PixelRush, had to say about the shopping campaign structuring feature of Optmyzr:

“Segmenting and structuring shopping campaigns by high-performing products (in terms of structuring around the product value and how many sales our products have gotten) - that was an area that the Optmyzr team definitely helped us with.”

Rule Engine - Analyze high and low-performing entities and filter suggestions based on business knowledge

Optmyzr’s Rule Engine, your personalized optimization builder, is now enhanced with novel features. Firstly, the Top/Bottom operators swiftly pinpoint low and high-performing entities, thus enhancing your optimization and analysis processes. Two popular scenarios our customers use this feature for are:

But the innovation doesn’t stop there. Our latest update: the “External List Data” feature, gives you precise control over the entities like search terms, placements, etc. involved in the Rule Engine strategy. Simply input a set of entities based on your business insights, and the system will let you include or exclude them from the strategy. Your optimization journey just became more powerful and nuanced, putting you in the driver’s seat for unparalleled campaign management!

“Rule Engine is certainly one of the amazing sections of Optmyzr because it’s really like your dedicated, highly flexible, and scalable optimization hub where you can automate a lot of very valuable optimizations for your clients with infinite customizations.” - Matthieu Tran-Van, PPC expert and author

Google Analytics 4 - Optmyzr’s got your back with the UA transition!

Responding to Google’s move from Universal Analytics to GA4, Optmyzr has taken proactive steps for a seamless user transition. Embracing this evolution, our dedicated Product Team unveiled a revitalized toolset to maximize GA4’s potential in analyzing your campaigns’ performance.

Reporting

Within the Reports tool, you can seamlessly blend Google Ads and Analytics insights with new GA4 widgets. You have the option to showcase GA4 performance through the Key Performance Metrics table, track emerging or declining trends in specific segments with the Dimension Trend widget for GA4, and more.

Segment Explorer

Delve into audience segments with the Explore Audience Segments tool, merging GA4 metric insights. Smoothly import all dimensions, metrics, and events into the tool for comprehensive exploration and analysis. 

Are you looking for tips on setting up GA4 in your accounts? Optmyzr’s Town Hall on Google Analytics 4 would be a great starting point; do check it out below!

Elevate your Sponsored Display Campaigns on Amazon with Optmyzr’s latest updates, which offer you unprecedented control and efficiency.

Gain control over campaign traffic with Rule Engine

The popular ‘Product Targets’ section in Rule Engine now seamlessly extends its prowess to Sponsored Display campaigns too! This compatibility allows you to precisely track campaign-generated traffic by targeting relevant product targets/categories, ensuring that your ads resonate with users actively seeking and expressing interest in your advertised product category. 

You can also identify expensive targets to filter out irrelevant traffic and adjust their bids and statuses to optimize ad spend.

Master Audience Targeting

You can now navigate Sponsored Display ads’ audiences effortlessly through Optmyzr’s various tools like Rule Engine, Account Dashboard, and Reports.

Use the Rule Engine to pinpoint underperforming or top-performing audiences, and explore high-traffic audience segments and maximize their ROI with Account Dashboard widgets like “Top Elements." 

Optmyzr ensures your Amazon Ads strategy remains ahead of the curve; so check out our features now!

What’s in store for you in 2024?

Embark on a transformative journey with Optmyzr in 2024! Two major updates to look out for are:

The future is here, and it’s fueled by Optmyzr’s commitment to innovation and empowerment. Get ready to conquer 2024 with Optmyzr’s unparalleled tools and capabilities!

Final thoughts

As we continue to explore the boundless possibilities of the features introduced by Optmyzr in 2023, it’s clear that innovation never takes a backseat. From Optmyzr Express streamlining your optimizations to the prowess of Optmyzr Sidekick and its AI-powered insights, the journey has been nothing short of extraordinary.

Looking ahead to 2024, brace yourself for ‘Optmyzr for Social’ and more advanced budget management options, promising a year filled with unparalleled tools and capabilities.

Ready to take the leap and experience the platform firsthand? Connect with our Sales team now! Schedule a personalized demo, explore these attractive features, and sign up for a no-strings-attached free trial now. Your journey to advertising excellence starts here - empower your strategies, exceed your goals, and conquer the future with Optmyzr!

How to Diagnose Your Ecommerce Performance Max Campaigns

Need to evaluate Performance Max? Start here.

In this article, we’ll explore the many areas to consider and explore when evaluating Google Ads Performance Max (i.e. PMax) campaigns.

Given the current limitations of insights we can pull from these campaigns, it can be difficult to understand the causes of performance fluctuations. This guide is here to make accomplishing that task easier than ever.

First Principles: Getting Familiar With The Context Of Our Data

Let’s begin with some first principles.

First off, it might be too soon to freak out!

Familiarize yourself with your estimated conversion reporting delay and the average days to conversion after the first ad interaction in your account for the conversion action that you’re analyzing.

Does it usually take 7 days before all conversion metrics are reported? Does it usually take 11 days until a customer completes a purchase after their first interaction with your ads?

In either case, if it’s only been a few days since your last major change to the campaign, it might be best to wait several more days before rushing to any major conclusions about performance.

Try to have as much of a complete picture of conversion metrics and the typical buying journey of your customers as you can before judging the outcome of your recent changes too harshly.

One quick way to check your recent average conversion reporting delay is by navigating to the Campaigns section of your account and changing the date range to Today, then hovering your mouse over the Conversions metric in the Account row.

This helps you understand, on a high-level, how long it takes customers who see and click your ad to complete a particular conversion action. Conversions can be reported up to 90 days after the click, depending on the conversion window you’ve chosen for that particular conversion action.

Pro Tip: If you’d ever like to see the conversions that actually occurred on a given date, use the “Conversions (by conv. time)” metrics. Do note, however, that conversion by time data is only available after March 6, 2019.

Now take an account-level look at the average days to conversion for the conversion action you’re analyzing by navigating to the Attribution > Path metrics section of your account. You’ll find this section under “Tools and settings” (top-right of page) > Measurement > Attribution.

Then click “Path metrics” on the left-side of the page. Once there, change the “Conversion action” filter as needed, choose an appropriate attribution Lookback window, choose a conversion window to analyze by changing the date range, then change the “Measure from last interaction” to “Measure from first interaction.”

Note the difference between Lookback window and Conversion window, per Google:

To see this in more detail and view the average days to conversion for the PMax campaign you’re investigating, add the Conversions > Days to Conversion segment to your Campaigns data table.

Usual Suspects (Non-PMax Specific): Most Common Indirect Causes Of Performance Fluctuation

Okay, so we’ve identified that we are indeed justified in our freakout. What now?

Let’s first investigate the “usual suspects” of major changes to PMax performance.

Conversion Tracking

Have there been any changes that may have affected conversion tracking?

For example, has there been any changes to the source code of your site or Google Tag Manager, or are there any error messages showing in the Conversions section of Google Ads, the Diagnostics section of any of your Primary conversion actions in Google Ads, the Overview section of your Google Ads account, or the Google Ads Tag or Google Analytics sections of your Google Ads account within the Your Data Sources area of Audience Manager?

Budget, Bidding, Asset Group, & Listing Group Changes

Have there been any changes to the campaigns budget, bidding, or Asset Groups since performance improved or worsened?

Changes to any of these three can have major impacts on performance - especially relatively large budget increases or decreases, bid strategy type changes, enabling or disabling of Asset Groups, or Listing Group product additions or exclusions.

Google Merchant Center Issues or Major Product Feed Changes

Check the Diagnostics section of your Google Merchant Center account for any recent disapprovals or warnings. Also, check the bell icon on the top-right of your Google Merchant Center account to see if there are any other notifications of issues that may be impacting the performance of your Shopping ads.

If you’re utilizing a Content API setup within your Google Merchant Center, don’t forget to check the Diagnostics report within the Content API section of your Google Merchant Center account as well. Are there major or consistent failed API calls occurring that may be impacting your Shopping ads?

Have there been any changes to your product feed that may have affected performance? If Supplemental Feeds are in use, are they still in sync and up-to-date with your primary product feed?

Site Changes

Have there been any changes to your site such as site navigation, checkout flows, CMS plugins, web hosting, or product pages?

Even seemingly minor changes to the site can cause major, unexpected negative consequences to the performance of your PMax campaigns.

Make sure you remain “in the loop” of any changes that occur to the site so you can closely monitor their potential impacts on performance - especially any changes that might impact conversion tracking or the product pages of best sellers.

Any recent changes to products going in or out of stock on your site, especially for any best sellers? Any recent changes to product pricing or promotions, customer shipping costs or free shipping offer thresholds?

Any extremely negative reviews showing on the site, or elsewhere for your products (e.g. on Amazon, on high-traffic volume review sites)?

Google Search Console

If you use Google Search Console, are all pages on your site that you want Google to crawl indexed with Google Search Console? Are there any important URLs that are now showing as “Failing” in the Core Web Vitals section of your Google Search Console account?

Market

Evaluate changes in the search behavior for your products by reviewing, if available, the Search Terms and Search Trend Insight data in the Insights section of your Performance Max campaign and your Google Ads account as a whole.

Pay particular attention to high search volume Search Categories and search terms that have incurred large positive or negative shifts in metrics like impressions and conversions.

Outside of high search volume terms, are you seeing major shifts in the performance of other terms you’ve deemed are important, such as branded, competitor, top-of-funnel, or commercial-intent-oriented searches?

Note that Search Trend Insight data is not available for all advertisers, or these insights may not be very relevant to the products you’re offering, but do check-in periodically to see if new insights emerge.

Google will, at times, provide a notification to new insights such as these in the “Notifications” feature of your account - found by clicking the bell icon in the top-right corner of your Google Ads account.

Similarly, check Google’s built-in Keyword Planner tool and Google Trends for any outliers in interest over time for high search volume or high conversion volume search terms.

When using Google Trends, try different search terms, topics, categories (e.g. Web search, Shopping, YouTube), and date ranges to uncover potential insights into changes in search behavior.

Have people recently changed or started to change the way they’re searching for the products you offer? Are there new major competitors who’ve recently entered the market?

Is there seasonality at play or global dynamics that may be affecting the buying behavior of your products or consumer spending in general that is apparent through this analysis?

Other areas to check, depending on if these features are available to you, are the Site Search > Search Terms section of your Google Analytics account and the Best Sellers section of your Google Merchant Center account.

Are there any outliers in how people use the search feature on your site? If applicable, are you seeing similar changes in search behavior in your Microsoft Ads account? Have any of your top selling products changed in popularity rank recently?

Note that the popularity rank is the popularity of the item on Shopping ads and free listings, in the selected category and country, based on the estimated number of units sold.

Have your competitors started getting more or less aggressive in their bidding? Check the Auction Insights section of your PMax campaign to investigate. Don’t forget to check both the Search and Shopping filter of this section.

Other Marketing

Google Ads doesn’t work in a vacuum. Have you recently pulled spend away or dramatically increased spend or marketing efforts towards another marketing channel that may have caused a ripple effect to Google Ads performance?

Common examples include changes to social media marketing, email or SMS marketing, affiliate and referral marketing, or third-party remarketing channels.

Check for metric fluctuation outliers in your Google Analytics Source/Medium report or your third-party attribution software, if you have one, for more detailed performance insights.

Don’t forget to analyze the Shopping Behavior and Product Performance section of your Google Analytics account as well to locate any performance fluctuation outliers.

Non-PMax Campaigns

Have you added, paused, or made any major changes to any other non-PMax campaigns in the account?

Performance Max campaigns tend to be sensitive to and affected by relatively major changes to other active Google Ads campaigns, such as, but not limited to, Display, YouTube, Discovery, and Search campaigns using Dynamic Search Ads.

Diving Deeper (PMax Specific): Performance Fluctuations Directly Correlated To Performance Max Campaigns

Now that we’ve investigated the usual suspects found outside of PMax, let’s dive deeper into the PMax campaign in question to see if there are more causation insights we can uncover.

Google Bidding & Targeting Algorithm Shifts

Has Google started showing your ads more or less on the Shopping ads network? Build a custom report to find out using the “MC ID” dimension. This is the ID of the Google Merchant Center account associated with the products being advertised.

Note: Expect impression metrics in campaign data tables in the Campaigns section of your account to be lower than the number of impressions shown for an associated MC-ID.

Per Google: “When an ad shows many products in an individual ad slot, each product collects an impression. However, the campaign, Asset Group, and ad recognize that only a single ad was showing and will count it as one impression.”

Get a glimpse of recent optimizations made by Google’s automated bidding strategy by reviewing the Top Bidding Signals report in the Overview tab of your campaign.

Investigate the landing pages Google has been sending Performance Max ad clicks to by building a custom report using the Landing Page dimension:

Note: This report is especially important to check if Final URL Expansion is enabled for a given PMax campaign.

Additionally, in many cases, you’ll want to download this data so you can, at a minimum, run the data through pivot tables to find categorical patterns, such as the performance of blog pages vs product pages, different product categories, best sellers vs other products, home page vs product pages, etc.

Performance Metric Outliers

First, if the Performance Max campaign has reliable historical data, familiarize yourself with what “normal” performance fluctuation looks like for it. This will help stifle recency bias.

Look for metric outliers when comparing pre and post major increases or decreases in performance.

Pay special attention to diagnostic and micro-volume metrics like Avg. CPC, CTR, Impr., Conv. rate, Value / conv., Views, Avg. CPM, as well as other major performance indicators like sales-based Conversions and Conv. Value / cost or Cost / Conv.

Open the Products section of the campaign and look for any outliers in Product-specific performance outliers pre and post major drops in performance.

Look at product-specific metrics as a whole for the campaign as well as by Asset Group by adding the Asset Group table filter.

Pay particular attention to differences in high vs low Value/conv. and high vs low priced products, products with a relatively high number of impressions and relatively high CTRs vs relatively high Conv. rate products with statistically significant click data historically, and best seller impressions vs others product impressions.

Is Google now predominantly pushing lower or higher Value/conv. products? Is Google now predominantly pushing products with high CTRs but not products with high conversion rates?

Is Google now favoring to show products that aren’t your bestsellers or products you need to push?

It’s important to note that the Conversion metrics found in this Products section represent products in your product catalog that were clicked and led to the sale of some product of yours, they do not necessarily represent the number of sales of that product after an ad click.

Make sure you compare the product sale metrics you see here with what you find in the Product Performance section of your Google Analytics account with an audience filter that just shows traffic from Performance Max.

To investigate performance change outliers for Listing Groups (performance of product attributes as assigned in Merchant Center and as segmented within an Asset Group), perform the same analysis to the Listing Groups section of your PMax campaign as you did in the Products section.

Note that you will be limited in your ability to analyze comparison metrics in this section because, at the time of this writing (November 2022), comparison values are not available in the Listing Groups section of Performance Max campaigns.

Lastly, check whether there has been a change in approval status to any assets within your Asset Groups or Ad Extensions, such as Eligible (Limited) or Disapproved.

Situation-Dependent Causes Of Performance Fluctuation

It’s important to mention that there will be special case scenarios to consider when evaluating why Performance Max improved or worsened in performance that will only be relevant for some accounts.

I’ve listed many of the most common of those below.

What’s Next?

Warning: Don’t Make Too Many Corrective Changes At Once

Once you’ve identified areas of opportunity for corrective action or scale, don’t make too many potentially high-impact changes at once, such as changing the bid strategy type AND excluding some high-volume products from your PMax campaign.

With the limited insights we can already gather from this campaign type, the last thing you’ll want to have is a situation where you don’t know which major change you made was the cause of greatly improved or greatly worsened performance.

Where to go from here depends highly on what you found in your analysis and on many other factors that will vary dramatically from business to business, such as, but not limited to, aversion to experimental risk, available ad spend budget, profitability thresholds, goals of the business, and internal resources for account management.

This is where Google Ads is most tricky and often where businesses will turn to PPC professionals for assistance in correcting ad spend inefficiencies or scaling success in a way that is uniquely tailored to the needs and available data of the business.

Performance Max is an ever-changing new-ish product offering from Google Ads, so expect some technical areas of this guide to possibly become quickly outdated.

However, there are also many high-level data analysis principles baked in that I don’t see changing much anytime soon.

While this guide doesn’t cover every possible situation or reason for performance changes in your Performance Max campaigns, my hope is that it will be a solid starting point for most.

I’m also sharing a checklist below to help you get started quickly.

You don’t have to go through every single one of these points. Just go over the ones that are relevant to your business.

I also discussed some of these points on PPC Town Hall with Frederick Vallaeys and Mike Rhodes. You can watch the full video here:

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Performance Max 44-point evaluation checklist for ecommerce businesses

Investigate…

  1. Estimated conversion reporting delay.
  2. Average days to conversion from first ad interaction (account-wide and campaign-specific).
  3. Conversion tracking and recent changes to conversion actions.
  4. What “normal” PMax performance fluctuation looks like for the account (if appl.)
  5. Recent changes to budget, bid strategy type, Asset Groups, and Listing Groups
  6. Google Merchant Center product disapprovals and warnings, account issues, and feed issues.
  7. Changes to the site (e.g. navigation/checkout, plugins, hosting, page designs)
  8. Changes to in-stock products, especially best sellers.
  9. Changes to pricing, customer shipping costs, and promotions listed or previously listed on the site.
  10. Extremely negative reviews on and off the site
  11. Google Search Console for “Failing” URLs
  12. Changes in relevant search and buying behavior via the Insights section of your PMax campaign and your account as a whole, Google’s Keyword Planner, Google Trends, your site’s search feature (if appl.), Best Sellers section of Google Merchant Center (if appl.), and Microsoft Ads (if appl.).
  13. New competitors in the market or competitors who are changing their level of competitiveness within ad auctions you compete in.
  14. Major changes in other marketing and site traffic channels outside of Google and Microsoft Ads (e.g. Facebook Ads, email automation, affiliates, third-party remarketing channels)
  15. Major changes in on-site shopping behavior (e.g. cart abandonment, check-out abandonment, sessions with transactions)
  16. Shifts in Shopping network-specific performance for PMax.
  17. Top Bidding Signals report for optimization changes recently made by automated bidding.
  18. Performance shifts of landing pages PMax ad clicks are being sent to.
  19. Major changes made to non-PMax campaigns that may have impacted the performance of PMax.
  20. Major shifts in the performance of high-volume or high-performing search terms, geographies, devices, days, days of the week, hours, audiences, match types, or campaign types in non-PMax campaigns.
  21. Performance metric outliers for the campaign pre and post-major increases or decreases in performance.
  22. Performance metric outliers for the products advertised in the campaign - at the campaign-level and Asset Group-level.
  23. Performance metric outliers for the Listing Groups in the campaign.
  24. Asset Group assets or Ad Extensions with Eligible (Limited) or Disapproved status.
  25. Seasonality Adjustments not being added for major promotions, or for other major expected spikes or dips in conversion rates.
  26. Improperly added Data Exclusions, or for instances where Data Exclusions should have been added but were not.
  27. Scripts or Automated Rules that made changes to the account that may have had an impact on Performance Max.
  28. Account changes by other users who are not the primary account manager.
  29. Auto-applied recommendation changes made by Google.
  30. Customer match list additions, removals, or edits.
  31. Custom Experiments recently ended in the account.
  32. Value rules or conversion value adjustments were added, edited, or removed.
  33. “Best” rated assets inside top performing Asset Groups had a recent change in rating.
  34. High-performing or high-volume search categories or terms shifted away from a high-performing or high-volume Asset Group.
  35. Edits made to a Business Feed or Custom Variable that affected any non-PMax campaigns.
  36. CRM integration issues.
  37. Negative Keyword List was added to the PMax campaign being evaluated per the request of another user.
  38. Negative keywords were improperly added to a Negative Keyword List that is applied to the PMax campaign being evaluated.
  39. YouTube ads were opted out of by another user.
  40. Mobile app placements not owned and operated by Google had major increases or decreases in impressions.
  41. Mobile app category exclusions were applied at the account or campaign level.
  42. Location or Ad Schedule exclusions were added or removed for the PMax campaign being evaluated.
  43. Improperly setup Performance Max URL Exclusions.
  44. Auto-generated YouTube videos were added by Google to the PMax campaign being evaluated.

Want to safeguard your Performance Max campaigns? Click here to learn how.

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Performance Max: 5 Effective Ways to Safeguard Your Campaigns in 2024

Performance Max is one of the biggest automated campaigns from Google in the last few years. It replaced Smart Shopping and Local campaigns in September 2022 making it very clear to us that Google has it as the top focus in its ad strategy and that more automation is on the way.

Whether we like it or not, this is the world we live in. So we have to start to work together with the machines because Google is making us and also it generally tends to provide better results.

Of course, you should never give up control of your Performance Max campaign and let automation take over. And this brings us to the concept of automation layering, which in simpler terms means adding a layer of your own automation over that of Google’s to safeguard your campaigns.

In this article, you’re going to learn how you can safeguard your Performance Max campaigns in the five following areas.

1. Account structure

2. Alerts

3. Budgets

4. Experiments

5. Placements

Let’s go into detail and learn how you can do that using Optmyzr’s tools.

1. Create the account structure that supports your business goals

When Google says “build a Performance Max campaign”, they don’t mean that you have to build just one. You can create multiple Performance Max campaigns and we recommend you do that.

For instance, you can create multiple campaigns based on margins, because margins also determine what your bidding target should be.

For high-margin products, you can afford to bid much higher and more aggressively and still make a profit. For low-margin products, on the other hand, you might want to have a different ROAS target.

Now, you could’ve also created a structure based on seasonality because you’d want to prioritize budgets at different times of the year.

By creating and maintaining multiple campaigns, you can change settings in response to promotions, seasonality, and other business factors.

And how can you do this in Optmyzr? You can build a dynamic Performance Max campaign (for retail) structure or a shopping campaign structure with Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Builder 2.0.

You can set up how your listing group structure has to look like. For example, say you want to use a custom attribute as your first level of division and one campaign for each different custom label.

This custom label could include your margin data—high margin, low margin, or mid margin. You can also add as much granularity to it as you want. And then as the second level of division, you can create separate asset groups by ‘brand’ which enables you to put in different messaging and creative for each brand that you sell.

And what comes out of it is a split with many campaigns and listing groups that allow you to quickly check what’s new in your product feed and automatically put new products into the correct structure on a daily basis.

P.S. We spoke to two of the best ecommerce experts, Andrew Lolk and Menachem Ani, on PPC Town Hall 71 to learn how to better structure your Performance Max campaigns.

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2. Set guardrails with alerts

You can get alerts whenever your Performance Max campaign deviates from the expected performance.

In this example, you can see that we’re saying we’d like to get alerted if the CPC (cost per conversion) is going off target. And here we can see it has gone 135% off target and is currently trending down.

You can also build custom alerts using the Rule Engine.

Setting up alerts like the one above helps us clearly understand what is automation doing to our campaigns.

3. Optimize budget allocation

You can allocate and optimize budgets effectively and achieve the right level of spend for your campaign(s).

If you have multiple accounts associated with a client (say, five accounts on Google Ads, plus one Facebook and one Microsoft account), you can bring all of those together under one client.

And underneath that, you can create budget groups. For instance, you can create a budget group for all of your branded campaigns and non-branded campaigns, and assign different budgets to each of them. Then you can make sure that you don’t exceed the total allocated budget for any of these budget groups.

One of the things we’ve added is budget optimization capability in the Rule Engine. So if you want to build something really custom based on past performance and on your own business data, you can set up a Rule Engine strategy and optimize it automatically.

4. Experiment effectively to find winners faster

Here’s the truth: nobody in PPC knows exactly what the best strategy to win is. But the person who experiments the most effectively is going to win. The way you get to the right strategy is by iterating and experimenting faster and more effectively.

But the problem that we found with experiments is Google makes it really tedious to see how your experiments are doing, which stage they’re in, and so on. And you have to go to multiple accounts and pages within each account to check your experiments.

But Optmyzr can simplify that for you. We bring all of your experiments onto a single dashboard to quickly show you what experiments are working, which ones you can promote, and which ones you should terminate or maybe replace with a new experiment.

We’re going to add more capabilities in the future, but if you haven’t tested it out yet, go and take a look at it today.

5. Stop ads from showing on low-quality placements

You can use our Rule Engine to exclude placements at the account level.

And we also have a brand new tool for that called Smart Exclusion automation. This is an add-on tool. If you want to know more about it, just talk to your Optmyzr account rep.

This tool uses Optmyzr-wide data to prevent you from wasting money on say, some new, random mobile app that’s click-baiting people into clicking on your ads that are wasting a lot of ad spend but are not converting enough.

We can proactively place it in your account based on the Optmyzr-wide data that we see and prevent you from ever wasting money on that sort of clicks. And we’ll even give you a prediction of how much money you can save and then you can decide if you want to turn this feature on or not.

Take back control of your Performance Max campaigns

Performance Max is not 100% automated. You need to provide it with good data and value-focused optimization so that Google clearly understands what it is that your business really wants and what a ’conversion’ means to you.

Nobody understands your business better than you. So why let Google make decisions for you?

Get started with a 14-day free trial today.

Do Not Start a PPC Agency in 2024 Until You’ve Understood These 7 Things

I spoke to 4 all-star PPCers to discuss different career journeys including the decision to head out on our own (for those who have started an agency or consultancy). After the call, Harry Makins on Twitter asked a follow-up question that got me thinking more about the difference between starting an agency in 2010 and now.

A tweet about starting a PPC agency

I think it’s easier and more difficult. If you’ll allow me to ponder on this, I’ll share my musings below and then perhaps we can continue the conversation on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Oh, and one other important thing. Because these are my musings, I might be wrong. So listen to what I have to say, weigh it to determine whether the logic makes sense, then let me know if you see something in the industry that suggests otherwise. I’d love to keep learning too, with your help.

Deal? Let’s get started.

3 Reasons Why Starting a Digital Marketing Agency in 2024 is HARDER Than Ever

Reason #1: The Digital Marketing Space is More Crowded Than Ever.

That doesn’t even include international agency growth that can service the US!

There are so. Many. Agencies out there right now.

Even in my small network, every time I turn around, another friend is announcing their intent to “go it alone” and try this freelancing thing.

So immediately, we recognize that it is harder out there simply because there are literally more agencies than there used to be.

Reason #2: Companies Are Aggressively In-housing Digital Marketing Services.

Another trend I’m seeing lately is the desire to eliminate vendor relationships and move paid media in-house. There are a number of reasons not to be discussed now for going in-house, or going agency with your media.

However, for the sake of this article, there are MORE agencies than ever, and yet MORE businesses are moving their ad buying in-house.

Seriously, while writing this post I ran across yet another DTC person (Patrick Coddou of Get Supply) announcing his move away from using agencies!

Reason #3: The Market Is More Mature & Also More Picky.

One thing I’m seeing personally is that people are savvier than they were a decade ago, and this works its way into many things.

Sales, for instance.

It used to be easier a decade ago to get into a Google Ads account, identify some immediate opportunities, and tell them to a befuddled marketing manager who said some variation of “okay, okay, what do you charge, you’re hired.”

I’ve found it’s not enough just to “know Google Ads better than the next guy” in order to land clients these days (and remember, there are just more agency options out there competing).

I’ve also found accounts we take over tend to be (on average) managed better than they were 5 years ago which makes improving them more challenging than the “glory days” when we could take over a new account in shambles and expect to see immediate results by adding in a few exact match keywords plus ads that actually land the user on the correct landing page (this is a general observation, rather than a prescribed rule, of course. There are still REALLY bad managers out there making bad accounts).

4 Reasons Why Starting a Digital Marketing Agency in 2024 is EASIER Than Ever

Okay, so we ran over some reasons why it’s harder than ever to start a new agency. Is there any good news? Actually, I think there is a lot of good news here!

Read on.

Reason #1: Online Businesses Are Booming.

It’s no secret (normal tech growth followed by a pandemic forcing ecommerce growth) that the newfangled-internet-thing continues to grow as an important part of any business.

Ecommerce sales made up only 5% of retail sales in 2011 (remember, back when the number of agencies was smaller), and in 2021 it has climbed to around 13%. So, while there are more agencies, there is more to manage for those agencies.

What is really mind-boggling to me, is the potential for continued growth here. In 2018 (admittedly, almost 5 years ago, but still) a whopping 46% of small businesses DID NOT EVEN HAVE A WEBSITE. Do you realize how much opportunity there still is in some of these niche markets?!

Reason #2: People Are More Willing to Hire True Experts.

I remember from conversations with prospects 5 years ago, that people wanted “an agency who does it all! We want one point of contact.”

Whereas, lately, our contacts have communicated to us: “we want to hire the best people in each marketing channel to build a super team, like the Traveling Wilburys of marketing.”

I think that shift is really fascinating (and it’s one of the reasons we’ve never had an issue being a Paid Search only agency), as it shows people are now seeing more value in having a truly skilled practitioner rather than in having fewer points of contact.

What this tells me, is that the savvy freelancer will identify an area in which she can become THE true expert, work hard to become that expert, and then attract clients who need that skill set. It’s time to ditch the small agency “we do it all” mentality!

I think the key to survival as a freelancer in 2024 and beyond is being satisfied with niching out (somehow: product, vertical, whatever). This may prevent you from growing into a mega-agency but I am convinced it can help you establish a profitable and stable business built on your network.

Reason #3: People Are Less Likely to Hire Based on “Agency Brand Strength” Alone.

I have to be careful here since I have a lot of respect for smart people I know in large agencies. However, what I have learned lately, is that businesses are less attracted to the “brand strength” that a larger, international agency used to carry simply by walking into the room.

I think this goes hand in hand with clients getting savvier. They want to make sure their account isn’t going to be managed by the interns when they were sold by the professionals.

In this way, I think it’s easier for a skilled freelancer who can sell well AND deliver on that promise, to win bids against larger agencies who used to have a substantial advantage simply because of their name.

Reason #4: Businesses Who Can’t Afford In-House Still Need Help.

Finally, I’m finding that there are certain businesses that simply can’t afford in-housing, even with all of the moves to in-housing that larger brands are making. In other words, there will ALWAYS be businesses that need assistance in various stages.

Rather than try to battle against in-house, I think the savvy freelancer of the future will instead look to those businesses who can’t afford to do in-house, and build a pricing package and work scope that works for both the smaller business and the freelancer.

Oh, and these may tend to be local, and I think the smaller freelancers also have a distinct advantage in that way, by rubbing shoulders with their neighbors.

So there you have it, I think there are concerns about starting a freelance or agency in 2024, but I also think there is a great opportunity. What do you think? Let’s continue the conversation on Social Media!

May the Auctions Be Ever In Your Favor.

Reduce Wastage: Manage Your Google Ads Budget for Optimal Results

At the heart of every successful Google Ads campaign lies a well-structured and meticulously managed budget. It’s the lifeblood of your campaign, dictating its reach, visibility, and effectiveness.

However, advertisers often struggle to manage their Google Ads budgets due to a combination of factors — some of which are in their control, and some that aren’t: campaigns overspending and underspending, lack of budget monitoring, seasonal fluctuations, a changing competitive landscape, and Google manipulating ad prices.

In this article, you’ll learn:

What is a Google Ads budget?

A Google Ads budget is the maximum amount you’re willing to spend on a campaign per day. However, your actual daily spending may vary depending on how well your ads perform. Some days, Google might spend less than your daily budget, and on others, you might spend up to twice as much.

How do Google Ads budgets work?

After you set a budget and start running your campaign, Google “paces” your budget spending throughout the day or month. This means that it’ll try to spend your budget evenly over the selected period of time. However, there may be days when you spend more or less than your daily budget, depending on factors such as competition and consumer demand.

Google Ads has two spending limits:

  1. Daily spending limit: This is the maximum amount you can be billed for a campaign on a given day. It’s calculated as 2 times your average daily budget.
  2. Monthly spending limit: This is the maximum amount you can be billed for a campaign in a given month. It’s calculated as 30.4 times your average daily budget.
Google Ads' daily spending limits

Google Ads’ daily spending limits (Source: Google Ads Help)

How to set a Google Ads budget?

Before setting your budget, there are 3 things you need to consider:

  1. Your business goals: Be clear about what you want to achieve with your Google Ads campaigns. Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive sales? Your budget should be aligned with your business goals.
  2. Your target audience: The next thing to consider is your audience. Who are you trying to reach with your ads? How competitive is the market for your keywords? The more competitive the market, the higher your budget will need to be.
  3. Your budget: And, lastly, the budget. How much money can you afford to spend on Google Ads each day or month? It’s important to set a budget that you’re comfortable with but that won’t break the bank.

Here’s how to set a Google Ads budget:

  1. Determine your budget type: Google Ads offers two primary budget types: daily budgets and shared budgets. Daily budgets control your spending on individual campaigns or ad groups each day, while shared budgets allow you to allocate a single budget across multiple campaigns. Choose the budget type that aligns with your campaign structure and objectives.
  2. Set a competitive budget: Research your industry and competition to determine what a competitive budget might be. What are other advertisers in your space spending? While you don’t need to match their budgets, understanding the competitive landscape can tell you what number you should set.
  3. Set a daily limit: Decide how much you want to set as a daily budget for your campaign.
  4. Set a bid strategy: Choose a bidding strategy that aligns with your goals. Whether it’s maximizing clicks, optimizing for conversions, or targeting a specific return on ad spend (ROAS), your bidding strategy influences how much budget is utilized.

How are budgets applied at the campaign level?

At the campaign level: Google Ads uses a hierarchical structure, with campaigns being the top-level entities. Each campaign has its own budget. You allocate a budget to a specific campaign when you create it.

At the ad group level: Within each campaign, you can further structure your budgeting by creating ad groups. Ad group budgets are optional and allow you to allocate a portion of the campaign’s budget to specific sets of ads and keywords.

Distribution of budgets: Your daily or monthly budget is distributed evenly over the selected time frame by default. However, as we told you earlier, Google Ads may spend more on high-performing days and less on slower days, as long as it doesn’t exceed the budget cap for the entire time frame.

4 tips to efficiently manage your Google Ads budget

1. Use historical data to predict future ad spend.

Why is historical data important?

When you know how much money you have spent on Google Ads in the past, you get a better idea of running a campaign and hence can set a budget that is realistic and achievable. Historical data can help you to identify trends and patterns in your ad spend.

For example, you may notice that your ad spend tends to increase during the holiday season or that certain keywords are more expensive than others. This information can help you make more informed decisions about your future ad spend.

It can also help you track your progress better over time.

How to predict your future ad spend?

1. Gather all your historical data: This includes your daily or monthly ad spend, clicks, conversions, and other relevant metrics. You can export this data from your Google Ads account.

2. Analyze your data: Look for trends and patterns in your historical data. For example, do you spend more money on advertising during certain months of the year? Do certain campaigns or keywords consistently drive more clicks and conversions?

3. Use a forecasting tool: There are a number of tools available that can help you forecast your future ad spend based on your historical data. These tools typically take into account factors such as seasonality, trends, and competition.

Or, you can try this script to forecast your ad performance.

4. Adjust your budget as needed: Once you have a forecast for your future ad spend, you can adjust your budget accordingly. You may need to increase your budget if you are planning to launch a new campaign or expand into new markets.

2. Allocate your budget efficiently for better performance.

Efficient budget allocation is important for various reasons: to reduce costs, improve performance, and maximize ROI. Here are some tips:

You can find more tips in the best practices section below.

3. Identify and fix lost impression share.

Lost impression share is the percentage of impressions that your ads were eligible to receive but didn’t receive. A few reasons why you could be losing impression share are lower budget, lower ad rank, and higher competition.

While it may seem like simply increasing your budget and ad rank while targeting lesser competitive keywords is enough to counter that, it’s not that straightforward.

Some PPC experts suggest you do the following:

4. Automate budgeting for more effective management.

Considering how powerful Google Ads’ machine learning has become, it’s a no-brainer to make use of it to run almost any campaign for any kind of use case these days.

Here’s one: if yours is a business that sees a higher demand for your product or service during certain days of the week or times of the day, you can use Google Ads automation to set higher budgets during those periods.

If you’ve got a similar use case, you should check out this really powerful script by Andrea Atzori.

Common Google Ads budget problems (and how to fix them)

Let’s break down some common problems advertisers face while managing budgets with possible causes and solutions.

Problem #1: Your campaigns are frequently overspending.

Cause #1: You’re not monitoring your broad match keywords.

How to fix it?

Cause #2: You’re bidding on too many or irrelevant search terms.

How to fix it?

Cause #3: You’re not using relevant or any ad extensions.

How to fix it?

Cause #4: Your post-click user experience needs work.

How to fix it?

Cause #5: Your campaign has conversion tracking issues.

How to fix it?

Cause #6: It’s not you, it’s Google.

How to fix it?

Check your Change History tool for any strange occurrences in your account. Sometimes Google Ads faces glitches or runs experiments that can waste your budget.

Related*:* 

Problem #2: Your campaigns are frequently underspending.

Cause #1: You’re overemphasizing saving costs rather than growing returns.

How to fix it?

Cause #2: You added too few keywords or those with low search volume.

How to fix it?

Cause #3: Your CTR is too low.

How to fix it?

Cause #4: Your target location is not broad enough or incorrect.

How to fix it?

Cause #5: You’re running the ads during inactive hours or for a very short time.

How to fix it?

Problem #3: Your daily ad spend is constantly fluctuating.

Cause #1: You may have set up scheduled bid adjustments.

How to fix it?

Cause #2: Google is optimizing your ad spend based on your goals.

How to fix it?

Scott Ostermiller, a PPC consultant based in Utah shared his experience regarding such fluctuations.

“One thing I generally do is anticipate my budgets to spend somewhat wildly on the 1st (and sometimes 2nd) of every month because Google likes to “test” things out and use its leeway to spend up to double your daily budget.

I combat this by gradually trimming my budget down in the last 7-10 days of the month so that we come in at around 70-80% of our average daily budget. And then I start to gradually ramp up to around 120% of the daily average by the middle of the month. Then the trimming starts again. Imagine a bell curve. 

The trick is to ramp/trim budgets in such a way that it doesn’t throw the campaign back into learning mode (which shouldn’t happen if your changes are less than 10% difference).”

Whether you’re just starting out in Google Ads or are a seasoned veteran, it helps to know how the trends are shaping up and where the industry stands today. Granted, the budget benchmarks vary depending on the industry, business size, and marketing goals.

But it can give you a general idea of what to expect in terms of advertising costs in your industry. Speaking of which, Databox conducted a Google Ads survey across 15 industries and we thought it’d be a good idea to answer some questions you may have below.

What does the average business spend on Google Ads?

Across all industries, the monthly median business spend on Google Ads is $2,266.7.

Google Ads business spend across industries

Source: Databox

How much should I spend on Google Ads?

While there’s no minimum spend on Google Ads, you can’t go too low and expect to see any practical results with $2 or $5 as your daily budget. However, for beginners, several PPC practitioners suggest spending anywhere from $10 to $50 per day at least considering factors such as your client’s business, industry, objectives, location, etc. On a monthly basis, they suggest increasing it to $5,000 with regular monitoring.

What does it cost to run Google Ads?

If you’re just starting out and want to see a tangible ROI, it’s better to get some expert help. So, taking into account their service fee plus your Google Ads budget, it should cost you anywhere from $10,000 to $40,000 at least per month.

Does Google Ads work for small businesses?

Like most other answers in PPC, the answer to this question too is: it depends. You need to realize that Google Ads follows a cycle of “test, learn, iterate, and repeat”. So you can’t guarantee which search queries or ads leading to which landing pages will bring you good results. It’s a process where you constantly learn from experience.

With that said, don’t spend too much or spread your budget too thin in the initial stages. Experts suggest testing a larger budget for a shorter period of time to 

For example, spend $5000 each month for 3 months instead of spending $2000 each month for 12 months.

Maximize ROI and boost performance with these Google Ads budget best practices

1. Set clear goals for your campaigns.

As cliched as this may sound before you dive into budget management, define your advertising objectives. Whether it’s increasing website traffic, generating leads, or driving sales, clear objectives will guide your budget allocation.

2. Choose the right keywords.

Keywords are still the major signals that direct your campaigns in the right direction. Choose relevant keywords that can drive growth and use negatives to cut through the noise.

3. Start with a test budget.

If you’re new to Google Ads or launching a new campaign, start with a modest test budget to assess performance and refine your strategy before committing to a larger budget.

4. Allocate ad spend strategically.

Allocate your budget strategically across your campaigns and ad groups. Prioritize higher-performing campaigns that drive the most value, but don’t ignore lower-performing ones that have the potential to improve with optimization.

5.  Understand your (or your client’s) sales cycle.

This is more of a general piece of advice, but clearly understanding the length of your sales cycle really helps you allocate budgets better. For businesses with longer sales cycles, be prepared to allocate budget over a more extended period to capture leads at various stages.

6. Use Google Ads Smart Bidding.

Make use of Google’s Smart Bidding strategies (e.g., Target CPA, Target ROAS) to automate bid adjustments based on your performance goals. Smart Bidding can help you optimize your budget by bidding more efficiently.

7. Adjust budgets for seasonality.

Be prepared to increase or decrease your budget based on seasonal trends in your industry. For instance, retail businesses may need to allocate more budget during this upcoming holiday season.

8. Make performance-based adjustments.

Increase budgets for high-performing campaigns when they are limited by budget. You don’t want to cap the success of a campaign that’s delivering a strong ROI. Similarly, decrease or pause budgets for underperforming campaigns.

9. Optimize your Quality Score and make use of ad extensions.

Invest in ad extensions and ensure that your ad copy and landing pages are optimized. Relevant, higher-quality ads earn a higher quality score which means better ad placements and less budget to maintain visibility.

10. Use budget alerts.

Set up budget alerts to notify you when your spending reaches a certain threshold.

When to increase your budgets

When to decrease your budgets

Manage Google Ads budgets using Optmyzr.

1. Monitor budgets and project future spend.

With Optmyzr’s Spend Projection tool, you can analyze your recent and historical performance and trends, and calculate a projected spend range. This way, you can monitor your spending throughout the month, proactively identify potential overspending or underspending, and ensure that you stay within your desired budget limits.

Optmyzr's Spend Projection Tool

Screenshot: Spend Projection Tool

You can also share a projection by scheduling a report to the appropriate people at the right time.

Optmyzr's Spend Projection Performance Reports

Screenshot: Performance Reports

2. Avoid overspending and underspending.

With the Optimize Budgets tools, you can avoid common budgeting issues like over and underspending.

Let’s take a couple of examples:

Example 1: Avoid overspending.

In the below example, it becomes evident that the account is at risk of exceeding the allocated monthly budget of $11,000. To address this issue and effectively manage costs, you have the option to select specific performance metrics for analysis and experiment with different daily budgets. This enables you to observe the changes in the Projected Spend column and make necessary adjustments to ensure optimal budget allocation.

Optimize Budgets - Avoid Overspending

Screenshot: Optimize Budgets - Avoid Overspending

To optimize costs without compromising conversions, consider reducing the daily budget for the Retail Campaign, which has lower potential and average daily spend compared to the budget amount. Meanwhile, note that the Non-Brand Pri campaign is currently the highest spender. By prioritizing budget reductions on the Retail Campaign, you can effectively control costs while minimizing the impact on conversions.

Example 2: Avoid underspending.

In our second example, we have clicked on the ‘Get Optimization Suggestions’ button, which provides us with various spending scenarios to consider. By analyzing these scenarios, you can evaluate the impact of reallocating budgets on campaign performance. Use this feature to explore different budget allocations and assess how they would influence KPIs.

Optimize Budgets - Avoid Underspending

Screenshot: Optimize Budgets - Avoid Underspending

In this scenario, the budget group is unlikely to reach the $1,500 monthly target. To optimize budget allocation and maximize conversions, you must identify campaigns where excess budget can be effectively utilized. By selecting the second row, you can explore suggestions for new daily budgets in specific campaigns that can potentially generate 110 additional conversions by month-end. Implementing these suggestions would increase overall spend by 27% and bring you closer to your monthly target.

3. Find and fix lost impression share.

The Fix Impression Share Lost Due To Budget - Campaign Budget express optimization focuses on boosting the budget for campaigns experiencing impression share loss due to budget constraints. By increasing the budget, you can capture a greater number of impressions and improve visibility. The tool provides initial suggestions and allows for further adjustments, giving you flexibility in optimizing your campaign’s budget allocation.

Fix Lost Impression Share tool

Screenshot: Fix Lost Impression Share tool

4. Manage budgets using automation that’s in your control.

Flexible Budgets is an Enhanced Script™ for Google Ads that provides automation for budget management. If you’ve been spending time manually checking budgets on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to make sure you’re not overshooting the target, this script will automatically do this for you every single hour.

By setting up this script, you can automate the process of pausing campaigns, ad groups, and keywords and labeling them when the cost exceeds the specified maximum. You can also have the script re-enable the same entities when your budget resets.

Let’s take an example: Pause campaigns when the weekly spend cap is reached.

Here’s how you’d set this one up to prevent an account from spending significantly more than $5,000 per week:

Pause Campaigns When Weekly Spend Cap Is Reached

Screenshot: Pause Campaigns When Weekly Spend Cap Is Reached

This script can be copied and pasted into Google Ads (either at the Manager/MCC or individual account level) and scheduled to run automatically every hour.

5. Allocate different budgets for different days of the week.

With the Rule Engine, you have the power to tailor your daily budgets to align with performance metrics and even external factors like the day of the week.

Imagine having the ability to fine-tune your budget allocation with precision. The Rule Engine empowers you to do just that; you can set logical rules that automatically adjust your daily budgets based on specific criteria and schedule your strategies to run on partial or full automation. 

Here’s an example: Lower budget for weekends and holidays.

Depending on your business, you may see lower conversion rates or potential customer activity on specific days - e.g. on public holidays or certain days of the week.

Lower Budget For Weekends And Holidays

Screenshot: Lower Budget For Weekends And Holidays

To maintain a consistent ad presence throughout the week while prioritizing higher budgets for weekdays, you can easily implement a rule similar to the example provided above: “Allocate a daily budget of $100 if today is Saturday or Sunday. For all other days, set the daily budget to $120.”

By employing this rule, you gain precise control over your budget allocation, tailoring it to specific days of the week. This approach enables you to maintain visibility and engagement over the weekend while strategically allocating higher budgets to weekdays.

Related*:* 

Effectively start managing your budgets today.

Managing budgets in Google Ads isn’t just about numbers and figures. It’s a process that involves strategic thinking, continuous monitoring, and timely adjustments.

That’s why it’s very important you learn the critical aspects of Google Ads budgets, including setting budgets, avoiding overspending, and preventing underspending and common issues advertisers face along with possible causes and fixes.

With these best practices and the Optmyzr tools mentioned here, you now have the superpowers to effectively manage Google Ads budgets in your hands.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

The Methodology Behind Target CPA and Target ROAS Optimizations

Smart bidding strategies have transformed bid management for the better. However, advertisers often grapple with the challenge of gaining greater control over their campaign optimizations. At Optmyzr, we’ve been at the forefront of addressing this concern, and one common question we receive is, “How can I adjust keyword bids when using smart bidding?”

The initial response might appear simple: “You can’t.” But there’s a twist.

Although you can’t directly modify bids for individual keywords, you can strategically signal the algorithms to influence your campaign’s performance and have a significant impact on your bids

How to adjust targets to influence bids?

If you’ve set a Target ROAS or Target CPA in your bidding strategies, you can influence bids through subtle adjustments to said targets at either the campaign or ad group level. These adjustments serve as signals to communicate your intentions to Google’s bidding algorithms.

If your goal is to raise your bids to increase your chances of conquering impression share and push for success in the auction, you can do the following:

Now, if you think that most of the available revenue or conversions are already being captured,  or that there’s some inefficient spend to remove and you want to decrease bids: 

To help illustrate these concepts, the graph below outlines the expected behavior of your CPCs as you adjust each target:

CPC Vs. Bidding

CPC Vs. Bidding

In summary:

How can Optmyzr help you?

Within the Optmyzr toolset for automated bidding, we have four ready-to-use rule-based tools called:

The primary goal of optimizing your targets is to fine-tune bidding strategies within campaigns or ad groups. This kind of optimization process relies on two key sets of rules:

First: Optimizing high-potential performers

Optimizing High-Potential Performers

Optimizing High-Potential Performers

The initial set of rules concentrates on identifying ad groups or campaigns with significant potential for improved performance. Specifically, we pinpoint ad groups or campaigns that are actively generating conversions but are losing impression share due to ad rank, and that don’t have any budget constraints.

In such cases, we want to increase our bids. Not arbitrarily but with a clear intention: to recover lost impression share and enhance the visibility of your ads. This can lead to higher click-through rates and increased exposure to potential customers.

Bidding up to regain lost impression share due to a lower ad rank in a converting campaign or ad group is a smart strategic move that can amplify the campaign’s reach, and ultimately, drive more valuable conversions. 

Second: Optimizing high-performers

Optimizing High-Performers

Optimizing High-Performers

In the second set of rules, the focus shifts to ad groups or campaigns that have already surpassed their performance targets. In these cases, we look for opportunities to make our bidding strategies more cost-efficient.

The process here closely resembles the first set of rules, with a key difference. Now, we’re reviewing ad groups or campaigns that have excellent impression share performance and have exceeded their current targets by a substantial margin (e.g. 140% of their targets). These are the ad groups or campaigns for which we may be paying more than necessary.

In this context, the objective is to reduce our bids.

Things to keep in mind

A few common questions and recommendations often arise when it comes to implementing this type of optimization. Let’s address them:

How often should I adjust targets?

Frequently adjusting your targets may not be the best approach. While the ideal frequency depends on your account’s characteristics and strategy, we typically recommend making these adjustments once or twice a month. Keeping a balanced approach allows for smoother performance and ensures that any learning phases triggered will be significantly shorter.

By default, our Optimize Target ROAS and Target CPA tools refrain from suggesting changes to entities you’ve already modified in the last 14 days. You also have the flexibility to adjust this threshold by customizing the tool into your own Rule Engine strategy.

Won’t it reset my campaigns to the learning phase?

To mitigate the risk of your campaigns re-entering the learning phase, we advise against making drastic changes to your targets. In fact, our tools will only suggest small adjustments. So, along with the recommended optimization frequency, you can avoid prolonged learning phases and maintain campaign stability.

Campaign duration before implementation

It’s a good idea to allow your campaigns to accumulate enough data before making adjustments. By default, the tool operates based on the last 30 days of campaign performance data. The more traffic volume and conversions your campaigns generate, the easier it’ll be for the algorithms to recalibrate, and the richer the dataset the tools can use to offer valuable suggestions.

Audience Bidding on Smart Bidding

We have been aware that sometimes, mistakenly, advertisers put audiences on “Observation” and then mix it with this type of strategy, hoping that Google will increase bids for those audiences as well. While we would love to be able to say that it works, this is not the case.

For campaigns that use Smart Bidding, first-party audience segments added under the “Observation” setting will be used as signals for Smart Bidding strategies to help prioritize certain audiences, or, sometimes will simply be ignored by Google.

Customization is key

Remember that you’re not bound to the examples outlined in this post or the default logic of our tools. Customization is the key to tailoring strategies to your account’s unique context and your specific goals.

For instance, if you’re pursuing aggressive competition for top-of-page impressions, instead of optimizing around Search Impression Share, consider focusing on metrics like Search lost top impression share (rank) or Search lost absolute top impression share (rank). 

Final thoughts

In the vast universe of accounts and campaigns, each with its unique context, it’s important to remember that there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy set in stone. What we’ve discussed here highlights that the success of automation depends on your input. These strategies serve as examples of how we can transform traditional bid management and optimization approaches into valuable signals that help algorithms perform even better.

For those of you looking to apply this knowledge to optimize and manage campaigns at scale and save time, tools like Optmyzr are ready for you.

If you haven’t joined us yet, we invite you to take a 14-day free trial. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with any questions, feedback, or ideas you may have. Our team is always happy to help you!

Unlock Efficiency and Savings with Optmyzr’s Landing Page URL Checker

In the dynamic world of Google Ads, ensuring the smooth functioning of your landing pages is paramount. Broken landing pages not only frustrate potential customers, but can also lead to wasted Google Ads budget. This is where Optmyzr’s Landing Page URL Checker comes to the rescue. This powerful tool is designed to meticulously scan and verify the integrity of all landing pages within your Google Ads account, helping you maintain a healthy online presence while optimizing your advertising budget.

About the tool

The Landing Page URL Checker is your dedicated ally in the battle against broken landing pages. It scrutinizes landing pages for dreaded 404 errors or any indicators of products being out of stock. Designed as an in-house solution, it ensures you never hit script timeouts or get bogged down by the limitations of external systems or services.

Getting started

Getting started with the Landing Page URL Checker is a breeze. Simply navigate to the ‘Monitoring’ tab in the Optmyzr interface, and you’ll find ‘Landing Page URL Checker’ listed under the ‘LANDING PAGE MONITORING’ section. The dashboard offers a clear view of your existing settings, complete with IDs, names, scope, and action buttons for editing, duplicating, or deleting them.

Creating a new setting is straightforward. Click the ‘+ADD SETTING’ button, and a side tray will open, guiding you through the basic settings.

Basic settings

In the initial settings window, you can assign a name to your setting and specify whether you want the tool to inspect URLs associated with ads, keywords, sitelinks, and/or PMax asset groups. This flexibility allows you to tailor the tool’s focus to your specific needs.

You also have the choice of running the tool in ‘Preview mode’ to generate a report or in ‘Apply mode’ to enable automatic changes within your Google Ads account based on your selected criteria.

In ‘Apply mode,’ the tool can pause ads, keywords, or asset groups in your account, as determined by the chosen options. Conversely, in ‘Preview mode,’ the tool generates a comprehensive report highlighting entities with broken URLs but refrains from making any changes.

Additional settings

The Landing Page URL Checker doesn’t stop at the basics; it offers a range of additional settings to fine-tune your URL monitoring:

The tool also offers options to check entities with zero impressions, mobile URLs, wrapped URLs, and more.

Reporting and Automation

The final step in harnessing the power of the Landing Page URL Checker is setting up reporting and automation. You can schedule the tool to run at your convenience and specify your notification preferences.

Conclusion

In a fast-paced digital advertising landscape, broken landing pages can be a costly setback. This tool empowers advertisers to proactively manage their landing pages, ensuring a seamless user experience and maximizing the return on advertising investment. With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, it’s an indispensable tool for any Google Ads account holder looking to optimize their campaigns and boost their performance. Don’t let broken landing pages drain your budget - take control with Optmyzr’s Landing Page URL Checker today.

Note: This feature is part of Optmyzr Core. Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Sign up for a free trial now.

Know Where Your Account Stands Among Competitors With PPC Vertical Benchmarks

In the fast-paced world of digital advertising, where trends shift like quicksilver, staying ahead of the competition is not just a goal—it’s a necessity for success. Recognizing the challenges advertisers face in navigating this ever-evolving landscape, Optmyzr has unleashed a game-changing tool onto the scene: PPC Vertical Benchmarks. 

This innovative tool is not just a lifeline; it’s a powerhouse that allows advertisers to gain a competitive edge by meticulously comparing the performance of their Google Ads account with others in the same industry vertical or across various verticals. As we delve into the intricacies of this tool, get ready to discover how it can revolutionize your Google Ads campaigns and propel your advertising strategy to new heights. The world of digital advertising is dynamic, and with Optmyzr’s PPC Vertical Benchmarks, you’re not just keeping pace - you’re leading the charge. Let’s explore how this cutting-edge tool can be your secret weapon in the pursuit of advertising excellence.

Understanding the PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool

The PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool is designed to provide advertisers with a comprehensive view of their Google Ads campaigns’ performance relative to their industry peers. It empowers you with the ability to measure and compare key metrics that directly impact your advertising success. Here’s what this innovative tool provides you with:

Industry-specific insights

By selecting your industry vertical, you can access performance data that is relevant to your specific niche. This insight allows you to gauge how your Google Ads campaigns are performing against competitors in your industry, giving you a clearer picture of where you stand.

Key Metric comparison

The PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool provides a side-by-side comparison of essential metrics with other accounts, including:

1. Average CPC

This metric reveals the average cost-per-click for your keywords. Understanding how your CPC compares to others can help you optimize your bidding strategy for better cost-efficiency.

2. Conversion Rate

The conversion rate is a critical indicator of your campaign’s effectiveness. Knowing how your conversion rate stacks up against industry benchmarks can guide your efforts in improving ad relevance and landing page performance.

3. CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)

Achieving a low CPA is a primary goal for most advertisers. With this tool, you can assess whether your CPA aligns with industry standards and work on strategies to improve it.

4. CTR (Click Through Rate)

The CTR measures the effectiveness of your ad copy and targeting. Analyzing your CTR in comparison to industry peers can help you identify opportunities for ad copy refinement and audience targeting.

5. ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

Ultimately, ROAS determines the success of your Google Ads campaigns. This tool provides insights into whether your advertising efforts are delivering the desired return on investment when compared to others in your vertical.

Keyword traffic analysis

In addition to comparing your overall account performance, the PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool also lets you drill down into keyword-specific data. This feature empowers you to compare the keyword match type spread of your account compared with others in the industry. It’s a game-changer for advertisers looking to fine-tune their keyword strategies.

Performance rank percentile

Understanding where your account stands within your industry is crucial. The tool provides a performance rank percentile, helping you visualize your relative position in comparison to other advertisers. This information is invaluable for setting realistic performance goals and tracking your progress.

How the PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool benefits advertisers

Optmyzr’s PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool offers a host of benefits for advertisers seeking to improve their Google Ads campaigns:

  1. Data-driven decision making: Access to industry-specific data empowers you to make informed decisions, ensuring your PPC strategy is aligned with industry standards.
  2. Competitive advantage: By identifying areas where your account outperforms or underperforms compared to industry benchmarks, you can focus your efforts on areas that matter most.
  3. Efficient budget allocation: Use the insights gained from this tool to allocate your budget more effectively to propel your account’s performance beyond your competitors’. Allocate more resources to areas that need improvement and capitalize on your strengths.
  4. Goal setting and monitoring: The performance rank percentile allows you to set realistic goals and track your progress over time, fostering continuous improvement.

In conclusion, the PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool from Optmyzr is a game-changing addition to the arsenal of any PPC advertiser. It provides industry-specific insights, facilitates data-driven decision-making, and helps you stay competitive in the ever-evolving world of digital advertising. Harness the power of this tool to optimize your PPC campaigns, achieve better results, and propel your business to new heights in the digital landscape.

Note: This feature is part of Optmyzr Core. Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Sign up for a free trial now. Elevate your Google Ads game and stay ahead in the competitive digital advertising landscape with Optmyzr’s PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool.

Supercharge Your Google Ads Campaigns with Optmyzr Express: Quick Byte-Sized Optimizations

Imagine this scenario: Your Google Ads campaigns are operating at peak performance, delivering a torrent of conversions and captivating your target audience. The twist? You’re not grappling with the complexities of optimizing them manually for each account. Instead, you’re navigating the Google Ads landscape with grace and ease, all thanks to Optmyzr Express.

This remarkable tool streamlines your advertising efforts, making optimization feel like a walk in the park. Whether you’re managing one account or many, Optmyzr Express revolutionizes your approach. It’s akin to having a dedicated optimization expert at your service, offering valuable insights and actionable suggestions. In this article, we’ll delve into the wealth of optimization categories and techniques Optmyzr Express provides. We’ll illustrate how it enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of your Google Ads PPC campaigns, ultimately boosting your ROI and giving you a competitive edge. Prepare to optimize your way to digital marketing triumph!

Ad Suggestions

1. Add Missing Ads (RSA)

Optmyzr Express kicks off by identifying ad groups without active responsive search ads (RSAs). Don’t let these ad groups sit idle when you can craft new RSAs with high-performing components in them from existing Expanded Text Ads (ETAs). With the help of Open AI’s suggestions in Optmyzr, you can create compelling ads that resonate with your audience, all with a single click.

2. Fix Ads with Issues (RSA)

For those underperforming RSAs, Optmyzr Express offers an array of suggestions to revamp them. Fine-tune your RSA assets using recommendations from existing ads and suggestions from Open AI. The tool also reveals top-performing keywords and search queries to help you craft relevant ads. 

3. Pause Low-Performing RSAs

Don’t let underperforming RSAs drag down your ad group’s overall effectiveness. Optmyzr Express provides proactive suggestions to identify and pause low-performing RSAs, ensuring that high-performing RSAs receive more traffic. It’s a simple yet effective way to optimize your ad groups and improve results.

Enhance the relevance and click-through rate of your ads by adding sitelink assets. Optmyzr Express identifies campaigns lacking sitelinks and allows you to quickly add multiple assets, hence helping you boost your ad’s appeal and improve user experience.

PMax Asset Groups with no Audience Signal

Optmyzr Express helps you maximize your audience targeting efforts for PMax campaigns  by identifying asset groups without any audience signals. You can add existing audience signals from your account or create new ones. Customize your audience segments based on interests, purchase intentions, or top-performing search queries. 

Create Experiments to Test Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, and Target ROAS Bidding Strategies

For campaigns currently running on manual bidding, Optmyzr Express suggests creating experiments to test automated bidding strategies like Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, and Target ROAS. By comparing the performance of the new strategy with the current manual bidding approach, you can determine which strategy works best for your goals.

Bid Suggestions - Manual Bidding Campaigns

1. Gender Bid Adjustments

Gain valuable insights into how different genders perform in your ad groups and set bid adjustments accordingly. Optmyzr Express identifies significant differences in click-through rates (CTR) among genders and provides bid adjustment recommendations. Customize these adjustments to fine-tune your campaign targeting.

2. Age Range Bid Adjustments

Similar to gender bid adjustments, Optmyzr Express helps you optimize bids based on age ranges. Identify age groups with varying CTRs and adjust your bids accordingly. This fine-grained control can enhance your campaign’s performance and ROI.

3. More Traffic for Converting Keywords

Boost the impression share of converting keywords that are losing impressions due to low bids. Optmyzr Express recommends bid increases for these keywords, providing them with more opportunities to drive conversions.

4. Push Keywords to First Page

Ensure your keywords make it to the coveted first page of search results. Optmyzr Express suggests bid increases for keywords with a good Quality Score, helping you achieve better visibility and click-through rates.

Shopping Campaign Suggestions

1. More Traffic for Converting Products

Apply bid adjustments to converting product groups that are losing impression share due to their current bids. This optimization allows you to increase your bids strategically and maximize your product visibility to potential customers.

2. Simplify Merchant Feed Optimization with Optmyzr Express

Optmyzr Express identifies products with missing essential attributes like Title, Description, Price, Link, Image Link, and Brand and helps you add these attributes through the tool.

What’s even better is that you don’t have to laboriously set up rules for every single product with missing attributes, just input the changes through a Supplemental Feed. Optmyzr Express lets you focus on improving just five products at a time, making the process manageable and efficient.

Budget Suggestions

1. Budget Suggestions from Google

Optmyzr Express works seamlessly with Google’s budget recommendations and analyzes them to give you the best set of suggestions for Google Ads budget optimization. It shows predicted changes in cost, conversions, and cost per conversion, and helps you make informed decisions about budget adjustments to enhance your campaign’s performance.

2. Fix Impression Share Lost Due to Budget - Campaign Budget and Shared Budget

Identify campaigns that are losing impression share due to budget constraints, even though they bring in conversions. Optmyzr Express empowers you to modify campaign budgets strategically, ensuring you capture more impressions and conversions. The tool provides suggestions for both campaigns with individual budgets and campaigns belonging to shared budgets.

Keyword Suggestions

1. Add New Keywords

Expand your keyword arsenal by adding relevant queries as keywords to your Google Ads account. Optmyzr Express identifies well-performing search terms that are absent from your keywords. Quickly add them and manage their bids and ad copies for optimal results.

2. Enable Converting Keywords

Revive dormant converting keywords that have been removed from your campaigns. Optmyzr Express highlights keywords that have generated conversions in the past 120 days but are currently inactive. Re-enable relevant ones (that may have been paused by Google’s auto-apply recommendations) to capitalize on their performance.

3. Fix Conflicting Negative Keywords

Eliminate conflicts between negative and positive keywords that may reduce ad impressions. Optmyzr Express provides a curated list of conflicting negative keywords, allowing you to resolve conflicts by pausing positive or negative keywords strategically.

4. Keyword Suggestions by Google

Leverage Google’s keyword recommendations within Optmyzr Express. The tool offers an extra layer of analysis on top of Google’s recommendations to present you with valuable and relevant keyword ideas.

5. Use Broad Match Keywords

Turbocharge your keyword strategy by identifying low-traffic keywords in exact and phrase matches and converting them to broad match if you prefer. Optmyzr Express goes the extra mile by analyzing Google’s recommendations and presenting you with the most relevant keyword suggestions in the tool. It’s all about expanding your reach and targeting a broader audience, effortlessly.

Placement Suggestions

1. Exclude Low-Performing Placements - Campaign Level

Trim wasted ad spend by identifying and excluding low-performing placements from your campaigns. Optmyzr Express helps you pinpoint placements that drain your budget without delivering conversions. Exclude placements on websites, mobile applications, YouTube videos, and YouTube channels to boost your ROI.

2. Exclude Low-Performing Placements for Performance Max - Account Level

Extend the power of placement exclusions to Performance Max campaigns at the account level. Eliminate unproductive placements across websites, mobile applications, YouTube videos, and YouTube channels to optimize your advertising spend effectively.

Expand Your Reach with Search Partners

Optmyzr Express takes the guesswork out of expanding your Google Ads reach. It identifies campaigns with untapped budget potential and strategically suggests opting them into the search partner network. By analyzing Google’s recommendations, Optmyzr Express ensures that your Google Ads budget is distributed well, connecting with audiences who share relevant interests on partner sites.

In Conclusion

Optmyzr Express is a powerhouse of optimization techniques designed to elevate your Google Ads campaigns. Whether you’re fine-tuning ad creatives, experimenting with bidding strategies, or expanding your keyword and placement reach, this tool streamlines the process and helps you achieve better results in less time. The suggestions are data-driven and can be applied with a single click, making optimization effortless. Make Optmyzr Express a part of your daily workflow, and watch your accounts’ performance soar. Your path to PPC success starts here!

Note: Optmyzr Express is part of Optmyzr Core. If you’re not an Optmyzr customer yet, sign up for a free trial now and experience the power of quick, effective Google Ads optimizations.

Optmyzr's Holiday Magic: New Features to Sleigh Your Shopping Season Goals!

The Holiday Season is here, and it’s time for some serious e-commerce action! We’re thrilled to announce that Optmyzr is your ultimate partner, delivering a bag of brand-new features to simplify the management of your Performance Max and Shopping campaigns during this festive period. From fine-tuning your merchant feed to monitoring product performance, we’ve got your back. So, grab your hot cocoa, get cozy, and let’s explore what Optmyzr has in store for you.

Shopping Feed Audits

Keep your shopping feed in top-notch condition with Optmyzr’s standout tool of the year, Shopping Feed Audits. This powerful tool offers a comprehensive report on your feed’s health, allowing you to tackle any issues like products getting disapproved, products missing key attributes like Title, and so on, before they pose a problem for your campaigns. Think of it as a checkup for your e-commerce success!

Simplify Merchant Feed Optimization with Optmyzr Express

Don’t let missing attributes in your merchant feed slow you down, as Optmyzr Express is here to simplify feed optimization. You can easily identify products without values for essential attributes like Title, Description, Price, Link, Image Link, and Brand.

This is a great way to streamline your feed optimization process by working on just five products at a time. And there’s no need to set up rules for all your products with missing attributes. Simply create a ‘Content API’ supplemental feed in your merchant center account and share the supplemental feed ID with us, and we’ll handle the rest. Feed optimization has never been this hassle-free!

Performance-Based Campaign Creation:

Imagine creating campaigns split by product performance without the headache of setting up scripts and importing them as custom labels. Well, say hello to Optmyzr’s flagship launch of 2023! This new update to the Shopping Campaign Management tool lets you create campaigns based on performance metrics like ROAS, conversions, clicks, cost, and more, and also based on product price. No more importing product reports from Google Ads – it’s all about simplicity and efficiency. 

Plus, we offer budget and Target ROAS recommendations based on historical data for added convenience.

Monitoring Products with Precision

In the bustling holiday season, keeping a close eye on your products is key. Optmyzr has introduced two new alerts to ensure you’re always in the know. First up, we’ve got a custom alert to notify you when the percentage of disapproved products in your merchant feed goes over your set limit. Say goodbye to potential traffic and sales losses due to disapprovals. This feature works for both Google Merchant Center and Microsoft feeds.

But that’s not all! We’ve also introduced performance alerts for products in your Shopping and Performance Max campaigns, making it effortless to keep tabs on your top-performing and underperforming products. For example, create a custom alert to flag products with a sudden dip in ROAS compared to the previous period. If you prefer automated product performance reports, you can create a Rule Engine strategy under the “Products” scope. Think of it as your holiday helper for your campaigns!

Saving Budget on PMax by running frequent URL Checks

Budget-conscious during the holidays? We’ve got your back! Our new feature in the URL Checker lets you check for broken URLs for all campaigns (including Performance Max). No more wasted budget on faulty URLs. The tool even scans for terms like ‘Out of stock’ or ‘Not found’ on landing pages, alerting you promptly about them or pausing the corresponding asset groups. Your budget is precious, and we’re here to make sure it’s spent wisely.

Rule Engine Strategies for the Win

Want to boost your campaigns even further? Consider using Rule Engine strategies to exclude low-performing location targets, placements, and listing groups. It’s a smart way to fine-tune your campaigns for maximum efficiency.

In conclusion, this Holiday Season, Optmyzr has your e-commerce needs covered from A to Z. With these new features and optimizations, you’ll be well-prepared for the busiest shopping season of the year. And remember, we’re not stopping here! Stay tuned for more exciting updates throughout the year. Happy holidays and happy optimizing!

Note: These features are a part of Optmyzr Core. Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Sign up for a free trial now.

A PPC Practitioner’s 13-Step Guide to Optimizing Paid Ads

Optimizing paid search campaigns is essential for any account. When optimizing, the objective is to ensure that the ads reach the right audience at the right moment. Optimization also involves making updates and changes to meet business goals.

I typically follow these steps in sequence, but it’s not always necessary to execute every step during optimization. Often, merely analyzing the data and deciding to refrain from making changes is the best course of action.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how I optimize paid search campaigns for brands of all sizes:

1. Define clear objectives.

Before diving into optimization, clearly define your goals. Whether it’s boosting website traffic, generating leads, or increasing sales, having distinct objectives will steer your optimization efforts.

In 2024, brands must understand that not all traffic is of the same quality. While traffic campaigns might seem enticing, they can attract visitors who don’t align with a specific goal. Such campaigns can result in minimal conversions and a low return on investment. Instead of merely aiming for higher traffic, brands should focus on campaigns that bring in qualified traffic, ensuring tangible outcomes.

After setting clear objectives, also align with stakeholders on key metrics, such as a CPA goal for lead generation or a ROAS goal for sales accounts or those using value-based bidding.

In one of the larger accounts that I manage the goal is to drive website sales and store visits.  For this account, I worked with the team to have brand campaigns optimized towards sales with a ROAS goal.  Then the non-brand or category terms are optimized for a store visit. 

The reason for the shift in goals is because this product sells better when the customer can have a hands-on sales experience.  The account can still result in sales, but the overall account goal and objective shifted based on where the customer was at in their journey. 

This is an example of a time when having a clearly defined goal to increase sales translated down to a key optimization in the paid search account.

Have a clearly defined goal

Have a clearly defined goal

2. Monitor and adjust budget.

Allocate a larger budget to top-performing campaigns and consider cutting or reallocating funds from underperforming ones.

I suggest evaluating campaigns based on spend, performance, and intent when adjusting the budget. Segmenting campaigns by these three categories is vital because intent varies with the keyword. If you overlook the broader objective, you might allocate the entire budget to campaigns that excel in conversions but don’t necessarily foster account growth.

This is especially relevant for brands not fully utilizing their brand traffic. By not exploring non-brand traffic campaigns, brands lose the chance to attract new customers and expand their market share. Hence, over-relying on brand traffic can hinder growth.

This underscores why all optimizations should align with clear objectives.

Adjusting budgets in the accounts I manage is generally something that can be changed 1 time a month, however when I am managing an ecommerce client I will make budget shifts a few times a month to align with promotions and sales.

3. Adjust campaign targets.

High-performing campaigns: Lower CPA/ROAS for campaigns meeting goals or based on business insights, such as significant sales or events like Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

Low-performing campaigns: Consider raising CPA/ROAS targets for these campaigns to bid less aggressively.

With Black Friday/Cyber Monday coming up, I will make changes to ROAS targets throughout the day and weekend as the sales data and conversion data align.  If traffic volume is high and the account is converting well lowering the ROAS target allows the account to scale to the demand during tent pole moments.

I often say that during these sale moments in ecommerce, paid search managers know more than the bidding algorithm.

4. Evaluate ad group performance.

Examine each ad group. This step ensures that every ad group aligns with its objectives and yields the best results. Here, I assess metrics to determine which keywords need further scrutiny. I also evaluate the ads since they are at the ad group level.

There are also times when ad groups need to be turned off or on.  When I was managing paid search in the auto industry the campaigns were often segmented by new and used.  The used car campaigns had to be changed daily as the account might be running keywords for 1 used car only. 

When that car sold the ad group needed to be turned off quickly, so the account didn’t waste money on terms for a car make and model that was no longer available.  This also could have potentially resulted in a poor customer experience. 

5. Optimize ad copy.

In 2024, when refining ad copy, I ensure all headlines and descriptions are utilized. I also assess performance rankings in the platform and replace underperforming assets. Additionally, it’s crucial to ensure no extra assets were inadvertently created by the platform due to campaign settings.

6. Evaluate keyword performance.

The approach for keywords mirrors that of ad groups. If the primary aim is account growth and the CPA/ROAS metrics are within range, I’m less stringent about pausing keywords. However, if keywords are too broad and metrics are off-target, I adjust the match type down to a phrase or exact.

Adjust the match type

Adjust the match type

Adding negative keywords: Excluding irrelevant keywords that might activate your ads but don’t lead to conversions is vital. This strategy not only saves on advertising costs but also enhances the campaign’s overall performance.

One of the ways that I can find negative keywords in the accounts I manage is to review the search terms report regularly.  Another helpful tip is to use the Google Keyword Planner or Google Suggest. This will show you common terms that are searched with your main keyword and you can remove the terms that aren’t relevant.

7. Evaluate ad extensions.

Ad extensions offer additional information and can boost click-through rates (CTR). However, they’re often overlooked. Regularly review extensions to ensure they’re up-to-date and relevant.

For ecommerce brands sales can be updated in the promo extension, or if there is a page with a portion of the inventory on sale, I will go into the account and create a site link and direct traffic to the promotion page.

One important note is that ad extensions can be scheduled to run for certain days.  This is helpful for workflow, so you aren’t finding yourself in a situation where you must find and manually turn off all the additional pieces of ads where you have added a limited time frame ad copy.

8. Create relevant landing pages.

Ensure that the landing page you’re directing traffic to is relevant to your ad and provides a seamless user experience. A mismatch can increase bounce rates and decrease conversions.

This is something I will look at quarterly across all accounts I manage.  Sometimes brands will make changes to the site and landing pages should be changed for a better experience.  Other times campaigns can be going to PDP pages vs category pages and depending on the size of the category the category page has better conversions.

9. Test and refine.

Testing is integral to any optimization process. Regularly conduct A/B tests on headlines, descriptions, and landing pages to pinpoint areas for performance optimizations.

The easiest test to run is the ‘Optimize Text Ads’ experiment.  Some ideas for tests are headline swaps as well as landing page tests.  In one of the accounts, I was managing the client created a landing page all about the category that was more educational, and we tested that page against the product page (PDP) and learned that the customers needed more information before the purchase.  Based on the data the educational product page converted better than the PDP.

Test and refine your ads

Test and refine your ads

10. Segment your audience data.

Many accounts I manage feature hundreds of audiences in observation mode within each campaign. If a campaign underperforms, review its performance data, and consider switching the targeting settings from ‘observation’ to ’target’. While this narrows the campaign’s reach, it effectively refines and then you can gradually expand its scope based on performance.

11. Consider bid strategies.

Depending on the account goals look at the bidding strategy.  By targeting a high impression share, you ensure that you’re not missing out on potential visibility opportunities. This is especially crucial for brand campaigns where the goal is often to be seen by as many relevant users as possible.

12. Stay updated.

While this isn’t necessarily an account optimization tip, this will help you optimize your tactics. Paid search platforms, especially Google Ads, frequently update their features and algorithms. Stay updated with the latest trends and best practices to ensure your campaigns remain effective. You can do this by reading blogs like the one you are reading now, watching YouTube videos, and listening to industry podcasts.

13. Seek expert advice.

If you’re unsure about certain aspects of your campaign, consider seeking advice from paid search experts or agencies. They can provide insights and recommendations based on their experience.

In conclusion, optimizing paid search campaigns is a continuous endeavor. Consistent monitoring, testing, and refining are crucial to ensure your campaigns remain effective and achieve the desired outcomes.

And if you need help, give Optmyzr a try.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Google Ads Reps: Friend, Foe, or Some Third Nebulous Entity?

“This is your Google Ads rep speaking. Please fasten your seatbelt—it’s about to get reeeeeal bumpy.”

No, that’s not a real message anyone’s ever received from their ad rep. But after reading some of the news headlines and PPC practitioner stories in recent months, you can’t fault them for expecting a message like this next.

Between dubious advice and pushing automated recommendations that prioritize Google’s bottom line over account performance, it’s understandable that many agencies and practitioners have grown wary of speaking to ad reps.

But it wasn’t always like this, especially before ad revenue saw a few consecutive quarters of decline.

I’ve heard firsthand accounts of reps taking agency owners out to dinner, getting them into beta tests and events, and of course conducting deep strategy sessions with agency and client goals at their heart.

Unfortunately, those new to paid search missed that “golden age” of Google Ad reps and only know the sales-aligned approach.

What exactly does a Google Ads rep do?

When a Google Partner agency reaches a certain threshold of managed spend, they gain a degree of importance. Given how much revenue contribution they influence (and how much more they could), it’s no surprise that Google would want to stay in their good graces.

Part of this process included assigning a dedicated product expert—someone with a deep understanding of the Google Ads product as well as marketing objectives—to manage the relationship with an agency and keep the money flowing (and growing).

Critically, these reps’ goals aligned with those of the agency.

Clients who got great results with Google Ads would be happy to keep spending (or spend more) instead of diverting any budget to new platforms. And this would keep agencies invested, since many of them would bill based on the amount of ad spend managed.

But somewhere along the way, Google Search and its adjoining ad products became too important to revenue generation and too big to ignore. With the balance of power now in the ad engine’s favor, everything became about tech adoption and revenue maximization.

The difference between in-house and third-party reps

Today, ad reps are split between those employed full-time by Google and those who work for third parties contracted by Google to manage client relationships.

Paid search specialists and agency owners report a stark difference in approach between the two types of reps, with the latter typically focused on increasing spend and hitting adoption metrics with little concern for what best benefits the account.

This prioritization of “quota attainment” over a product-centric one is the source of agencies’ frustration, along with some unprofessional responses when practitioners choose not to align with their goals.

To truly understand the two reps’ difference in approach and knowledge, you have to first understand what motivates someone employed by one of the companies to which Google outsources this function.

When a vendor is told that they will be measured on certain numbers and targets, that’s what they’ll put first and get their people to prioritize as well. One independent Google Ads expert’s foray into that world reveals more.

How third-party reps are incentivized

Boris Beceric is a freelance Google Ads consultant. Like several of his colleagues, he faced issues with Teleperformance, one EU-based company that handles partner agency relationships on behalf of Google.

Being the mad scientist he is, Boris decided the best way to get to the bottom of why Teleperformance does what they do was to interview with them and get a job offer.

Sounds reasonable.

I’ll let you go through this Twitter thread from Boris explaining what he discovered.

What happens when ad reps go rogue

Most complaints about ad reps these days center on them being pushy or unaware of the Google Ads product. Sometimes, reps will go further and disrespect the sanctity of the business relationships that have existed in advertising for decades.

They push too hard on communication

The PPC practitioners and agency owners I know are busy folks, managing multiple accounts and servicing those clients on a daily basis.

It’s unrealistic for them to get on calls that don’t actively move those goals forward—and unwise when those calls are aimed at achieving adoption and increasing ad spend with no consideration for whether those are the right actions for the account.

I understand their frustration with third-party ad reps whose own performance is measured by how many calls they book, how many automated recommendations they enable, and how much additional ad spend they influence—conversions be damned.

They make questionable requests (and demands)

With ad engines obscuring more data than they show, it’s understandable that agencies and the advertisers they represent don’t want to provide them with any more information than is absolutely necessary.

But even in the best of times, asking for client data that has no bearing on campaign performance or account security is a dubious request. That goes double when the ask comes from a third party acting on behalf of the ad engine, and even more so when they already have read-only access to what they need to see.

They disregard the relationship between agency and client

So the partner agency says “no” to calls and “no” to requests for client data. What’s the right thing to do here?

If you said “back off”, you won’t make it as a third-party ad rep.

Truly unfortunate PPC practitioners like Jonni Lomax have to deal with reps who break the sanctity of the client/agency relationship, choosing to bypass the service provider and go straight to the folks who pay the advertising bill.

It’s a bold move, Cotton, but one that’s sure to tarnish an ad engine’s reputation.

How top Google Ads practitioners work with ad reps

As much as it surely bugs them to have to fight this fire on top of the many others raging in PPC land, the best practitioners know that it’s a battle they must face. More importantly, they have a process to address issues and maintain client trust.

But not all of it is bad. Several practitioners have good stories and praise for their reps, even if there are conditions and limitations attached.

“Everything we do had better relate to our goals”

If ad reps are going over our head, we often don’t hear about it. When I get emails from a rep, I often don’t reply. I let the client know the first few times and tell them why I won’t be talking with them. I’ve never had an issue in seven years of running the agency.

A few Facebook reps went directly to the client. One client met a few more times with the rep last year, but I’m unsure what happened after. Another met them a couple of times and then stopped as they found it to be a waste of time.

Regardless of where the rep works, if they want to have our clients’ best interests in mind, having us in the loop is key. When you are managing 10-20 clients and each client is on three or four platforms, it can be hard to do two hours of calls a month with reps. I think that is the part each platform does not take into account.

If I do meet with a rep, I state our goals, why they are what they are, and what our focus is. Everything we do from that point had better relate to our goals; I won’t accept anything less. If reps have an issue emailing ideas, I won’t talk with them either. No one has the time to do two hours of calls a month per client, and that doesn’t even take into account all the reps from ad platforms who want our business.

Since our clients trust us and we have shown what we can do, we don’t have an issue with them letting us lead. We don’t take on clients who want to micromanage or have ad platforms call the shots; there would be no reason to have us.

We do work with a few members of Google’s growth team who have helped with industry reports, getting access to betas, and sometimes coming up with campaign ideas for brands. Even Google’s support team has moved fast to add a client’s GMC to our agency MCA when onboarding a client.

Duane Brown, CEO, Take Some Risk

“Our rep is focused on our client’s goals”

I want to offer praise for our Google Ads rep, who has worked hard to try to resolve an issue that we’ve been having with remarketing campaigns serving to expanded audiences despite that setting being turned off.

From the beginning of our relationship with this rep, prior to the expanded audience issue, he’s been helpful and valuable. Stories abound of Google reps who just want to push auto-apply recommendations and higher budgets, but ours has focused on our client’s goals and offered useful recommendations to achieve them. He’s been a great partner in working with us to get results for the client.

When the expanded audience issue cropped up, the rep jumped in and escalated the support ticket immediately. He’s followed the issue all the way to a (less than ideal) resolution, and has continued to fight for us to get a refund despite the official word from Google support saying we are not due one.

All in all, we’ve been extremely happy with our Google Ads rep!

Melissa Mackey, Director of Paid Search, Compound Growth Marketing

“The higher the budget, the more experienced the rep”

When getting in touch with Google reps, I’ve had both positive and negative experiences.

In one scenario, a representative caused issues between the marketing agency I worked at and their client. Without ever getting in touch with the PPC specialist, this rep directly emailed the client stating that they found very important issues in the account that need to be resolved as soon as possible: “Poor ad strength”, “Poor ad rank” and “Selected features that are impacting the performance of the campaign”.

Obviously, the client got very upset and emailed the agency demanding answers.

An email that’s been signed by “Google” has stronger authority of expertise over a PPC specialist, and it’s easy to harm the client/agency relationship this way—especially if it happens in the early stages of the relationship, as it was in this case.

But I’ve also dealt with an ad rep who was knowledgeable and provided recommendations relevant to the business. A few months ago, I had a discussion with a Google representative who took the time to understand the client’s business and main goals.

Based on the discussion, the representative suggested relevant optimizations that could be implemented in the account, while also mentioning that things like Broad Match keywords (recommended in every other instance by every other rep I’ve talked to) should be avoided in this specific account considering the niche terms that were required.

Even when going through the Recommendations tab, there was no pressure to select all of them. Instead, they explained each of the options while insisting that I should avoid most of them.

I should note, though, that this client has a significant budget. I’ve learned that the more spend a Google Ads account has, the more experienced its allocated representative.

Sofia Akritidou, PPC Director, ThinkWise Digital

“Exceptional dedication helped navigate peak ecommerce season”

If you have been in paid search as long as I have you, you likely remember Google actively assisting agencies with tasks like campaign uploads and account restructuring, relieving us of significant workloads, particularly during periods of substantial account expansion.

Though such services have become rarer, there are circumstances where having Google perform a task is advantageous.

During a frenzied Black Friday and Cyber Monday, our strategist went above and beyond, offering unwavering support, budget reports, and projections related to search volume. This exceptional dedication helped our advertiser navigate the peak demands of the ecommerce season.

Acknowledging the natural skepticism within the paid search community regarding this partnership, it’s essential to emphasize that successful collaboration can indeed thrive. In this case, the balance struck between strategists and advertisers—combining support and sales—proved not only effective but helpful for our collective success.

Sarah Stemen, Owner, Sarah Stemen LLC

A partner who’s always got your back

Dealing with pushy ad reps can be frustrating for agencies, but open communication with clients and firm boundaries can reduce some of the stress. And in the instance that you stumble upon a rep with your genuine interests at heart, do everything in your power to hold on to them.

Because when you add in the black box nature of auctions and the motives that drive Google Ads as a product, it can feel like it’s you against the world’s biggest ad network.

After all, there’s a fundamental clash of business priorities.

If you’ve ever wished you had a buffer, consider managing your campaigns via a third-party platform like Optmyzr. Not only will you save time on investigations and apply custom strategies at scale, but you’ll get a partner with an outstanding reputation for support; one whose growth goals align with your own.

Cross-Channel Advertising: Challenges & Strategies (With an Example)

Juggling PPC campaigns across Google Ads, Facebook, and LinkedIn? You’re not alone in this high-stakes game of cross-channel marketing. According to a Nielsen study, a well-executed strategy can amplify consumer interaction by 250%. But how do you navigate the complexities?

That’s where this guide comes in. Brought to you by the UAWC marketing agency, we’ll break down platform-specific rules, smart budgeting, and more. Our aim? To help you maximize your ROI in the challenging landscape of cross-channel advertising.

What is Cross-Channel Advertising?

Cross-channel advertising is when businesses advertise across multiple digital platforms, ensuring their ads are seen by a wider audience. This approach is vital because today’s consumers are everywhere - from social media to search engines.

Now, you might hear “multi-channel” and “cross-channel” and think they’re the same. Not quite.

Multi-channel campaigns mean you’re on multiple platforms, but each one operates in its own bubble. Cross-channel, on the other hand, is more integrated. It’s about making sure all your campaigns talk to each other and give a unified message.

What are the major players in Cross-Channel advertising?

Diving into cross-channel PPC means getting familiar with the big players in the game. Let’s break them down:

Each platform offers unique advantages. Google captures intent, Microsoft provides cost-effective reach with niche targeting, Meta capitalizes on detailed demographic insights, LinkedIn zeroes in on professionals, and TikTok engages through interactive content. The key is aligning platform strengths with your audience and campaign goals.

How to overcome challenges in Cross-Channel advertising?

Managing cross-channel PPC isn’t a walk in the park. Here are some hurdles you might face:

1. Developing Unified Messaging

Maintaining a consistent message across platforms like Google Ads, Facebook, and LinkedIn is increasingly challenging. Each platform has its own set of rules, audience behaviors, and ad formats. 

This complicates the task of delivering a uniform brand message across various channels, requiring marketers to adapt their strategies to each platform’s unique environment.

2. Developing a Unified Tracking Strategy

Data is the lifeblood of PPC campaigns, but the sheer volume can be overwhelming. Each platform offers its own set of metrics, from click-through rates to impressions to conversions. 

This creates a challenge in developing a unified tracking strategy that can be applied cross-channel. Marketers must discern which metrics are most relevant to their goals and find a way to standardize these across all platforms for easier analysis.

3. Budget Optimization

Budget allocation becomes a complex task when managing cross-channel PPC campaigns. For instance, if Google Ads is consuming a significant portion of the budget but failing to deliver expected results, marketers are faced with a dilemma.

Should they reallocate funds to more successful channels, or continue investing in Google Ads in the hope that performance will improve? This decision-making process becomes even more complicated when considering the unique cost structures and bidding options of each platform.

4. Consistent Branding

Maintaining a consistent brand image across multiple platforms is a significant challenge. Each platform has its own set of guidelines and limitations for ad creatives. 

For example, LinkedIn’s professional atmosphere may require a more formal tone and specific visual elements, while Instagram’s casual setting allows for more creative freedom. The challenge lies in adapting the brand’s core message and visual identity to fit the unique requirements of each platform without diluting the brand.

5. Audience Segmentation

Different platforms attract different demographics, making audience segmentation a complex task. LinkedIn is often more effective for B2B marketing, while platforms like TikTok or Instagram may be more suitable for targeting younger demographics. 

This requires marketers to develop multiple audience personas and craft tailored messages for each, complicating the campaign management process.

6. A/B Testing

A/B testing is a standard practice in PPC campaigns, but its complexity multiplies when applied across multiple platforms. An ad that performs well on Facebook may not yield the same results on Google Ads due to differences in audience behavior and ad display algorithms. 

This necessitates running multiple sets of A/B tests, each tailored to the specific requirements of the individual platform, making the process time-consuming and resource-intensive.

7. Staying Updated

The digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving, with platforms regularly rolling out new features, ad formats, and algorithms. 

Marketers must not only stay updated on these changes but also understand their implications for cross-channel PPC campaigns. This requires continuous learning and adaptation, making it a demanding aspect of campaign management.

What are the strategies for effective Cross-Channel Campaigns?

To navigate the maze of cross-channel PPC, you need a solid strategy. Here’s a roadmap to guide you:

1. Platform-Specific Content Creation 

Craft content tailored to each platform’s strengths and audience. While the core message remains consistent, the presentation should vary. For instance, a detailed infographic might work for LinkedIn, while a catchy short video is more suitable for TikTok.

Ambr Eyewear ran a cross-channel PPC campaign using Google Ads and Facebook Ads. On Google Ads, they utilized concise, keyword-focused ad copy along with ad extensions to provide additional information.

On Facebook, they took advantage of the platform’s robust demographic and interest-based targeting, using visually engaging ads with short, compelling copy. This tailored approach allowed them to effectively reach different customer segments, thereby optimizing their ROI across both platforms.

2. Centralized Analytics Dashboard 

Use a unified analytics tool that aggregates data from all platforms. This allows for a holistic view of performance metrics and helps in making informed decisions based on cross-channel insights.

3. Cross-Platform Remarketing

For effective cross-platform retargeting, it’s crucial to know which platforms work well together. Here’s a breakdown:

Tips:

4. Unified Customer Profiles

Unified customer profiles are essential for understanding the customer journey across platforms. CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho offer integrations with multiple advertising platforms, allowing you to create a more cohesive cross-channel strategy.

Tips:

5. Synchronized Campaign Launches 

When launching a new campaign, synchronize the timing across platforms. This creates a buzz and ensures that your audience receives a consistent message, no matter where they are.

6. Cross-Promotion Between Platforms 

Use one platform to drive traffic to another. For instance, tease content on Instagram and direct users to view the full content on YouTube or your website.

7. Optimize for Cross-Channel Conversions

Recognize that a user might discover your product on one platform and convert on another. Ensure that the transition between platforms is seamless and that there’s a consistent call-to-action guiding them.

The role of automation in Cross-Channel Advertising

Cross-channel advertising is a multifaceted field. It involves various platforms and strategies.

Automation tools can be the answer to this complexity. They ensure your campaigns are optimized and run efficiently.

Why embrace automation?

Managing ads across different platforms is a challenge. The sheer diversity can be daunting.

A PPC automation tool, like Optmyzr can adjust bids dynamically, stop underperforming ads, reallocate budgets in real-time, and much more to help you run profitable ads.

Case Study: Successful Cross-Channel Campaign

Brand: Ambr Eyewear - A visionary eyewear brand from Dublin.

The Challenge:

Ambr Eyewear was founded to address the need for stylish computer glasses. While they had a unique and quality product, their brand was relatively unknown. Their primary challenge was to make a mark in a competitive market, targeting users who spend long hours in front of screens.

The Strategy (with UAWC’s Assistance):

UAWC, a renowned digital marketing agency, stepped in to elevate Ambr Eyewear’s marketing game.

Channels:

Strategy:

Insights & Results:

Key Takeaways:

In conclusion, with UAWC’s expert guidance, Ambr Eyewear transformed their digital marketing approach. Their journey is a testament to the power of a well-strategized cross-channel PPC campaign. With the right partners and approach, even a niche brand can achieve remarkable success and recognition.

Conclusion

Navigating the world of cross-channel PPC is undeniably complex, but it’s a challenge worth embracing. As showcased by successes like Ambr Eyewear, understanding and adapting to these complexities can lead to remarkable results. 

So, as you delve into cross-channel campaigns, see each challenge as an opportunity. With the right approach, the digital realm offers vast potential. Embrace it, adapt, and thrive.

And if you need help, give Optmyzr a try.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

20 PPC Optimization Strategies to Take Your Performance From Good to Great

PPC Optimization, or Pay-Per-Click Optimization, is a continuous process of analyzing and improving your ad campaigns to maximize their effectiveness and achieve specific business objectives.

Types of PPC Optimizations

PPC Optimization can involve a range of activities like:

Let’s break it down and learn how to optimize each of these elements.

Optimize keywords

1. Get high-performing keyword suggestions with Keyword Lasso.

Since its launch, this has been one of our customers’ favorite tools for search term management.

The Keyword Lasso offers you a clean list of great keywords that do not yet exist in your account. It also lets you get suggestions from the Google Ads Keyword Planner as well. This means you can now see how some search terms you don’t yet have as keywords have performed compared to the competition and the average monthly searches they receive.

Pro tip: Use turbo mode with custom filters to identify new themes and even get negative keyword ideas.

Try Keyword Lasso now

2. Identify non-performing keywords easily with the Negative Keyword Finder.

This tool has helped some of our customers save thousands of dollars every month.

As the name suggests, the Negative Keyword Finder helps you quickly find negative keywords out of search terms that have not been performing well for the entire account over the past few days and are inefficiently spending your budget.

Try the Negative Keyword Finder now

3. Get the right traffic by adding exact match negatives using the Traffic Sculptor.

If you’re using any broad or phrase match keywords, it is likely that some search queries will match less relevant keywords and show a less relevant ad. 

The Traffic Sculptor analyzes search terms and keyword data and suggests adding some search terms as exact match negative keywords at the ad group level so that the right ads show for each search query in your account.

Try the Traffic Sculptor now

4. Find duplicate keywords within the same campaign or across campaigns using the Keyword De-Duper.

Duplicate keywords that are present more than once in the same account end up competing against each other and thus dividing the traffic.

The Keyword De-Duper finds absolute duplicate keywords in your Google Ads account, both within and across campaigns. The system analyzes the data and then suggests the best-performing duplicate keyword to keep.

Try the Keyword De-Duper now

Optimize manual CPC bidding campaigns

1. Identify keywords with a high Quality Score that missed Google’s first page with the First Page Bridger.

The First Page Bridger analyzes the performance data for each keyword and gathers the ones with a high Quality Score but with a bid that’s slightly below the first-page bid (up to 20% lower). 

It’ll then display the list of keywords that would have the largest impact through a minimum bid increase. By doing so, you’ll increase their chances of appearing on the first page of search results, which ultimately results in more traffic and sales.

Some tips for using the First Page Bridger

We suggest segmenting keywords into three sections based on impact and the required bid increase to meet the first page requirements:

Because the bid increase can take some time to affect the account performance, we recommend running the optimization every 7-14 days. Keep in mind that the lower the Quality Score, the higher the required bid to get a good ad rank.

Try the First Page Bridger now

2. Get more conversions using the Conversion Grabber.

The Conversion Grabber looks for keywords in your Google Ads account that have had conversions, but which are currently losing impression share due to ad rank. It’ll then recommend selective bid increases for the keywords that would have the most positive impact on conversions.

The analysis looks at data for the last 30 days. You can change the date range to look at a different period as well.

We recommend running this optimization every two weeks.

Try the Conversion Grabber now

3. Reduce bids of expensive keywords with the Find Expensive Keywords tool.

We created this optimization using the Rule Engine to help you find expensive keywords and reduce their bids.

The keywords suggested are ones with a higher CPA than a keyword would typically have in the campaign, or keywords without conversions but which have still undergone more clicks than normally required to get at least 1 conversion.

Try the Find Expensive Keywords tool now

4. Adjust bids by the hour based on performance with the Hour of Week Bidder.

The Hour of the Week Bidder recommends time-based bid adjustments based on the performance of KPIs.

Unlike Google Ads where you have to create time slots first, and then set bid adjustments one by one, this optimization recommends and lets you set bid adjustments with a single click. You can also create custom time slots to analyze performance and create ad schedules.

Important note for Microsoft Ads accounts: As you may know, unlike with Google Ads, in Microsoft Ads each campaign can have a different time zone. In the Hour of Week tool, this translates into the following:

The system fetches data for the selected campaigns irrespective of each campaign’s time zone, which means that if a campaign accrues, for example, 5 impressions from 12:00 AM to 4:00 AM, the data will be fetched properly for that hour range, no matter what the time zone is. This also works when selecting multiple campaigns.

Try the Hour of Week Bidder tool now

5. Set bid adjustments to a geolocation using the Geo Bid Adjustment tool.

The Geo Bid Adjustment tool makes recommendations for bid adjustments on locations based on performance. It analyzes the performance for each location your ads show in and makes recommendations at a campaign level.

Even if you’re not directly targeting a location, you can analyze the performance and the tool will add it as a target, and set the bid adjustment. You can set bid adjustments at country, region, city, and zip code/pin code level.

Try the Geo Bid Adjustment tool now

More tools to optimize manual CPC bidding

Optimize automated bidding campaigns

1. Manage Target ROAS or Target CPA.

When your campaigns have automated bidding strategies set up in Google Ads, it is not possible to manually edit the bids for keywords (except Enhanced CPC). The way to optimize the campaign’s performance is by modifying the target Cost-per-Acquisition (CPA) or Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) values at the ad group or campaign level for the strategies Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value.

You can also teach Google more about how you value conversions from different segments when your campaigns run on value-based bidding.

For this purpose, we have created 6 optimizations using the Rule Engine to help you manage and optimize your campaigns on automated bidding: Optimize Target ROAS for Ad Groups and Campaigns, Optimize Target CPA for Ad Groups and Campaigns, Non-Converting Queries (Search), and Non-Converting Queries (Shopping). 

Optimize Target ROAS for Ad Groups

Modify Target ROAS for ad groups performing well to reduce the ROAS gap and increase conversions.

Optimize Target CPA for Ad Groups

Modify Target CPA for ad groups performing well to reduce the CPA gap and increase conversions.

Optimize Target ROAS for Campaigns

Modify Target ROAS for campaigns performing well to reduce the ROAS gap and increase conversions.

Optimize Target CPA for Campaigns

Modify Target CPA for campaigns performing well to reduce the CPA gap and increase conversions.

Non-Converting Queries (Search)

Add non-converting queries with zero conversions, high cost, and low CTR as negative keywords.

Non-Converting Queries (Shopping)

Add non-converting queries with zero conversions, high cost, and low CTR as negative keywords.

You can find these optimizations under the Optimizations tab > For Automated Bidding.

We built these strategies using the Rule Engine. Read more here to see how you can get started creating your own custom strategies. If you need any help on how the Rule Engine works, feel free to reach out to our support team or at support@optmyzr.com, and we’ll be more than happy to help!

2. Bonus tools for automated bidding

Score segments of your audience based on how valuable they are to your business with the Segment Scorer.

The Segment Scorer provides you with the Analytics data that could be assessed while scoring a segment. It serves to consider other important business aspects like Customer Long Term Value or Expected Contract Value while making value adjustments.

It’s not just the usual machine data that is already observable by Google, but your own knowledge and understanding that’s put into work.

Adjust conversion values using Optimize Value Rules.

The ‘Optimize Value Rules’ tool suggests conversion value rules that you can set up in your Google Ads account. It gives you these suggestions by using the data from the segments you scored in Segment Scorer. You can read more about how it works here.

Optimize ad text

1. Fix underperforming RSAs with the Ad Text Optimization tool.

This optimization tool helps you identify the high-performing ad text components in your account. Sort by metric to see what’s working and what isn’t, modify or edit text in bulk, and create new ads while pausing the old ones.

Try the Ad Text Optimization tool now

2. Pause underperforming ads and create and A/B test new ads with the A/B testing tool.

Once you make changes to ad text, visit the A/B Testing for Ads tool to see ads by performance breakdown. Here you can filter by ad type to see only Responsive Search Ads and create new ads. Modify headlines and descriptions, then run more tests.

To A/B test your Microsoft Ads, read this guide

Try the A/B testing tool now.

3. Find underperforming landing pages with the Landing Page Analysis tool.

In addition to underperforming Responsive Search Ads, your ad group may be suffering from a weak landing page experience.

The Landing Page Analysis tool:

Try the Landing Page analysis tool now.

Optimize budgets

1. Optimize Budgets for a single account (Google Ads or Microsoft Ads)

The Optimize Budgets - Single Account tool lets you optimize budgets for Google Ads and Microsoft Ads by translating them from monthly to daily budgets. This can be done to achieve a target or allocate more budget to campaigns that are driving more leads/sales. 

Try the tool now.

2. Optimize Budgets Across Multiple Account Portfolio

This tool lets you track, monitor, and change campaign budgets across multiple accounts and platforms (Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Facebook).

You’ll first need to create a portfolio using the PPC Portfolio Manager. A portfolio can include more than one account from different platforms. 

Try the tool now.

Optimize shopping campaigns

Here’s an overview of the shopping tools we built to help you optimize your campaigns.

If you want help with managing your campaigns for this Q4 holiday season, watch the video below:

For more tips on managing your Performance Max campaigns, implementing seasonality bid adjustments, and more, watch this video.

Other optimizations

1. Breeze through multiple optimization tasks in minutes with the Optmyzr Express.

Going through Optmyzr Express is like going through your email inbox every morning. It shows you optimization suggestions across accounts. It is designed to work as a to-do list for your Google Ads, Amazon Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Yahoo Japan Ads accounts.

Try the Optmyzr Express now.

2. Optimize your campaigns by weather.

This tool enables you to target or exclude locations and even pause/enable your campaigns based on the weather conditions of the specified locations, whether they are directly targeted in your campaigns or not.

Try the tool now.

3. Exclude unnecessary placements.

Finally, it’s important to regularly analyze the performance of your campaigns and exclude any placements that are not performing well. This will ensure that your campaigns are optimized for performance and that your budget is being spent on the most valuable products.

Mobile Apps Exclusion

This optimization allows you to exclude all the low-performing mobile app placements that are costing you money but not resulting in any conversion. 

The tool will list out all your mobile app placements with exactly 0 conversions in the last 30 days and with costs greater than zero.

You can exclude both types of automatic placements; for IOS and Android apps at the ad-group level in bulk. 

You can access the tool here and the detailed user guide here.

Display Placements Exclusion

With the Display Placements Exclusion optimization, you can find placements that are resulting in wasted spend and exclude them based on a business goal – Branding, Traffic, or Conversions. This tool also makes it possible to see sites that are part of search partners and exclude them.

You can access the tool here and the detailed user guide here.

Account-Level Placement Exclusions 

Excluding placements from an account helps prevent your ads from showing up on certain placements on the Display network or YouTube, overriding any campaign-level placement targeting.

For some cases, as with Smart Shopping and Smart Display campaigns, account-level placement exclusions are a great solution, as Google doesn’t support excluding placements through a negative list or by excluding them at the ad group level.

You can access the tool here and the detailed user guide here.

Execute, measure, and optimize

Optimizing ad campaigns is an ongoing process. It requires experimentation, continuous testing, data analysis, strategic thinking, and a commitment to adapt and refine campaigns based on changing market conditions and business goals.

And if you need help, make use of these tools.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

7 Proven Retargeting Strategies for Higher Conversion Rates

Retargeting is an advertising technique for reaching out to your previous website visitors. Paid search, social media, and email marketing channels let brands and other advertisers create retargeting campaigns.

However, it also requires browser cookies enabled from the user’s side. Advertisers can identify user behavior with the help of a unique code courtesy of browser cookies. Tracking user behavior and seeing whether they complete the call to action determines whether to retarget that user.

For example, if somebody abandons a shopping cart, a retargeting ad functions as a reminder mechanism to complete the transaction.

Benefits of Retargeting

Retargeting campaigns would not be so prominent without the multiple benefits they bring. According to FinancesOnline, about 70% of marketers rely on retargeting to raise brand awareness. Other benefits include:

According to a survey by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, 92% of marketers found retargeting to outperform search, email, and display advertising.

Overall, retargeting is a valuable technique to grow your revenue, but the question is how to make the most out of it.

Here are 7 retargeting strategies that should push you in the right direction.

7 Proven Retargeting Strategies

1. Focus on the Copy Rather Than the Image.

Let’s start with the copy. If you look through various ads on different channels, brands aim to prioritize assets users are familiar with, such as logos and slogans.

Taking this approach with retargeting ads doesn’t make a lot of sense. After all, your targeted audience is already familiar with the brand. These people visited your site but did not complete the transaction. 

Instead of the visuals, focus on the copy. Determine the customer hesitations and build a tailor-made ad to address these hesitations.

Check out Optmyzr’s AB Testing for Ads optimization tool.

It helps you find ads that meet your business goals or contribute to the success of your advertising campaign, pause underperforming ads, and create new ones to continue testing.

The tool also recommends high-performing headlines, description lines, and display URLs (from your best-performing ads) to create new ads in the ad groups where you are pausing ads with a lower performance.

Try the tool now

2. Incentivize Target Audience With Discounts.

Online shoppers have an easy time comparing product prices to get the best deal. Bouncing from one site to another is not even necessary, as you can simply install a price checker extension on your browser.

The odds are that prospective customers did not complete a purchase because they believed that they could find a better deal. Leaving a site once is enough to potentially lose a user. And not because they could find a more appealing offer but also because of various distractions, making them forget about visiting your website in the first place.

Why not sweeten the deal in your retargeting ad by proclaiming that you offer a special discount? That’s bound to get people’s attention, especially if they showed interest early on. A simple incentive can be the difference-maker you were looking for.

3. Add FOMO.

The fear of missing out urges consumers to take action. Even if somebody doesn’t really need goods or services, they might change their mind if a last-minute offer appears on their feed.

The tried and true FOMO tactic combined with buzz phrases like “the clock is ticking” or “book now and save 50% off before the offer expires” can get people’s attention.

Many brands also highlight bestsellers and show stock levels. “Only 3 left in stock” is one way to highlight scarcity. As is running a limited offer, as is shown in the example below:

For retargeting campaigns, FOMO is particularly effective. You are reaching out to a consumer who was interested before, and giving them that push is bound to improve your conversion rates.

4. Remind Buyers Why They Chose You.

Customer retention is a priority because happy shoppers are returning shoppers. If they trust the brand, persuading them to continue spending money on your business is easier than persuading new customers.

Remind the audience why they should return. For instance, if you sell MacBook accessories and help users with creating bootable USB on Mac or solving Bluetooth problems with earpods, focus on these benefits as your selling points.

Fashion brands are another example. Whenever a collection is out, notify the customers and encourage them to browse new goods.

Finally, for recurring service businesses, retargeting ads could revolve around reminders to book an appointment.

5. Polish Your Call to Action.

Your call to action entices potential customers to lose their hesitation and commit. A good CTA button is:

Previously covered discount and FOMO tactics shape the CTA copy, but one should also understand the importance of designing and presenting the offer visually.

Bright and clear colors and enough white space are the basics of designing graphics for your retargeting ads. However, if the ad has multiple elements, it is crucial to establish a clear hierarchy and push the call to action in the front. 

6. Test Different Times.

Retargeting ad engagement rate is similar to social media content engagement in the sense that the time of displaying the ad determines how much traction it gets.

It takes a while to test different time frames to gain enough data for conclusive results, but it is a necessary step to create a successful retargeting campaign.

Some marketers lose motivation when their early retargeting efforts lead nowhere. They fail to recognize that changing the ad display time is enough to boost engagement.

7. Track Your Ad Data.

Determining the best time to display your ads is just one part of the data you need to collect. Retargeting marketing is complex, and those in charge of the campaign have to go through trial and error to gain insightful details and improve the results.

Color psychology in the visuals, the copy, target demographics, locations, and everything else you can think of that goes into the retargeting market to maximize the effectiveness of the campaign.

Multiple tools exist to track different information, so you do not have to worry about keeping tabs on everything manually.

Also, expect to make adjustments to keep up with ever-changing digital landscape trends. Failing to do that means ineffective usage of available resources and falling behind competitors who are more efficient than you.

It’s easier to convert returning visitors than new visitors.

To sum it all up, retargeting ads have a fair few benefits, and they should be utilized more. At the end of the day, returning customers are easier to please than new potential leads.

That is not to say that businesses should abandon the idea of attracting fresh customers. It’s just that when done right, retargeting ads is less of a hassle.

And if you need help, Optmyzr makes it easier to showcase the value of your campaigns.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

How to protect your Google Ads account from glitches?

Ad platform giants like Google Ads and Meta Ads are always testing new features and functionalities. And, these tests require real-world data, which comes from ad accounts like yours.

Sometimes the platforms inform you’re part of a test group when they run their experiments. But most of the time, you’re not given a heads-up. As a result, you may observe varying results in your campaigns—sometimes they perform better, and sometimes they don’t.

However, it’s unusual for a test to go totally wrong, so wrong that it costs your brand real money. This is precisely what happened to Melissa Mackey, Director of Paid Search at Compound Growth Marketing.

What exactly happened?

Expanded targeting is a feature that grants Google permission to reach people beyond your specified target audience if it believes there’s a high likelihood of conversion. While most platforms have this feature enabled by default nowadays, in Google Ads, you can choose to disable it.

Melissa said she contacted Google Ads support, they apologized, told her it was a bug, and they’d refund her.

But then, it happened again. Even though she’d turned it off, Google opted her clients’ ads back into expanded targeting.

She reached out to Google Ads support once again, and they told her:

Google’s Ad Liaison, Ginny Marvin, assured her that she would investigate the matter.

While it is not clear if this is a widespread issue, such glitches aren’t necessarily new. Earlier this year, Chelsea So, Founder of Leadocity, discovered that Google Ads was ignoring placement exclusions for her client.

But it happened in one specific instance: for video campaigns with Optimized Targeting enabled.

A workaround—while far from ideal—does exist. Watch the video below to listen to Chelsea’s story and how Leadocity fixed things for their client.

And recently, Odi Caspi, Founder of UK-based agency, EffectiveMarketing said this on X (formerly Twitter).

Here’s one more: this happened to us back in January of this year. Watch the video below where our CEO, Frederick Vallaeys explains what happened in detail.

Or you can read the full article of what happened here.

TL;DR, Google identified our brand term “Optmyzr” as a redundant keyword, which made no sense because it was — and still is — one of our best-converting keywords.

But we caught it in time with our PPC Investigator and Rule Engine tools in Optmyzr before it could cause too much damage (more on them below).

All these instances are a clear reminder that you can never “set it and forget it” in PPC. This is exactly the reason you need automation layering or PPC insurance to protect your accounts. And that’s what a tool like Optmyzr or a great script will do for you.

How can you protect your account from Google Ads glitches?

Our evangelist, Navah Hopkins, shares a few ways in this video about how Optmyzr can help you proactively protect your account from any accidental or automated additions to your campaign targeting.

1. Set up alerts.

One way to stay informed about such unexpected changes made to your campaigns is by setting up alerts for your budget spend.

This will help you to stay informed about the status of your campaigns and make sure you don’t waste unnecessary ad spend. This is particularly important if you have lots of automated rules and scripts running (especially budget pacing rules).

However, Optmyzr can automatically look for anomalies or deviations for you without you setting them up yourself using anomaly alerts.

You can also generate them for Microsoft Ads or Facebook Ads, not just for Google Ads.

2. Protect your account from showing your ads on low-quality placements.

Optmyzr’s Smart Placement Exclusions can proactively find bad ad placements for you. Instead of waiting for these placements to spend money on wasted clicks and then excluding them, the tool proactively excludes them.

If you want to exclude placements for your Display Campaigns, you can use the Display Placements Exclusion tool.

Or, if you want to exclude placements at the account level, you can use Optmyzr’s Rule Engine.

3. Track performance changes using the Change History widget.

The Change History widget allows you to report on status changes for the account, ads, audience, budgets, keywords, network, placements, and targeting, on an individual basis.

Here are some insights you can get from the Change History widget:

Read more*:* 5 Ways to Optimize Your Google Ads Account Using the Change History Widget

4. Get a detailed view of your account performance using the PPC Investigator.

The PPC Investigator is an insights tool that’ll help you find exactly which element in a given account caused a metric to increase or decrease, and whether it’s a keyword, placement, or an entire network that caused the changes.

It has two components:

  1. Cause Chart
  2. Root Cause Analysis

Cause Chart

The Cause Chart is based on the fact that the performance of every metric depends on the performance of other underlying metrics. It uses the relationships between different metrics to show potential causality.

Root Cause Analysis

After identifying which metric needs to be worked on, the Root Cause Analysis goes a step further and highlights the exact Campaigns/Ad groups/Product partition/Keywords, etc. that were responsible for the change in an account.

It shows top movers who are significant contributors to the change in the account when compared across the two date ranges. You can view the top three positive and negative movers for a particular account.

The video below explains how you can use this tool for PPC analysis.

Run your campaigns with confidence and peace of mind

As Navah said in her video above, we want to reiterate that we truly do not believe these glitches are intentional, rather they are accidents made by Google Ads’s automated system. This is why it’s critical that you’re always documenting what actions you take and why in account management. And if you need help, Optmyzr makes it easier to protect your account!

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use these tools to manage over $4 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Maximize Q4 Ecommerce Profits: 13 Tips for a Successful 2023 Holiday Season

Considering how important and chaotic the Q4 shopping season can be for advertisers, it’s never too late to start setting up your campaigns. Buyer behavior trends have changed over the years during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and December holidays and now we’re seeing consumers shopping earlier than before.

One thing is for sure: billions of dollars will be up for grabs.

With all that said, let’s see how you can prepare in advance and make this 2023 shopping season a profitable one for your business.

On that note, our CEO, Frederick Vallaeys recently spoke to Marcel Smal of Roots Network on PPC Town Hall. Marcel shared how his agency is gearing up for Q4 and how he recommends you set up your Performance Max and other campaigns.

Watch the full episode below.

This article is a collection of tips shared by Marcel during that conversation.

5 Tips to Get Started With Setting up Your Campaigns

1. Start early.

Initiate preparations well in advance. Briefings for creatives, alignment, budgets, etc. take time. Allocate sufficient time for planning.

2. Set efficiency targets.

Set aggressive efficiency targets before promotional days. Use seasonality adjustments during promotions. Use negative seasonality adjustments afterwards, or conversion exclusion events.

Note: Seasonality adjustments don’t work for Video and App campaigns.

3. Try Discovery ads.

Use a ramp-up period before promotion. Allow time for the campaign to gain traction. It can take a few days to a week to start seeing some volume.

4. Build a pre and post-Black Friday strategy.

For instance, during pre-Black Friday, you can focus on lead generation, app downloads, and audience building. Push those goals during the promotion days.

And post-Black Friday, plan to promote follow-up products (e.g. accessories for products your audiences have bought, refills, etc.).

5. Don’t ignore ad extensions and customizers.

For retail campaigns, add promotions to your Merchant Center. Use site links and ad customizers.

Performance Max tips for 2023 Q4 Shopping

Marcel suggests the following tips for Performance Max.

1. Align your goals with your business objectives.

Make sure your measurement and reporting are aligned with your business objectives: revenue, profit, CLV, etc. If new customers are worth more to you than existing customers, then use ‘New Customer Acquisition’ as your goal.

2. Give Performance Max time to learn.

Performance Max campaigns look promising and Google is pretty active in adding more features to improve it. I suggest Pmax be included in your setup, but don’t make them your top priority over other campaign types. And don’t create too many Pmax campaigns.

Related reading*:* How to Manage and Optimize Your Performance Max Retail Campaigns

3. Keep an eye on the results.

If you see an uplift of +30%, analyze where that uplift came from. Is that traffic from existing customers? Or from branded traffic? Also, check which interactions drove the conversions.

4. Make use of Mike Rhodes’s PMax script.

It’s clear that insights and reporting in PMax campaigns are limited. So Marcel suggests taking the help of Mike Rhodes’s (of WebSavvy) PMax script which allows you to see the performance per platform.

5. Don’t create too many asset groups.

Creating too many asset groups can take quite a bit of manual work to optimize and make adjustments. Again, use the script by Mike Rhodes to find out which asset groups get the most volume.

You can use these insights to decide if it is necessary to split up your asset groups further. And, based on the volume, you can check if it is worthwhile to create or refresh new assets.

Also, add your own video assets. And check with Google if its automatically-created videos can be turned off.

6. Set up good targeting settings.

Take your time to set up targeting. Prepare an extensive list for custom intent audiences, competitor websites, competitor apps, brand websites, etc.

Bonus tips

1. Bidding

tROAS or tCPA? If your conversions have different values (retail, travel, leads with different values), then you can choose tROAS bidding. If you are a lead-gen advertiser with multiple types of leads and multiple CPA targets, then assign that CPA value to the different conversion actions.

And if you then let a tROAS bid strategy optimize towards a ROAS of 1.0, you will work towards your original CPA targets.

Related reading: 5 Ways to Manage Smart Bidding

2. Measuring conversions

Should you prioritize revenue or profit? If profit is your bottom line KPI, and this information is available, then always optimize towards profit. Implement this in your measurement if possible so that you can actively steer towards profit instead of revenue.

Make sure you measure everything that adds value to your company. If you have physical stores, measure store visits and store sales. If people can also buy via telephone, track phone calls. If you run app campaigns, track app downloads and assign a value. If account sign-ups have a value, track them too and assign a value.

Try to measure as close to the business objectives as possible.

Conversions -> Revenue -> Profit -> CLV

The Bottom Line

As we near the end of Q3, last-minute preparations for Q4 are in full swing. Search marketing has changed, and we need to be watchful of these changes as they affect data analytics and audience behaviors.

At Optmyzr, we’ve seen a massive shift across industries as more and more marketers and agencies are starting to trust machine learning, automation, and data-driven optimizations.

But in order to thrive with automation, you need to look for powerful search systems and highly effective management tools.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use these tools to manage over $4 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Weather-Based PPC Management: How to Optimize Campaigns Based on Weather Changes

Weather often impacts the behavior of consumers. For example, rainy weather would lead to an increase in demand for cab and shuttle services. And, a heat wave compels people to stay indoors which leads to an increase in demand for air conditioning and similar services.

Not only the buying of products, but weather can also impact the moods of consumers. They might be interested in watching romcoms or sitcoms when the weather is pleasant. On dark cold nights, some may prefer fantasy while others may love watching horror movies. Similarly, during the summer or spring break, you’d see an increased interest in social activities for both kids and adults.

Now, suppose you are someone with a business that sells services or products that can be impacted by weather changes, like, cab services, cosmetics, apparel, streaming platforms, etc. You always want to reduce wasted ad spend. In that case, you know how important it is to stay on top of these changes and target the right audience for your ads.

In this article, you’ll learn:

How does weather-based advertising work?

Let’s say you are a cafe owner and you have your specials of the day out on the display. On a rainy day, you’d put hot cocoa. And on a sunny day, you’d prefer to put peach iced tea as your special to attract customers.

Once they are in your cafe, they can order anything from the menu. The important thing here is to attract customers and make them want to enter your cafe, which you do by posting special, relevant messages on the display.

Similarly, when advertising, you can choose to manage campaigns based on weather. For example, you can have one campaign with cold beverages and another for hot beverages. And then on sunny days, you advertise the campaign with cold beverages.

The 3 levers you need to do weather-based advertising

  1. Target the right set of locations
  2. Have conditional changes in the campaign based on the weather for those locations
  3. Have a way to automate this process

3 benefits of weather-based advertising

1. Personalized campaigns

Weather-based advertising can help localize and personalize your ads according to your customer’s location and weather.

2. Relevant messaging

Weather-based campaign management can make sure that the end-user of your product or service sees a relevant ad that resonates with their mood.

3. Enhanced ad ROI

Personalized ads and relevant messaging can lead to an increase in leads, engagement, and then conversions.

Examples across industries

There are several industries that can benefit from weather-based advertising, and use this strategy to boost their campaign performance. Here are some examples.

Retail or ecommerce

Advertisers all around the world can use weather forecasting to show the right kind of ads at a particular location. 

For example: showing ads for umbrellas on the days when the forecasts say it’s going to rain in 2 days. Or, showing ads for seasonal products like sunscreen around the time summer is about to start.

Apparel

Similar to the ecommerce industry, apparel stores — online or offline — need timely advertising based on the current weather conditions. 

For example: showing ads for pullovers or sweaters for a colder week and pausing campaigns selling windcheaters for the weeks with no cold waves or rains in winter.

Cab services

In cities or places with unreliable public transport, a lot of people use third-party services to book cabs for commute. So, with the business knowledge of how the population of a certain area uses your services and the understanding of the current or future weather conditions you can manage your campaigns profitably. And you can also choose to target the right locations and set budgets for those campaigns based on demand and weather.

How to do weather-based advertising?

You can use the OpenWeather API to get weather updates for the locations of your choice and then add them to your campaigns as targets or exclusions.

However, manually doing that would be very time-consuming and also exhausting, as you’ll always need one or more team members to check the weather conditions and then make relevant changes to the campaigns.

There are some workarounds though, like using scripts. But then you need to maintain them and have your own API key for the OpenWeather API or, another very popular one from Optmyzr.

However, these are not simple and straightforward to implement. But if you’re an Optmyzr customer, we’ve made things easier for you with the ‘Optimize Campaigns by Weather’ tool.

Optmyzr Weather-based Campaigns

Optmyzr Weather-based Campaigns

But why use day-to-day weather forecasting when seasons change over months?

Weather conditions can be added to work with the change in seasons by using automation to check the weather of upcoming days and accordingly adjust the target locations, campaign status, targets, etc.

There is one other reason why you should leverage weather-based advertising. With evolving global climates, there are some locations where the traditional summers now look like pre-monsoon seasons. As climates get warmer, it would make sense to look at the day-to-day weather conditions and then plan your strategy. That’s where weather-based advertising can help you.

There are even more applications for using weather forecasting conditions in PPC campaigns. But the important thing is to understand how it can be used as leverage for your campaigns.

We hope the ‘Optimize Campaigns by Weather’ tool helps you smartly execute your campaigns. But if you’d like to know more about it, please reach out to our support team at support@optmyzr.com. Or if you’re not a customer already, and would like to try it out, sign up for a 14-day free trial today.

How to Use Audience Segmentation to Improve Ad Relevance and ROI

In this article, you’ll learn how to use audience segmentation to improve the relevance and return on investment (ROI) of your advertisements. This strategy grants your marketing team the creative direction they need to develop high performing and profitable ads that appeal to their target audiences.

Read on to understand audience segmentation and how best to use it to your advantage.

What is Audience Segmentation?

Audience segmentation is the process of breaking up your target audience into smaller groups that share certain metrics. With this data in hand, your marketing team can develop buyer personas that represent these groups and tailor ads to each of them, with the goal of increasing engagement, clicks, and ultimately purchases.

Types of Audience Segmentation

You can segment your target audience using metrics that range from geographical location to behavioral traits and beyond.

Below is a brief overview of each of the most popular and important types of audience segmentation you can apply.

Geographic segmentation

Geographic segmentation involves grouping your target audience based on their location in the world. For example, you may group your customers who live outside of the United States separately from those who live in the US.

Demographic segmentation

Demographic segmentation includes metrics such as ethnicity, gender, occupation, age, and income.

Psychographic segmentation

Psychographic refers to the psychological characteristics (i.e., beliefs, values, likes, dislikes) of each member of your target audience.

Behavioral segmentation

When you group your target audience using behavioral segmentation, look at the way that they behave on their purchasing journey. Where is their starting point? How long do they stay on your website before clicking away?

Identifying patterns in this segment can be extremely insightful, as those patterns can help you improve not just ad relevance but also technical issues with your site which could be deterring potential customers from fulfilling your desired outcome.

Technographic segmentation

Technographic segmentation allows you to map out how your customers view and interact with technology. For example, some of your customers may embrace technological advances, whereas others may dislike having to learn new things.

Needs-based segmentation

Different customers have different needs. With needs-based segmentation, focus on grouping your target audience according to their unique problems and the solutions your company offers.

Value-based segmentation

Value-based segmentation views your target audience according to the value they bring to your company in terms of revenue and ROI.

Source: The Communication Initiative Network

Source: The Communication Initiative Network

How to Choose The Right Segmentation Method?

Choosing the right segmentation method starts with using an audience segmentation tool to gather and interpret data about your target audience.

What are audience segmentation tools, and how to use them?

Audience segmentation tools like Google Ad Manager and Google Analytics analyze the visitors to your website. To see a segment in Google Analytics, open your Analytics account and the View you wish to see. 

If you open the Audience Overview, you will see the All Users segment. You can click on Add Segment. This action will open a list of pre-created segments. You can use these, or custom create your own.

After you pull up the segments list, browse the segments of your audience who visited your website.

Pay close attention to groupings that are large and overlap. These are your biggest segments, and they will give you the greatest insight into your most valuable customers.

How to Gather and Analyze Data for Audience Segmentation?

Gathering and analyzing data is the bedrock of audience segmentation. Let’s explain how it works.

What are the data sources for audience segmentation?

The biggest source of data for audience segmentation is your customers themselves. But there are numerous ways to reach out to them. You can, for example, use Google Analytics to gather data about the people clicking on your ads and visiting your website. 

Here are some other ways to collect data from your target audience:

Use these methods to ask customers questions that will help you group them in ways that an audience segmentation tool can’t quantify based on analytics alone. Their answers will enable you to narrow those initial broad segments into even smaller groups, which will help you hone your targeted advertising even further. 

Specifically, look for information about your audience that is needs-based, psychographic, and behavioral, which will tell you more about their personality and potential purchasing decisions than demographic data alone will. 

How to analyze and interpret the data?

Once you’ve obtained data about your target audience, group the results using your chosen segmentation methods. 

Next, look at the number of people in each segment to find the largest groups, as well as discover how the different groups overlap. Think about their answers to your questions and the gaps that they identify in your marketing. Finally, use those gaps to come up with creative targeted ad solutions.

Common challenges in data analysis and how to overcome them

The most common challenge in data analysis is incentivizing your target audience to participate in data collection. 

To overcome this obstacle, consider rewarding customers who participate with discount codes for your online store, an entry in a prize drawing, or a free digital product. 

Buyer Personas - What Role Do They Play in Audience Segmentation?

Once you’ve segmented your audience, the next step to improving ad relevance and return on investment (ROI) is creating buyer personas.

What are buyer personas?

A buyer persona is a fictional stand-in for your typical customer. The persona’s description is specific and includes all types of segmented data you obtained about your audience from demographics, psychographics, needs, wants, and more.

Why are buyer personas important?

Buyer personas describe your typical buyers. These are the individuals you’ve identified as making up the largest, most valuable groups in your target audience. For example, your highest revenue earning customer may be a top-earning Black woman in her twenties who prefers shopping for high quality clothes through an app because it’s quick and convenient for her busy lifestyle.

How to create buyer personas?

Once you’ve segmented your audience, create buyer personas by identifying similarities between different groups. For example, if a large portion of your customers are in their thirties, you could start a buyer persona based on that demographic data and build from there.

How to Target Specific Audience Segments?

With your buyer personas prepared, use them to target specific audience segments.

Here are a couple of strategies for accomplishing that goal.

Identify high-priority audience segments

First, identify which audience segments are the highest priority. These are the groups you should appeal to if you want to generate the most engagement and revenue. 

A great place to start is by looking at which groupings contain the most customers, as well as which groups have the potential to generate high revenue once their needs and values are targeted.

Create tailored messaging for different segments

Tailor your ad messaging for your high priority segments. This way, you can appeal directly to your most valuable customers in a way that makes them feel seen. 

Ultimately, this is how you will improve ad relevance and your ROI and conversion rate on advertising spend.  You’re spending less money on general messaging that can’t possibly appeal to everyone in your audience, and more time speaking directly to your most frequent and highest spending clients.

Retargeting Strategies - What They Are and Why You Need Them?

While we’re on the subject of audience segmentation, we want to address its role in retargeting, which can also improve ad relevance and ROI.

What is retargeting?

Retargeting is a tool which shows targeted ads to visitors to your website who didn’t make a purchase (or complete whatever action you want them to do when they go to your site).

The success of this strategy rests on using audience segmentation to analyze what might not have worked for a potential customer, and then sending them an ad targeted to their unique needs and preferences. 

All of this effort is in hopes of funneling them further along the buyer’s journey.

How retargeting works?

Retargeting requires obtaining first-party data, such as contact information (email addresses, phone numbers, etc.). You must then add this data to secure lists on a CRM, a third-party application like Optmyzr, or advertising platforms like Google Ads. You attach a specific ad to that list, so that anyone with that email address on that platform will see that ad.

How retargeting improves ad relevance and ROI?

Retargeting grants you multiple chances to entice buyers who previously visited your site or clicked on your ad, but didn’t complete their journey to a purchase (or your desired outcome). 

By pairing this strategy with audience segmentation, you can define what types of potential customers aren’t completing their buyer’s journeys, and then develop ads designed specifically to appeal to their behavioral, demographic, psychographic, and needs-based data. This tailored approach not only bolsters the relevance of your ads but also contributes to a higher ROAS, as you allocate resources more effectively towards engaging and converting specific audience segments. In this way, retargeting fulfills the twin goals of improving the relevance of your ads and your ROI.

Conclusion

Audience segmentation helps you understand your target audience more intimately. With this knowledge, you can focus on persuading your highest value and highest priority customers, both current and potential, to slide to the end of the sales funnel. That will naturally lead you to produce more relevant, more effective ads out of the gate, which will in turn lead to a greater ROI on ad spend. 

Pair audience segmentation with retargeting, and you have a powerful marketing strategy that will get you far!

Boost Conversions: 7 Microsoft Ads Optimization Tips

Microsoft Advertising recently announced they’re launching a new ChatGPT-based, AI-powered Bing, to deliver a “better search experience” — in their own words.

As of the day (February 28) of writing this blog post, they released this feature as a limited preview on desktop only.

But, still, this is big news for Microsoft advertisers as it will soon draw huge attention to Bing. And hence, now is the time to consider extending your reach to Microsoft if you haven’t done it already.

In this article, you’ll learn how to get started with Microsoft Advertising if you’re running Google Ads, what to keep an eye out for if you’re already running ads there, and how to get the most out of them.

Psst! If you’re an Optmyzr user, you already have access to our PPC toolkit that’ll make advertising on Microsoft hassle-free. Read on and you’ll come across tools and prebuilt solutions that’ll help you get started immediately.

If you’re not an Optmyzr user, our free 14-day trial will give you access to the complete set of solutions (no credit card needed). Sign up here

To find out more about alerts, audits, target optimization, and budget management, watch this Learn with Optmyzr.

How to get started easily with Microsoft Ads if you’re a Google Ads advertiser?

Microsoft has made it extremely easy to start advertising on its platform. You can simply take your best performers in Google Ads and import them into Microsoft Ads.

The two platforms resemble each other in many ways which make both navigating the UI and managing campaigns feel pretty familiar if you’re already comfortable with Google Ads.

How to import Google Ads into Microsoft Ads?

There are two ways to import Google Ads into Microsoft Ads:

  1. One-time imports: You can do a simple, one-time import that will allow you to bring in campaigns, keywords, ad copies, budgets, bid adjustments, etc. from Google Ads. Once that’s done, you’ll need to go to each interface to optimize the campaigns.
  2. Scheduled imports: If you set up an import schedule, any (compatible) changes you make in Google Ads will eventually be copied over to your Microsoft Ads campaigns.

Our recommendation: Opt for one-time imports. While the two platforms may look and feel pretty similar, the audiences they reach are different.

If you or your client don’t have a Microsoft Advertising account yet and you’re interested in giving it a shot, reach out to us at support@optmyzr.com and we should be able to help out with an initial advertisement credit.

7 tips while migrating from Google Ads to Microsoft Ads

1. Turn off Google Ads auto-import.

Consider switching off the auto-import function if you have it on. It is better to optimize Microsoft campaigns separately, instead of expecting the behavior to be the same as on the Google side.

You can manage the import schedules under Import > Import Schedules & History (read more).

2. Run a health check to flag issues.

Make sure conversions are not being over or undercounted, all ad groups have negative keywords, ads are driving traffic to the right landing pages, etc.

For Optmyzr users: The PPC Policy and Audits report can do this for you: it breaks down your Microsoft account into individual scopes, runs an analysis, and highlights any elements that may need your attention.

Read more about the PPC Policy and Audits tool here.

3. Sync your Merchant feed with your Shopping campaigns (for ecommerce advertisers).

To get the best performance out of the shopping campaigns you’ve created, do a hygiene check to see if all the products in your inventory feed are actually part of the campaign.

If there are products in your feed that don’t have a product group or an ad group yet, you can edit the shopping campaign and add them. On the other hand, if some products have left the feed, delete the empty product groups.

For Optmyzr users: Instead of doing this manually, use the Shopping Campaign Refresher to automate the whole process.

For more granular reporting and targeting, you can set up campaigns with multiple levels of product partition.

For Optmyzr users: Split your shopping campaigns into multiple product groups at different levels in a matter of minutes and avoid human errors in the process with Campaign Builder.

Read more about Optmyzr’s shopping tools here.

4. Monitor performance regularly.

Traditionally, less competition has meant lower CPCs and CPAs compared to Google.

Keep an eye on your average CPCs and CPAs, especially mid and short-term performance to detect gradually increasing costs or declining performance.

For Optmyzr users: Set up alerts and get notified by email, Slack, or MS Teams if CPCs trend up or any anomalies happen.

Track impressions and CTR -as more buzz around Bing potentially translates to more searches.

For Optmyzr users: Set up custom alerts using if-then-else statements to get notified when impressions have increased significantly from the previous period. Visualize performance over time on the Account Dashboard to detect any trends.

Be aware of budget pacing: This new, increased interest might result in unexpected spikes in ad spend, budgets being exhausted earlier than usual, and overspending.

For Optmyzr users: Set up a monthly target for the account on the main dashboard, view your pacing status, and get alerted if overpacing starts happening.

Read more about tracking and reporting in Optmyzr here

5. Analyze traffic performance.

Understand the underlying factors behind the changes in performance.

If performance is changing, pull reports to see if there’s a particular audience, ad group, device, etc., or a combination of several factors that are driving new traffic, higher CPCs, or increased CPAs.

For Optmyzr users: Run the PPC Investigator to do the analysis without downloading multiple reports. View the cause chart to analyze which elements of an account are affecting performance.

The root cause analysis helps you go a step further to find the potential causality at the demographics/audience/keyword/ad group or campaign level.

Read more about PPC Investigator here.

Identify the landing pages you should improve.

Check if there are any ads with a high CTR but low-conversion landing pages and see if there’s anything you can improve, e.g. in the CTA or page layout, to get visitors to take the desired action.

For Optmyzr users: Use the Landing Page Performance analysis to pinpoint landing pages that need your attention: from expensive landing pages to potential ones as well as top performers.

Analyze geo performance

In which countries, regions, and cities are your ads shown? Which location has the best conversion rate? Which locations are costing you money? Are there any that should be excluded from your campaigns?

Run an analysis to make sure budgets are spent in the best possible locations.

For Optmyzr users: Geo HeatMap helps you figure all of this out.

Know which networks work the best.

If you’re running campaigns on multiple networks, like Audience and Search, breaking down the performance by networks will help you find out if the approach is bringing you the right results.

This way, you make the most informed decisions regarding where you want your ads to be shown.

For Optmyzr users: Do this and many other similar comparisons in Performance Comparison.

Read more here.

6. Start optimizing for high-converting search terms.

Monitor your search terms.

Are there any new queries that didn’t drive traffic to your ads in the past but now do? Make sure you keep track of the search terms that trigger your ads and, if they’re highly relevant, consider adding them as keywords and including them in some of your ad texts.

For Optmyzr users: The Search Term N-Grams break down search queries into individual words, visualizing which search queries drive traffic to your account. To get a list of queries that are trending up, run the New and Declining Search Queries report in Rule Engine.

Are there any search terms you’re not targeting yet but are bringing in conversions or have a relatively high CTR? In addition to expanding your keyword list, building landing pages around the newly added keywords may help you improve your quality score and overall performance.

For Optmyzr users: Let the Keyword Lasso analyze all your campaigns and ad groups in one go. Add relevant search terms as keywords to drive more good traffic to your site.

Pro Tip: Automate the process using Rule Engine.

Increased traffic due to broad match keywords can lead to irrelevant traffic, so make sure to keep adding negative keywords regularly.

Some search terms might be irrelevant to the entire business, while others should drive traffic to the most relevant ad groups only. Compare the query cost to the typical ad group CPA and make sure high-CTR queries aren’t excluded.

For Optmyzr users: Add account-level negative keywords to reduce wasted spend using the Negative Keyword Finder.

Identify search queries that drive traffic to your ads but don’t convert and quickly add them as negative keywords to the ad groups.

Pro Tip: The fastest way to get notifications for negative keyword ideas is by scheduling the Non-Converting Search Queries in Rule Engine.

Read more about automating search query management here.

Optimize keywords.

Reduce cost per acquisition by pausing underperforming keywords that drive clicks but no conversions.

For Optmyzr users: The Non-Converting Keywords tool shows you keywords that have never converted, as well as those that used to convert but no longer do. You can pause them with a single click. Read more here.

If you’re running manual bidding campaigns, look for expensive keywords and reduce max. CPC to focus on less expensive clicks

For Optmyzr users: Head over to Rule Engine to run the Find Expensive Keywords instant strategy. Reduce bids for keywords that have a higher CPA than the typical keyword in the campaign, or for non-converting keywords with a good number of clicks.

Pro-Tip: Set up an automation schedule without auto-apply but email notifications enabled to save time.

Find the low-hanging fruit and focus on where easy wins are available. If you notice good keywords that are not shown on the first page of search results, consider working on those.

For Optmyzr users: The First Page Bridger does the work for you. Read more here.

Pro Tip: Save more time by getting a notification when opportunities are detected.

Go through your ad copies.

Expanded text ads are now deprecated in Microsoft Advertising. You can still run existing ETAs but editing and creating them isn’t possible anymore.

We know RSAs outperform ETAs in Google Ads so it’s safe to assume the same trend will be seen on Microsoft.

Go through your ad groups to find those that don’t have an RSA yet but don’t abandon your ETAs fully yet: you can analyze which headlines and descriptions have performed the best and use them in your new RSAs.

For Optmyzr users: Create new RSAswith a few clicks, get a list of all ad groups without an enabled Responsive Search Ad, and create ad copies using best-performing ETAs’ components.

Analyze the performance grouping of existing assets and create new ones in Ad Text Optimization for RSAs.

Pause underperforming ads and create new ones in A/B Testing for Ads.

Pro-Tip: Check out the AI-generated suggestions for new assets.

Read more about the ad optimization tools here.

Keep budgets under control.

Microsoft can spend up to 200% of your daily budget so make sure a sudden increase in interest doesn’t come as a surprise.

For Optmyzr users: Project future spend based on recent and historical spend patterns to see how close to your target budget you’re likely to get.

On the other hand, if you have flexibility and performance is good, take advantage of the momentum and allocate more budgets to those campaigns that have the best chance of increasing sales, leads, or value.

If a campaign that tends to perform well is losing impression share due to budget but you’re not able to increase the account’s monthly budget, check if any other campaign tends to underspend and shift budgets from one campaign to another.

For Optmyzr users: Run the Budget optimization suggestions to see different reallocation scenarios and project the impact the reallocation suggestions will have on KPIs like overall ad spend and conversions. Read more here.

Pause campaigns if you can’t overspend. This is a bit of a no-brainer, but the easiest way to make sure you don’t go over budget is to pause the campaigns when your monthly budget is exhausted. Remember to re-enable the campaigns at the beginning of the new budget cycle.

Pro Tip: If you/your client has an overall paid ad budget for multiple platforms like Microsoft, Google, and Meta that you can reallocate as you see fit to maximize performance, use the Optimize Budgets Across Platforms - also to pause and re-enable campaigns. Read more here.

Set ad schedules.

Automated bidding campaigns should have an idea of which are the best times of the day/week to show your ads.

However, the machine isn’t perfect so if you’re certain your ads should only be shown at a certain time of the day or e.g. paused during the weekends, you should create ad schedules.

This applies also if you’re running manual bidding campaigns. Look at performance metrics like impression share, conversions, cost/conversion, and conversion rate when and compare the performance of different time slots throughout the day and the week.

This way, the budget is geared towards the best-performing times of the day and the week.

For Optmyzr users: You can do this with a couple of clicks in Hour of the Week Bid Adjustment and Hour of the Week Analysis tools. Read more here.

Set your auto-bidding campaign targets at the right level.

If you’re running campaigns with a target CPA, keep an eye on the impression share metrics especially for converting campaigns. Are there potential conversions lost because the ad rank is too low?

Consider paying a slightly higher price in exchange for more conversions. If you’re already paying less than your target is, you might have the opportunity to keep capturing cheaper and cheaper leads/sales and bring down the CPA gradually.

The same goes for Target ROAS - keep tweaking the targets based on performance.

For Optmyzr users: using the prebuilt strategies in Rule Engine, optimize all campaigns that have potential to convert more but are limited by ad rank, and those that could lead to permanently lower CPAs or higher ROAS. Read more here.

7. Report on the results.

Whether it’s for yourself only or any of your stakeholders, you should make sure adequate performance reporting takes place. Optimizing is important but understanding the results is critical when determining the success of any campaign.

Know which ad copies were the most popular, which search queries lead to clicks, which percentage of all the impressions lead to clicks and conversions, what year-over-year performance looks like, and which of all your campaigns turned out to be the most valuable for your business.

For Optmyzr users: instead of creating reports from scratch every week or month, use Optmyzr’s template-based reporting and schedule them to be sent to your email. The dynamic date ranges and scalable approach make sure the templates are always populated with the right data from the right account.

Pro tip: Combine all your platforms’ performance reports into one executive report. Read more here.

And there you have it!

With the investment in OpenAI, Microsoft has made a substantial leap in the search engine space potentially driving a massive user base to Bing.

This is a big opportunity for you to find new avenues to grow your business. We hope the tips mentioned above will help you with the same.

If you need additional help, you can always take a 14-day free trial of Optmyzr to get the most out of your Microsoft Ads.

How B2B marketers can improve PPC targeting by segmenting CRM data

“Do you remember the good old days when all you had to do to build, target, or remarket an audience was to drop a cookie in someone’s browser?

Now, I love cookies, just not in my browser.” - Jessica Tozer, associate director of paid media at Powered By Search.

As marketers, cookies are mission-critical elements for PPC success, but as users, we can relate with Jessica.

Last year, at Unlevel 2022, she presented on automated segmentation using CRM data. She brought up some brilliant points on using cookies and data while keeping privacy regulations in mind.

Read on for a quick recap of Jessica’s presentation at Unlevel 2022.

If you’d like to watch her presentation instead, click here.

Since the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy Directive, consumers are becoming more conscious of their online privacy. So you can’t just drop a cookie in their browser without them knowing.

Then how do you go about it?

You’ve to get first-party data of course.

Jessica lists 3 ways to obtain first-party data based on the audience’s stage in the funnel.

This is specific to B2B SaaS, but it can also be applied to other industries.

Once we have that first-party data, the next step is getting it back into our ad platforms. But it’s a daunting task to collect and import data manually.

So, what’s the solution? Automation, of course.

How to effectively segment CRM data using automation?

Segmenting CRM data through automation is a game-changer for PPC advertisers. Imagine having a goldmine of data in your CRM, but manually uploading it is clunky and time-consuming.

Not only that, but manual uploading can cause delays when changes occur between life cycles. This can mean missing out on key lifecycle stages and even losing prospects.

Here’s where automation comes in.

This example uses HubSpot, but the same principles can be applied using other CRMs or third-party applications like Optmyzr.

In a CRM tool like HubSpot, you can create a contact list that automatically updates as leads move through different lifecycle stages. Creating an active list automatically pushes this data back to the advertising platform, making targeting much more efficient.

This is especially helpful for remarketing campaigns that aim to push people further down the funnel.

Once the contact list is created, an audience group can be created and selected from that contact list. From there, lookalike lists can also be made, which is helpful for cold prospecting and top-of-funnel campaigns.

By automatically exporting contact lists by lifecycle stage into platforms like Google Ads, Meta, and LinkedIn, you can target people depending on where they are in the funnel without the extra effort and uncertainty that comes with manual uploading.

This means more accurate data, closed gaps in the funnel, and, ultimately, a higher chance of winning over prospects.

Final words

The point is to use automation to send prospect and customer lifecycle stages into the ad platform instead of manual uploads. This ensures that your client is in the right place at the right time with the right message, giving them a competitive edge in their industry.

10 Expert Tips to Create a High-Converting Video Landing Page for Your PPC Campaign

When creating a PPC campaign, there are a lot of factors that you need to consider to be successful. While crafting compelling ad copy and setting up an effective bid strategy are a few critical parts of the process, converting paid site traffic into paying customers is what it’s all about.

Landing pages are one of the most essential elements of a successful PPC campaign, as they are the first thing potential customers see after clicking on your ad. A well-designed landing page can be the difference between a conversion and a bounce, so it’s important to consider yours.

In this article, I’ll discuss how you can use video on your landing pages to improve the conversion rate of your PPC campaigns significantly.

But first, let’s quickly go over what a video landing page is and why you should create one.

What is a video landing page?

A video landing page is a type of landing page that uses video to promote a product, service, or brand. Usually, the video is the page’s primary focus, with other elements such as text and images playing a supporting role.

**Source**: [Wistia](https://wistia.com/)

Video landing pages are very effective because they can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time. They are also engaging and visually appealing, which helps capture visitors’ attention.

What are the benefits of a video on a landing page?

When constructing landing pages for your PPC campaigns, there are several factors to consider. However, adding a video should be at the top of your list, as it can provide many benefits. Here are some of them:

1. Improves Engagement

The first and most obvious benefit of using video on your landing pages is that it can improve engagement. Video is an incredibly engaging medium, and including one on your page can help to keep visitors interested.

A recent study by Myzowl polled over 582 marketing professionals to get their take on the benefit and impact of using videos to improve engagement. 87% of those polled said that video has helped them increase traffic to their sites and landing pages while over 60% said that number of views a video receives directly coincides with the success of the advertising campaign.

By using video, you can tell your story in a more engaging and interesting way than with text and images alone. You can also include calls to action within the video, prompting visitors to take the desired action.

2. Is Useful and Informative

Another benefit of video landing pages is that they can be useful and informative when marketed to the right audience. Unlike text, which can often be dense and hard to read, videos are easy to consume and hold people’s attention.

At the same time, a well-made video can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time. This is perfect for dynamic landing pages where you need to get your message across quickly.

And since several studies have proven that people are more likely to remember information they see in a video, they’re more likely to convert after watching one.

3. Simplifies Complex Concepts

If you’re selling a complex product or service, a video can be an invaluable tool for simplifying complex concepts. By breaking down your offer into bite-sized pieces and explaining it in an easy-to-understand way, you can help to increase conversions.

When you can define the value of your products or services simply and concisely, people are more likely to take the next step.

4. Builds a Positive Brand Image

In addition to being informative and entertaining, videos can also be used to build a positive brand image. When done correctly, they can humanize your brand and make it more relatable. This is important, especially if you want to build long-term relationships with your customers.

By featuring real people in your videos and telling your brand’s story, you can connect with viewers on a more personal level. This will make them more likely to do business with you.

5. Creates an Emotional Connection

Finally, videos can also create an emotional connection with viewers. This is because they allow you to communicate more personally than text or images alone.

While the features of your product or service are indeed an essential component of your campaigns, it’s also important to focus on the emotional aspects.

These are just a few benefits of using video on your landing pages and prove that this type of video content can be incredibly effective.

10 Tips for High-Conversion Video Landing Pages for PPC Campaigns

Now let’s learn how to create high-converting pages. While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, these tips can help you get started:

1. Use a Script

Making a script is one of the most critical steps in creating a video. Without one, staying on track and including all necessary information will be challenging.

When writing your script, think about what you want to say and how you want to say it. Don’t worry if it’s not perfect, as you can always make changes along the way. Just make sure that you have a clear idea of what you want to say before you start filming. Doing so will save you a lot of time and frustration.

2. Keep the Video Above the Fold

When creating a video landing page, it’s important to keep the video “above the fold.” This means that viewers should be able to see the video without scrolling down.

**Source**: Wistia

If your video is buried below other content, there’s a good chance that people will never even see it.

3. Showcase the Product in Action

Videos are an excellent opportunity to showcase your product in action. This is especially true if you offer a physical product that can be demonstrated.

**Source**: Wistia

If possible, include a demonstration of your product in the video. This will give viewers a better idea of what it is and how it works. Seeing the product in action will also help to increase confidence and encourage people to make a purchase.

Just like with any other type of content, optimizing your videos for search engines is important. This will help ensure as many people see them as possible. When optimizing your video, there are some core elements that you’ll need to focus on:

5. Keep It Short and Simple

When it comes to videos, less is often more. People generally are not interested in watching long, drawn-out videos.

Instead of trying to include everything in one video, break it up into multiple shorter videos. This will make it easier for viewers to digest the information and keep them engaged.

6. Use Custom Thumbnails

People scrolling through their feeds are likely to stop and watch a video if it has an attractive thumbnail. This is why it’s important to take the time to create custom thumbnails for your videos.

Think about what will grab attention and make people want to watch the video. A well-designed thumbnail can distinguish between someone watching your video and moving on.

7. Avoid Autoplay

While autoplay can be a great way to ensure that people see your video, it’s not always the best option. Sometimes, it can be annoying and lead to people leaving your page.

If you do choose to use autoplay, make sure that it’s not set to too high of a volume. You don’t want to startle or annoy people as soon as they land on your page.

8. Make It Informative

Your video should be informative and provide value to the viewer. If it’s nothing more than a commercial, people are not going to want to watch it.

Think about what you can include in your video that will be helpful or interesting to people. The more value you can provide, the more likely people will watch it all through.

9. Capture Attention in the First Few Seconds

It’s important to capture people’s attention in the first few seconds of your video. If you don’t, there’s a good chance that they’ll move on before it’s even over. The first five seconds should be the most engaging part of your video.

Think about what you can do to hook viewers in and make them want to keep watching. This may mean starting with a question, shocking statistic, or attention-grabbing visual.

Regardless of your choice, make sure it will grab people’s attention and get the point across within 5-10 seconds.

10. Focus on the unique value proposition

Your video should be focused on your unique value proposition (UVP). This is what sets you apart from your competitors and is why people should do business with you.

Make sure that your UVP is clear and concise. It should be evident in the video so that viewers know exactly what you’re offering and why they should choose you over someone else.

Level up your landing pages today

Video is a critical element of a landing page. I’m positive that if you follow and execute these 10 tips, it can greatly help you increase your PPC campaign conversion rates and drive more sales.

Google’s ‘Remove Redundant Keywords’ Recommendation: Here’s How You Can Manage Automatic Keyword Deduplication

On January 4th, 2023, Google sent an email to advertisers who run Google ads regarding a new change they made to the “remove redundant keywords recommendations”.

What was Google’s announcement on the “Remove Redundant Keywords Recommendation”?

Google announced that they are changing how automatically applied recommendations will work for deduping keywords.

Here’s why this is important.

If you’re an advertiser who previously accepted Google deduping your keywords automatically on your behalf, Google is now changing the rules for how they will define what a duplicate keyword is.

In the past, a duplicate keyword had to be the same match type. But, going forward, Google will also consider the same keyword text in different match types to be an equivalent keyword.

In other words, this recommendation now applies across match types.

Instead of keeping the more precise match type — so if you had an exact match and a phrase match — Google will decide to keep the broad match keyword.

The PPC community was clearly not a fan of this move

Greg Finn, Director of Marketing at Cypress North, was the first to report on this after he got a notification from Google that something was changing.

Several advertisers were upset and it showed on Twitter.

Specifically, what’s going to be different, as highlighted in yellow in the screenshot above, is the definition of what constitutes a duplicate keyword. Google will no longer look at the match type of the keyword.

In response, Google Ads Liaison, Ginny Marvin took to Twitter to clear the confusion.

What should you do about redundant keywords?

First of all, go and take a look at your account. If you’re already accepting the automatic deduplication of keywords in your account, consider whether you want that to continue to happen or whether you want to pause it and start deduping your account on your own.

Let me show you how you do this in Google Ads.

Navigate to the Recommendations section and look at the History section. If you’ve already accepted the automatic deduping, it will show up here as a historical event.

Now, from here, it’s very easy to change the status from green to red and disable this automatic optimization simply by clicking on ‘Disable’.

If this is not an optimization you were previously doing, you can go to the Manage section, then under Maintain your ads, and you will find the deduplication right here under Remove redundant Keywords.

You can check that to turn it on for an account where you want to use this.

How you can take back control?

If you’d prefer manual control and stay in charge of your account, you can use Optmyzr to find duplicate keywords and remove them on your own terms.

For that, as an Optmyzr user, you can go to Optimizations -> For Keywords -> Keyword De-duper.

The Keyword De-duper works in several ways. It can either check across campaigns or within the same campaign for duplicate keywords.

Whenever it finds duplicates, it will present them to you with an automatic recommendation of which ones to remove based on performance data.

But you can always go ahead and change those selections if you prefer to remove other keywords that are also considered to be duplicates.

This, of course, all falls under the realm of Google’s continued push towards more broad keywords.

It makes sense if you think about it from the perspective that AI and machine learning are getting progressively better at matching a user’s intent when they do a search for a company that can provide and service that intent.

But as you continue to use more broad match keywords in your account, we recommend you keep a close eye on what exactly your ads are showing for.

That’s another thing Optmyzr can help you with, using the Rule Engine. With the Rule Engine, you can automatically process search terms based on criteria that you set.

You could take one of Optmyzr’s pre-built strategies or create your own.

In the video above, I’ve explained how you can create your own strategy based on search terms.

You’ll have a lot of flexibility in how you use the Rule Engine to automatically manage and monitor your search terms as Google continues to push towards more broad match.

How to find keywords removed by Google?

If you’re already an Optmyzr user, you can create a Rule Engine strategy to generate a report on the recently removed keywords.

We recommend this if you’re running the auto-apply recommendation and would like to see the list of keywords Google has removed.

You can get started with it using this ready-to-use strategy.

A big thanks again to Greg Finn from Search Engine Land for first reporting this and making advertisers aware that this is something to pay attention to.

I also had a chance to speak to Greg about this announcement recently. You can watch our full conversation here.

We’re here to help

This change by Google is one more clear indication that they’re moving toward broad match. But, it’s you, and not a machine who will know what’s best for your account.

Taking back control with even the smallest of changes, like the one above that takes just a few minutes goes a long way in protecting your PPC accounts.

So, if you like what you’ve seen, go ahead and try it in your Optmyzr account. But if you don’t have one yet, consider starting a 14-day free trial. You can use all of our tools with no limitations to manage your PPC more efficiently.

Get actionable PPC tips, strategies, and tactics from industry experts to your inbox once a month.

The Top 12 Tools 10,000+ Advertisers Used in 2022 to Maximize Their PPC ROI

With the beginning of a new and exciting year, our Customer Success team, with the help of our analysts, identified the most used and talked about features from our suite of tools during 2022.

Though it’s tough to pick just a few from so many excellent features, we wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the Optmyzr tools our user base made a staple in their PPC management and optimization workflows last year.

The Best Optimization Tools

1. Get high-performing keyword suggestions with Keyword Lasso.

Since its launch, Keyword Lasso has been one of our customers’ favorite tools for search term management.

In addition to offering you a clean list of great keywords that do not yet exist in your account yet, we now let you get suggestions from the Google Ads Keyword Planner as well! This means you can now see how some search terms you don’t yet have as keywords have performed compared to the competition and the average monthly searches they receive.

⚡️ Pro-tip: Use turbo mode in tandem with custom filters to identify new themes and even get negative keyword ideas.

Read the user guide

Visit the tool

2. Identify non-performing keywords easily with Negative Keyword Finder.

This tool has helped some of our customers save thousands of dollars every month! It helps you quickly find negative keywords out of search terms that have not been performing well for the entire account over the past few days and are inefficiently spending your budget.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

3. Allocate campaign budgets effectively with the Optimize Budgets tool.

The popularity of this tool has increased in recent months because it doesn’t only help users plan their budgets smartly, but some also use it as a conversation starter with their customers or stakeholders!

Optimize Budgets will help you reallocate budgets based on goals, and when there’s enough data, it can even project how your performance will change if you’re planning to increase or decrease your campaigns’ budgets.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

4. Build your own automation with the Rule Engine.

Many of our users have turned to the Rule Engine because it gives them much more room to play when compared to other automation techniques like Google Ads’ automated rules. With the Rule Engine we give you the tools to build your own optimizations and automations using your preferred logic.

What are our customers automating with Rule Engine?

The possibilities are endless, but to give you some ideas, this is what most of our users are currently using the Rule Engine for:

Read the user guide | Watch a demo | Visit the tool

The Best Insight Tools

1. Audit your accounts with the PPC Policy Audits.

Imagine being able to get every opportunity for improvement and information about your account and campaigns in a single report. This is precisely what this tool offers, and most of our users use it to do scheduled reviews for their clients or to prepare an evaluation of their prospect’s accounts to get them onboard.

To keep up with all of the changes in the industry this year. we launched new audits for Responsive Search Ads, Performance Max as well as support for Microsoft Ads accounts.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

2. Check why your PPC performance changed with the PPC Investigator.

This is another tool that year after year appears on the list of most used tools, and we don’t doubt why. With PPC Investigator, you can ask Optmyzr to prepare a full cause chart and root cause analysis to understand performance changes in just minutes. All of this without the need to download or visit multiple reports in Google Ads or Microsoft Ads.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

3. Monitor daily spend and predict future spend with the Spend Projection tool.

One of our favorite things to hear our customers say when we show them this tool is “I’m glad I no longer need to do this manually on a spreadsheet”.

And this is because Spend Projection helps them easily calculate how much their campaigns are likely to spend on a cumulative or daily basis at the end of the month, quarter, year, or any other time range they desire while considering important aspects such as past performance data and seasonality.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

4. Check quality score at the keyword, ad group, campaign, and account level with the Quality Score Tracker.

In recent years, the relevance of Quality Score has been the subject of many debates. If we were to answer that question based on the popularity of our Quality Score Tracker, we can tell you that it all indicates that for our core users, it’s still an important metric!

The reason why our customers like it is so simple: It gives you the Quality Score calculation not only at the keyword level but also at the ad group, campaign, and account level, with each of its components. So after just spending a couple of minutes in the tool, you’ll know exactly what’s left to improve in the account.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

What about eCommerce?

1. Create shopping campaigns faster and keep them in sync with your merchant feed with the Shopping Campaign Builder & Shopping Campaign Refresher.

If you ask our eCommerce customers about their favorite Optmyzr tools, they will surely mention these two. It’s the perfect combo for creating and updating new shopping campaigns quickly and efficiently.

By using both you can build multiple Shopping or Performance Max campaigns with consistent and advanced structures in just seconds, while also automatically keeping them up to date by adding new ad groups, product groups, and even campaigns based on your inventory content.

Shopping Campaign Builder: Read the user guide | Visit the tool

Shopping Campaign Refresher: Read the user guide | Visit the tool

Bonus Tools

1. Check for broken landing pages with the URL Checker.

Imagine having to explain that a quarter of your budget ended up on clicks to a 404 page or an out-of-stock product listing. That’s where the URL Checker comes to the rescue.

With this Optmyzr automation, we not only offer the possibility to monitor ads, keywords, and site links to detect if they’re driving traffic to broken landing pages, but we can also automatically pause them if we find any problems in their respective landing pages, and reactivate them once they are fixed.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

2. Monitor campaign budgets with the Flexible Budgets script.

Having an account overspend is always a big concern for advertisers. This is why from our list of Enhanced Scripts, Flexible Budgets is the most popular one.

The Flexible Budgets script has helped thousands of users monitor and pause campaigns, ad groups, keywords, or ads before they overspend.

⚡️ Pro-tip: Use the spreadsheet integration feature to manage the script settings for multiple accounts and campaigns from one place.

Read the user guide | Visit the scripts page

3. Build detailed, white-label reports with the Reports tool.

Our clients are increasingly opting to design templates and automated reports directly in Optmyzr, and with the new re-vamped interface and features, this process is even easier than before.

The Report Designer lets you build reports with fresh data to download them in different formats or automatically send them to your teammates or clients.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

More to come in 2023

With 2022 being a year of changes and innovation in the industry we were happy to see how many of our core users continue to see Optmyzr as a helpful and complete toolkit to cover all possible areas when managing PPC accounts.

We aim to continue to help advertisers and account managers save time by automating and streamlining repetitive tasks so they can focus on what matters most: strategizing and helping their clients generate more revenue.

We are excited about 2023, and we invite you to stay tuned for updates as our roadmap comes with many surprises.

Performance Max for Ecommerce: Evaluate Your Campaign Performance With This 44-Point Checklist

It’s no secret that Performance Max campaigns present limitations in terms of data and insights we can pull from them. As a result, understanding the causes of their performance fluctuations can be difficult.

I’ve created an in-depth 44-point checklist for ecommerce businesses in this article to make accomplishing that task easier for you.

Of course, you don’t need to go through every single one of these points. Just go over the ones that are relevant to your business.

I also discussed some of these points on PPC Town Hall with Frederick Vallaeys and Mike Rhodes. You can watch the full video here:

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Performance Max 44-point evaluation checklist for ecommerce businesses

Investigate…

  1. Estimated conversion reporting delay.
  2. Average days to conversion from first ad interaction (account-wide and campaign-specific).
  3. Conversion tracking and recent changes to conversion actions.
  4. What “normal” PMax performance fluctuation looks like for the account (if appl.)
  5. Recent changes to budget, bid strategy type, Asset Groups, and Listing Groups
  6. Google Merchant Center product disapprovals and warnings, account issues, and feed issues.
  7. Changes to the site (e.g. navigation/checkout, plugins, hosting, page designs)
  8. Changes to in-stock products, especially best sellers.
  9. Changes to pricing, customer shipping costs, and promotions listed or previously listed on the site.
  10. Extremely negative reviews on and off the site
  11. Google Search Console for “Failing” URLs
  12. Changes in relevant search and buying behavior via the Insights section of your PMax campaign and your account as a whole, Google’s Keyword Planner, Google Trends, your site’s search feature (if appl.), Best Sellers section of Google Merchant Center (if appl.), and Microsoft Ads (if appl.).
  13. New competitors in the market or competitors who are changing their level of competitiveness within ad auctions you compete in.
  14. Major changes in other marketing and site traffic channels outside of Google and Microsoft Ads (e.g. Facebook Ads, email automation, affiliates, third-party remarketing channels)
  15. Major changes in on-site shopping behavior (e.g. cart abandonment, check-out abandonment, sessions with transactions)
  16. Shifts in Shopping network-specific performance for PMax.
  17. Top Bidding Signals report for optimization changes recently made by automated bidding.
  18. Performance shifts of landing pages PMax ad clicks are being sent to.
  19. Major changes made to non-PMax campaigns that may have impacted the performance of PMax.
  20. Major shifts in the performance of high-volume or high-performing search terms, geographies, devices, days, days of the week, hours, audiences, match types, or campaign types in non-PMax campaigns.
  21. Performance metric outliers for the campaign pre and post-major increases or decreases in performance.
  22. Performance metric outliers for the products advertised in the campaign - at the campaign-level and Asset Group-level.
  23. Performance metric outliers for the Listing Groups in the campaign.
  24. Asset Group assets or Ad Extensions with Eligible (Limited) or Disapproved status.
  25. Seasonality Adjustments not being added for major promotions, or for other major expected spikes or dips in conversion rates.
  26. Improperly added Data Exclusions, or for instances where Data Exclusions should have been added but were not.
  27. Scripts or Automated Rules that made changes to the account that may have had an impact on Performance Max.
  28. Account changes by other users who are not the primary account manager.
  29. Auto-applied recommendation changes made by Google.
  30. Customer match list additions, removals, or edits.
  31. Custom Experiments recently ended in the account.
  32. Value rules or conversion value adjustments were added, edited, or removed.
  33. “Best” rated assets inside top performing Asset Groups had a recent change in rating.
  34. High-performing or high-volume search categories or terms shifted away from a high-performing or high-volume Asset Group.
  35. Edits made to a Business Feed or Custom Variable that affected any non-PMax campaigns.
  36. CRM integration issues.
  37. Negative Keyword List was added to the PMax campaign being evaluated per the request of another user.
  38. Negative keywords were improperly added to a Negative Keyword List that is applied to the PMax campaign being evaluated.
  39. YouTube ads were opted out of by another user.
  40. Mobile app placements not owned and operated by Google had major increases or decreases in impressions.
  41. Mobile app category exclusions were applied at the account or campaign level.
  42. Location or Ad Schedule exclusions were added or removed for the PMax campaign being evaluated.
  43. Improperly setup Performance Max URL Exclusions.
  44. Auto-generated YouTube videos were added by Google to the PMax campaign being evaluated.

Want to safeguard your Performance Max campaigns? Click here to learn how.

This is a guest post by Cory Lindholm, Founder of Ads By Cory.

About the author: Cory is a paid search expert in Google and Microsoft Ads. He has helped countless brands grow their businesses with advanced paid search strategies for nearly a decade.

Connect with Cory on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Performance Max Holiday Season Playbook: 6 Tips to Help You Prepare for Q4 2022

The busiest shopping period of the year is just around the corner. And we’ve seen several consumer behavior changes this year as a result of the economic downturn and other macroeconomic factors which make this shopping season unlike any other.

So we need real data from someone who actually knows and understands what’s happening and provides us with suggestions to better prepare for this shopping season. And who better to learn all of that from than Google?

We’ve spoken to Willie Booker, Product Strategy Lead at Google on our latest PPC Town Hall to learn the trends and tips to set up our Performance Max campaigns for this holiday season. In the episode, we also spoke to Andrew Lolk, Founder of SavvyRevenue to get his perspective on that and also understand how agencies are preparing for the same.

Watch the full episode below.

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How consumer behavior has changed in 2022?

Consumers are shopping earlier than usual

Willie Booker says that 42% of consumers are shopping earlier in 2022 than they did in 2021. And in the U.K., 30% of consumers have already started their holiday shopping in June.

In fact, we’re only at the end of October and Target has already started its Black Friday sale.

**Source**: Target

Andrew Lolk, founder of SavvyRevenue has also seen a shift in consumer behavior. He says ->

“We’ve seen Black Friday become a big thing the last few years, and now it’s even bigger. A couple of years ago we only did Black Friday, and now two or three years later we’re doing “black months”. I personally like it. I think it puts less pressure on logistics this way. You can spread out bidding and budget a lot better, but it comes with some challenges if you get in behind later than everybody else.”

This shift in consumer behavior is not new. In the last two years, we’ve seen consumers shopping earlier than usual due to inventory and supply chain issues.

Most consumers are now brand-agnostic

Willie says that over 71% of consumers switched brands in the past year for reasons like better deals, better product quality, better customer service, etc.


Google’s also predicting an uptick in BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick-Up in Store) this year, as we saw in 2020 and 2021.

Embrace experimentation to take advantage of social commerce

Shopping has always been a social experience. That’s why before making a purchase, consumers look for trusted sources.

And it’s very clear from Google’s survey chart above. Consumers look for social proof like product videos and reviews which influence their purchase decisions.

Google’s Performance Max tips for the 2022 holiday season

As you start to plan for the peak holiday season, have a look at these 6 tips that Google shared with us.

We’ve listed them down here on a high level. For more details on these tips, please watch the PPC Town Hall episode above.

1. Adjust bids and budgets

Google says this is the quickest way to start to see results from your campaigns.

2. Use seasonality adjustments

According to Google, seasonality adjustments are used to inform Smart Bidding of expected changes in conversion rates for future events like promotions or sales. Google recommends this for expert advertisers.

3. Enable final URL expansion

Final URL expansion is turned on by default in your campaign. Making sure that it’s on allows Google to replace your final URL with a more relevant landing page for the user based on their behavior.

4. Segment your holiday campaigns and optimize creatives accordingly

Google suggests you get your feed and creatives ready to clearly highlight products that are going to be featured for the relevant holiday.

5. Feature holiday products

Make sure that a holiday plan is in place and that you have the right bids, budgets, and products to be featured in your campaigns.

And if you want to prioritize certain types of products, create a separate Performance Max campaign for them.

6. Enable Enhanced conversions for more accurate conversion measurement

Google suggests using enhanced conversions to improve the accuracy of your conversion measurement and unlock more powerful bidding.

Timing is important

In terms of your holiday setup, Google recommends planning four to six weeks ahead of your peak period and making adjustments with at least two weeks of ramp-up time for each new campaign that you set up.

The ramp-up period also helps with allowing the smart bidding algorithm to bid on products that haven’t been bid high so far in your campaign.

Make sure to use this playbook this holiday season. However, you also need to provide your Performance Max campaign with good data and value-focused optimization so that Google clearly understands what it is that your business really wants and what a ’conversion’ means to you.

Learn how you can take back control of your Performance Max campaign here.

Images courtesy of Google’s presentation on our latest PPC Town Hall.

4 Easy Steps to Add Your Universal Analytics Conversions to Google Analytics 4

In less than a year, starting July 2023, Universal Analytics (UA) from Google will stop recording new data. So if you haven’t already done so, you should immediately use the upgrade assistant from Google to create a new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) property.

Even if you do nothing else, this ensures that you start collecting data now, which will help you with those year-over-year reports that someone in your team will invariably ask for next year.

If you’re a PPC marketer and would like to learn how to migrate to Google Analytics 4 and what changed in GA4 compared to UA for PPC, watch the video below where I spoke to two of the top Google Analytics experts, Janet Driscoll Miller and Charles Farina on PPC Town Hall:

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But after setting up GA4 and exploring the reports, one of the first things many advertisers will notice is that the automatic migration tool hasn’t brought along their goals which makes the data much less helpful in optimizing online ads.

Adding conversions or goals back into GA4 should be one of the first steps after migrating, but because GA4 works very differently from UA, it can seem tricky and get skipped over.

So in this post, we’ll explain first why Google has made it more complicated and then show you how to get things back the way you want them with minimal effort and without needing an engineer’s help.

Why did pageview conversions go missing in Google Analytics 4?

The reason the pageview conversions from a migrated UA property didn’t cleanly make it over to GA4 stems from the fact that GA4 works differently from UA. GA4 is an event-centric rather than a pageview-centric measurement tool.

In UA, every page load was considered a visit and got counted in all the standard reports. In GA4, page loads are still tracked but they’ve been relegated to a supporting role in favor of events.

Tracking events rather than pageviews makes sense on the modern web because many web pages are interactive and don’t reload when the user interacts with them.

Think of Gmail, for example… you can click around the interface to see different emails and reply to them without causing a single page to reload. GA4 can measure all this engagement through events rather than relying on page loads.

But what if your conversions are based on pageviews, like when a user gets to a ‘thank you’ page after submitting a lead form or an order confirmation page after their purchase? Does that mean you can no longer track these pageview-based events as conversions in GA4?

Luckily, you still can, and it’s relatively easy, so let’s look at the steps to add pageview-driven conversions in a GA4 property.

Step 1: Enable Enhanced Measurement

While you could get overly technical and ask the webmaster or person who manages Google Tag Manager to create a special event when a user comes to the page associated with a conversion, you can also do it much more simply.

GA4 already tracks certain events out of the box, and pageviews are one of these automatically tracked events that users get when they enable enhanced measurement by turning it on with a single switch in the admin settings.

Go to the ‘Data Streams’ section of the admin settings in GA4:

Then toggle the switch to enable enhanced measurement:

Step 2: Create an event for a view of a specific page

Of course, we don’t want to measure every page view as a conversion so we need to narrow it down and create an event for the page we want to track as a goal or conversion.

Go to the ‘Events’ page and click the button to create a new event:

For the new event, set the event_name equal to‘ page_view’ and for the page_location parameter, enter the condition that will match it to the desired conversion page. In our example, we’re matching URLs that end with a particular text:

If you can’t remember what pageview should be tracked as a goal, simply head back to your old UA profile (which you should not have deleted when you migrated to GA4) and look at the details for the goals you’d like to bring into GA4:

In the old UA account, we tracked a conversion whenever the destination URL equaled a particular text. We’re taking that string of text and using it to create an equivalent event-based conversion in GA4.

Notice the string we’re pointing to in UA below is the same text we entered for our custom event in the GA4 screenshots above in step 2:

Step 3: Turn the new event into a Conversion

The final step is to toggle your new event to be counted as a conversion. This toggle is available on the configuration page for events, where you’ll end up right after creating the new event in step 2, detailed above.

Step 4: Wait for data

Note that data for the new event will only start to collect after you create it. GA4 will not go back and retroactively find instances of that event. And similarly, GA4 will only count an event as a conversion from the moment you toggle it to be counted as a conversion.

So after a few hours, assuming you’ve had conversions happening on your site, return to GA4 and you should see some numbers for your new event and pageview-based conversion.

Conclusion

That’s it… relatively straightforward once you know how GA4 differs from UA. Of course, we wish we didn’t have to learn a whole new way of working with Google Analytics but that’s outside Optmyzr’s control.

We hope our guide helped make it easier to get your goals back into your GA data so you can start getting some real value out of GA4.

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Getting Started with Google Ads for E-commerce

It’s that time of year when PPC advertisers start feeling the heat of the busy shopping season.

So we’ve put together a comprehensive guide that will help you understand all aspects of running ecommerce campaigns with Google Ads, from choosing the right campaign type to creating campaigns and ads, as well as best practices for optimizing and managing them effectively.

Before we dive in, let’s take a step back and understand why Google Ads is a popular choice for many PPC advertisers.

Why use Google Ads for your ecommerce businesses?

Google Ads has long been a go-to for ecommerce brands and for good reason. It gives you access to potential customers across Google Search, Shopping, YouTube, and a massive network of partner sites.

And now, with placements showing up in things like AI Overviews, the competition for attention is getting even tougher.

What sets Google Ads apart is how targeted you can get. You’re not just casting a wide net; you’re reaching people based on what they’re searching for, what they care about, and how they behave online. That means your ads show up for the people most likely to buy.

It’s also flexible. You only pay when someone clicks, and you can adjust your spend based on what’s working and what your goals are.

In addition, Google Ads provides analytics that allows you to track the performance of your campaigns and see what’s working and what’s not. This data can be used to optimize your campaigns and improve results over time.

But while Google Ads makes it easy to get started, scaling campaigns profitably, especially across large product catalogs and dynamic markets, requires more than Google’s native tools. That’s where Optmyzr comes in, giving ecommerce advertisers the automation, feed control, and budget intelligence that Google doesn’t provide out of the box.

Running campaigns is just the start. Staying profitable, especially during busy seasons, takes a smart setup. You’ll need to choose the right campaign types, manage budgets with intention, and build in ways to keep reaching the right audience, even after they’ve clicked.

Read on to learn about it, from campaign types to budget strategies, audience targeting, and more.

Types of Google Ads campaigns for various objectives

In Google’s vast ad ecosystem, there’s a campaign type for nearly every channel. From Search and Shopping to YouTube, Gmail, and beyond.

Each has its place. But in ecommerce, it’s not just about picking the right type. It’s about managing them at scale. When you’re juggling hundreds of SKUs, multiple feeds, and dynamic budgets, it can quickly become overwhelming to manage.

Let’s walk through the main campaign types and what they offer, then we’ll zoom in on how to use them strategically for ecommerce growth.

Search Campaigns

Search campaigns are the most common type of Google Ad campaigns. They appear in Google’s search results when users look for specific keywords.

Advantage: Search campaigns are a great way to target audiences who are already interested in your offer, as they are actively searching for it. However, as your product catalog grows, so does the number of ad groups and keywords you have to manage.

Display Campaigns

Display campaigns allow you to show your ads across the Google Display Network on websites and apps.

Advantage: Display campaigns are an excellent way to reach a wider audience and build brand awareness. But they are less intent-driven and harder to control at the conversion level.

Shopping Campaigns

Shopping campaigns allow you to show your product listings in the Google Shopping tab and other search results.

Advantage: Shopping campaigns are a great way to drive traffic to your website (ecommerce store) and increase sales. It is important to have a consistent feed hygiene and repeatable processes when you’re managing SKUs, inventory, and product data at scale.

Local Campaigns

Local campaigns allow you to promote your business in Google Search results and Google Maps.

Advantage: Local campaigns are a great way to reach potential customers looking for businesses like yours in their area. However, they may not be as relevant for online only ecommerce businesses.

Performance Max Campaigns

PMax campaigns use machine learning and automation to optimize your ads for all of Google’s channels, including Search, Display, YouTube, and more.

Advantage: Performance Max campaigns are a good option for businesses that want to reach a broad audience and achieve business goals with a single campaign.

Discovery Campaigns

Discovery campaigns allow you to show your ads in the Google Discover feed. It’s the personalized content that users can see on Google Search, the Google app, and YouTube.

Advantage: Discovery campaigns are great for reaching audiences who are already interested in topics related to your business.

There’s more to Google Ads, but for now, we’ll get into campaign types specific to ecommerce: Search, Standard Shopping, and Performance Max.

Search Campaigns

Google Ads search campaigns involve bidding on specific keywords and displaying text ads on Google’s search engine results pages (SERP). Advertisers can tailor these ads to include additional information like prices, reviews, and images through ad extensions.

Search campaigns are often where ecommerce brands start. They capture high-intent shoppers right when they’re searching. But as your product catalog grows, so does the complexity. Managing keywords, budgets, and performance at scale takes more than a basic setup.

Where Do Search Ads Appear

 

Source: Google Ads

Google Shopping: If you have a Google Merchant Center account, you can show your product listings in the Google Shopping tab and other search results.

Source: Google Ads

💡Pro Tip: Search ads perform best when you’re showing up for the right queries and skipping the ones that waste budget. Optmyzr’s Keyword Lasso helps you spot high-converting search terms that aren’t yet keywords in your account, so you can add them quickly and grow coverage where it counts.

 

 

Ad Formats for Search Ads

Search Ads Bidding Strategies

There are a variety of bidding strategies that you can use for your search campaigns. The best bidding strategy for you will depend on your ecommerce business goals and budget.

Some of the most common bidding strategies include:

Standard Shopping Campaigns

Standard Shopping campaigns give you more hands-on control over how your products show up across Google. You can manage everything from product groupings to bids and negative keywords—making it easier to shape performance around your ecommerce goals.

They help you promote product listings across the Shopping tab, Search results, and more, driving traffic to your store and supporting sales growth.

Where Do Shopping Ads Appear

 

Source: Marcel Digital

💡Pro tip: When you're juggling thousands of SKUs across multiple channels, having a clean, well-organized feed is essential. The Shopping Campaign Builder makes it easy to turn your product catalog into tightly grouped, performance-ready campaigns.

 

 

Ad Formats for Standard Shopping Campaigns

Standard Shopping campaigns include Shopping Ads and Local Inventory Ads.

⚠️Quick fix: Feed issues can silently tank performance. Shopping Feed Audits flag missing data, misgrouped items, or missing negatives and Feed Alerts notify you when approvals or prices go off-track.

 

Read More: The Complete Guide to Product Feed Optimization

Standard Shopping Campaign Bidding Strategies

Standard Shopping campaigns allow for automated strategies like Target ROAS and Maximize Clicks, as well as manual CPC.

Performance Max (PMax) Campaigns

The buzz about Performance Max campaigns is all about its ability to use machine learning to optimize your ads for all of Google’s channels, including Search, Display, YouTube, and more. This campaign type uses robust automation across various aspects of the campaign, including bidding, budget optimization, audiences, creatives, and attribution.

Where Do PMax Ads Appear

Performance Max ads can appear in the following places and also automatically adapt to new inventory and formats:

Ad Formats for Performance Max Campaigns

PMax offers a wide array of ad formats, including:

Performance Max Campaigns Bidding Strategies

Performance Max uses automated bidding strategies like Maximize Conversion Value and Maximize Conversions. And with automated bidding, Google automatically sets your bids to get as many conversions as possible within your budget.

This is where tools like Optmyzr’s Shopping Analysis come in. You can break down PMax performance by product attributes like brand, category, or custom labels, giving you insights Google doesn’t show natively. You’ll know which segments are pulling their weight and which ones might be eating spend.

 

Additional Features of Performance Max Campaigns

PMax has some additional features that can be helpful for both lead generation and ecommerce campaigns, including

Speaking of leads, it’s important to know how to use Google Ads campaigns to generate leads and drive sales for ecommerce businesses. While lead generation and sales are crucial parts of any ecommerce strategy, there is a difference between the two.

By understanding the different campaign types and targeting options available, you can create campaigns tailored to your specific business goals.

Let’s look at how you can approach Google Ads differently for lead generation and sales in ecommerce campaigns.

When creating a Google Ads campaign, it is essential to first define your goals.

Are you looking to generate leads, drive sales, or increase brand awareness? Once you know your goals, you can choose the right campaign type and targeting options.

When leveraging Google Ads, the strategic goals include:

Lead generation attracts and converts new potential audiences and prospects into someone who has indicated interest in your company’s product or service. A lead is a person who has shown some interest in what you have to offer but hasn’t yet become a customer.

Sales is the process of converting leads into paying customers. It involves building relationships with leads, understanding their needs, and persuading them to buy from you.

Google Ads can be used for both lead generation and sales. However, there are some key differences between the two types of campaigns.

Aspect

Lead generation

Sales

Goal

Generate leads by collecting contact information from potential customers.

Convert leads into paying customers.

Target audience

People who have shown some interest in your company's product or service.

People who are already interested in your product or service.

Ad copy

Focuses on the benefits of your product or service and how it can solve the customer's problem.

Focuses on the value of your product or service and why the customer should buy it now.

Call to action

Typically, it includes a call to action to sign up for a free trial, download an ebook, or schedule a consultation.

Typically, it includes a call to action to buy your product or service.

 

Now, let’s get into how you can optimize the three main ecommerce campaign types (Search, Shopping, and PMax) differently for lead generation goals.

Now that we understand what options you have in terms of Google Ads campaigns for ecommerce, let’s look at how to create the three types of Google Ads ecommerce campaigns - Search, Standard Shopping, and Performance Max.

How to Create Search Campaigns

Here is a step-by-step process of creating search campaigns in Google Ads:

Once you’ve created your search campaign, it will go through a review process. Once your campaign is approved, it will start running, and your ads will appear in search results.

How to create Standard Shopping Campaigns

The steps to create a campaign remain the same until choosing the type of campaign. In this case, you select “Shopping” as your campaign type.

From there on, the steps are as follows:

After completing these steps, your Google Ads Shopping campaign will be set up and ready to go live. Review and monitor the campaign’s performance regularly for any necessary adjustments.

How to create a Performance Max campaign

Once you’ve created your Performance Max campaign, it will first go through a review process. After your campaign is approved, it will start running, and your ads will appear in search results and other Google channels, such as Display, YouTube, and Maps.

Remember, creating a campaign is just the beginning. Running successful ecommerce campaigns is all about testing, monitoring, and making optimizations based on your results. Once you have a good understanding of what’s working and what’s not, you can start to implement more advanced strategies like remarketing.

Remarketing for Google Ads Ecommerce Campaigns

Remarketing is a powerful way to reach people who have visited your website or interacted with your brand. Today, however,, it’s less about “following” users around and more about using your data intentionally to stay relevant.

With third-party cookies disappearing and AI playing a bigger role in ad targeting, your remarketing strategy needs to lean on first-party data, thoughtful segmentation, and creative that’s built to convert.

How to use remarketing strategically in ecommerce

By using remarketing to target people who have already shown an interest in your products, you can increase your chances of converting them into customers.

In addition to remarketing, there are several other best practices that you can follow to improve your Google Ads ecommerce campaigns. We have curated five tips from expert PPCers in the industry, and some valuable articles and user guides by Optmyzr.

5 Best Practices For Successful Ecommerce Google Ads Campaigns

Showcase your best products

Put the spotlight on your top-selling products. They’re the winners for a reason. Give them catchy titles, descriptions, and eye-catching images or videos to attract more buyers. Allocate a good chunk of your budget to these rock stars.

Learn more about it here.

💡Pro Tip: Stop wasting time treating every product the same. The Smart Product Labeler automatically sorts your catalog into performance tiers so you can double down on proven winners, give promising products the push they need, and cut wasted spend on underperformers with ease.

 

 

Set smart bids and budgets

Figure out your bidding strategy based on your profit margins and conversion rates. Smart bidding can be a game-changer, but keep an eye on it to ensure it works for your specific goals.

Check out Freya Laskowski’s advice on our recent blog here.

💡Pro Tip: With Optmyzr’s Optimize Budgets tools, you don’t have to keep shuffling money around manually. They automatically shift budget toward the campaigns and accounts that are performing best so your top performers never get starved, and your spend stays aligned with your goals

 

 

Keep out the irrelevant clicks

Use negative keywords to filter out searches that don’t match what you’re selling. Regularly review search terms to keep your ads from showing up where they shouldn’t.

Read Nicholas Woodward’s article on 5 effective strategies for negative keywords and how to use them in ecommerce PPC campaigns.

Create an optimization schedule

Optimization is the key to any campaign’s success, but it can be difficult to keep track of your campaigns and ensure they perform optimally, especially if you’re operating on a larger scale. That’s where a Google Ads optimization schedule can help. It helps you track your progress and make data-driven decisions.

Here’s a great article by Andrew Lolk on Google Ads optimization schedule.

💡Pro Tip: Optmyzr’s Account Blueprints let you set a recurring workflow, automating optimization tasks across campaigns so you never miss a step

 

Track your performance to optimize for success

Tracking your ecommerce website’s performance is essential for optimizing your Google Ads campaigns. And setting up conversion code is the key to unlocking valuable insights into your website’s behavior.

Check out Hukum Negi’s tip on using Google Ads conversion code.

We have another great resource for you to help you through this year’s ecommerce campaign management. Check out this PPC Town Hall episode on how to stand out in eCommerce advertising featuring Duane Brown and Andrew Goodman, who have been running top-quality eCommerce campaigns for years and helped brands exponentially grow revenue and smash prior financial records.

Streamline Your Ecommerce Google Ads with Optmyzr

Running ecommerce Google Ads can be a handful. It demands constant fine-tuning and attention to ensure your campaigns are at their prime. But there’s no need to stress. With Optmyzr, managing your ecommerce campaigns is a lot easier and more efficient.

Here are some of Optmyzr’s top tools and features to support you at every stage of your ecommerce campaign management journey.

Tools for creation

Shopping Campaign Builder 2.0

Structure your active shopping campaigns by creating multiple levels of product partitions through a single click. You can create hundreds of ad groups with thousands of product groups in a matter of minutes.

Shopping Campaign Builder 2.0 makes building Shopping or PMax campaigns easy based on performance. For example, you can group products with similar ROAS performance and set more targeted bids and budgets, leading to improved performance overall. And it helps you manage your campaigns more effectively by making it easy and quick to identify and address any low-performing campaigns.

Know more here.

Restructure Shopping Campaigns Tool

With this tool, you can restructure your shopping campaign groups created through Shopping Campaign Builder 2.0. You can also restructure campaigns not part of a campaign group created through Optmyzr.

Know more here.

 

Tools for performance analysis and optimization

Shopping Analysis

The Shopping Campaign Analysis tool from Google Ads is a powerful tool for getting insights into your Shopping and Performance Max campaigns. It allows you to aggregate data from your shopping feed by performance metrics and attributes, regardless of your campaign structure.

Know more here.

Shopping Feed Audits

These audits help you identify opportunities for enhancing your shopping and PMax Retail campaign structure and organization. For example, you can:

Know more here.

 

Alerts for monitoring

Know all about alerts here.

 

Tools for managing bids

Shopping Bidder Tool

The Shopping Bidder lets you make bulk bid changes for product groups based on performance with a single click. The tool enables you to set bids for thousands of product groups in a matter of minutes. New bids can be uploaded to AdWords with a single click.

Know more here.

Shopping Attribute Bidder

Manage your shopping bids in a more flexible way by aggregating and reviewing data from the attributes in your product feed. For example, you could change bids for product groups advertising the same product but with different attributes like size and color.

Know more here.

Stay on top of your Google Ads ecommerce campaigns with Optmyzr

Managing successful ecommerce Google Ad campaigns is an ongoing process that requires constant experimentation, testing, data analysis, and strategic thinking. It’s also important to be adaptable and willing to refine your campaigns based on changing market conditions and business goals.

And Optmyzr, with its array of solutions, helpful resources, and support team, is always there to assist you.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

How To Run Cross-Platform Ad Campaigns Without Losing Visibility or Control

Running campaigns across Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, and others feels less like marketing and more like managing a dozen open browser tabs.

Each platform has its own metrics, dashboards, and annoyances. The result? Marketers spend more time managing platforms than improving performance.

Optmyzr fixes that. It brings every account into one place so you can see what’s working, reallocate budget quickly, and share clean, cross-platform reports.

This guide walks through seven ways Optmyzr simplifies multi-platform advertising, so you can do less switching and more strategizing.

For a complete walkthrough of how Optmyzr simplifies cross-platform advertising, you can watch our latest Learn With Optmyzr session below:

 

7 ways Optmyzr simplifies cross-platform advertising

1. Simplify account management with unified portfolios

One of the biggest challenges in cross-platform advertising is simply keeping track of everything. It’s quite common for account managers to have to switch between multiple platforms to understand what’s going on with their campaigns.

Optmyzr solves this by giving you a Portfolio View on the All Accounts Dashboard.

 

Instead of logging into multiple platforms, you can see both aggregate metrics across accounts and platform-specific details in one place.

Additionally, you can even customize your view by adding performance metrics that matter to your goals, such as the conversion rate, ROAS, custom conversions, or cost.

Let’s take an example. Say you have a client running brand campaigns on both Google and Microsoft. Instead of switching between platforms or juggling multiple spreadsheets, you can group these accounts into a single portfolio in Optmyzr. Let’s call it the “Brand Campaign” portfolio.

Now the portfolio view will give you a unified view of all the campaign data across both platforms.

This setup is quite useful for account managers who spend a lot of time toggling between multiple interfaces.

And the best part? If you also run competitor or seasonal campaigns, you can create separate portfolios or budget groups for those, too. This gives you full control and flexibility across your entire PPC strategy.

2. Get clearer insights with a unified view of performance

Once your accounts are grouped under a single portfolio, the next step is to make that view as actionable as possible.

Like we discussed before, Optmyzr allows you to tailor your portfolio view with key performance metrics that align with your business goals. This way, you’re looking at insights that truly matter to you.

Now, from here you can drill down into performance by campaign, keyword, or search term across all the accounts in the portfolio. You can easily find out which campaigns are driving the most conversions or see which search terms are wasting spend.

For example, in one portfolio, 90% of the budget is spent on Google Ads, while the remaining amount is allocated to Microsoft Ads. However, surprisingly, you find that Microsoft contributes nearly 44% of the total conversions, almost as much as Google.

This kind of cross-platform insight enables you to rethink your media mix and intelligently reallocate budget where it drives the most impact.

 

To make these insights more actionable, Optmyzr even provides platform and channel-level distribution charts that show you where your spend is going— Search vs Display, Google vs Microsoft, and how it aligns with your impressions, clicks, and conversions.

3. Turn raw data into actionable answers with AI-powered insights

Managing cross-platform insights can be overwhelming. But, the good news is that Optmyzr’s AI assistant makes it quite easy to extract key insights from your available data.

You can ask natural-language questions like ‘Which account is the top performer in this portfolio’, and the AI assistant will evaluate key metrics across all linked accounts and then highlight the platform driving the strongest results.

 

These AI-driven insights are great if you’re preparing for client meetings, helping you turn raw data into strategic and actionable conversations.

4. Stay on track with smart budget monitoring and alerts

After setting up your portfolios, Optmyzr allows you to set target budgets for entire portfolios or even for specific campaign groups like brand, competitor, or seasonal campaigns. This way you can track spend in a way that matches your client or business objectives.

The Budget Dashboard also shows you the pacing status so you know if you’re under or overspending. For example, if you’ve spent only 25% of a $27,000 monthly budget by the end of the month, Optmyzr highlights that you’re underpacing and at risk of leaving money on the table.

If you want to stay proactive with your budget and how it’s being spent, a good practice is to set up automated alerts that are triggered when your spend hits critical thresholds such as 50%, 75%, 90%, or 100% of your target budget.

 

This way you’re never caught off guard, whether you’re spending too slowly or burning through your budget too quickly.

To make things easier, you can choose to receive your alerts over email, Slack, or Microsoft Teams so they appear where your team is already communicating.

5. Optimize spend with strategic budget reallocation

If you want a better way to reallocate budgets for maximum performance, the Budget Optimization tool allows you to create budget groups to organize campaigns by type, such as brand, competitor, or seasonal. This structure makes it easy to track pacing for each group individually instead of lumping all campaigns together.

You can then see how each group is performing against its target budget, with clear pacing indicators. If one group is underspending or overspending, you can quickly make adjustments to daily budgets.

If you have strict budget caps, you can configure the campaigns to pause automatically once they hit their limit and restart at the next cycle so you’re fully in control of your spend.

And when it comes to reallocation, you have the flexibility to manually adjust budgets using your own logic. Or you can let the tool suggest changes based on specific goals like clicks, conversions, or ROAS.

6. Uncover opportunities with cross-platform search term analysis

Knowing which search terms are driving conversions and which ones are draining budget is one of the most important parts in managing your PPC campaigns. The Search Term N-Grams tool in Optmyzr allows you to easily analyze performance across all connected accounts and campaigns.

The tool lets you group terms into 1-word, 2-word, or longer phrases so you can visualize their impact in an interactive word cloud. The largest words represent the highest cost while the darkest ones show the lowest ROAS.

 

When you want to dig deeper, simply click on a term to see a full cross-platform breakdown of cost and ROAS by campaign and account. This level of granularity helps you identify where a term is profitable and where it isn’t, so you can make smarter optimization decisions.

To make insights even more actionable, the tool also provides an AI-powered summary highlighting what’s working and what’s not, alongside a downloadable table view for detailed audits and reports

7. Save time with consolidated multi-account reporting

Now, if you want to get a consolidated report of what’s happening across the platforms and accounts you manage, Optmyzr’s multi-account reports are exactly what you need.

It pulls the data from Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Facebook, Amazon, and Analytics to give you a single, unified view.

The account selectors in the tool allow you to choose which accounts, campaigns, or labels to include. It can give you a high-level report of all campaigns across platforms or even something more granular, like a breakdown of brand vs. competitor campaigns within a single account.

You also have the specialized, multi-account widgets that aggregate spend, conversions, ROAS, and other critical metrics across every account you select.

For agencies and in-house teams managing dozens of accounts, this is a game-changer. It saves time, reduces reporting errors, and most importantly—provides clients and stakeholders with a clear, cross-platform picture of performance.

 

Simplify how you work across ad platforms with Optmyzr

Running PPC across multiple platforms doesn’t have to feel like juggling in the dark. With Optmyzr, you get a single, central hub to see what’s really happening—whether it’s budgets, performance insights, or reports.

Instead of reacting to problems after they happen, Optmyzr helps you stay ahead. You can spot when budgets are drifting, shift spend toward channels that are really delivering, uncover search terms that drive true value, and share clean reports that make sense to clients and teams. It allows you to make smarter decisions with less busywork.

Sign up for Optmyzr’s free 14-day trial and explore how you can streamline cross-platform PPC management.


New to Optmyzr? Here's What You Should Test In Your Free Trial Period (+ Free Checklist)

When you’re moving from one PPC platform to another, the trial period is your best chance to see if the tool is truly worth it. Along with the features, you want proof that the tool can save you time, cut wasted spend, and make account management easier.

That’s why this guide focuses on the real questions PPC managers struggle with every day, like “Why did performance change?”, “Am I paying for irrelevant clicks?”, or “Are my ads really working?” Each section shows how Optmyzr helps you answer those questions.

👉 If you want the full set of self-serve onboarding modules (with step-by-step instructions), you can find them all here.

Get quick wins with the All Accounts Dashboard

When you’re managing ads across Google, Microsoft, Facebook, or Amazon, the hardest part is keeping track of everything. Instead of juggling logins and reports, the All Accounts Dashboard consolidates all your data into a single view.

You’ll see performance trends at a glance, spot red flags quickly, and get nudges on where to take action.

The dashboard lets you star your most important accounts, filter by networks or devices, and pick your key metrics. You can even save a default or team view so every login starts with the data that matters most.

👉 Try this: Connect your accounts, star your top three, and save a custom view comparing “last 7 days vs. previous 7.”

 

Catch problems early with alerts

One of the toughest parts of PPC is that you often don’t know something’s wrong until it’s too late. Optmyzr’s alerts keep you one step ahead by flagging issues the moment they happen.

“How do I spot sudden spikes/drops before they waste my budget?”

Performance can shift overnight; clicks or conversions dip, or impressions spike because of irrelevant traffic. The Anomaly Detector Script monitors your accounts hourly and alerts you right away, no coding required.

 

👉 Try this: Set up anomaly detection for clicks, impressions, and conversions. Check your inbox for alerts the next time something unusual happens.

“How do I stay on top of KPIs without checking reports all day?”

Manually tracking CPC, ROAS, or budgets across platforms is nearly impossible. Setting daily KPI alerts in Optmyzr helps compare your metrics against client-set thresholds or automatically benchmarks them against the past 8 weeks.

 

👉 Try this: Create a daily alert for CPC/ROAS in one campaign. Let Optmyzr calculate the baseline and see how it compares to your client’s target.

“Can I get alerts tailored to my account’s weak spots?”

Yes, the Rule Engine lets you build custom alerts for what matters most, like disapproved ads, low-Quality Score keywords, or campaigns losing impression share.

And now, Optmyzr’s AI explains each pre-built strategy in plain language, so you understand exactly why a rule exists and when to use it.

 

👉 Try this: Use the Rule Engine to create an alert for any ad disapproved in the past 7 days. You’ll never miss one again.

 

💡Also Read: 8 Rule Engine Strategies: How Optmyzr Customers Bypass Google Ads Limitations

Stay in control with budget monitoring

Few things erode trust with clients faster than budget mismanagement.

Overspend too early, and campaigns burn out before the month ends. Underspend, and you leave valuable opportunities on the table.

Optmyzr’s budget monitoring tools ensure these questions don’t eat up your precious hours:

“How do I know if I’m overspending or underspending on ads?”

In the All Accounts Dashboard, you can set monthly budgets and enable pacing alerts. Connect them to Slack or Teams so you’ll get notified instantly instead of checking dashboards all day.

👉 Try this: Add a monthly budget target for one account and switch on pacing alerts. Watch how quickly overspending or underspending gets flagged.

“How can I predict if I’ll run out of budget before the month ends?”

Most managers only realize budgets are off-track at the very end of the month.

The Spend Projection tool gives you foresight with min, max, and projected spend, adjusted for seasonality and historical trends.

 

👉 Try this: Open Spend Projection for one campaign. Check if you’re projected to overspend or underspend halfway through the month.

“What’s the best way to reallocate budget between campaigns?”

Some campaigns always hit limits while others underspend. The Optimize Budgets tools help you rebalance. At the single-account level, you’ll see where impression share is being lost.

At the multi-account level, you can group budgets (e.g., brand vs. generic across Google, Microsoft, and Facebook) and shift spend where it performs best.

👉 Try this: Run Optimize Budgets for one account. Move budget from a low-performing campaign to one that’s losing impression share.

“How do I stop campaigns from overspending automatically?”

Even with pacing, things can slip. That’s why budget scripts work as safety nets.

The moment a campaign goes over the budget you’ve set, the Pause When Budget Exceeds script pauses it automatically. Similarly, the Reach Target Monthly Spend script adjusts daily spend so you stay close to your monthly target, avoiding both underspending and overspending.

👉 Try this: Add the “Pause When Budget Exceeds” script to a campaign with a strict monthly cap. Then add “Reach Target Monthly Budget” to one where spend is uneven. You’ll see how one prevents overshoot and the other keeps pacing balanced.

 

 

See why results changed and how to fix them

Once you’ve got control over budgets and alerts, the next question is:

“How do I actually improve my ad performance?”

Most PPC managers spend hours reviewing reports, trying to determine why results have shifted, where spend is being wasted, or which ads are actually working.

Optmyzr’s insights and optimization tools are designed to cut that work down to minutes. Here are some questions that our PPC automation software will help you answer:

1.“Why did my performance change, and what caused it?”

One of the most challenging aspects of PPC management is explaining sudden dips or spikes.

Did conversions drop because of device traffic, budget pacing, or something deeper?

Optmyzr helps you with a simple two-step workflow:

With our Performance Comparison tool, you can line up two sets of performance data side by side👇

 

For example, compare “last week” to the “week before” across the same campaigns.

You can filter by networks (Google Search, Display, YouTube, Search Partners) and devices (desktop, mobile, tablet).

This way, you’re able to isolate where exactly the performance changed.

Was the drop in traffic coming from mobile devices? Did YouTube spend increase while conversions dipped on Search? Did one campaign suddenly lose impression share?

When your numbers go up or down, whether it’s clicks, conversions, or costs, it’s not always clear why. That’s where the PPC investigator can trace the reason with two simple views:

Cause Chart: a big-picture map

The Cause Chart shows you how different metrics (like impressions, clicks, conversions) connect to each other.

If conversions dropped, was it because you got fewer clicks? Or because the same clicks converted less often? It helps you see that chain of events.

 

👉 Try this: Pick a metric that changed (for example, conversions last week vs. the week before). Open the Cause Chart and follow the path. You’ll see whether the dip came from traffic slowing down, costs going up, or conversion rates falling.

 

This way, you don’t just see what went wrong, you understand the sequence that led to it.

Root Cause Analysis: zooming in on the culprit

Once you know the chain of events, the Root Cause Analysis zooms in further. It tells you exactly which campaign, keyword, or ad group caused the change.

It even highlights the biggest “movers,” both positive and negative.

 

👉 Try this: After spotting a drop in the Cause Chart, click into Root Cause Analysis. You’ll see the top three contributors. For example, maybe one keyword lost 100% of its clicks, or one ad group suddenly drove more conversions.

 

Takeaway: Use the Cause Chart to see the story of what happened, and Root Cause Analysis to find the characters responsible. Together, they give you clear answers when performance changes.

 

2. “Why am I paying for irrelevant clicks?”

Every advertiser has wasted money on clicks that will never convert.

Sometimes it’s just one word in a search query, like “free” or “jobs,” that keeps triggering ads but brings in no real customers.

Catching these early means saving budget for clicks that matter.

Negative Keyword Finder

Negative keyword finder scans your search terms and finds keywords that don’t perform.

For example, if “free” keeps showing up in search queries but never leads to conversions, the tool will recommend adding “free” as a negative keyword.

 

👉 Try this: Run the Negative Keyword Finder, review the list, and add 2–3 irrelevant words as negatives. Upload them directly into Google Ads with one click.

 

Search Term N-Grams

Instead of combing through hundreds of search terms, N-Grams breaks queries into chunks (single words, two-word phrases, etc.) and shows you which ones drive clicks but don’t convert.

You’ll also see terms you should be targeting because they’re performing well.

 

👉 Try this: Look at the N-Grams word cloud for your top campaigns. Add one poor-performing term as a negative, and shortlist one strong phrase as a keyword idea.

 

Keyword Lasso

On the flip side, some queries convert really well but aren’t part of your keyword list yet.

Keyword Lasso spots these and lets you add them as exact keywords so you can control bids more effectively.

 

👉 Try this: Run the tool on one campaign and add at least one converting query as a keyword.

 

Takeaway: Together, these tools make keyword management simple:

Do this even once during your trial, and you’ll see a cleaner account with less wasted spend and more budget flowing to what works.

3. “Am I bidding the right amount?”

Bidding is one of the trickiest parts of PPC.

Finding the sweet spot manually is exhausting. Optmyzr gives you two quick ways to test smarter bidding in your trial:

First Page Bridger

Sometimes, good keywords with strong Quality Scores don’t even make it to page one because the bid is slightly too low. First Page Bridger finds those keywords and tells you the minimum bid increase needed to push them onto page one.

 

👉 Try this: Run First Page Bridger on one campaign. Pick a few high-quality keywords just below page one and let the tool suggest the right bid bump. Apply the change with one click.

 

Conversion Grabber

Other times, you have keywords that convert but don’t show often as they’re losing impression share. Conversion Grabber identifies these converting keywords with low impression share and suggests small bid increases to boost visibility.

 

👉 Try this: Run Conversion Grabber, filter for top suggestions, and increase bids for one converting keyword.

 

Adjust targets for automated bidding

If you’re using Google’s automated bidding (Target CPA or Target ROAS), you can’t manually tweak keyword bids. Instead, Optmyzr helps you optimize target CPA or ROAS at the campaign or ad group level to regain control.

 

👉 Try this: Pick one campaign on Target CPA, lower the CPA slightly in Optmyzr, and see how impression share responds.

4. “Are my ads really working?”

It’s easy to launch ads, but harder to know which headlines and descriptions work.

Some waste budget, others drive the clicks and conversions you want. Optmyzr helps you spot the difference fast.

Ad text optimization

The Ad text optimization tool breaks your Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) into their individual parts: headlines, descriptions, and even full ads to show you which ones are performing well.

You can edit any asset by clicking the edit icon; saving marks it as “modified,” but nothing is pushed to Google Ads until you review and finalize.

The tool also suggests AI-powered headlines, descriptions, and full ad drafts. You can apply these suggestions directly or customize them.

 

✨ Remember: AI-generated content is meant to support your decisions; always review before applying.

👉 Try this: Run Ad Text Optimization for one campaign. Look at which headlines and descriptions are getting the most impressions or best ratings, and note which ones are weak.

 

Ad A/B testing

A/B Testing for ads shows you which ads in an ad group perform best based on clicks or conversions, and lets you pause underperformers automatically.

 

👉 Try this: Run A/B Testing on one ad group with multiple ads. Pause one weak ad and create a new variation using suggestions from your stronger ads.

 

Get more from Performance Max (PMax)

PMax can drive great results, but only if you can see what’s happening and act fast.

Here are the exact questions Optmyzr helps you answer, plus what to try in your trial:

“Where is my PMax spend going (Shopping vs Display vs Video)?”

Use the PMax Channel Distribution widget from the Account Dashboard to see cost and ROAS by channel at a glance, then drill into a full table by campaign.

If “Other” is high (Search/Discovery/Gmail/Maps), you’ll know to review exclusions.


👉 Try this: Open Channel Distribution, click View Full Table, and flag any campaign overspending on Display for follow-up (e.g., placement cleanup).

“How do I get alerts when products are disapproved or top products start slipping?”

Create Feed-level alerts for % of products disapproved so you catch feed issues early.

Also set Product-level alerts when a top performer (e.g., top 10% by ROAS) falls into a low bucket (e.g., bottom 50%) over your chosen period. Both can be set in bulk across accounts.


👉 Try this: In Create KPI Alert, set Level = Feed for disapprovals; then another alert with Level = Products to catch drops from top→bottom performers.

“Is my feed hurting performance?”

Run a Merchant Feed Audit to get a letter grade and a one-page checklist of issues (titles/descriptions, length, missing attributes, disapproval reasons). Schedule it weekly or monthly so fixes don’t slip.

 

💡Learn More: The Complete Guide to Product Feed Optimization in Google Merchant Center

“How can I build and manage PMax campaigns faster?”

Instead of building campaigns manually, the Shopping Campaign Builder lets you create PMax structures in minutes.

 

You can segment by ROAS buckets, product types, or labels and keep them automatically synced with your feed so you never advertise out-of-stock products.

 

👉 Try this: Launch a ROAS-based structure with thresholds that match your goals; turn on the sync so products move buckets automatically.

“How do I see PMax search terms?”

Generate the PMax Search Terms Script (no coding). It sends PMax search terms to a spreadsheet so you can track KPIs per term, spot winners, and negate irrelevant traffic.

👉 Try this: Install the script for one account, review the sheet weekly, and add obvious negatives/audience tweaks from low-quality terms.

“How do I cut wasted spend in PMax?”

Optmyzr has tools to trim waste:

👉 Try this: Run the URL Checker and fix any broken pages it flags before they waste clicks.

Put it all together with a quick checklist

By now, you’ve seen how to:

That’s a lot to cover during a trial. To make it easier, we’ve created a Quick Optimization Checklist you can use to stay on track. It includes:

👉Download the checklist here

Need a hand? Our team is here to help!

That’s it, you now have the key steps to make the most of your Optmyzr trial.

From monitoring and alerts to budgets, insights, and Performance Max, you’ve got the tools to spot issues faster and take smarter action.

If you’d like a guided walkthrough, you can book a demo with our team, and we’ll be happy to show you the exact steps in your own account.

And if you ever get stuck, just reach out to us at support@optmyzr.com. We’re always here to help!

Avoid These 6 Common (and Costly) Mistakes When Migrating To A New PPC Platform

Migrating PPC platforms looks simple until you’re in the middle of it.

Lose account ownership, miss a legacy script, or skip a backup, and suddenly you’re facing broken tracking, underperforming campaigns, and frustrated stakeholders.

What should have been an upgrade turns into weeks of damage control.

In this guide, we’ll show you the most common (and costly) migration mistakes and how to avoid them.

We’ll also share how Optmyzr helps advertisers and agencies safeguard data, preserve automations, and keep campaigns running smoothly so you can switch platforms with confidence.

 

Mistake #1: Failing to secure account ownership before migrating

One of the biggest risks when switching PPC platforms is relying on vendor-owned MCCs (manager accounts) or business accounts. If your old vendor controls account ownership, you could lose access to valuable historical data, face gaps in reporting, or encounter compliance issues.

Beware of agencies that restrict account access.

If you decide to cancel, some may not return your accounts, leaving you without your data or campaign history. Always ensure you maintain full ownership so you stay in control no matter who manages your ads.

The Fix:

Before starting a migration, it’s critical to:

How Optmyzr helps

Optmyzr connects directly through your own Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or Facebook Ads manager account login.

This ensures from day one that you own the account, not a third party.

And because Optmyzr’s connection is secure and limited to your credentials, only you can make changes to your campaigns.

Our onboarding team guides advertisers through the verification of ownership and permissions, ensuring migration starts from a position of control.

Mistake #2: Forgetting to audit and remove legacy scripts & rules

When migrating to a new PPC management platform, many advertisers overlook the scripts, rules, and alerts left behind by their previous vendor.

These “ghost automations” not only clutter the account, but they can also actively conflict with new workflows, causing duplicate conversions, incorrect budget pacing, and even pausing campaigns.

The Fix:

To ensure a clean platform transition, it’s essential to:

How Optmyzr helps

Instead of relying on outdated scripts or leftover rules from your previous vendor, Optmyzr gives you full control with the Rule Engine. Before migrating, we recommend writing down the logic of your existing rules. Our Customer Success team can then help you rebuild them cleanly in the Rule Engine.

Here’s what the RE covers:

Automation Schedules further helps you quickly access automation settings, monitor performance, and even jump directly into the main tool if you need to make manual changes right away.

Also Read: Why Use Optmyzr When You Have Google Ads Editor, Rules, and Scripts?

Mistake #3: Not backing up historical data and custom dashboards

Historical performance data is the backbone of smart optimization. Yet during migration, many advertisers assume their new platform will handle all data transfers seamlessly.

The risk? Incomplete imports, missing dashboards, or lost attribution models make it harder to benchmark performance, optimize effectively, or reassure stakeholders that continuity has been preserved.

The Fix:

Even if your new platform offers import features, it’s essential to:

How Optmyzr helps

Optmyzr makes it simple to preserve and re-create the insights you depend on:

With AI-generated Reports, you can even go beyond templates, creating custom narratives, visuals, or summaries from a simple prompt.

That’s how Optmyzr ensures your history, insights, and reporting consistency are not lost in migration.

 

Mistake #4: Skipping feature mapping when choosing a new platform

Not all PPC management platforms are created equal. A common mistake during migration is selecting a tool without first confirming that it supports critical workflows, from automation and bulk edits to reporting and cross-account management.

Teams then discover missing capabilities after migrating, which leads to workflow breakdowns, wasted time recreating processes, and costly performance setbacks.

The Fix:

To avoid surprises, make sure to:

How Optmyzr Helps

One of the biggest fears in a migration is discovering after the switch that the new platform doesn’t support a workflow your team depends on. That’s where Optmyzr stands apart.

Not only does Optmyzr cover critical workflows like automation, bulk edits, advanced reporting, and cross-account management, but we also maintain a comprehensive Help Center with summaries of every supported tool, organized by category.

At any time, you can check exactly which workflows Optmyzr supports and how they work across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Amazon Ads, and Meta Ads.

We also treat customer feature requests as a core part of our product roadmap.

If there’s a capability you rely on that isn’t yet in Optmyzr, our product team takes your request seriously.

Many of our most impactful features came from advertisers and agencies like you.

So instead of being locked into a rigid tool, you get a platform that evolves with your needs, ensuring you’re never stuck without the features that drive performance.

 

 

Mistake #5: Underestimating training & knowledge transfer needs

Even the most powerful PPC platform won’t deliver results if the team managing it doesn’t feel confident using it. A common mistake during migration is assuming teams will “figure it out as they go.”

In reality, unfamiliar terminology, new workflows, and different reporting formats can slow adoption, create errors, and cause unnecessary performance drops in the early weeks.

The Fix:

Successful migrations build in structured knowledge transfer:

💡Optmyzr Tip: If you’re moving from the Google Ads UI to a software platform, try mimicking your existing workflows and rules in the new tool. Optmyzr’s Rule Engine makes it easy to automate tedious Google tasks, saving time and reducing errors.

 

How Optmyzr helps

Optmyzr is built with customer enablement at its core. Beyond the platform itself, we provide extensive resources to ensure your team transitions smoothly and confidently:

With these resources, advertisers not only migrate to a new PPC tool, but they also gain a partner invested in their success.

Mistake #6: Ignoring early performance data post-migration

After migration, some advertisers take a “set it and forget it” approach, assuming campaigns will stabilize on their own. The reality is that even small differences in tracking, automation, or reporting between platforms can lead to unexpected performance shifts.

Waiting too long to react means wasted budget, lost conversions, and missed opportunities to reassure stakeholders that the transition is under control.

The Fix:

A strong migration plan should include active monitoring:

How Optmyzr Helps:

Optmyzr’s Anomaly Alerts (Auto Alerts) give advertisers peace of mind by monitoring key metrics automatically across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Facebook Ads.

Without any setup, Optmyzr alerts you when spend, clicks, or impressions deviate significantly from expected trends; whether it’s a sudden spike or an alarming drop.

Combine anomaly alerts with Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to set custom thresholds, guardrails, and recurring checks.

Add extra layers of protection with the Anomaly Detector Script and run the PPC Account Audit to find deeper issues that may be holding performance back.

That’s the kind of proactive monitoring you need in the first 30 days post-migration.

It will help you catch disruptions early, keep stakeholders reassured, and protect performance continuity.

 

Migrate to Optmyzr without losing data or performance

Switching PPC platforms shouldn’t mean risking your campaigns, losing valuable data, or sacrificing performance.

The truth is, most migration mistakes are avoidable with the right strategy and the right partner.

At Optmyzr, we’ve designed our tools and support to ensure a seamless transition for advertisers and agencies. From preserving historical data to maintaining performance, our platform makes moving effortless.

Ready to experience it yourself? Try a fully functional 14-day free trial today! (no credit card needed)

FAQs

1. What is PPC platform migration?

A. PPC platform migration is the process of moving your paid search and advertising campaigns (Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.) from one management tool or vendor to another. It includes transferring account ownership, historical data, tracking setups, automations, and reporting dashboards to ensure continuity.

2. Why is PPC migration risky?

A. Without proper planning, migrations can lead to lost performance history, broken tracking, duplicate or missing automations, campaign downtime, and reporting gaps. These disruptions can harm ROI and undermine client or stakeholder trust.

3. How do I migrate PPC accounts safely?

A. The safest approach is to follow a structured migration plan:

4. What should I back up before switching PPC platforms?

A. Export campaign performance history, conversion data, audience segments, and any custom dashboards or reports. Even if your new platform imports some of this automatically, having your own backup ensures nothing is lost.

5. What happens to my automations, scripts, and rules?

A. Automations tied to your old vendor may not transfer. Audit existing scripts and rules, retire what’s no longer relevant, and rebuild workflows in the new platform. Tools like Optmyzr’s Rule Engine make this process faster and more reliable.

6. How do agencies manage PPC migrations for multiple clients?

A. Agencies need a standardized process: ownership audits, clear communication with clients, consistent data backups, and training resources for account managers. A checklist and migration framework help keep multi-account transitions organized.

7. How long does a PPC migration take?

A. Timelines vary based on the size and complexity of your accounts, but most migrations can be completed within a few weeks. Running parallel campaigns during this time ensures performance stability.

8. What support does Optmyzr provide during PPC migrations?

A. Optmyzr helps advertisers and agencies migrate with confidence by offering account ownership audits, anomaly alerts for early performance monitoring, automation rebuilding with Rule Engine, and extensive onboarding resources (Help Center, Learn with Optmyzr series, Automation Layering Masterclass, and a responsive support team).

How to Conduct A Google Ads Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide (+ Checklist)

Even the most carefully planned PPC campaigns can go off the rails when not monitored closely. You can be spending big on ads, and they may even be racking up clicks. But you’ll soon find they’re delivering little to no actual value.

That’s where a Google Ads audit comes in handy. It’s like a health checkup for your account. One that allows you to identify what’s working, spot inefficiencies, and maximize every dollar spent.

Without a clear auditing strategy, you run the risk of missing key optimization opportunities, poor campaign performance, and worse—wasted budgets.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through a step-by-step audit checklist to help you take control of your campaigns and make them work smarter.

When should you perform an audit?

A Google Ads audit is not just about fixing what’s broken. PPC audits are key to identifying growth opportunities and just making sure that your campaigns are working as intended. That being said, here are some of the most common scenarios where an audit is necessary.

During routine health checks

A routine, systematic audit of your account can help catch hidden inefficiencies, ensure your budget spends are in check, and prevent any major performance issues. A good practice is to schedule these checks depending on account size and campaign complexity.

For instance, an enterprise-level account may do well with quick weekly health checks, monthly deep performance reviews, and quarterly structural audits.

Here are some key elements to review during a routine audit:

In one of our PPC Town Hall episodes, Melissa Mackey from Compound Growth Marketing recommends auditing your accounts at least every quarter to prevent small mistakes from escalating into costly problems.

 

When you take over a new account

If you’ve recently started managing a new account, you may want to consider conducting a comprehensive account review to deep dive into historical performance data. This can help assess the account’s current health and identify quick wins. Focus on:

When you see a performance decline

Some audits are reactive—focused, on-emergency reviews triggered by sudden dips in performance. For example, when conversion rates drop by 50% overnight, you’ll want to:

But here’s the challenge: by the time you notice the drop manually, you’ve already lost valuable spend.

💡 Pro Tip: Automate anomaly detection with Optmyzr’s Anomaly Alerts. These built-in alerts scan your Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Facebook Ads accounts daily, and flag sudden spikes or drops in cost, clicks, impressions—or even feed disapprovals—before they spiral.

 

During campaign restructuring

If you’ve recently overhauled your campaign structure or targeting, an audit helps ensure the changes are doing what they’re supposed to—driving performance without overlap or waste. Be sure to:

For automated campaign types like Performance Max, don’t stop at structure. Audits should also evaluate the quality of foundational signals such as:

Modern campaigns run on inputs. An audit is how you make sure you’re feeding the machine the right ones.

When making seasonal adjustments

Audits during seasonal campaigns ensure aspects like messaging, budget allocation, and targeting are optimized for the season. During seasonal adjustments you’ll need to:

Here’s a step-by-step checklist for performing a Google Ads audit

If your account has structural issues, it can impact ad performance, reporting, costs, and CTR. For instance, if the same high-intent keywords are used in multiple campaigns, you may end up with a higher CPC since you’re essentially bidding against yourself. To avoid these misses, consider auditing two aspects of your account structure.

1. Assess your account structure

Effective campaign management starts with a well-organized account. During an audit, focus on both naming conventions and segmentation to ensure everything is aligned with performance goals.

Campaign naming conventions

Campaign segmentation

2. Conduct a thorough performance review

During a performance review, the goal is to spot underperforming campaigns and figure out how you can improve them. For this, you can:

Analyze key metrics to spot trends and identify areas for improvement

1. Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

CTR is a metric that measures the percentage of people who clicked on your ad after seeing it.

A low CTR means your targeting needs improvement or that your ads are not resonating with your audience. But you also want to be cautious of a high CTR with low conversions since you may inadvertently be advertising on brand terms or attracting irrelevant clicks.

2. Cost Per Click (CPC)

CPC is the cost you pay per click and is determined by the bidding strategy you choose (manual, automatic, or smart).

Achieving a higher quality score can help you secure cheaper CPCs. A high CPC might mean you’re getting pulled into auctions you don’t intend to be pulled into.

Conversely, lower CPCs might mean:

👉Remember: Quality Score based on expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience impacts both CPC and Ad Rank. Improving these elements can help reduce CPCs and improve your auction position.

 

3. Cost Per Action (CPA)

CPA is the average cost you’re willing to pay for an action the user takes after seeing your ad. This could include a purchase, registration, or signup.

A low CPA with high conversions indicates that your campaign is effective. You can consider scaling your budgets to increase conversions. On the other hand, a high CPA with low conversions means you’re spending too much. Review targeting settings, ad quality, ad messaging, and landing page experience so you’re able to resonate better with your audience.

4. Return on Ad Spend

ROAS is a measure of profitability. It compares the ROI you receive from your campaigns against how much you’re spending on them.

If you notice a low ROAS despite high conversions, it could signal that the audience you’re attracting isn’t valuable enough. You may want to refine your targeting settings to attract high-value customers to increase your conversion value. On the other hand, although a high ROAS is good, it doesn’t always mean better results.

For instance, a high ROAS with low conversion volume can mean you’re not reaching a wide enough audience even though your campaign is cost-effective. Similarly, a high ROAS with high spend means you’re not generating additional revenue. It may be a good idea to think of ways to make your campaign more sustainable.

Identify trends over time

According to Melissa, it’s also a good practice to set up alerts so you’re immediately notified if there are any sudden changes in your campaign performance.

“One way to catch issues early is to use tools like Optmyzr or scripts to set alerts. You want to know immediately if your CPCs, conversions, or impressions suddenly change.”

In such cases, if you want to dig deeper, Optmyzr’s PPC Investigator tells you why your account saw a sudden increase/decrease in clicks or conversions. There are two parts to the tool. One is the cause chart which essentially highlights the metric that impacted the performance.

PPC Investigator

 

The next part is the Root Cause Analysis which tells you the elements in your account (keywords, ad groups, campaigns) that contributed to the observed change.

Root Cause Analysis

 

Here’s a quick walkthrough of how this feature works for a better understanding.

 

5. Impression Share

Don’t overlook Impression Share (IS) and its derivatives:

Tracking these helps diagnose whether performance issues are due to budget limitations or competitive shortcomings.

3. Fine-tune your keyword strategy

Your keyword strategy should evolve with your audience’s behavior and search trends. Regularly auditing and refining keywords is key to staying competitive and relevant.

Monitor keyword alignment with search intent

Ensure your keywords reflect intent-driven phrasing—whether users are ready to buy, comparing options, or just researching. For example:

Label queries by intent using custom labels like “high_intent”, “comparison”, or “top_product”. These labels help segment your keyword data for better performance analysis and strategy refinement.

Negative keyword management

Avoid irrelevant or low-converting traffic by:

💡Pro Tip: Optmyzr’s Rule Engine (Search Terms Scope) can automatically detect and flag underperforming or irrelevant search queries for exclusion—saving time and preserving budget.

 

Match type audits

Balance match types to maximize reach while maintaining relevance:

Eliminate duplicate keywords

Wasted budgets and ad fatigue often stem from overlapping or duplicate keywords across ad groups or campaigns.

💡 Pro Tip: Optmyzr’s Keyword De-Duper checks within or across campaigns for duplicate keywords. It gives you an automatic recommendation of which ones to remove based on performance data.

 

4. Audit your ad creatives for better engagement and conversions

Strong ad creatives are essential for driving better engagement and increased conversions.

Navah Hopkins, one of our former in-house PPC experts also suggests pinning assets to specific spots in RSAs so you can control how they’re displayed in the final ad.

Unless you’re A/B testing landing pages, there’s no need to run multiple ads in the same ad group anymore. This is because RSAs (as well as PMax) have built-in testing in the format.

Instead, focus on pinning specific assets to certain positions and compare the performance of AI-generated creative with human-created content.

- Navah Hopkins, Former-Evangelist, Optmyzr

 

Read: How to Choose the Best PPC Audit Tool: 7 Top Picks for 2025

5. Monitor your landing pages

A strong landing page experience is essential for driving conversions and maintaining ad performance. During your audit, evaluate whether your pages are helping or hurting your results.

Check page health and functionality

💡Pro Tip: Use Optmyzr’s landing page URL checker to scan and verify the integrity of the landing pages in your Google Ads account.


Improve UX with behavior insights

Use heatmapping tools to monitor user interactions. Track where users click, how far they scroll, and where they drop off. These insights help pinpoint friction points that aren’t obvious through performance metrics alone.

Test and personalize

For high-traffic campaigns or top-performing audiences:

A consistent and frictionless post-click experience is as critical as the pre-click strategy. Optimize both to maximize results.

6. Fine-tune your budget allocation and bidding strategies.

Assess budget allocation

Review bidding strategies

Read more: How Google Ads bidding strategies impact performance

7. Track key performance metrics with the right tools.

Make sure your Google Ads and GA4 are properly linked so you can track and analyze the entire customer journey, all the way from ad clicks to conversions. If you want to get a closer look at conversions, bounce rates, and other KPIs, we recommend using the following tools.

1. Rule Engine
Define ‘if-and-then’ conditions using Rule Engine to automate campaign management tasks like pausing underperforming ads or allocating more budget to high-converting ones. This saves time and ensures your campaigns are consistently optimized.

2. Budget pacing tool
Avoid overspending and optimize your daily budgets with the budget pacing tool. It efficiently manages your campaign budget throughout the day or month so you don’t exhaust your budgets too early or miss out on important opportunities.

8. Check your audience settings

Validate your remarketing lists and audience settings so you’re targeting the right audience with your campaigns.

9. Validate scripts, recommendations, and automation logic

PPC automations are a game-changer for scaling audits and managing campaigns efficiently if used thoughtfully. Regularly reviewing and optimizing scripts, automated rules, and recommendations ensures they align with your goals and don’t create inefficiencies.

What comes after your PPC audit?

Once you’ve successfully ticked off the items in this checklist, it’s time to use your findings to refine your campaigns. Here’s how you can do this:

1. Prioritize your improvements

To start with, divide your insights according to their importance and urgency and assign a priority level to each of them. A good way to do this is to use the ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease) prioritization framework. This will help you differentiate your quick wins from long-term actions by evaluating and ranking your ideas. To do this, you need to:

Once you have the scores, see which actions have the highest score and prioritize implementing those first since they are likely to have the most impact.

If you find that some recommendations have a high impact score but lower overall ICE score, it could indicate a difficulty with implementation or a lack of confidence. In such cases you might want to consider going ahead with recommendations that are relatively easy to implement despite low confidence. You can test such ideas and measure their impact for better decision-making.

2. Create a roadmap for your post audit actions

After you’ve finalized your priorities, you’ll need to create a detailed roadmap to manage your implementation process. This would include:

3. Monitor the progress

Implementation is one part of the post-audit process. The other is to closely monitor the impact of the changes you’ve implemented. For this you’ll need to:

“For our monthly audits, we use a checklist that our team has created to go through the audit. We used Optmyzr’s PPC Audits once a month and work through changes on that list from the most impactful first.”

-Amy McClain-Ponder

Streamline your Google Ads audits with Optmyzr.

Regular audits are critical to the health of your Google Ads campaigns. They identify inefficiencies and missed opportunities that may be hiding in plain sight. Not only does this lead to better campaign performance and budget allocation, but it also ensures your ads are driving a higher ROI.

Tools like Optmyzr offer a comprehensive suite of features that take the complexity out of auditing. It takes care of the repetitive tasks while you focus on what’s important—getting the best out of your ad campaigns.

If you’re curious to know more about how Optmyzr can help you optimize your Google Ad campaigns, sign up for a free 14-day trial. Or you can even talk to one of our experts for a consultation call.


Google Shopping: 6 Ways to Structure Campaigns (+Best Practices)

Sales and profit are the ultimate goals of ecommerce and retail advertising. For brands and agencies pursuing these objectives through Google Ads, Shopping campaigns offer greater control, structure, and reporting visibility than Performance Max.

While Google continues its shift toward Performance Max, many advertisers still find Standard Shopping campaigns essential—particularly those who prioritize control, transparency, and margin-aware strategies.

Whether you’re switching back from Performance Max or building from scratch, your Shopping campaigns’ structure significantly impacts your ability to get the most out of your ad spend. Cobbling together products with varying profit margins, levels of demand, and supply chain constraints is a recipe for budget under-optimization.

Let’s go through:

The basics of campaign structure for Google Shopping ads

Shopping campaigns in Google Ads feature a four-tier hierarchy of elements:

Each level allows you to specify and modify certain parameters, which I’ll explain in the sections below.

Campaign level

Campaigns cover settings that apply across ad groups, product groups, and products. These include:

If you’re using smart bidding strategies like Target ROAS (tROAS) or Target CPA (tCPA), it’s important to set realistic performance goals. These strategies rely on high-quality conversion data and sufficient volume to optimize bids effectively. Without enough signals, even the most sophisticated bidding can fall short.

Ad group level

Google allows you to create multiple ad groups in Shopping campaigns. At this level, negative keywords (which filter out irrelevant queries, intents, and audiences) are crucial.

Negative keywords are one of the biggest advantages of Shopping campaigns. With Performance Max, your options are limited to account-level negative keywords, campaign-level brand exclusions, and a cumbersome form to manually request campaign-level negative keywords.

This limits your ability to sculpt traffic, requiring you to absorb more irrelevant visitors in order to get incremental conversions, affecting overall campaign profitability if your budgets are constrained.

To avoid waste, it’s critical to regularly audit your campaigns for irrelevant queries or expensive terms that aren’t driving performance. Keeping your negative keyword lists fresh helps your Shopping ads stay aligned with buyer intent. Tools like Optmyzr’s Rule Engine, specifically the Search Terms scope, can automate this process, helping you spot and exclude underperforming queries by analyzing aggregated performance across match types and keywords within each ad group.

Product group level

Product groups are collections of individual products that sit within an ad group. There are multiple ways to group products into categories and subcategories. The two broad approaches use:

Product grouping lets you exercise granular control over bids, keep campaigns profitable, and prioritize your most relevant and in-demand products.

By creating custom labels and using them to build product groups, you can align your bids and budgets more closely with your business goals, whether that’s promoting high-margin items, seasonal collections, or clearance stock.

Some advertisers also implement dynamic grouping strategies, where products are automatically moved between groups based on real-time performance or inventory levels. This helps ensure that campaigns remain agile and focused on what’s working.

Shopping campaign priority levels

You can assign your Shopping campaigns one of three priority levels: high, medium, and low. These priority levels govern which campaign enters the auction for a query and allow you to create multiple campaigns for the same products.

Campaign priority is a powerful tool for query sculpting—controlling which campaign wins a particular search query and ensuring the right message or bid is applied at each funnel stage.

Use priorities to build a tiered campaign strategy:

This setup allows you to allocate budget and bid intensity based on purchase intent, optimizing efficiency across the full customer journey.

6 ways advertisers set up their Google Shopping campaigns

There’s no right or wrong way to set up a Shopping campaign; only what works for your account’s budget, business goals, and available resources.

Here are six common tactics to consider when building your next ecommerce or retail campaign in Google Ads:

Single campaign, single ad and product group

Suitable for brands selling a single product line with similar pricing, such as flavored sparkling water

💡Pro Tip: Split traffic using search term reports—labeling queries as low-intent vs. high-intent, to improve efficiency, even for smaller catalogs. This allows tighter control over spend and more relevant ad targeting

Single campaign, multiple ad and product groups

2 or 3 campaigns using campaign priorities

Multiple campaigns, multiple ad and product groups with query sculpting

Automation tools are essential here—especially for maintaining negative keyword lists and adjusting campaign priorities dynamically to keep your sculpting strategy aligned with current inventory and performance

Performance-based approach

Margin-informed bidding—where smart bidding strategies are guided by live profitability data—helps ensure you’re not just chasing conversions but prioritizing the ones that actually drive returns. This approach is especially valuable for ROI-focused structures where every ad dollar needs to pull its weight

Groups of individual products

Read more: 3 Google Shopping Campaign Examples You Can Copy Now

Best practices for building Google Shopping campaigns

Now that you’ve chosen a structure for your Shopping campaign, these industry-standard tactics will help you shape traffic and keep campaigns organized:

Before you get started, remember: A best practice is only ‘best’ if it serves you. For the greatest results, use the theory behind these tactics but adapt them to your specific circumstances.

Product grouping

Organize your product groups based on what works for your business. You might use feed attributes (such as brand and color) to target queries that include those elements. Other effective strategies include grouping products by category or subcategory, bundling bestsellers to move inventory faster, or consolidating items with similar margins to support your bottom line.

For even more precision, build product groups using custom labels tied to dynamic data like profit margin, seasonality, and stock levels.

Tools like Shopping Campaign Management can automate this process—whether you’re setting up Standard or PMax campaigns—by syncing to your Merchant Center and recommending structure based on performance or feed attributes. This ensures your campaign structure always reflects real-time business needs.

Organize your product feed based on performance and build smarter campaigns:

Merchant feed audit and optimization

Product feeds are the lifeblood of your Shopping campaigns. Organized feeds make money, while incomplete or messy ones cost money.

It helps to periodically review your feed for issues, such as:

Clean up your source file to keep your campaigns error-free. Since feeds directly impact what gets shown (and how well it performs), ongoing audits are quite essential.

Optmyzr’s Shopping Feed Audit tool helps you stay ahead of common issues by automatically scanning your Merchant Center feed and flagging missed opportunities like disapproved products, missing data, and weak product group structures. The built-in dashboard widget gives you a quick view of feed health, so you can catch problems early.

For deeper monitoring at scale, the Rule Engine lets you set up proactive alerts and automated actions tied to feed quality, disapprovals, or underperforming groups—ensuring your campaigns stay efficient and aligned with your business goals.

Budget allocation and bid strategy

Managing your money well is critical in all forms of advertising, but particularly when selling physical goods on a comparison shopping platform like Google Ads.

Negative keyword management

Adding unwanted or irrelevant search terms to the negative keyword list for an ad group prevents all the associated products from showing up for those searches. Remember that negative keywords use the same match types as positive ones (broad, phrase, exact), so use the correct format for the match type you want to prohibit.

To keep your campaigns efficient and your spend clean, make it a habit to review search queries regularly. This helps you catch expensive or irrelevant terms that may be slipping through. Update your negative keyword lists accordingly and refresh your SKAGs (Single Keyword Ad Groups) to reflect evolving trends and product performance.

Conversion tracking

If the product feed is the beating heart of a Shopping campaign, then conversion tracking is its mind. It’s critical that you choose the right conversion actions (both micro-conversions, like cart additions, and final conversions, like purchases) and that you track them correctly.

Without these in place, your account will register and learn from incomplete or inaccurate data, causing it to optimize in the wrong direction for the wrong outcomes. Using an algorithmic layer like Smart Bidding will amplify these unwanted consequences by several orders of magnitude.

That’s why it’s essential to validate your tracking setup end-to-end. Regularly audit for pixel accuracy, attribution delays, and consent-mode consistency to ensure that Smart Bidding has a clean, reliable foundation to optimize from. Even small gaps in data capture can derail campaign performance.

Audience tracking

Use this setting if you’d like to target specific audiences, such as remarketing lists of people who’ve visited your website before. Audience tracking will then let you show up for searches from people who’ve already shown some level of interest in your brand or products.

To improve bidding precision, segment your audiences by customer lifecycle stage—from new visitors to cart abandoners to repeat purchasers. This allows you to assign more appropriate bids based on where users are in their journey.

Also take advantage of dynamic remarketing in Shopping, which pulls in product-level data to show users the exact items they viewed or left in their cart—boosting relevancy and increasing the chance of conversion.

Read more: 12 Best Practices to Optimize Google Shopping Campaigns

Faster, easier, error-free shopping campaigns with Optmyzr

Choosing the right campaign structure is important, but it’s still only one part of running a solid Google Ads shopping program. Maintaining a healthy feed, filtering out low-quality queries, and keeping campaigns synced with inventory are just as important to success.

Keeping up with the flux in your accounts and feeds can get overwhelming. That’s without factoring in multiple accounts and feeds, and additional campaign types and platforms to manage.

Optmyzr gives you full control over your Shopping campaigns. Automate maintenance and monitoring tasks with freedom and flexibility, while enjoying the full visibility and total control that ad platforms are taking away from you.

To see how we can support your advertising goals and business needs, speak to an Optmyzr expert or start a 14-day free trial.

People also ask

Q. What’s the best structure for a small product catalog?

A. For smaller catalogs, a single campaign with one or a few ad and product groups is usually sufficient. You can simplify setup while still exercising control by using search term reports to segment traffic by intent level—helping you tailor bids for low- vs. high-intent searches. Even small catalogs benefit from this layered approach to maintain efficiency and relevance.

Q. Can I still use Shopping Campaigns alongside PMax?

A. Yes. While Google is moving toward Performance Max, Standard Shopping campaigns remain valuable, especially for advertisers who prioritize manual control, budget segmentation, and negative keyword management. Tools like Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Management support both formats, allowing you to keep them in sync and maintain a unified strategy.

Q. How do I keep my shopping structure up to date as my inventory changes?

A. The key is automation. Manually shifting products between campaigns based on performance or inventory changes is time-consuming and error-prone. Tools like Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Management allow you to automatically restructure campaigns, sync with your Merchant Center, and dynamically adjust product groups as conditions evolve.

Q. What are some common feed issues that hurt Shopping Campaign performance?

A. Poor product feed quality is a major performance killer. Common issues include:

With Optmyzr’s Shopping Feed Audit, you can scan your Merchant Center for these problems and stay ahead of potential disruptions.

Q. How do campaign priority settings impact performance?

A. Campaign priority levels (high, medium, low) determine which campaign serves for a given query when the same products appear in multiple campaigns. This enables intent-based bidding strategies, where you bid lower on broad, high-funnel traffic (high priority) and more aggressively on bottom-funnel, product-specific searches (low priority). It’s also essential for query sculpting, a tactic that directs search traffic to the most relevant campaigns using negative keywords and priorities together.

These PPC Monitoring Tools Help You Catch Issues Early (2025 Guide)

Regular monitoring is crucial after you launch any new PPC campaign. It’s an ongoing process that helps you quickly identify and address campaign performance issues before they cost you budget or customers.

However, PPC campaigns have lots of moving parts (ads, bids, keywords, impressions, etc.) that can make monitoring a nuanced and time-consuming process. So, choosing a PPC monitoring tool that simplifies that process is important.

PPC monitoring tools help you track and analyze your campaign performance quickly and easily. The best monitoring tools go beyond the basics and tell you exactly what led to a performance change (like an increase or decrease in certain KPIs). They offer deeper analysis, detailed insights, and simplified reporting to help you understand campaign performance.

They also notify you of changes to your most important metrics and save you time by automating tedious tasks. This lets you identify and focus on what matters most to improve your campaign performance and make the necessary adjustments.

In this article, you’ll learn:

What should you look for in a PPC monitoring tool?

There are so many PPC monitoring tools available catering to different levels of expertise, campaign complexity, and budget constraints. So, choosing the right monitoring tool requires careful consideration.

We believe there are five factors to consider when choosing the right monitoring tool. They are:

Criteria

Description

Ease of use

The tool should have a user-friendly interface that guides you through the analysis process step-by-step. It should present data clearly to help you make quick decisions and spot issues (like a drop in conversions, underperforming ads, or landing page problems) that might negatively impact your campaigns.

Analytics capabilities

The tool should analyze KPI deviations (e.g., CTR, CPC, CPA, and ROAS). Additionally, competitor analysis is a vital feature, providing insights into your competitors' strategies. The tool should help you identify who is bidding on your keywords, brand name, and product names, as well as detect new competitors and monitor brands that have stopped competing on your search terms.

Account/campaign troubleshooting capabilities

The tool should help you understand exactly what led to a specific performance change, whether positive or negative. This allows you to uncover the root causes of any deviations, helping you correct course.

Alerts customization

The tool should allow you to configure alert thresholds according to your specific needs (for example, a 20% drop in CTR) so that you receive relevant and actionable data without being overwhelmed by unnecessary notifications. It should also support sending alerts through multiple channels where you and your team spend the most time.

Customized reporting capabilities

The tool should enable you to create easy-to-read reports with various templates, formats, and visualizations that align with your budget, campaign goals, and the needs of your stakeholders.

The best PPC monitoring tools on the market

Considering the factors listed above (on the condition that the tool satisfies at least four out of the five criteria), we’ve analyzed eight tools, including their key features and publicly available user feedback:

The listed tools offer these common features:

Optmyzr

Optmyzr homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn, and Amazon Ads

Pricing: From $209/month ($25K spend, up to 25 accounts), with a 14-day free trial

Rating: 4.6/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

Optmyzr is an award-winning PPC management software solution that gives paid media marketers the tools they need for auditing, optimization, reporting, and automation. It is built for accounts of any size, diversity, or complexity.

Optmyzr’s key features:

Watch how Optmyzr’s monitoring tools make the day-to-day job of every advertiser easier:

What do users think of Optmyzr?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Skai

Skai PPC homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn Ads

Pricing: On request

Rating: 4.0/5 on G2 and 4.3/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

Skai is an omnichannel platform performance marketers use to gather insights, streamline execution, and measure holistically across walled garden media.

Skai’s key features:

What do users think of Skai?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Read: How Skai compares to Optmyzr

TrueClicks

TrueClicks homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google and Microsoft Ads

Pricing: From $208/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: 4.6/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

TrueClicks is a cloud-based marketing solution for businesses to create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns on a unified portal.

TrueClicks’s key features:

Integrates with analytics tools like Looker Studio, Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Power BI, and Tableau for advanced data analysis.

What do users think of TrueClicks?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Read: How TrueClicks compares to Optmyzr

NinjaCat

NinjaCat homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta Ads, Amazon Ads, and more

Pricing: On request

Rating: 4.1/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

NinjaCat is a digital marketing performance management platform that helps marketers unify campaign data and automate reporting.

NinjaCat’s key features:

What do users think of NinjaCat?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Read: How NinjaCat compares to Optmyzr

Opteo

Opteo homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google Ads

Pricing: From $129/month ($25K spend, 10 accounts)

Rating: 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.9/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

Opteo is a Google Ads management tool that recommends optimizations based on continuous account monitoring.

Opteo’s key features:

Provides scorecards to help advertisers understand performance.

What do users think of Opteo?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Read: How Opteo compares to Optmyzr

Marin

Marin PPC homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta Ads, Amazon Ads, and more

Pricing: From $500/month (5 accounts)

Rating: 3.8/5 on G2 and 4.1/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

Marin is a campaign management tool that helps marketers create and optimize campaigns for Google, Facebook & Amazon Ads.

Marin’s key features:

Marin integrates data from multiple advertising platforms for a holistic view that may help you understand the customer journey across different channels.

What do users think of Marin?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Read: How Marin compares to Optmyzr

Adalysis

Adalysis homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google and Microsoft Ads

Pricing: From $127/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: 4.8/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

Adalysis is a PPC management solution designed to help marketers manage advertising campaigns on Google and Bing search engines.

Adalysis’s key features:

What do users think of Adalysis?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Read: How Adalysis compares to Optmyzr

Acquisio

Acquisio homepage

 

Platforms supported: Google, Microsoft, and Meta Ads

Pricing: On request

Rating: 3.8/5 on G2 and 3.9/5 on Capterra (August 2024)

Acquisio is an AI-powered solution for marketers, agencies, and local SEM resellers to scale their PPC offerings on advertising platforms like Google, Meta, and Microsoft.

What do users think of Acquisio?

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The good:

The bad:

Read: How Acquisio compares to Optmyzr

Choose a monitoring tool that keeps your accounts safe.

The right PPC monitoring tool can be the difference between catching a small issue before it snowballs and budget leaks that turn into costly problems over time.

So, take the time to carefully evaluate your needs and choose a tool accordingly.

If you think Optmyzr may be the tool for you, sign up for a 14-day free trial today. Thousands of advertisers worldwide—from small agencies to big brands—use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a PPC monitoring tool?

A PPC monitoring tool is software designed to continuously oversee your pay-per-click campaigns, tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) like CTR, CPC, CPA, and ROAS, and alerting you to performance fluctuations so you can intervene before budget or results are impacted.

Why is a PPC monitoring tool needed?

Continuous monitoring helps detect issues early—such as underperforming ads, rising CPCs, or loss of visibility—enabling quicker optimizations. Without it, you risk overspending, wasted clicks, and underperforming campaigns.

How do PPC monitoring tools provide more value than manual checks?

They automate the tracking and analysis of campaign performance, generate actionable alerts, and simplify reporting—replacing manual review processes and helping you respond faster and more effectively.

How quickly can a PPC monitoring tool alert me to critical issues?

The best tools offer real-time or near-real-time alerting, helping you act on sudden changes—like budget overruns, drop in conversions, or shifts in cost—before they escalate into larger problems.

12 PPC Reporting Tools That Tell the Story Behind Your Campaigns

Reporting is a must for PPC marketers, but it often turns into a time-consuming headache—especially when juggling multiple clients and ad platforms.

Native tools don’t cut it as they lack cross-platform insights. Looker Studio needs heavy customization, and Google Analytics isn’t built for PPC deep dives.

You need a reporting tool that not only saves time, but integrates data across platforms seamlessly and presents clear insights. With so many options available, let’s explore the best PPC reporting tools in the market.

But first, what should you look for in a PPC reporting tool?

You need to look at eight factors while looking for a PPC reporting tool irrespective of your business type and size.

Considering these factors here are the 12 best PPC reporting tools in the market.

Best PPC reporting tools

Name of the Tool

Top Feature

Pricing

Optmyzr

Drag-and-drop reporting with pre-built widgets, cross-platform data integration, and automated scheduling

From $209/month for $25K spend, up to 25 accounts

Skai

Unified platform for managing PPC campaigns across various channels

From $90,000/year

Adalysis

Automated PPC audits and health checks

From $149/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Marin

Cross-channel campaign management with advanced reporting

From $500/month for up to 50 accounts

TrueClicks

Comprehensive auditing and budget pacing tools

From $208/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Opteo

Continuous account monitoring with performance-based recommendations

From $129/month for $25K spend, up to 10 accounts

DashThis

Easy-to-use and attractive dashboard tool to stop wasting time gathering data

From $49/month

ReportGarden

Automate cross-channel reporting, manage campaign budgets, and create invoices

From $89/month

Supermetrics

Move data from various sources to preferred reporting, analytics, or storage platform

Pricing is platform-specific

Databox

Pulls all your data into one place to track performance and discover insights in real-time

Free plan available; paid plans from $59/month

Whatagraph

Automatically collects data from multiple channels and creates visual reports

On request

Swydo

Create, schedule, and share reports for your marketing campaigns

From $49/month

Optmyzr

Best ppc reporting tools - Optmyzr

Best for: PPC agencies & in-house teams from small companies to enterprises needing automated, cross-platform reports with real-time insights

Pricing: From $209/month ($25K spend, upto 25 accounts)

Rating: Rated 4.6/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 Capterra

Optmyzr is a powerful, award-winning PPC management software that gives search marketers the tools they need for detailed insights, optimization, reporting, and automation. It is built for accounts of any size, diversity, or complexity.

From search to shopping to Performance Max, you can run Google Ads campaigns the way each account demands with Optmyzr.

And if you think of PPC as more than just Google, you’ll advertise with creativity and insight across several platforms. Our proven automation capabilities mean you can supervise and run campaigns your way, even when you’re working on other things.

What kinds of teams use Optmyzr?

Optmyzr is used by a variety of teams such as:

Individual PPC consultants: Helps streamline their workflow and manage multiple campaigns without the need for extensive resources.

Optmyzr’s key reporting features

Read more: Optmyzr’s reporting capabilities

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Optmyzr?

Users have praised Optmyzr for its significant reporting and time-saving capabilities, particularly through custom-built automations in its Rule Engine, which effectively streamline tasks that would typically require a team of PPC managers.

The platform’s workflow design allows for systematic account management, ensuring comprehensive optimization without overlooking any tasks.

Additionally, users appreciate the user-friendly interface and the exceptional support team, which collectively enhance productivity and facilitate the implementation of tailored strategies.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Skai

Best for: Enterprise brands & agencies managing omnichannel media strategies

Pricing: From $90,000/year

Rating: Rated 4/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra

Skai is a cloud-based marketing solution, which helps organizations create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns on a unified portal.

Skai’s key reporting features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Skai?

Users praise Skai for its user-friendly interface, responsive customer support, and powerful automation features that streamline campaign management. They also value its actionable insights, robust analytics, and regular updates that keep the platform current and effective.

Read: How Skai compares to Optmyzr

Adalysis

Best for: Google Ads & Microsoft Ads specialists looking for automation and optimization tools

Pricing: From $149/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Rating: Rated 4.8/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra

Adalysis is a PPC management solution designed to help marketers manage advertising campaigns on Google and Bing search engines.

Key reporting features of Adalysis

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Adalysis?

Users have praised Adalysis for its ability to streamline PPC optimization by highlighting areas that need attention and automating ad testing. They also appreciate the platform’s capability to provide valuable insights and facilitate changes without the need to log into Google Ads.

Read: How Adalysis compares to Optmyzr

Marin

Best for: Large advertisers & agencies managing high-budget, multi-platform campaigns

Pricing: From $500/month for up to 50 accounts

Rating: Rated 3.8/5 on G2 and 3.4/5 on Capterra

Marin is a campaign management tool that helps marketers create & optimize campaigns for Google, Facebook & Amazon Ads.

Marin’s key reporting features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Marin?

Users praised Marin Software for its intuitive interface and custom reporting capabilities, which streamline campaign management. They also highlighted its versatility in creating and modifying diverse marketing components effectively.

Read: How Marin compares to Optmyzr

TrueClicks

Best for: PPC professionals needing an AI-driven tool to monitor and optimize campaign performance

Pricing: From $208/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

TrueClicks is a cloud-based marketing software, which helps organizations create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns on a unified portal.

Key reporting features of TrueClicks

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about TrueClicks?

Users have praised TrueClicks for its user-friendly interface, effective automation of routine tasks, and actionable suggestions that enhance campaign performance. Additionally, TrueClicks is recognized for its ongoing development and responsiveness to user feedback, continually updating the platform to align with industry best practices.

Read: How TrueClicks compares to Optmyzr

Opteo

Best for: Google Ads managers looking for easy, AI-driven recommendations and workflow automation

Pricing: From $129/month for $25K spend, up to 10 accounts

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.8/5 on Capterra

Opteo is a Google Ads management tool that recommends optimizations based on continuous account monitoring of account performance data.

Opteo’s key reporting features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Opteo?

Users praise Opteo for its time-saving features, user-friendly interface, and actionable recommendations that improve campaign performance. Additionally, its responsive customer support enhances the overall experience.

Read: How Opteo compares to Optmyzr

DashThis

Best for: Agencies & freelancers needing simple, automated marketing dashboards

Pricing: From $49/month

Rating: Rated 4.8/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

DashThis helps digital marketers and agencies by providing an easy-to-use and attractive dashboard tool so that marketers can stop wasting time gathering data, and instead do what they do best: make decisions based on that data.

Key reporting features of DashThis

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about DashThis?

Users appreciate DashThis for its excellent dashboards that are easy to understand and good for business analysis. However, some users feel that basic features, like improved chart manipulation, could enhance usability.

ReportGarden

Best for: Marketing agencies looking for an all-in-one reporting and invoicing tool

Pricing: From $89/month

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

ReportGarden is a dashboard & reporting tool for ad agencies to automate cross-channel reporting, manage campaign budgets, create invoices, perform SEO audit, and track keywords rankings for your clients.

ReportGarden’s key reporting features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about ReportGarden?

ReportGarden is valued for reducing the time spent on reporting, allowing for more productive work elsewhere. However, some users feel it takes time to get accustomed to the UI/UX, which is a common occurrence with such platforms.

Supermetrics

Best for: Data-driven marketers & analysts needing advanced data extraction for custom reports

Pricing: Pricing is platform-specific

Rating: Rated 4.4/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra

Supermetrics streamlines the delivery of data from sales and marketing platforms into the analytics and reporting tools marketers use to make better decisions.

Key reporting features of Supermetrics

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Supermetrics?

Supermetrics is praised for its ability to integrate multiple data sources into a single platform, which is beneficial for creating comprehensive dashboards and automating reporting. Some have encountered minor issues with data integration and connection bugs, although the platform generally enhances workflow productivity.

Read: How Supermetrics compares to Optmyzr

Databox

Best for: Marketing teams & business owners wanting a user-friendly, all-in-one analytics dashboard

Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans from $59/month

Rating: Rated 4.4/5 on G2 and 4.7/5 on Capterra

Databox helps growing businesses know how they’re performing at all times, make better decisions, and find opportunities to improve their performance.

Databox’s key reporting features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Databox?

Databox is praised for its efficient setup process and intuitive dashboard that makes understanding traffic and analytics straightforward. However, some users mention the initial learning curve associated with understanding the platform’s full potential and how to best utilize its features. While generally user-friendly, it may take some time for new users to become fully comfortable with its functionality.

Whatagraph

Best for: Agencies & in-house teams needing customizable, automated multi-channel reports

Pricing: On request

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra

Whatagraph is an intuitive all-in-one marketing data platform that easily removes data-related manual work and hassle from a marketer’s day-to-day.

Whatagraph’s key reporting features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Whatagraph?

Users praise Whatagraph for its ease of use, intuitive interface, and robust ability to integrate multiple data sources like social media and web analytics tools. On the downside, some users feel that the pricing can be on the higher side, especially for small businesses, and there are occasional challenges with customization and integration with certain apps. Additionally, performance issues such as speed during report generation and the limited duration of stored historical data are noted as areas needing improvement.

Swydo

Best for: Agencies & freelancers looking for budget-friendly PPC & SEO reporting

Pricing: From $49/month

Rating: Rated 4.2/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

Swydo is an easy to use reporting and monitoring platform to retrieve data from multiple sources and create professional, customizable marketing reports.

Swydo’s key reporting features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Swydo?

Users praise its ease of use, seamless integration with major platforms like Google Ads and Meta, and ability to create visually appealing, customizable reports. However, some users express a desire for automated reporting on specific metrics and enhanced data source activity detection.

Track. Monitor. Report.

The best PPC reporting provides context, and analysis, and finds the reasons behind wins or losses. It serves as a source of meaningful data and insights, helping you to make informed decisions and optimize the overall effectiveness of your PPC campaigns.

And if you think Optmyzr is the tool for you, sign up for a 14-day free trial today. Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a PPC reporting tool?

A PPC reporting tool is software that aggregates and analyzes data from your pay-per-click campaigns across multiple platforms. It provides insights, helps you visualize performance trends, and simplifies campaign reporting across client accounts.

Why do I need a PPC reporting tool?

Native ad platform dashboards often fall short when managing campaigns across multiple networks. Reporting tools save time, centralize campaign metrics, and produce clear, actionable insights and visual reports—without heavy customization.

How do PPC reporting tools deliver broader value compared to manual reporting?

They enable:

How to Choose the Best PPC Audit Tool: 6 Top Picks for 2025

Regular PPC audits help maximize ROAS, but they can be time-consuming. That’s where PPC audit tools come in—they simplify analysis, automate tasks, and provide a clear audit roadmap, saving you time and effort.

The best tools go beyond basic checks. They offer deeper insights and actionable tips to improve your campaigns. In this guide, we’ll cover the top PPC audit tools that make the process easier and help you get better results.

What should you look for in a PPC audit tool?

There are so many PPC auditing tools available catering to different levels of expertise, campaign complexity, and budget constraints. So, choosing the right audit tool requires careful consideration.

We believe there are five factors you need to consider when choosing the right audit tool. They are:

Criteria

Description

Ease of use

The tool should guide you through the audit process, step-by-step, making it manageable even if you are a newer PPC professional. Plus, it should present data clearly, so you can quickly spot issues like irrelevant keywords, underperforming ads, or landing page problems that might drag down your campaigns.

Dedicated auditing features

The tool should focus on PPC auditing as its primary function or as a prominent feature within a broader suite of features. It must also offer detailed analyses of critical PPC metrics that matter to you.

Customized reporting

The tool should enable you to create reports with various formats and visualizations that align with your budget, campaign goals, and the needs of your stakeholders.

Transparent scoring and actionable insights

The tool should be transparent about its performance grading or scoring methodology. It should also be able to explain your campaign’s performance and provide actionable insights and recommendations suited to you.

Cross-platform auditing support

The tool should integrate with and retrieve data from multiple platforms seamlessly, since you may be running campaigns across various platforms. It should also give you the power to conduct comprehensive audits anytime, regardless of where your ads are running.

What are the best PPC audit tools in the market today?

Considering the factors listed above (on the condition that the tool satisfies at least four out of the five criteria), we’ve listed six tools, including their key features and publicly available user feedback:

Name of the Tool

Top Feature

Pricing

Optmyzr

Provides detailed audits via powerful rule-based automation

From $209/month for $25K spend, up to 25 accounts

TrueClicks

Offers insights and recommendations to enhance campaign performance

From $208/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Skai

Integrates with Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Zapier for real-time notifications during audits

From $90,000/year

Opteo

Provides scorecards to understand performance, aiding in audit processes

From $129/month for $25K spend, up to 10 accounts

Madgicx

Offers an all-in-one automation and management solution for Meta Ads, facilitating comprehensive audits

From $31/month for the basic plan; 7-day free trial available

Adalysis

Provides audits via rule-based automation to identify campaign issues

From $127/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

1. Optmyzr

Best audit tools - Optmyzr

Best for: Agencies and in-house teams managing multiple PPC accounts who need advanced automation and deep audit insights

Platforms supported: Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn, and Amazon Ads

Pricing: From $209/month ($25K spend, up to 25 accounts), with a 14-day free trial

Rating: 4.6/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra

Built for accounts of any size, diversity, or complexity, Optmyzr is an award-winning PPC management software solution that gives paid media marketers the tools they need for auditing, optimization, reporting, and automation.

Optmyzr’s key features:

Watch Navah Hopkins explain how Optmyzr’s audit tools make every advertiser’s day-to-day tasks easier.

What users think of Optmyzr:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The Good:

The Bad:

2. TrueClicks

Best audit tools - TrueClicks

Best for: PPC managers who want a detailed, AI-driven analysis with clear recommendations to improve account performance

Platforms supported: Google and Microsoft Ads

Pricing: From $208/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: 4.4/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra

TrueClicks is a cloud-based marketing solution, which helps businesses create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns within a unified portal.

TrueClicks’s key features:

What users think of TrueClicks:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The Good:

The Bad:

Read: How TrueClicks compares to Optmyzr

3. Skai

Best for: Large enterprises and agencies that require integration with business intelligence tools and real-time audit notifications

Platforms supported: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, and LinkedIn Ads

Pricing: From $90,000/year

Rating: 4.0/5 on G2 and 4.2/5 on Capterra

Skai is an omnichannel platform performance marketers use to unlock insights, streamline execution, and measure holistically across walled garden media.

Skai’s key features:

What users think of Skai:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The Good:

The Bad:

Read: How Skai compares to Optmyzr

4. Opteo

Best for: Small to mid-sized businesses looking for an easy-to-use tool that provides clear performance insights

Platforms supported: Google Ads

Pricing: From $129/month ($25K spend, 10 accounts)

Rating: 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.9/5 on Capterra

Opteo is a Google Ads management tool that recommends optimizations based on continuous account monitoring.

Opteo’s key features:

What users think of Opteo:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The Good:

The Bad:

Read: How Opteo compares to Optmyzr

5. Madgicx

Best audit tools - MadgicX

Best for: Advertisers focused on Meta Ads who want AI-driven audit insights and automation for ad performance improvement

Platforms supported: Meta Ads and Google Ads (limited)

Pricing: From $31/month for the basic plan. Offers a 7-day free trial.

Rating: 4.7/5 on G2 and 4.8/5 on Capterra

Madgicx is a cloud platform for Meta Ads ecommerce advertisers that offers a range of solutions to optimize multiple areas of their advertising, including Facebook tracking, automation, targeting, creatives, and ad management.

Madgicx’s key features:

What users think of Madgicx:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The Good:

The Bad:

6. Adalysis

Best audit tools - Adalysis

Best for: PPC professionals who prefer rule-based automation to streamline audits and identify optimization opportunities

Platforms supported: Google and Microsoft Ads

Pricing: From $127/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: 4.8/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra

Adalysis is a PPC management software designed to help marketers manage advertising campaigns on Google Search and Microsoft Bing.

Adalysis’s key features:

What users think of Adalysis:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

The Good:

The Bad:

Read: How Adalysis compares to Optmyzr

Spend less time buried in audits and more time doing work that drives conversions.

The modern PPC advertiser’s job is no longer about pulling levers and pushing buttons in an ad interface. Your real value is your ability to contextualize, think creatively, and execute well. And a great PPC audit tool helps you do that.

If you think Optmyzr is the tool for you, sign up for a 14-day free trial today.

Thousands of advertisers—from small agencies to big brands—worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, schedule a consultation call today to talk to one of our experts.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a PPC auditing tool?

A PPC auditing tool is software that analyzes your pay-per-click campaigns—such as those on Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or Meta—to assess performance, identify inefficiencies, and recommend optimizations for better ROI.

Why do I need a PPC auditing tool?

Conducting PPC audits manually is time-consuming. A dedicated audit tool streamlines the process, automates analysis, uncovers issues more efficiently, and delivers actionable insights to boost campaign results and ROAS.

How do PPC audit tools deliver value beyond manual analysis?

They simplify audits by automating the evaluation of campaign structure, keyword relevance, ad performance, and landing pages—while producing clear scoring, recommendations, and visual reports that manual processes often lack.

How to Choose the Right PPC Bid Management Tool for Your Needs (+ 6 Top Picks)

PPC bid management is all about setting and adjusting bids to maximize ad performance while staying within your budget. As ad platforms become more automated, you need tools that provide visibility, control, and efficiency.

A reliable bid management tool provides you with those while automating optimizations and preventing overspending. But choosing the right tool is crucial. It should align with your goals, budget, and level of automation needed to drive the best results.

With so many options available, let’s explore the best bid management tools in the market.

What should you look for in a PPC bid management tool?

There are so many bid management tools available catering to different levels of expertise, campaign complexity, and budget constraints. So, choosing the right one requires careful consideration.

We believe there are ten factors you need to consider when choosing the right bid management tool. They are:

Factor

Why it matters

What to look for

Automation capabilities

Reduces manual work and optimizes bids in real-time

Auto-bid adjustments based on conversion data, anomaly detection, and budget pacing

Cross-platform support

Ensures seamless bid adjustments across various ad platforms like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta Ads

Seamless integration with multiple ad platforms for a unified bidding strategy

Real-time bid adjustments

Reacts quickly to competition and user behavior changes

Tools that update bids dynamically based on real-time data

Data insights and reporting

Provides transparency and actionable insights for better decisions

Customizable reports, conversion tracking, and integration with analytics tools

Budget management and pacing

Prevents overspending and ensures consistent performance

Features like budget pacing, forecasting, and spend distribution across campaigns

Ease of use and customization

Simplifies bid management without requiring technical expertise

Intuitive dashboards, drag-and-drop UI, and customizable rule-based automations

A/B testing for bid strategies

Helps identify the most effective bid strategies through testing

Tools with built-in A/B testing or bid experimentation capabilities

Anomaly detection and alerts

Notifies users of bid spikes or inefficiencies to prevent wasted ad spend

Real-time notifications and alerts for unusual performance trends

Scalability

Adapts as your business grows and manages larger budgets

A tool that supports different business sizes, from SMBs to enterprises

Pricing and ROI

Ensures the tool fits within your budget while maximizing return on investment

Transparent pricing with flexible plans for different levels of ad spend

 

What are the best PPC bid management tools in the market today?

Considering the factors listed above (on the condition that the tool satisfies at least seven out of the ten criteria), we’ve listed six tools, including their key features and publicly available user feedback:

Name of the tool

Top feature

Pricing

Optmyzr

Advanced bid optimization with powerful rule-based automation

From $209/month for $25K spend, up to 25 accounts

TrueClicks

Data-driven insights for bid adjustments

From $208/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Skai

Omnichannel bid optimization for enterprises

From $90,000/year

NinjaCat

Bid and budget automation with advanced analytics

Custom pricing

Adalysis

Automated bid suggestions and A/B testing

From $149/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Marin

AI-powered bid management across search, social, and ecommerce

From $500/month for up to 50 accounts

 

1. Optmyzr

Best ppc bid management tool - Optmyzr

 

Best for: Agencies and in-house teams looking to automate bid management, optimize PPC performance, and maintain control over budgets across multiple platforms

Pricing: From $209/month ($25K spend, up to 25 accounts), with a 14-day free trial

Rating: 4.6/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra

Built for accounts of any size, diversity, or complexity, Optmyzr is an award-winning PPC management software solution that gives paid media marketers the tools they need for auditing, optimization, reporting, and automation.

Optmyzr’s key features:

What users think of Optmyzr:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

Pros:

Cons:

2. TrueClicks

 

Best for: PPC agencies and consultants who need automated audits, optimization recommendations, and performance monitoring to ensure accounts follow best practices

Pricing: From $208/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: 4.4/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra

TrueClicks is a cloud-based marketing solution, which helps businesses create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns within a unified portal.

TrueClicks’s key features:

What users think of TrueClicks:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

Pros:

Cons:

Read: How TrueClicks compares to Optmyzr

3. Skai

 

Best for: Large enterprises and agencies managing omnichannel PPC campaigns and needing advanced AI-driven bidding, predictive analytics, and deep cross-platform insights

Pricing: From $90,000/year

Rating: 4.0/5 on G2 and 4.2/5 on Capterra

Skai is an omnichannel platform performance marketers use to unlock insights, streamline execution, and measure holistically across walled garden media.

Skai’s key features:

What users think of Skai:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

Pros:

Cons:

Read: How Skai compares to Optmyzr

4. NinjaCat

 

Best for: Agencies and multi-location businesses that require automated reporting, budget pacing, and campaign performance tracking across multiple PPC platforms

Pricing: Custom pricing

Rating: 4.1/5 on G2 and 4.3/5 on Capterra

NinjaCat is a unified marketing analytics platform designed for agencies, media companies, and multi-location brands. They acquired shape.io, a PPC management platform.

NinjaCat’s key features:

What users think of NinjaCat:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

Pros:

Cons:

Read: How NinjaCat compares to Optmyzr

5. Adalysis

 

Best for: Advertisers and PPC managers focused on data-driven bid adjustments, A/B testing, and automated optimizations for Google and Microsoft Ads

Pricing: From $149/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: Not enough reviews

Adalysis is a PPC management solution designed to help marketers manage advertising campaigns on Google and Microsoft Ads.

Adalysis’s key features:

What users think of Adalysis:

Users have praised Adalysis for its ability to streamline PPC optimization by highlighting areas that need attention and automating ad testing. They also appreciate the platform’s capability to provide valuable insights and facilitate changes without the need to log into Google Ads.

Read: How Adalysis compares to Optmyzr

6. Marin

 

Best for: Large advertisers and enterprises managing PPC, social, and ecommerce campaigns who need AI-powered bid management and cross-channel reporting

Pricing: From $500/month (50 accounts)

Rating: Rated 3.8/5 on G2 and 3.4/5 on Capterra

Marin is a campaign management tool that helps marketers create & optimize campaigns for Google, Microsoft, Facebook & Amazon Ads.

Marin’s key features:

What users think of Marin:

The following is a synopsis of feedback from G2 and Capterra reviews.

Pros:

Cons:

Read: How Marin compares to Optmyzr

Choose a bid management tool that works for you.

Managing PPC bids effectively is about more than just automating adjustments—it’s about making smarter, data-driven decisions that align with your business goals. The right bid management tool helps you automate where necessary while keeping you in control of your budget and strategy.

If you think Optmyzr is the tool for you, sign up for a 14-day free trial today.

Thousands of advertisers—from small agencies to big brands—worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, schedule a consultation call today to talk to one of our experts.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a PPC bid management tool?

A PPC bid management tool is software that automates and optimizes the process of setting and adjusting bids for pay-per-click campaigns. It uses data and algorithms to help advertisers get the most clicks, conversions, or ROI for their budget.

Why do I need a PPC bid management tool?

Managing bids manually is time-consuming and prone to error, especially in large or multi-channel campaigns. A bid management tool saves time, improves efficiency, and ensures your bids respond to real-time performance changes—maximizing ROAS.

How do PPC bid management tools help prevent overspending while optimizing performance?

They adjust bids dynamically based on conversion data, budget pacing, and performance trends—helping you stay within budget while driving better results.

How to Choose the Best PPC Automation Tool: 10 Top Picks for 2025

In the past few years, PPC automation has gone from a nice-to-have to a must-have for advertisers looking for the best account performance. You need automation not only to increase efficiency and reduce costs but also to secure more control and greater visibility into your accounts, considering that the major ad platforms have become more of a black box in recent years.

However, the biggest challenge is finding the right automation tool for your needs. A tool is a good fit if it puts you in control instead of just being a reskinned—insert an ad platform editor name—UI.

There are so many tools available, each with its strengths and weaknesses, catering to different levels of expertise, campaign complexity, and budget constraints. Finding the right one requires careful consideration of factors like ease of use, automation capabilities, compatibility with your existing platforms, and pricing structures.

In this article, we’ll list the best PPC automation tools available in the market today with varying levels of capabilities.

What should you look for in a PPC automation tool?

You need to look at four areas while looking for a PPC automation tool irrespective of your business type and size.

 

Let’s look at some of the best PPC automation tools in the market. We’ve listed 8 tools here after a thorough research.

Best PPC automation tools

Name of the Tool

Top Feature

Pricing

Optmyzr

Powerful rule-based automation for optimization and reporting

From $209/month for $25K spend, up to 25 accounts

Skai

Unified platform for managing PPC campaigns across various channels

From $90,000/year

Adalysis

Automated PPC audits and health checks

From $149/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Marin

Cross-channel campaign management with advanced reporting

From $500/month for up to 50 accounts

Bïrch

Automated ad creation and management

From $99/month for $10K spend

TrueClicks

Comprehensive auditing and budget pacing tools

From $208/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

NinjaCat

Reporting and campaign management

Custom pricing

Opteo

Continuous account monitoring with performance-based recommendations

From $129/month for $25K spend, up to 10 accounts

Acquisio

AI-powered bid and budget management across multiple platforms

Pricing available upon request

Madgicx

User-friendly interface with automation and optimization features

From $31/month for $1K spend

Optmyzr

Best PPC automation tools - Optmyzr

 

Best for: Detailed insights, optimization, reporting, and automation across various campaign types

Pricing: From $209/month ($25K spend, upto 25 accounts)

Rating: Rated 4.6/5 on G2 and 4.7/5 on Capterra

Optmyzr is a powerful, award-winning PPC management software that gives search marketers the tools they need for detailed insights, optimization, reporting, and automation. It is built for accounts of any size, diversity, or complexity.

From search to shopping to Performance Max, you can run Google Ads campaigns the way each account demands with Optmyzr.

And if you think of PPC as more than just Google, you’ll advertise with creativity and insight across several platforms. Our proven automation capabilities mean you can supervise and run campaigns your way, even when you’re working on other things.

Optmyzr’s key features

What kinds of teams use Optmyzr?

Optmyzr is used by a variety of teams such as:

Pros & Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Optmyzr?

Users have praised Optmyzr for its significant time-saving capabilities, particularly through custom-built automations in its Rule Engine, which effectively streamline tasks that would typically require a team of PPC managers.

The platform’s workflow design allows for systematic account management, ensuring comprehensive optimization without overlooking any tasks.

Additionally, users appreciate the user-friendly interface and the exceptional support team, which collectively enhance productivity and facilitate the implementation of tailored strategies.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Skai

 

Best for: Enterprises aiming to manage large-scale PPC campaigns across multiple channels on a unified platform

Pricing: From $90,000/year

Rating: Rated 4/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra

Skai is a cloud-based marketing solution, which helps organizations create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns on a unified portal.

Skai’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Skai?

Users praise Skai for its user-friendly interface, responsive customer support, and powerful automation features that streamline campaign management. They also value its actionable insights, robust analytics, and regular updates that keep the platform current and effective.

Read: How Skai compares to Optmyzr

Adalysis

 

Best for: Advertisers seeking automated PPC audits and health checks to maintain account performance

Pricing: From $149/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Rating: Rated 4.8/5 on G2 and 4.6/5 on Capterra

Adalysis is a PPC management solution designed to help marketers manage advertising campaigns on Google and Bing search engines.

Adalysis’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Adalysis?

Users have praised Adalysis for its ability to streamline PPC optimization by highlighting areas that need attention and automating ad testing. They also appreciate the platform’s capability to provide valuable insights and facilitate changes without the need to log into Google Ads.

Read: How Adalysis compares to Optmyzr

Marin

 

Best for: Large enterprises requiring cross-channel campaign management with advanced reporting features

Pricing: From $500/month for up to 50 accounts

Rating: Rated 3.8/5 on G2 and 3.4/5 on Capterra

Marin is a campaign management tool that helps marketers create & optimize campaigns for Google, Facebook & Amazon Ads.

Marin’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Marin?

Users praised Marin Software for its intuitive interface and custom reporting capabilities, which streamline campaign management. They also highlighted its versatility in creating and modifying diverse marketing components effectively.

Read: How Marin compares to Optmyzr

Bïrch

Bïrch Revealbot

 

Best for: Agencies seeking to automate and optimize ad campaigns across platforms like Meta, Google, Snapchat, and TikTok.

Pricing: From $99/month ($10K spend)

Rating: Rated 4.4/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

Bïrch helps to simplify the automation of your ad campaigns running on the most popular platforms: Meta, Google, Snapchat, and TikTok.

Bïrch’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Bïrch?

Bïrch (formerly Revealbot) is highly regarded for its intuitive interface, which streamlines the creation and management of ad campaigns across platforms like Meta and TikTok.

Users commend its automation features, such as Bulk Creation and Post Boosting, for enhancing efficiency and simplifying complex tasks.

TrueClicks

 

Best for: Agencies needing comprehensive auditing and budget management across numerous accounts

Pricing: From $208/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

TrueClicks is a cloud-based marketing software, which helps organizations create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns on a unified portal.

TrueClicks’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about TrueClicks?

Users have praised TrueClicks for its user-friendly interface, effective automation of routine tasks, and actionable suggestions that enhance campaign performance. Additionally, TrueClicks is recognized for its ongoing development and responsiveness to user feedback, continually updating the platform to align with industry best practices.

Read: How TrueClicks compares to Optmyzr

NinjaCat

 

Best for: Agencies, media companies, and brands that need to produce comprehensive and consistent report presentations for clients or stakeholders

Pricing: On request

Rating: Rated 4.1/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra

NinjaCat is a unified marketing analytics platform designed for agencies, media companies, and multi-location brands. They acquired shape.io, a PPC management platform.

NinjaCat’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about NinjaCat?

Users appreciate the platform’s seamless integration with various data sources, enabling efficient consolidation of marketing metrics.

The platform’s automation capabilities are also praised, as they streamline reporting processes and save valuable time for marketing teams. Additionally, NinjaCat’s responsive customer support is frequently highlighted, with users noting prompt assistance and effective solutions to their queries.

Read: How NinjaCat compares to Optmyzr

Opteo

 

Best for: Small to medium-sized businesses seeking easy-to-understand performance recommendations

Pricing: From $129/month for $25K spend, up to 10 accounts

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.8/5 on Capterra

Opteo is a Google Ads management tool that recommends optimizations based on continuous account monitoring of account performance data.

Opteo’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Opteo?

Users praise Opteo for its time-saving features, user-friendly interface, and actionable recommendations that improve campaign performance. Additionally, its responsive customer support enhances the overall experience.

Read: How Opteo compares to Optmyzr

Acquisio

 

Best for: Marketers and agencies looking for AI-driven bid and budget management across platforms like Google, Meta, and Microsoft

Pricing: On request

Rating: Rated 3.8/5 on G2 and 4/5 on Capterra

Acquisio is an AI-powered solution for marketers, agencies, and local SEM resellers to scale their PPC offerings on advertising platforms like Google, Meta, and Microsoft.

Acquisio’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Acquisio?

Users praise Acquisio for its intuitive interface, responsive customer support, and AI-driven bid and budget optimization. Its comprehensive reporting tools also save time and enhance campaign management efficiency.

Read: How Acquisio compares to Optmyzr

Madgicx

 

Best for: Ecommerce businesses and agencies looking to optimize and automate their advertising campaigns across platforms like Meta and Google

Pricing: From $31/month for $1K spend

Rating: Rated 4.7/5 on G2 and 4.8/5 on Capterra

Madgicx is a cloud platform for Meta Ads ecommerce advertisers that offers a range of solutions to optimize all areas of their advertising - including Facebook tracking, automation, targeting, creatives, and ad management.

Madgicx’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Madgicx?

Users commend the platform’s comprehensive ads library, providing valuable inspiration for campaign creation.

Additionally, Madgicx’s customer support is frequently praised for its responsiveness and personalized assistance, enhancing the overall user experience.

Build a competitive advantage with automation

Automation is a net positive, says our Evangelist, Navah Hopkins. And it’s absolutely true. If you aren’t using it in 2025, you’re losing out.

The modern PPC advertiser’s job is no longer about pulling levers and pushing buttons in an ad interface. Your real value is your ability to contextualize, think creatively, and provide high-quality inputs. And a great PPC automation tool helps you do that.

 

If you think Optmyzr is the tool for you, sign up for a 14-day free trial today.

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is PPC automation?

PPC automation is the use of technology to maximize your time and resources by delegating mundane, repetitive, or time-consuming tasks to the machines while you focus on monitoring campaigns and overseeing the strategy.

Here are some examples of time-consuming tasks that can be automated:

Why do you need PPC automation?

Check out this chart below. It shows all the major changes and capabilities Google Ads has added from late 2020.

Google Ads automation updates

As you can see, Google has been on a roll with several updates in recent years thanks to the advancements in AI and machine learning. Microsoft Ads, Amazon Ads, Meta Ads, and the like have also followed suit in this department.

So advertisers wanting to drive the best results while keeping pace with so many changes have had to resort to automation. While a lot of advertisers have adopted these changes, a majority of them are not satisfied with the results.

That’s because there’s a sentiment amongst some advertisers that automation benefits the ad engines more than the advertisers.

The good news is you can make them work for you, with the help of automated scripts or a robust third-party PPC automation tool that understands the principle of automation layering: in other words, the tool you’re using should provide you with the control, security, and visibility you need for your accounts.

Find the Best Google Ads Tool in 2025 [Tried & Tested by PPC Pros]

Google Ads has become much more sophisticated — and more of a black box — in recent years, due to advancements in AI and machine learning.

Although the shift towards more automation is great for advertisers, Google has also reduced the control and visibility for you, the advertiser over your ad spend.

And, in light of the recent antitrust lawsuits and scrutiny over its ad business practices, advertisers are becoming more concerned that Google is overextending their ad budgets. That’s why savvy advertisers need to be vigilant to ensure they are getting true value from their ad spend.

The good news is that there are several tools out there that can help you take back control and manage your Google Ads campaigns the way that works for your business.

In this article, you’ll learn:

Best Google Ads management tools

Name of the tool

Top feature

Pricing

Optmyzr

Powerful rule-based automation for optimization and reporting

From $209/month for $25K spend, up to 25 accounts

Google Ads Editor

Bulk editing tools for managing multiple campaigns offline

Free

Opteo

Continuous account monitoring with performance-based recommendations

From $129/month for $25K spend, up to 10 accounts

TrueClicks

Comprehensive auditing and budget pacing tools

From $208/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Acquisio

AI-powered bid and budget management across multiple platforms

Pricing available upon request

Marin

Cross-channel campaign management with advanced reporting

From $500/month for up to 50 accounts

Skai

Unified platform for managing PPC campaigns across various channels

From $90,000/year

Adalysis

Automated PPC audits and health checks

From $149/month for $50K spend, unlimited accounts

Adpulse

Visual workflow builder for custom automation

From $25/month for $3K spend

HubSpot Campaign Assistant

Copy generation for ads, landing pages, and emails

Free

Adzooma

User-friendly interface with automation and optimization features

Free plan available; premium features at additional cost

 

Optmyzr

Best Google Ads management tool - Optmyzr

 

Best for: Detailed insights, optimization, reporting, and automation across various campaign types

Pricing: From $208/month ($25K spend, upto 25 accounts)

Rating: Rated 4.6/5 on G2 and 4.7/5 on Capterra

Optmyzr is a powerful, award-winning PPC management software that gives search marketers the tools they need for detailed insights, optimization, reporting, and automation. It is built for accounts of any size, diversity, or complexity.

From search to shopping to Performance Max, you can run Google Ads campaigns the way each account demands with Optmyzr.

Mike Rhodes WebSavvy Optmyzr

Optmyzr’s key features

What kinds of teams use Optmyzr?

Optmyzr is used by a variety of teams such as:

Pros & cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Optmyzr?

Users have praised Optmyzr for its significant time-saving capabilities, particularly through custom-built automations in its Rule Engine, which effectively streamline tasks that would typically require a team of PPC managers.

The platform’s workflow design allows for systematic account management, ensuring comprehensive optimization without overlooking any tasks.

Additionally, users appreciate the user-friendly interface and the exceptional support team, which collectively enhance productivity and facilitate the implementation of tailored strategies.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Google Ads Editor

 

Best for: Beginners managing multiple campaigns offline with bulk editing capabilities

Pricing: Free

Rating: Rated 4.3/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

Google Ads Editor is a free, downloadable application for managing your Google Ads campaigns.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Google Ads Editor?

Users have praised Google Ads Editor for its robust bulk editing capabilities, which facilitate efficient management of multiple campaigns and ads simultaneously. Additionally, the user-friendly interface simplifies navigation and campaign management, making it accessible for both beginners and experienced advertisers.

Opteo

Opteo

 

Best for: Small to medium-sized businesses seeking easy-to-understand performance recommendations

Pricing: From $129/month ($25K spend, 10 accounts)

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.8/5 on Capterra

Opteo is a Google Ads management tool that recommends optimizations based on continuous account monitoring of account performance data.

Opteo’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Opteo?

Users praise Opteo for its time-saving features, user-friendly interface, and actionable recommendations that improve campaign performance. Additionally, its responsive customer support enhances the overall experience.

Read: How Opteo compares to Optmyzr

TrueClicks

TrueClicks

 

Best for: Agencies needing comprehensive auditing and budget management across numerous accounts

Pricing: From $208/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: Rated 4.5/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra

TrueClicks is a cloud-based marketing software, which helps organizations create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns on a unified portal.

TrueClicks’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about TrueClicks?

Users have praised TrueClicks for its user-friendly interface, effective automation of routine tasks, and actionable suggestions that enhance campaign performance. Additionally, TrueClicks is recognized for its ongoing development and responsiveness to user feedback, continually updating the platform to align with industry best practices.

Read: How TrueClicks compares to Optmyzr

Acquisio

Acquisio

 

Best for: Marketers and agencies looking for AI-driven bid and budget management across platforms like Google, Meta, and Microsoft

Pricing: On request

Rating: Rated 3.8/5 on G2 and 4/5 on Capterra

Acquisio is an AI-powered solution for marketers, agencies, and local SEM resellers to scale their PPC offerings on advertising platforms like Google, Meta, and Microsoft.

Acquisio’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Acquisio?

Users praise Acquisio for its intuitive interface, responsive customer support, and AI-driven bid and budget optimization. Its comprehensive reporting tools also save time and enhance campaign management efficiency.

Read: How Acquisio compares to Optmyzr

Marin

Marin PPC

 

Best for: Large enterprises requiring cross-channel campaign management with advanced reporting features

Pricing: From $500/month (50 accounts)

Rating: Rated 3.8/5 on G2 and 3.4/5 on Capterra

Marin is a campaign management tool that helps marketers create & optimize campaigns for Google, Facebook & Amazon Ads.

Marin’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Marin?

Users praised Marin Software for its intuitive interface and custom reporting capabilities, which streamline campaign management. They also highlighted its versatility in creating and modifying diverse marketing components effectively.

Read: How Marin compares to Optmyzr

Skai

Skai PPC

 

Best for: Enterprises aiming to manage large-scale PPC campaigns across multiple channels on a unified platform

Pricing: From $90,000/year

Rating: Rated 4/5 on G2 and 4.4/5 on Capterra

Skai is a cloud-based marketing solution, which helps organizations create, launch, and manage PPC marketing campaigns on a unified portal.

Skai’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Skai?

Users praise Skai for its user-friendly interface, responsive customer support, and powerful automation features that streamline campaign management. They also value its actionable insights, robust analytics, and regular updates that keep the platform current and effective.

Read: How Skai compares to Optmyzr

Adalysis

Adalysis

 

Best for: Advertisers seeking automated PPC audits and health checks to maintain account performance

Pricing: From $149/month ($50K spend, unlimited accounts)

Rating: Not enough reviews

Adalysis is a PPC management solution designed to help marketers manage advertising campaigns on Google and Bing search engines.

Adalysis’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Adalysis?

Users have praised Adalysis for its ability to streamline PPC optimization by highlighting areas that need attention and automating ad testing. They also appreciate the platform’s capability to provide valuable insights and facilitate changes without the need to log into Google Ads.

Read: How Adalysis compares to Optmyzr

Adpulse

Adpulse

 

Best for: Teams looking to create custom automation workflows through a visual interface

Pricing: From $25/month (3K spend, 100 accounts)

Rating: Not enough reviews

Adpulse provides PPC analysis, marketing automation, automatic testing, and 

shopping campaign management.

Adpulse’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Adpulse?

Adpulse has received positive feedback from users, highlighting its effectiveness in managing PPC campaigns. Users appreciate its user-friendly interface and actionable insights, which help in optimizing account performance and saving time.

Read: How Adpulse compares to Optmyzr

HubSpot Campaign Assistant

hubspot campaign assistant

 

Best for: Small businesses and solopreneurs looking to generate ad copy and ensure consistent messaging across marketing channels.

Pricing: Completely free to use.

Rating: Rated 4.4/5 on G2 and 4.5/5 on Capterra.

HubSpot’s Campaign Assistant is simple, free, and effective. It’s a copy generator that allows you to generate texts across Instagram, Facebook, and Google Ads, as well as landing pages and emails — all in one go.

This makes the platform an excellent choice if you’re looking to develop cross-channel marketing campaigns and ensure your messaging remains consistent on each particular touchpoint.

HubSpot Campaign Assistant’s key features

Pros and cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Campaign Assistant?

Users enjoy Campaign Assistant’s simplicity and effectiveness, as the platform’s copy generator saves them a lot of time that would have otherwise been spent on copy editing and fine-tuning.

Adzooma

Adzooma

 

Best for: Small businesses seeking a user-friendly platform with optimization features, including a free plan option

Pricing: Has a free plan. The paid plan starts from $99 a month.

Rating: Rated 4.3/5 on G2 and 4.1/5 on Capterra

Adzooma provides PPC analysis, marketing automation, automatic testing, and shopping campaign management.

Adzooma’s key features

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

What do users say about Adzooma?

Users praise Adzooma for its intuitive interface and real-time campaign optimization insights. They also appreciate its multi-channel support and responsive customer service, making it a reliable tool for advertisers.

Read: How Adzooma compares to Optmyzr

Choose the right tool for your needs

Using a Google Ads management tool isn’t just about managing your campaigns better—though it absolutely does that. It also makes your life as an advertiser easier by many orders of magnitude. Hopefully, we did our part to help you find a tool that does that for you.

Optmyzr review

 

And after what you read here, if you think Optmyzr is the tool for you, sign up for a 14-day free trial today.

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Google Ads management tool?

A Google Ads management tool is third-party software that helps you create, monitor, optimize, and report on your Google Ads campaigns more efficiently—often offering features beyond what Google’s native interface provides.

What features should I look for in a Google Ads management tool?

Key features include:

Why you should use a Google Ads management tool

A third-party Google Ads management tool helps you create, optimize, and manage your campaigns more efficiently and effectively than you ever can using Google’s default platform. Here are a few reasons why you should use one:

1. Google doesn’t always have your best interests when making product decisions.

Google is a business. So its goal is to do what’s best for its shareholders. The more money you spend on its platform, the more beneficial that is for its shareholders. That’s a big reason for its push to increase ad prices, encourage broad match, and auto-applied recommendations so that your ads are shown for a higher number of search queries, which means more clicks and ultimately more money for Google.

2. Google’s native platform has extremely limited capabilities for advertisers.

A third-party tool can offer features that are not available or limited in Google Ads, such as competitor analysis, cross-channel integration, custom reporting, and AI-powered optimization. These features can help you gain more insights into your market and your campaigns and improve your ROI.

3. Third-party tools can save you time and money.

A third-party tool can automate many tasks that would otherwise take you hours to do manually on Google Ads, such as keyword research, bid management, ad creation, and performance tracking. This can free up your time to focus on much more important aspects of your business and reduce your advertising costs.

Mastering Negative Keywords and Ad Targeting

Negative keywords serve as the gatekeepers of your ad campaigns, allowing you to refine your targeting and ensure your ads are displayed to the most relevant audience. In this article, you will learn in detail about:

Whether you’re new to search advertising or seeking to optimize your existing campaigns, understanding negative keywords is essential for maximizing your ROI and achieving your advertising goals.

What are negative keywords?

Negative keywords are search terms that prevent your ads from showing when those words or phrases are part of a user’s search query in Google Ads or Microsoft Ads. They act as filters, helping advertisers exclude irrelevant traffic, reduce wasted ad spend, and improve campaign performance.

Standard vs Negative Keywords:

Example: A luxury travel agency might target “luxury vacations” but exclude terms like “cheap vacation packages” or “budget travel deals.”

With a well-structured negative keyword list, you ensure your ads reach the right audience, improving CTR, conversion rates, and overall PPC efficiency.

How to evaluate search terms to find negative keywords

Evaluating search terms is the first step in building an effective negative keyword list. The goal is simple: identify queries that waste budget, don’t match your audience, or have low conversion potential and exclude them.

 

💡Optmyzr Tip: Reviewing search terms one by one is slow and easy to get wrong. Optmyzr’s Negative Keywords Finder makes it easier by analyzing your Search Terms Report, breaking down queries into single words, and flagging the ones that consistently underperform.

You can quickly review these suggestions with data like impressions, clicks, CPC, and conversions, and add them as negative keywords (at the query, word, campaign, or even account level) in just a few clicks.

 

How do negative keyword match types work?

Negative keyword match types work similarly to regular keyword match types but in reverse, allowing you to control which search terms your ads are not shown for. There are three main types of negative keyword match types: broad, phrase, and exact.

The following table gives you an idea of how each of the match types functions for the keyword ‘free shipping’.

Negative Broad Match

Negative Phrase Match

Negative Exact Match

Search Term

Will the Ad show?

Search Term

Will the Ad show?

Search Term

Will the Ad show?

"free shipping options"

No

"free shipping options"

No

"free shipping options"

No

"shipping services with free returns"

No

"shipping services with free returns"

No

"shipping services with free returns"

No

"fast shipping options"

Yes

"fast shipping options"

Yes

"fast shipping options"

Yes

"get fast shipping"

Yes

"get fast shipping"

Yes

"get fast shipping"

Yes

"fast shipping near me"

Yes

"fast shipping near me"

Yes

"fast shipping near me"

Yes

"shipping services with fast and reliable delivery"

Yes

"shipping services with fast and reliable delivery"

Yes

"shipping services with fast and reliable delivery"

Yes

"overnight shipping services"

Yes

"overnight shipping services"

Yes

"overnight shipping services"

No

"overnight shipping tracking"

Yes

"overnight shipping tracking"

Yes

"overnight shipping tracking"

No

"fast overnight shipping"

Yes

"fast overnight shipping"

Yes

"fast overnight shipping"

No

 

Broad match negative keywords

Broad match negative keywords prevent your ads from showing for any search term that contains the keywords in any order, along with any additional words.

For example, if you add the negative keyword ‘free shipping’, your ads will not be shown for searches like ‘free shipping options’, ‘shipping services with free returns’, or ‘free express shipping’. This match type provides the broadest coverage but may also exclude some relevant searches.

Phrase match negative keywords

Phrase match negative keywords prevent your ads from showing only when the search term contains the exact keyword phrase, along with any additional words before or after it.

For example, if you add the negative keyword ‘fast delivery’, your ads will not be shown for searches like ‘get fast delivery’, ‘fast delivery options’, or ‘fast delivery near me’. However, they may still appear for searches like ‘delivery services with fast and reliable shipping’.

Exact match negative keywords

Exact match negative keywords prevent your ads from showing only for the exact keyword phrase specified, without any additional words before, after, or in between. For example, if you add the negative keyword ‘overnight delivery’, your ads will not be shown for searches like ‘overnight delivery services’, ‘overnight delivery tracking’, or ‘fast overnight delivery’, ensuring that your ads are not displayed for any variation of the specified phrase.

Using negative keyword match types effectively requires understanding the nuances of each match type and selecting the most appropriate option based on your advertising goals and target audience. Additionally, regularly reviewing and updating your negative keyword lists to reflect changes in search behavior and campaign performance is essential for optimizing the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.

Learn More: How to Choose the Best Keyword Match Type for Your Google Ads Campaign

How to add negative keywords to your campaigns

Account-level negative keywords

These apply across your entire ad account and are ideal for excluding broad, irrelevant queries, like “free,” “jobs,” “make your own,” or “shops near me.”

These keywords indicate search intents that are irrelevant to your ad and can include job searches, mistaken searches, address searches, brand-specific searches, etc. Building a list of account-wide negatives will save you a lot of time and money.

The benefits of this function will amplify with each addition to the list.

But here’s a warning from the experts: don’t overdo it.

PPC expert Andrew Lolk pointed this out in our town hall episode that account-level negatives can easily cut off valuable traffic without you realizing it, especially as your product lines evolve:

“Advertisers often forget to revisit old negatives, and those can quietly block exactly the audience you’re trying to reach today.” — Andrew Lolk

 

💡Action Step: Build a universal negative keyword list for terms you never want to trigger ads, then audit it regularly to ensure it still aligns with your current offerings.

 

 

Campaign-level negative keywords

Campaign-level negative keywords apply only to the specific campaign they are added.

If you implement a list of negative keywords at the campaign level, you’re telling the ad platform that you do not want to show ads to anyone searching for these keywords in the entire campaign.

These negative keywords will apply to all ad groups within the campaign.

They allow advertisers to tailor their exclusions to the theme or focus of each campaign. For example, a campaign promoting luxury watches may exclude terms related to inexpensive or budget watches.

🚨Update Alert: Google recently rolled out a long‑awaited update- you can now add campaign‑level negative keywords directly in Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. This change gives you far greater control over what traffic PMax drives and helps prevent wasted spend.

 

Want to catch up on what’s new with Google in 2025?

Watch our exclusive discussion with Ginny Marvin, Google’s Ads Liaison, where we break down the latest updates and what they mean for your campaigns. Spoiler alert: insider intel ahead!

 

Ad group-level negative keywords

Ad group-level negative keywords apply only to the ad group they are added to, providing even more granular control. Advertisers can use ad group-level negative keywords to further refine targeting within a campaign.

For instance, within a campaign promoting men’s clothing, an ad group focusing on suits may exclude terms related to casual wear.

You can also use negative keywords to ensure that different ad groups don’t overlap. You can use targeted keywords from one group as negative keywords for another to avoid wasting multiple ads on a single search.

💡Action Step: Use ad group‑level negatives to keep queries where they belong. Optmyzr's Traffic Sculptor can look at how search terms are matching across your account and recommend exact‑match negatives where queries are landing in the wrong ad group. Just a few clicks, and you can make sure the right ads are showing for the right searches.

 

Tips to find effective negative keywords

Reviewing thousands of search terms every week isn’t realistic. But that doesn’t mean you settle for a “good enough” negative keyword list.

Adam Gorecki from Intigress puts it simply:

“If you don’t have time to review everything, start with the search terms getting the most impressions — then move on to the ones costing you the most.”

In other words, prioritize by impact. Ignore the one-off impressions. Go after what’s driving cost and volume.

From there, make your list work harder:

Automate the heavy lifting. Driva, a fintech based in Australia, used Optmyzr’s Negative Keyword Finder to spot and eliminate non‑performing queries at scale. Their team freed up hours of manual review while actually improving results.

Here are some negative keyword strategies we’ve seen many experts using in their campaigns

These strategies come from seasoned PPC experts and regular practitioners like Navah Hopkins, Duane Brown, Melissa Mackey, and Nicholas Woodward.

Use match types effectively

Merely knowing match types might not be enough. Navah Hopkins points out that negative keywords do not account for close variants.

For instance, you add ‘cheap’ as a negative keyword to prevent your luxury hotel ads from showing for budget-related searches. If you use ‘cheap" as a phrase match or broad match negative keyword, it will block any search query containing the word ‘cheap’ along with additional words before or after it. This ensures that your ads won’t appear for terms like ‘cheap luxury hotel" or ’luxury hotel deals cheap’.

On the other hand, if you set ‘cheap’ as an exact match negative keyword, it will only exclude search queries that exactly match the word ‘cheap’ without any additional words. While this protects against direct mentions of ‘cheap’, it may still allow variations like ‘affordable luxury hotel’ to trigger your ads. Therefore, understanding the nuances of negative keyword match types is crucial for effective ad targeting and campaign optimization.

Look beyond the search terms report

Duane Brown from Take Some Risk Inc. offers insightful advice on expanding negative keyword strategies beyond the conventional Search Term report. He suggests “using synonym finder tools to identify closely related terms to add to your negative keyword lists”.

Additionally, GPT can be used to rank search terms by relevance. You can save a lot of time by using GPT’s AI to easily score long lists of search terms and find the ones with the lowest relevance for your business.

 

Exclude irrelevant keywords based on current events

Nicholas Woodward from Pack and Send says, “Major events, shocking news, and viral content can disrupt a search campaign like an earthquake. Take preemptive measures to ensure that current events or a sudden rise in related searches do not affect your campaign.”

For example, you’re running ads for ‘banana milkshake’. Meanwhile, some celebrity spills a banana milkshake on their dress and this incident goes viral in the news. Your ad campaign could experience unexpected fluctuations.

As your campaign is targeting the words ‘banana milkshake’, people searching for the celebrity mishap will also see your ad. Negative keywords can help you exclude all people searching for the celebrity.

Avoid competing with your own ads

If you’re planning to run Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) you might want to consider adding your active keywords as negatives in those campaigns. Many PPC experts including Navah have observed that despite Google’s stance that DSA campaigns won’t compete with keywords and ads from Standard campaigns, the results were much better when the two were not mixed and when negatives were used.

Leverage negative keyword lists

Despite their potential, negative keyword lists are often underutilized. Melissa Mackey says, “Every ads account should use negative keyword lists. Advertisers should have lists at least for Universal Negatives, Brand terms to negate from non-brand campaigns, and Competitor Negatives.” There might be a 20-list constraint, but they serve as valuable tools for managing extensive themed lists and maintaining campaign precision.

Additionally, Duane recommends building strong negative keyword lists to exclude irrelevant searches effectively- “Most brands can also look at building a source of truth negative keyword list and making sure they don’t show up for jobs, YouTube, video game and other odd searches.”

What are the advantages of using negative keywords?

Refined targeting

Negative keywords allow you to refine your targeting by excluding searches that are not relevant to your business or offering. This helps you focus your advertising efforts on reaching the most qualified audience for your products or services.

Improved quality score

By excluding irrelevant searches, your ads become more targeted, leading to higher click-through rates (CTRs) and improved ad relevance. This can, in turn, positively impact your Quality Score, resulting in better ad positions.

Relevant ads that convert better

Negative keywords help ensure that your ads are shown to users who are more likely to be interested in your offering. By filtering out irrelevant traffic, you increase the chances of reaching potential customers who are more likely to convert, leading to higher conversion rates and a better ROI.

Money saved on CPCs

Google’s control over ad auction pricing and changes in minimum bids are causing CPCs to rise year after year, and you should do what you can to safeguard your PPC campaigns against increasing costs.

One of the simplest ways to do that is by excluding irrelevant searches, in other words, by using negative keywords to prevent your ads from being triggered by users who are unlikely to convert. This helps you avoid wasting your budget on clicks that are unlikely to result in a desired action, ultimately saving you money on CPCs and improving the overall ROI of your ad campaigns.

Ready to implement? Use our comprehensive negative keywords worksheet

 

This is just a glimpse of our detailed negative keywords worksheet. Here’s a link to the full worksheet that can help you get rid of the stubborn terms eating away at your budget!

Find the positive impact of negative keywords

Finding negative keywords will always be a work in progress. The more campaigns you run, the more negative keywords you will discover, and each negative keyword helps you filter out people you don’t want. But it is important to strike a balance. If you have too many negative keywords, you might also filter out potential customers. Target keywords and negative keywords work like yin-yang. They are opposites, yet they function harmoniously.

With the right tools and strategies, you can navigate this delicate balance efficiently. Take control of your keyword management and overall account health with Optmyzr’s suite of solutions. Sign up for a 14-day free trial.

People also ask

Q. What is the primary purpose of using negative keywords in PPC campaigns
A. The primary purpose of using negative keywords in PPC campaigns is to prevent your ads from appearing for irrelevant search queries. It ensures your ads are shown only to users genuinely interested in your products or services, significantly improving ad relevance, click-through rates (CTR), and return on investment (ROI) by reducing wasted ad spend on non-converting clicks.

Q. How do negative keyword match types (broad, phrase, exact) differ, and when should each be used?
A. Negative keyword match types control how strictly your negatives block search queries:

Q. What are the key benefits of regularly using negative keywords in my ad campaigns?
A. Using negative keywords regularly helps you avoid showing ads to people who aren’t really looking for what you offer. That way, you are not stuck wasting money on irrelevant clicks. Instead, your ads reach the right audience, the ones more likely to engage and convert. Over time, this means better results, lower costs, and a campaign more in control.

Q. How often should I review my Search Terms Report to find new negative keywords?
A. You should review your Search Terms Report at least once a week, especially for new or actively managed campaigns. For mature, stable campaigns, a bi-weekly or monthly review might suffice.

The frequency depends on:

Q. Can using too many negative keywords negatively impact my ad campaigns?
A. Yes, using too many negative keywords or overly broad negative keywords can negatively impact your ad campaigns. Your ads might fail to show for relevant queries, reducing reach and impression volume. That’s where you need to ensure your exclusions are not unintentionally starving your campaign of the needed traffic.

 

Why Your Google Ads Might Not Be Working And How To Make Them Work (Expert Insights + Free Checklist)

There’s nothing more frustrating than launching a Google Ads campaign with carefully chosen budgets, precisely defined targeting, and ad copy you’re proud of, only to be met with… silence.

No clicks, no conversions, just the nagging question: “Why aren’t my Google Ads working?”

It’s a challenge that more advertisers are facing today. As Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin shared during our recent PPC Town Hall, “We’re experiencing a transformation as significant as the mobile revolution. Search queries are evolving from short keyword phrases to longer, more conversational queries.”

 

This makes traditional troubleshooting even more critical as the new shifts take over.

In this blog, we’ll break down the real reasons your Google Ads aren’t working and give you step-by-step solutions to turn things around.

Throughout this guide, we’ll also share exclusive insights and perspectives from our in-depth discussions with Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin for more informed decisions.

How to investigate if your Google Ads is actually working?

If you’re wondering, “Why aren’t my Google Ads showing or driving traffic?”, the first step is to verify whether they’re even running properly. Here’s how:

1. Review your campaign performance metrics

Go to your Google Ads and Google Analytics dashboards and check:

If impressions or clicks are consistently low, it’s a sign that your ads may not be serving effectively, or they are not resonating with your audience.

2. Check your ad status in Google Ads

Log in to your account, click “Ads & assets,” and look at the “Status” column. This tells you if your ads are:

Having an idea of your ad’s status gives you a starting point for troubleshooting, whether that means fixing targeting, adjusting bids, or resolving policy issues.

 

Now, let’s explore the common issues that can affect the performance of your Google Ads campaigns.

Why are my Google Ad campaigns not working and how to fix the issues?

Issues with the preliminary account setup

1. Your ad has been paused, removed, or disapproved

It may seem obvious, but ads, ad groups, and campaigns can get paused, removed, or disapproved quite often. Sometimes, these issues are overlooked, especially if multiple team members manage the account. In fact, users sometimes set up a campaign but forget to turn it on, leaving it in a “paused” or “disabled” state.

Solutions:

💡AI Tip: Optmyzr's new AI-powered Sidekick can now access change history information and handle advanced queries. Instead of manually digging through change logs, you can ask questions like "Which recent changes to the account could have contributed to the 5% decline in performance?" to quickly identify issues.

Check out more of our AI updates and how they simplify your PPC efforts here!

 

2. Your account is still under review

Google reviews ads to ensure they comply with its policies, but the system reviews most ads within one business day. However, more complex reviews may take longer.

Solutions:

3. There’s a billing issue

Addressing billing issues is vital as they can result in account suspension once Google’s grace period expires. Common billing challenges include:

Solutions:

4. Your IP address could be blocked

Some advertisers block their own IP addresses to study their competitors, inadvertently preventing their ads from displaying.

Solution:
In your campaign settings, check if your IP address is listed in the IP exclusions section. If found, remove it to ensure your ads show up as intended.

Issues arising from managing the account

 

1. Your keyword search volume is too low

Google Ads automatically pauses keywords with low activity to help advertisers focus on more relevant and impactful terms. This means if a keyword has received no impressions in the past 13 months, it will be automatically paused. If you re-enable a paused keyword, it could be paused again after 3 months if it remains inactive.

Solution:
Check the “Keywords” section in your account and review the “Status” column to identify low-search-volume keywords. Consider using broader terms or match types and targeting more relevant locations. Use Google’s Keyword Planner or Optmyzr’s high-performing search terms report for keyword ideas.

In the words of Google:

2. There’s an issue with ad scheduling

Overly narrow ad schedules can limit your ad’s exposure and traffic, causing it to not show to potential audiences.

Solution:
Conduct hourly analyses of your campaign’s performance and adjust ad schedules to maximize reach during the most relevant hours and days without exhausting your budget.

 

3. Landing pages are irrelevant or faulty

Poorly performing landing pages due to irrelevance, URL errors, or even hacking can negatively impact your ad ranking and cause your ads not to show on SERPs.

Solutions:

💡Google’s Update: Landing page issues have become even more critical following Google’s latest quality update. Google Ads Liaison Ginny Marvin revealed:

Check out the following PPC Town Hall episode that highlights the common mistakes you should avoid while creating high-converting landing pages.

 

4. Bid and budgeting issues

In Google Ads, how much you bid and budget can make or break your success:


 

5. Low keyword quality scores and CTR

Ad relevance to the search query and low CTR can harm the quality scores of your keywords, leading to decreased visibility on SERPs.

Solutions

Google’s approach to relevance hasn’t changed, but the execution has become more sophisticated.

As Ginny pointed out, “The whole goal is to serve an ad and a landing page that is highly relevant to the user, what their need is, what their problem is that they’re searching for.”

6. Negative keywords are canceling out positive keywords

Overlapping positive and negative keywords can prevent your ad from showing for specific searches.

Solution:
Regularly audit your positive and negative keyword lists to avoid overlaps and keep them updated. Optmyzr’s Negative Keyword Finder tool can help identify conflicting keywords and suggest negative keywords to add, ensuring your positive keywords aren’t being blocked by overly broad negative terms.

7. Using the wrong keyword match types: Google Ads Coach Jyll talks about how this impacts their client

Sometimes, when you use a Broad or Phrase match type for your keywords to capture more traffic, it could match with your competitor’s brand keywords and cause your top-performing campaigns to suddenly decline.

This happened with an e-commerce client that one of our customers, Jyll Saskin Gales (Google Ads Coach and Consultant at Jyll.ca), manages. Their top-performing brand search campaign saw a sudden dip in ROAS, though they hadn’t changed anything in their campaign.

On reviewing their search term report, they found that their Phrase match keywords started matching competitor brand names. These competitors had higher search volume and higher CPCs, which ate up the client’s budget without producing good results.

Solution:
“Rather than play whack-a-mole with negatives, we decided to change her brand keywords from phrase match to exact match, and performance stabilized within a few days. Phew!” - Jyll Saskin Gales, Google Ads coach & consultant, Jyll.ca

💡Google's perspective: According to Ginny, Google is addressing match type issues through AI improvements: "With automation advancements and AI advancements, we're now able to infer a lot more about what that query intent is" through AI-based keyword prioritization that helps select the most relevant keyword and ad combinations for user queries.

 

📖Also Read: How to Choose the Best Keyword Match Type for Your Google Ads Campaign

 

8. You are not providing Google with enough conversion data

One of the most overlooked reasons for poor Google Ads performance is inadequate data sharing. Smart Bidding algorithms rely heavily on conversion data to optimize your campaigns effectively. Without sufficient quality data, Google’s machine learning can’t properly identify your best customers or optimize toward your business goals.

As Ginny emphasizes, “Please give Google the data it needs to help you and your business succeed. The more you withhold information, the harder time you’ll have seeing success.”

Solutions:

9. Campaign structure is fragmenting your conversion data

If you have multiple campaigns targeting the same audience with identical ROAS goals but they’re separated unnecessarily, each campaign operates with limited conversion data. This prevents Google’s machine learning from understanding your best customers and optimizing bids effectively.

As Ginny explains, “What matters to your business should inform your structure. That would be if you have campaigns that necessitate different ROAS targets, for example, that will dictate a structure.

But if you look across your account now and have five, ten campaigns that essentially have the same goal, that could be an opportunity to consolidate under that one goal.”

Solutions:

Checklist used by most of Optmyzr’s power users to troubleshoot why their Google Ads aren’t working as expected

Now let’s take a look at the checklist used by our power users to investigate if their campaigns aren’t working as intended, whether it’s a sharp decline in cost or a drop in conversions. Sharing these tips below (most of them were discussed earlier too):

Along with the checklist our customer used, here’s a full, comprehensive step-by-step checklist covering every fix.

Download it for free here!

Take back control of your Google Ads campaigns with Optmyzr

While Google Ads can be a powerful tool for your marketing campaigns, various issues can hinder their performance. However, with regular monitoring and troubleshooting, you can address these problems and get your ads back on track, driving the results you desire.

Don’t let the frustration of underperforming Google Ads campaigns discourage you; instead, take action to optimize your campaigns and achieve your advertising goals.

If you’re looking for an efficient way to monitor and troubleshoot your Google Ads campaigns, consider scheduling a demo with Optmyzr. Their tools can help you quickly identify and optimize for these issues.

You can also explore their solutions by signing up for a 14-day free trial.

You will get all the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

FAQs

Q. Why is Google Ads not loading in Chrome?

A. One of the most common reasons Google Ads might not load in Chrome is due to ad blockers. Disable your ad blocker or add an exception for Google Ads to resolve this issue.

Browser settings, like pop-up blockers or JavaScript blockers, can also prevent Google Ads from loading. Adjust these settings to allow Google Ads to display.

Q. What are some common mistakes made in Google Ads setup?

Q. How long does it take for Google to start showing ads?

A. After activating your Google Ads account, it typically takes 24-48 hours for Google to review and approve it.

Following approval, Google gathers essential data about your business, learns about your target audience, and examines your desired topic. This process can take longer for larger or more complex businesses.

Q. Why are my Google Ads campaigns not showing at the top of the page?

A. If your ads aren’t appearing on the first page or at the top of search results, it’s usually because your bids are too low compared to competitors.

To fix this, check the “Est. first page bid” and “Est. top of page bid” for your keywords in Google Ads. Adjust your bids to meet or exceed these estimates to improve your ad position and ensure better visibility.

Q. Should I search for my own ads on Google to check if they’re appearing?

A. No, avoid manually searching for your own ads on Google’s search results.

When you or your team repeatedly search for your ads without clicking them, it artificially inflates impressions while lowering the click-through rate (CTR). This drop in CTR can hurt your Quality Score, leading to lower ad rankings. In some cases, it may even cause your ads to stop appearing altogether.

Instead, use Google’s “Ad Preview and Diagnosis” tool to see if your ads are showing for specific keywords. This tool simulates a search without increasing impressions, preserving your performance stats.

Social Media Advertising Tools: A Comparison Guide of 6 Leading Platforms

Managing paid social campaigns across multiple platforms is time-consuming, detail-heavy, and often more complex than it needs to be, especially if you’re juggling different formats, audiences, and budgets.

This is precisely why, whether you’re a seasoned marketer or a novice, having the right tools in place is essential for scaling your efforts efficiently.

Thankfully, there’s a wide range of social media ad tools that cater to the needs of every type of agency or brand. In this guide, we’ll explore native ad management platforms as well as the top social media advertising tools available, their key features, and how they can help you manage campaigns and achieve your business goals.

By the end, you’ll know whether a third-party platform makes sense for you and which ones are worth considering.

How to choose the best social media ad management tool for your needs

There are so many diverse ad platforms to choose from today, but there are even more tools to help with ad optimization. Picking the right one can be challenging, but aligning your marketing goals with the capabilities that these platforms offer is the best way forward.

Find a tool that meets at least most, if not all, of these basic criteria:

Native social media ad platforms: Pros and cons

Meta Ads Manager, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, X Ads Manager) are designed to serve their own social networks, providing features tailored to their specific channels.

While multi-platform social media advertising tools offer powerful features and capabilities, it’s important to recognize that not all businesses need these additional functions (and the costs that come with them). Native ad management platforms are effective for many users, especially if you’re only advertising on a single social channel, or Facebook and Instagram, as you can manage them both via Meta Ads.

LinkedIn Campaign Manager

LinkedIn Ads Manager, also known as Campaign Manager, is a platform for creating, managing, and optimizing advertising campaigns on LinkedIn. It offers features for setting up various ad formats, targeting specific professional audiences, and controlling budgets and schedules. You can track campaign performance with detailed analytics and reporting tools, helping you refine your marketing strategies to meet your business goals.

Advantages

Potential limitations

  • Audience targeting: Use over 20 audience attribute categories to reach the right audience.

  • Ad formats: Sponsored Content, Message Ads, Dynamic Ads, and Text Ads.

  • Budget and scheduling: Set and manage campaign budgets and schedules.

  • Performance tracking: Access detailed analytics to measure and optimize campaign performance.

  • Limited creative capabilities: The scope for creative and visually appealing ads is limited, when done directly on LinkedIn Campaign Manager.

  • Smaller audience pool: Focuses mainly on B2B audiences, limiting reach.

 

For more information, visit LinkedIn Ads Manager.

Meta Ads Manager

Meta Ads Manager can serve as your central hub for running advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, or Audience Network. You can create ads, manage their scheduling and placement, and monitor the performance of your campaigns.

The platform offers detailed analytics and insights to help marketers optimize their ad strategies.

Advantages

Potential limitations

  • Audience targeting: Targeting options based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and more.

  • Ad formats: Access all Meta Ads formats, including video ads, carousel ads, slideshow ads, etc.

  • Budget and scheduling: Set ad budgets and schedules to control spending and timing.

  • Performance tracking: Monitor ad performance with detailed analytics and reporting tools.

  • Learning curve: The platform can be somewhat challenging for newcomers to master.

  • Target audience size: The minimum targetable audience size is 1,000 people (while the maximum is 50 million).

  • Manual optimization: Requires frequent manual adjustments to maintain optimal performance.

  • Integration limitations: May not seamlessly integrate with all third-party analytics and CRM tools.

 

For more detailed information, visit Meta Ads Manager.

X Ads Manager

Twitter Ads Manager (now X Ads Manager) is a comprehensive platform for creating, managing, and analyzing ad campaigns on Twitter. It offers detailed audience targeting with filters such as location, keywords, and behaviors.

The platform supports various ad formats to engage users effectively. Users can manage budgets and schedules for precise ad spend control and monitor campaign performance through customizable metrics and detailed analytics.

Advantages

Potential limitations

  • Audience targeting: Detailed audience breakdowns with filters like location, keywords, and behaviors.

  • Ad formats: Utilize various ad formats like image, video, text, and carousel ads for enhanced engagement and flexibility.

  • Budget and scheduling: Manage campaign budgets and schedules for precise control.

  • Performance tracking: Monitor campaign performance with customizable metrics and detailed analytics.

  • Less comprehensive analytics: Provides less detailed analytics, making it harder to measure precise campaign performance.

  • UI complexity: The user interface can be less intuitive, requiring a steeper learning curve.

  • Customer support: Slower response times and less accessible support for troubleshooting.

 

For more detailed information, visit X Ads Manager.

Top 6 social media ad management tools compared (2025)

While there are numerous social media ad management tools out there, we’ve shortlisted the top six tools available now. Take a look at what each of these platforms offers and choose the one that best aligns with your social ad management requirements.

Name of tool

Top features

Pricing

Optmyzr Social

Portfolio-based account grouping, cross-platform management (Meta + LinkedIn), performance alerts, custom automation, drag-and-drop reporting.

Starts at $99/month

Madgicx

AI marketer suggestions, pixel-based attribution, creative ad library.

Starts at $58/month

AdRoll

Cross-platform retargeting, ML-driven budget management, native ad creation.

Custom pricing

AdEspresso

A/B testing, auto post promotion, campaign approval flows

Starts at $49/month

Smartly.io

Dynamic creative optimization, AI campaign recommendations, creative/reporting suites.

Custom pricing

Semrush Social Media Marketing

Influencer analytics, social scheduling, community management.

Starts at $20/month

 

Before we take a deeper look at what each of these social tools offers, some features are common to all the tools mentioned above; these features include:

All-in-one performance management platforms

Optmyzr Social

Venturing into social ad management software, Optmyzr has launched Optmyzr Social. The platform supports Meta and LinkedIn Ads management and is currently available for everyone under public beta.

What you need to know about Optmyzr Social

Suitable for: Agencies, B2B marketing teams, ecommerce brands, enterprise brands

Cost: $99/month with unlimited accounts and ad spend. Optmyzr users can add it to their subscription for $79/month (20% off).

Payment model: Flat pricing irrespective of ad spend and number of accounts

Unique features:

Here’s what Anna P., Junior Online Marketing Manager, Elephant Digital, had to say about the toolset:

“I think it’s pretty cool that you can see the demographics (like how many impressions are coming from men or women), because it’s not too easy to find out in the Business Manager. It’s also cool that you can set up alerts.

I also liked the “Ad Analyzer”; it’s very helpful to see which ads are spending a lot of money, and decide which ads we want to pause.”

 

Madgicx

Madgicx has made a name for itself with AI and automation-based features to optimize Meta and Google Ads campaigns.

What you need to know about Madgicx

Suitable for: Ecomm brands, agencies, solopreneurs

Cost: All-in-one suite starting at $58/month

Payment model: Seven-day free trial; monthly, quarterly, and annual plans

Unique features:

Creative and campaign optimization tools

Smartly

Smartly offers three different suites, one for creative development, one to optimize campaigns, and the third to analyze reports. It leverages AI to optimize ad performance on most social platforms, including Meta, Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok, and Google Marketing Platform.

What you need to know about Smartly

Suitable for: Brand marketing, Creative teams, agencies, performance teams

Cost: Media spend percentage fee

Payment model: Demo request followed by paid subscription

Unique features:

AdEspresso

AdEspresso is designed to simplify the ad creation and management process for Facebook, Instagram, and Google. Known for its user-friendly interface, AdEspresso offers features like A/B testing and customizable templates.

What you need to know about AdEspresso

Suitable for: Agencies, ecomm brands, small- and medium-sized businesses

Cost: Starter pack starting at $49/month

Payment model: 14-day free trial; Starter ($1000/month spend limit), Plus, and Enterprise plans for unlimited ad spends

Unique features:

Retargeting and cross-platform reach tools

AdRoll

AdRoll specializes in retargeting and machine learning-based ad analyses. It provides cross-channel analytics, dynamic ad creation, and audience targeting for most social platforms, including Meta, TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, and X (Twitter) Ads.

What you need to know about AdRoll

Suitable for: Ecommerce brands, financial institutions, hospitality businesses, agencies

Cost: Pay-as-you-go for display and native ads

Payment model: Pay-as-you-go; monthly subscription

Unique features:

Semrush Social Media Marketing

Semrush offers a comprehensive social media marketing tool as part of its suite. It offers two different toolkits: Semrush Social and Influencer Analytics. While the platform does not have a creative building suite, users can manage and optimize campaigns across various social media platforms, providing features like content scheduling, analytics, and KPI tracking.

What you need to know about Semrush Social Media Marketing

Suitable for: Influencers, agencies, marketers, performance teams

Cost: Starting at $20/month

Payment model: Seven-day free trial, followed by plans based on company size

Unique features:

Level up your social media ad strategy, without the chaos

Choosing the right social media ad management tool isn’t just about features—it’s about finding a platform that supports the way you work. Whether you prioritize automation, cross-platform visibility, or deeper insights, the right tool can help you reclaim time, reduce errors, and get more from your ad spend.

By leveraging Optmyzr Social, you can focus more on the strategic planning and creative execution of your social ads. Explore Optmyzr Social with a free beta trial to elevate your paid social advertising strategy today.

People also ask

Q. What are social media ad management tools?
A. These tools help advertisers plan, run, and monitor paid campaigns across platforms like Meta and LinkedIn. They bring everything from setup to reporting into one place, making it easier to stay organized and efficient.

Q. How do these tools work?
A. They connect to ad platforms via APIs to let you:

Some tasks (like replying to comments or creative edits) may still need to happen on the native platforms.

Q. What are the best social media ad management tools for agencies in 2025
A. Some of the top tools are Optmyzr Social, Madgicx, AdRoll, AdEspresso, Smartly.io, and Semrush Social. Each one is good for different kinds of businesses.

Q. How do multi-platform social media ad tools help save time and improve results?
A. They let you manage everything in one place, automate common tasks, and help analyze data from different social platforms.

Q. What should I look for in a social media ad tool?
A. Focus on how easy it is to use, if it can grow with your business, how well it automates, reports, and connects with other tools you use.

Q. Are third-party tools better than using the platform’s own ad manager?
A. Third-party tools are a smart choice for managing ads across multiple platforms efficiently. They help you save time, scale your campaigns, and automate repetitive tasks even though a few advanced features might still need native platform access.

Q. How do advertisers choose the right tool for their specific goals (e.g., creative testing, automation, performance tracking)?
A. Start by identifying your biggest bottlenecks. If you’re spending too much time on manual tasks, prioritize tools with strong automation. For creative testing, look for platforms with dynamic creative features and clear A/B test reporting. If performance tracking is your focus, choose tools that offer customizable dashboards, real-time alerts, and integrations with your analytics stack.

Q. When should you choose a social media ad management tool?
A. When you’re managing campaigns across multiple platforms, need to automate tasks, or want faster, clearer insights. These tools help you stay ahead of algorithm changes, monitor performance in real time, and save time on manual work, making them ideal for advertisers looking to scale efficiently.

Amazon Exited Google Shopping Ads. Here’s How to Rebalance Budgets and Monitor CPC Shifts

Amazon has pulled out of Google Shopping ads in 20 global markets. For years, they’ve been a dominant force in the auction, accounting for up to 30% of impression share in many verticals.

 

Their absence changes the landscape. CPC trends may shift. Impression share could be redistributed. And advertisers will need to monitor performance more closely to stay on track.

Here’s how to respond and how Optmyzr can help.

Monitor campaign changes as they happen

When a major player exits an auction, campaign performance can shift quickly. Small changes in CPC or impression share can add up, especially across large accounts or portfolios.

Optmyzr helps you stay informed with:

KPI alerts for impression share, CPC, spend, conversions, and more

Get notified when something’s off with your campaigns, like unexpected underspending or overspending.

For example:

With Optmyzr’s Anomaly Alerts (also called Auto Alerts), you’ll get automatic notifications across any linked Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or Facebook Ads account.

You’ll find these alerts by default under the Alert Settings page in Optmyzr.

Notifications via email, Slack, or MS Teams

Track key metrics like impression share, CPC, spend, conversions, and more, and get notified when they move in the wrong direction.

For example:

 

 

You can customize these alerts in the Alert Settings page in Optmyzr.

Root-cause analysis with the PPC Investigator tool

The PPC Investigator is an insights tool that’ll help you find exactly which element in a given account caused a metric to increase or decrease, and whether it’s a keyword, placement, or an entire network that caused the changes.

It has two components:

  1. Cause Chart
  2. Root Cause Analysis

Cause Chart

The Cause Chart is based on the fact that the performance of every metric depends on the performance of other underlying metrics. It uses the relationships between different metrics to show potential causality.

Root Cause Analysis

After identifying which metric needs to be worked on, the Root Cause Analysis goes a step further and highlights the exact Campaigns/Ad groups/Product partition/Keywords, etc. that were responsible for the change in an account.

It shows top movers who are significant contributors to the change in the account when compared across the two date ranges. You can view the top three positive and negative movers for a particular account.

 

“It’s as if [Amazon] have completely disconnected from Merchant Center.”
— David Kyle, National Positions

These tools make it easier to catch unexpected changes early, before they impact broader performance.

Adjust budgets based on changing conditions

With Amazon gone, some sectors may see reduced CPCs. Others might see more aggressive bidding. Either way, advertisers should review budget pacing to ensure it still aligns with current performance.

Optmyzr’s budget tools include:

Effective budget pacing makes sure your campaigns stay on track throughout the month. You can use automated alerts to track monthly budgets across Google Ads combined, allowing for seamless cross-platform management.

In Optmyzr, these pacing alerts get automatically added on the Alert Settings page, where you can manage some more advanced options like notifying multiple users.

 

You can edit the Cycle Date or Monthly Budget target, and any update will get automatically reflected on the All Portfolio Dashboard.

For example: Monitoring spend by the 15th of the month to ensure campaigns hit 50-60% of their budget.

Why it matters: This prevents wild budget swings and makes sure the performance stays consistent.

“I always emphasize the importance of showing my clients how their budget is being utilized. The Budget Pacing tool has made this process so much easier for me, helping my team and me understand what to expect for the rest of the month and figure out where to invest the next advertising dollar for my clients.”

— Mike Rhodes, Founder, WebSavvy

“Amazon appears in ~30% of Shopping auctions across our client base — so this is a big shift. CPCs haven’t dropped… but it’s definitely one to review.”
— Josh Duggan, Vervaunt

Stay flexible while the market shifts

There’s some speculation that this exit might be temporary, possibly related to Prime Day, while others see it as a broader test. In either case, advertisers who can monitor trends and respond quickly will be better positioned.

Optmyzr can help teams:

“Now is the perfect time for brands and agencies to run their own Google Search to Amazon ads with attribution, since they no longer get free coverage via Google Shopping Ads from Amazon.”
— Brandon Yann, VML

Summary: What to focus on now

If you manage Shopping or Amazon Ads, consider these next steps:

✅ Review campaign performance for changes in CPC or impression share
✅ Set up alerts for key metrics across channels
✅ Monitor budget pacing to avoid overspending
✅ Compare results across platforms for short-term opportunities

Optmyzr helps advertisers respond effectively

Optmyzr’s tools support faster diagnosis, clearer reporting, and more controlled budget management across ad platforms.

In a changing market, that kind of visibility helps advertisers make practical decisions without scrambling to react after the fact.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Now’s the best time to sign up for a full functionality 14-day free trial.

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

 

Why Use Optmyzr When You Have Google Ads Editor, Rules, and Scripts?

“Can’t I just do all of this in Google Ads?”

That’s one question many PPC marketers ask us during a sales conversation. It’s a fair one. Google Ads has grown more sophisticated with tools like Editor, Automated Rules, and custom scripts.

So, where does Optmyzr fit in?

This article lays out the answer clearly and in depth. We’ll highlight what Google Ads does well, but also spotlight where it falls short and how Optmyzr fills those gaps. The reality is that Optmyzr doesn’t replace Google Ads. It complements it with automation, analytics, scalability, and workflow capabilities designed for modern paid media teams.

What Google Ads gets right and where it ends

Let’s start by acknowledging the strengths of Google’s native tools:

That said, Google’s tools often lack:

Example: A PPC manager at an agency wants to compare budget pacing across 15 ecommerce clients in one view, not jump between individual accounts. Optmyzr’s Account Dashboard solves this.

Example: A retailer wants to adjust bids based on profit margin per SKU, which exists in their Google sheet but isn’t available inside Google Ads. Optmyzr’s Rule Engine can ingest and act on it.

Example: Setting up layered logic like “Pause if CTR drops by 10% AND CPC rises by 10% AND ad relevance is below average” is impossible in native rules, but you can do the same as a simple drag-and-drop operation in the Rule Engine.

Example: A client’s conversions dropped 40% last week. Instead of pulling 5 different reports, PPC Investigator identifies that it’s due to PMax shifting budget from a high-ROAS asset group.

Example: An agency wants its analysts to review all automated changes before they’re applied. Optmyzr enables scheduled suggestions with human-in-the-loop review via Blueprints.

As teams scale, these gaps turn into bottlenecks.

What you can’t do in Google Ads but can in Optmyzr

Feature

Google Ads

Optmyzr

Campaign grouping by performance

❌

✅

Feed-based automation

❌

✅

Cross-entity analysis

❌

✅

Creating Shopping campaigns at scale*

❌

✅

Industry insights

❌

✅

Multi-account dashboards

❌

✅

Team task assignment and SOPs

❌

✅

Real-time anomaly detection

❌

✅

Integrated competitor insights

❌

✅

Channel-specific PMax audits

❌

✅


Example: *Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Management tool lets you build campaigns with hundreds of ad groups and thousands of product groups in minutes, not hours. It’s impossible to do this manually in Google Ads without risking errors and delays.

What you can do in Google Ads but tediously

Google Ads doesn’t make certain workflows easy. You can technically complete them, but only with time, spreadsheets, and workarounds. Here’s where Optmyzr streamlines the process:

Task

Google Ads

Optmyzr

Finding high- and low-performing keywords

Manual spreadsheets

Search Terms N-Grams

Investigating why CPAs rose

Multi-report exports

PPC Investigator

PMax asset-level auditing

Click through 1-by-1

Optmyzr Express (Audit in bulk)

Forecasting and budget reallocation

A long, multi-step process

Spend Projection, Optimize Budgets tools

Google’s Automated Rules let you:

Optmyzr’s Rule Engine is built for powerful automation. It allows you to:

✅ Combine multiple rules

✅ Use multiple or custom date ranges

✅ Relative comparisons

✅ Pull external data

✅ Review or schedule

✅ Exclude recent changes

“Rule Engine is certainly one of the amazing sections of Optmyzr because it’s really like your dedicated, highly flexible, and scalable optimization hub where you can automate a lot of very valuable optimizations for your clients with infinite customizations.” - Matthieu Tran-Van

Learn how Matthieu Tran-Van saw a 10x productivity boost & a 28% revenue surge through Optmyzr

Scriptless automation: A safer way to scale

Scripts offer flexibility, but they come with challenges:

Optmyzr’s automation approach matches the logic of scripts, with a visual builder, version control, audit logs, and support.

Google Ads scripts

Optmyzr

Technical expertise required

No-code logic builder

No audit trail

Version history + UI preview

Must maintain yourself

Supported + updated regularly

Rule Engine, Campaign Automator, and Optmyzr Express offer 90% of what scripts can do, with 0% of the overhead.

Campaign Automator helps SearchLab Digital boost their client’s conversion rate by 42%

Optmyzr offers automation with accountability (what we like to call PPC insurance)

Score philosophy: Transparent, not self-serving

Google’s Optimization Score often nudges advertisers toward recommendations that increase ad spend, not always results. In contrast, Optmyzr offers its own scoring framework that:

This matters when your job is to balance performance with cost efficiency, not simply to check off Google’s to-do list.

Google’s AI-driven recommendations and campaigns like PMax have introduced helpful features, but also unexpected risks:

“Google re-enabled expanded targeting without notice and cost us thousands.” — Melissa Mackey

Learn more: How to protect your Google Ads account from glitches

Optmyzr’s platform is designed as a safety net:

These features help you spot Google-initiated changes before they become costly.

Optmyzr is built for scale and teams

Reporting that goes beyond Google

Optmyzr supports multi-channel, branded reports that:

For agencies, this means less time formatting spreadsheets and more time showing value to clients.

Built-in workflows and safeguards

Optmyzr goes beyond single-user control to support complex PPC teams:

Example: An analyst sets up a budget reallocation in Rule Engine. Instead of applying immediately, the task is queued for approval from the account lead.

Optmyzr was designed for agencies and enterprises, not just individual account managers.

For agencies:

For in-house teams:

Optmyzr doesn’t compete with Google Ads. It complements it.

If you’re a solo advertiser managing one account, Google’s native tools might be enough. But if you’re:

…then Optmyzr becomes indispensable.

Use Google’s tools where they shine. But when you need clarity across accounts, custom automations that scale, protection from black-box automation, and workflow visibility for teams, Optmyzr is your edge.

Why Competitor Audience Targeting Is the Future of PPC (And How to Do It Right)

Are you noticing that your PPC budget doesn’t go as far as it used to, while targeting options now seem more limited than ever? You’re not alone, and you’re certainly not imagining it.

Google’s recent GML2025 updates made one thing clear: the rules of audience targeting are changing fast. We now have AI Max, a new keywordless campaign type that expands on the automation model of Performance Max.

With these shifts, traditional account management approaches like keyword targeting and general lookalike audiences are no longer sufficient.

This calls for an audience-first PPC strategy: one that focuses on understanding and targeting specific audience segments, and tailoring ads to match their behaviors and preferences.

A more impactful tactic in this new era is competitor audience targeting. It’s a strategic shortcut to reaching high-intent prospects faster. This guide covers what it is, why it works, and how to do it right to lower CPC, boost ROAS, and future-proof your PPC strategy in 2025.

What is competitor audience targeting in PPC?

Competitor audience targeting involves building highly targeted custom audiences based on the websites your competitors are attracting traffic to. Unlike competitor keyword targeting, which focuses on bidding for the same search terms, this approach targets actual audiences that have shown interest in your competitors.

This is one of the most powerful audience targeting tactics available today, since it can be associated with campaign types that don’t use keyword-based targeting, like Performance Max, Demand Gen, Display, etc., to get more control on their reach and spending.

Why traditional keyword targeting alone isn’t enough

1. Auction saturation and cost inflation

As CPCs rise and market competition intensifies, relying solely on keyword targeting and bidding, especially during peak seasons like BFCM, can quickly drain your ad budget. Overcrowded auctions drive costs sky-high, often without delivering proportional returns, particularly if your ad rank isn’t competitive.

2. Limited control in AI-led campaign types

Campaign types like Performance Max and Demand Gen don’t support keyword targeting and offer limited visibility into search term data. Relying on them without strong audience input means surrendering control to Google’s algorithm. While you may hit your conversion goals, it often comes at the cost of wasted spend on irrelevant audiences across multiple channels.

3. Keywords show queries, not people

Traditional competitor keyword targeting may help you compete on the same search terms, but it doesn’t reveal who you’re actually reaching. Without visibility into the audiences behind those queries, you’re missing the chance to target high-intent users directly. You need tools that turn competitor engagement into actionable audience segments for your own campaigns.

Why competitor audience targeting works

1. Behavioral affinity > guesswork on intent

Unlike traditional audience targeting, which covers a wide spectrum of users across different stages of the funnel, competitor audience targeting zeroes in on users who are already solution-aware. These users are actively considering alternatives.

Your goal? Persuade them that your solution offers more value than your competitor’s. This approach boosts advertising efficiency by focusing the budget on those most likely to convert.

2. Unlocks smarter audience seeds for Google’s algorithms to target

In AI-driven campaign types, the quality of your inputs determines the quality of your outputs. Competitor audiences act as high-quality seeds that inform Google’s machine learning models more precisely, leading to more efficient budget use.

3. Reduces waste and speeds up results

Starting with audiences that are already high-probability converters shortens the learning curve of black-box campaign types like Performance Max. It leads to faster stabilization, improved ROAS, and reduced spend on irrelevant impressions.

Real use cases for competitor-based audience targeting

1. Prospect smarter (not broader)

Launching a Display campaign for a SaaS project management tool? Instead of going broad with interest-based targeting, build a custom audience of users who visit competitors like Zoho Projects or Asana.

The result? Lower CAC, better CTR, and more marketing-qualified leads within the first two weeks.

2. Boost PMax performance with external audience signals

A DTC apparel brand runs a PMax campaign and adds a custom audience built from URLs of top competitors. This arms Google’s machine learning algorithms with more relevant audience signals, accelerating learning for asset groups and improving cost efficiency across placements.

3. Run win-back or contrast campaigns

Suppose you’re managing an account of a fintech startup. Build campaigns targeting audiences from larger players like Intuit. The ad messaging should focus on speed, agility, and personalized support, contrasting the pain points associated with larger companies.

Result: Higher engagement from users open to alternatives.

4. Category expansion

Suppose you’re managing campaigns for a meal delivery service that’s expanding into wellness-related products. Identify adjacent competitors and target their audiences. This opens up new revenue streams via cross-category interest, with less money spent on prospecting.

How to build competitor-targeted audiences

1. The manual approach

To create competitor URL-based audience segments in Google Ads, you need to create a custom segment within the Audience Manager, selecting “people who browse types of websites” and adding your competitor’s URLs. This allows you to target users who have recently visited those websites.

Here’s a step-by-step guide:

  1. Access Audience Manager: Navigate to your Google Ads account. Go to “Tools & settings” > “Audience manager”.
  2. Create a Custom Segment: Click the “Custom segments” tab, then the plus button to create a new custom segment.
  3. Define the Audience: Choose “People who browse types of websites”. Enter your competitor’s URLs and, optionally, relevant search terms. These segments are inferred by Google based on user behavior, not direct visits.
  4. Name and Save: Give your segment a clear name (e.g., “Competitor A Visitors”) and save.
  5. Add to Campaign: In your chosen campaign or ad group, go to “Audiences” > “Edit audience segments” > select your new segment > click “Save”.

While powerful, this process is fragmented and manual. Here’s an easier way.

2. The smarter way: Building competitor audiences through Optmyzr

We recently introduced a new feature that makes it easy to create targeted custom audiences using competitor website URLs, right from the Top Competitors Widget on your Account Dashboard.

This widget identifies competitor domains based on overlapping keyword activity. You can immediately build an audience by clicking “Create Audience”, opening a side-tray where you can:

Competitor Audience Targeting

 

This turns a previously complex, multi-step task into a streamlined workflow, giving you smarter reach in minutes.

Why this matters now (and what’s coming next)

Ad platforms are increasingly adopting keywordless targeting models like AI Max and Demand Gen, where traditional controls no longer apply. In this landscape:

It’s time to move from keyword strategy to audience strategy

PPC success in 2025 is not just about showing up for the right searches; it’s about showing up for the right people.

If you’re ready to avoid broad guesswork and start using your competitors’ success as your targeting strategy, Optmyzr can help. If you’re not an Optmyzr user yet, sign up for a free trial to explore this feature and see how it gives you a competitive edge.

Key questions answered

Q. What is competitor audience targeting?

A. It’s the strategy of creating audience segments from competitor website URLs, allowing you to target users already interested in similar products or services.

Q. How does competitor audience targeting improve ROAS?

A. By targeting high-intent users who have already engaged with competitor sites, you reduce wasted impressions and increase the likelihood of conversions.

Q. What are common tools or methods for competitor audience targeting?

A. You can use Google Ads Custom Segments and Optmyzr’s new feature to build competitor-targeted audience segments.

Q. Why is this feature not available in my Optmyzr plan?

A. The “Create Audiences Using Competitor Websites” feature is available only in Premium and Enterprise plans. Contact support@optmyzr.com to upgrade.

Q. How does competitor audience targeting help with PMax campaigns?

A. It feeds Google’s machine learning with high-quality audience signals, accelerating learning and improving performance across asset groups.

Q. What challenges does competitor audience targeting solve?

A. It solves inefficiencies in targeting by focusing ad spend on known high-intent segments, improves relevance, and provides greater control in AI-led campaigns.

The 7 Most Frustrating Amazon PPC Challenges And How Optmyzr Fixes Them

“I’m running ads, adjusting bids… so why isn’t performance improving?”

It’s a question many Amazon advertisers ask right after realizing their ad budget’s nearly gone and performance isn’t keeping up.

Sure, Seller Central covers the basics when you’re managing Amazon ads. It helps you set up campaigns, manage budgets, and monitor ad performance. But when it comes to making sense of the why behind a sudden ACOS spike, missed keyword wins, or wasted spend, it’s often not enough.

That’s where Optmyzr steps in.

It adds a powerful layer of insights and automation on top of your Amazon Ads so you can fix inefficiencies faster, scale what’s working, and stay proactive instead of reactive.

In this article, we’ll unpack key challenges Amazon advertisers face and show how Optmyzr helps you go from manual firefighting to confident, data-backed decision-making.

7 challenges with running Amazon ads and how Optmyzr helps

1. Burning your budget without ROI

Problem: “My campaigns are overspending and I don’t know why.”

Leaving your budget spend unchecked is one of the fastest ways to erode your profit margins when advertising on Amazon. Without proper visibility and guardrails, you run the risk of burning through your monthly or daily budgets, sometimes on non-converting keywords or irrelevant placements. Often, you may find yourself reacting after the damage is done, instead of proactively controlling spend.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅Budget monitoring

Set monthly budget targets for each account and monitor daily pacing against those limits. In Optmyzr, you can configure the budget cycle (e.g., reset on the 1st of each month) and receive overpacing/underpacing alerts directly via email or Slack. This setup ensures real-time visibility and control without interfering with Amazon Ads platform configurations.

✅Spend projection

Using current spend trends, Optmyzr forecasts whether you’re on track to hit or exceed your monthly budget. This lets you proactively adjust bidding or pause inefficient campaigns before budget overruns happen.

 

✅Account alerts

Real-time alerts flag anomalies like a spike in spend or a drop in return, letting you intercept issues before they spiral. You can configure alerts based on ACOS, spend thresholds, or CTR drops, making them actionable and tailored to your KPIs.

📌Example: Midway through the month, your Budget Monitor shows high pacing, and an alert flags rising costs with flat conversions. Spend Projection confirms you’re on track to overspend. A quick dive into campaign metrics points to a generic campaign—high CPC, zero conversions, and broad targeting that’s driving low-intent traffic. It’s burning the budget fast with no return. You pause it, adjust bids, and reallocate spend to a high-ROAS branded campaign.

 

Also read: 5 optimizations to boost Amazon PPC profitability

2. ACoS eating into your profits

Problem: “My ACoS is too high.”

High ACOS eats into profitability, especially for low-margin products where even small inefficiencies can negate your returns. Without a structured way to optimize bids, you risk wasting budget on keywords that fail to convert at a sustainable cost.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅Suggested bids

This tool uses Amazon’s API to recommend bid changes based on current keyword performance. You can:

It’s ideal for routine tuning and works best when run every 7–14 days to account for performance lag.

📌Example: You’re tuning a high-traffic campaign and spot keywords where Amazon recommends higher bids. Using Optmyzr’s Suggested Bids, you apply a +10% increase to top performers with strong CTR and conversion volume. For a few, you tweak bids manually. In minutes, your bids are updated in bulk.

 

✅Bid adjustment optimization

Optmyzr offers two rule-based strategies here:

📌Example: You notice ACOS creeping past 80%, far above your 30% target. Using Optmyzr’s “Change bids based on ACOS”, you set your target and a conversion threshold, so only data-backed keywords are adjusted. Optmyzr automatically lowers bids on the overspenders.

For newer campaigns, you switch to “Set bids to reach target ACOS”, define your bid range, and let Optmyzr calculate the ideal bid to hit your goal.

 

3. Blind spots costing you performance

Problem: “I don’t have enough visibility into what’s working or failing in my campaigns.”

When you don’t know which campaigns, keywords, or settings are delivering value, you can’t optimize confidently. You end up reacting to performance drops instead of preventing them, and potentially miss opportunities to scale what’s working.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅Account dashboard

Your performance command center. Switch between account, campaign, and ad group views to instantly see top-level KPIs. The dashboard highlights trends, helps spot optimization opportunities, and tracks shifts in performance at a glance.

 

✅Performance comparison

Easily compare campaign or ad group performance across two custom date ranges. For Amazon Ads, this tool highlights changes in key metrics like ACOS, ROAS, conversions, and cost, broken down by campaign or ad group.

Each result includes:

Use it to:

Perfect for reviewing post-sale periods, new campaign launches, or monthly performance shifts.

✅Magic Quadrant

Get a visual snapshot of your top 100 campaigns, keywords, or ad groups—plotted into four categories:

Customize the axes (e.g., ACOS vs. ROAS) and filter by scope. It’s a great way to see what you need to scale, fix, or pause, at a glance.

📌Example: You open the Account Dashboard and notice a spike in spend but no lift in conversions. To investigate, you head to Performance Comparison and compare this week to last. The results show that one ad group’s ACOS jumped 35% while conversions dropped, flagging it as a concern.

Next, you check the Magic Quadrant. That same ad group appears in the “Laggards” quadrant—low ROAS, high spend. Meanwhile, a previously overlooked campaign shows up in “Stars,” delivering strong ROAS with low ACOS.

Based on this, you reduce bids and pause keywords in the underperformer, then reallocate the budget to the top performer.

 

4. Wasting budget on irrelevant clicks

Problem: “I’m paying for traffic that doesn’t convert.”

Every click that doesn’t lead to a sale drains your budget. Whether it’s shoppers searching for “free samples” or traffic from irrelevant product queries, these wasted clicks reduce efficiency and inflate your ACOS, especially when they go unnoticed across large keyword sets.

How does Optmyzr help?

Optmyzr’s Rule Engine for Amazon Ads includes pre-built strategies specifically designed to reduce wasted spend and improve ad group targeting:

✅ Non-Converting Keyword and ASIN Search Terms

Get suggestions to block keywords or ASINs that fail to convert after a set number of clicks, defined by you. This helps filter out underperformers before they drain your budget.

✅ Expensive Search Queries

Find search terms that have high spend but no conversions. The strategy uses pre-set thresholds to flag them and recommends adding them as negative keywords, so your ads stop showing for those queries.

✅ Rule Automation

These strategies can run on a scheduled basis—daily, weekly, or monthly—so you can keep your account clean without doing the heavy lifting.

📌Example: You enable the Expensive Search Queries rule and set a spend threshold. The next week, Optmyzr flags terms like “free sample mug” and “cheap ceramic alternatives” that spent significantly without sales. These are automatically suggested as negatives, helping you cut wasted spend without manual reviews.

 

5. Missing keyword opportunities

Problem: “I’m missing valuable keyword opportunities.”

If converting search terms aren’t added as keywords, your ads may miss high-intent traffic. It means less visibility, lower relevance, and lost revenue, especially if those terms are already driving sales.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅ Keyword Lasso (Query Management)

This tool helps you turn converting search queries into keywords—quickly and efficiently. It aggregates performance data from similar queries by ad group and match type, and uses conversion and impression thresholds to ensure suggestions are based on statistically meaningful data. You can filter to focus on search terms with strong performance, then add them to existing or new ad groups.

✅ Add New Keywords (Rule Engine Strategy)

Automatically identifies converting search terms and suggests adding them as new keywords in your account. You can define when the rule runs (weekly, monthly) and set thresholds so only meaningful terms are suggested—keeping keyword lists fresh without manual effort.

✅ Keyword Report

Analyze which keywords are generating impressions, clicks, and sales—and which ones are underperforming or inactive. It’s a quick way to clean up low-value terms and double down on what works.

📌Example: You run the Add New Keywords strategy and it surfaces queries like “custom engraved coffee tumbler” that have converted three times but aren’t in your keyword list. Using Keyword Lasso, you filter by conversion count and add them to a dedicated ad group—boosting relevance and capturing more high-intent traffic.

 

6. Poor campaign structure or hygiene

Problem: “I’m not sure if my campaigns are set up right or if they need to be improved.”

Without a solid campaign structure, your Amazon Ads account becomes inefficient. Poor naming, keyword clutter, or conflicting negatives can lead to wasted spend, limited visibility, and missed growth opportunities.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅ PPC Account Audit for Amazon

Optmyzr provides a library of audits that highlight issues across campaigns, ad groups, keywords, products, and placements.

Some examples:

📌Example: You run the “Conflicting Keywords” audit and find that some phrase match keywords are being blocked by exact match negatives in the same ad group, preventing your ads from showing on valuable queries.

Then, the “Campaigns with Zero Sales” audit flags a Sponsored Products campaign that spent over $500 without generating a single order. You fix the keyword conflicts, pause the non-performer, and reallocate budget to better-performing campaigns—improving structure and reducing wasted spend.

 

7. Reporting takes too long

Problem: “Reporting takes hours every week.”

Manually compiling reports eats into valuable time that could be spent optimizing campaigns. And when you’re managing multiple accounts or stakeholders, it’s even harder to deliver timely, consistent insights.

How does Optmyzr help?

✅ Create & Edit Reports with the Report Designer

Optmyzr’s Report Designer lets you create and automate beautiful, data-rich reports in minutes.

You can even create multi-account reports or filter performance by campaign type, geography, or targeting strategy.

📌Example: You set up a weekly executive summary that includes KPIs, top campaigns, ACOS trends, and AI-written performance highlights. Every Monday, it’s delivered automatically to your CMO’s inbox—saving hours and keeping leadership in the loop without effort.

 

Run Amazon Ads like a pro with less manual effort

Managing Amazon PPC doesn’t have to be reactive or overwhelming. With Optmyzr, every part of your workflow, from controlling spend and optimizing bids to uncovering keyword gaps and automating reports, is transformed into a proactive, data-driven process. Tools like Rule Engine, Budget Monitor, Keyword Lasso, and Report Designer empower you to act fast, stay efficient, and scale with confidence.

Explore Optmyzr’s Amazon PPC toolkit today. Sign up for our 14-day free trial and see what smarter advertising looks like.


8 Rule Engine Strategies: How Optmyzr Customers Bypass Google Ads Limitations

Managing multiple ad accounts can feel like an endless to-do list—analyzing search terms, avoiding wasted spend, monitoring performance, and keeping track of audiences. And that’s just the start.

When the holiday season hits, the workload multiplies. The common solution? Automation Layering.

Our customers rely on the Rule Engine to handle this, but we know that with so many new features available, it can be tricky to unlock its full potential.

We analyzed several high-performing customer accounts to compile a list of innovative strategies they’ve used to boost performance. These customers are enterprise brands and agencies managing hundreds of accounts across industries (with a heavy focus on e-commerce PPC strategies).

We’ve also included setup instructions so you can build them for your own accounts.

Pro tip: Set your favorite strategies as Global ones by clicking on the “3-dot” menu—this allows you to create one template and apply it across multiple accounts without setting them up individually.

For example, apply a global budget management strategy across all your e-commerce accounts to save time during the holiday season. This will give you an extra layer of automation and save countless hours!

What is the Rule Engine?

For those new to the Rule Engine, here’s a quick overview: it combines the best of both worlds—control over your campaigns with automation working behind the scenes to keep everything running smoothly. It uses simple “If-This-Then-That” rules to monitor your campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and more, with minimal effort on your part.

If Google Ads’ automated rules feel too limiting and you want more control, the Rule Engine is the perfect tool. Need help getting started? Check out our resources below!

Here’s how you can navigate to the Rule Engine:

Manage & Optimize > Rule Engine > View & Create Strategies

To make things easier, we also offer pre-built strategy templates that you can add to your accounts and customize as needed.

And don’t forget, you can automate your strategies to save time. You can choose whether to let the system make changes for you or just notify you with suggestions for review.

Here’s what our Pro Plus $500K customer and Google Ads expert, Matthieu Tran-Van, had to say about the Rule Engine:

“Rule Engine is certainly one of the amazing sections of Optmyzr because it’s really like your dedicated, highly flexible, and scalable optimization hub where you can automate a lot of very valuable optimizations for your clients with infinite customizations.”

Matthieu saw a 28% revenue increase at the same ROAS through automated optimizations and saved 20 hours per client weekly using automated custom strategies. Here’s a video where he explains popular automations that save him time and prevent burnout:

 

Now, let’s dive into those innovative strategies!

1. Find products that previously converted

Rule Engine scope: Shopping/PMax Products

This strategy helps you identify products that aren’t currently converting but performed well in the past. Set conditions to check how much they’ve cost and how many clicks they’ve received.

This generates a report of non-converting products that converted in the past. You can place these in performance-based campaigns and give them a budget boost to revive their performance if necessary.

Sample Conditions:

 

Recommendation: Duplicate this rule to compare product conversions across different time frames—e.g., last 30 days vs. last 90 days, or last quarter vs. previous quarter.

2. Monitor ad copy relevance to season

Rule Engine scope: Ads

Ensure that your ad copy remains relevant to the current season. This strategy provides automated reports of RSAs and/or ETAs containing text related to holiday sales like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Valentine’s Day.

However, it’s important to note that you’ll need to manually adjust the trigger phrases (like “Black Friday”) for each season or event. The Rule Engine can’t automatically detect the time of year, so setting the right conditions is key for ensuring your ad copy aligns with the season.

Sample Conditions:

Recommendation: Duplicate this rule for each holiday season by swapping text (e.g., from “Black Friday” to “Valentine’s Day”). You can also add KPIs to evaluate performance and adjust low-performing ads to boost engagement.

3. Adjust ROAS/CPA targets based on the weather

Rule Engine scope: Campaigns

This strategy is especially useful because spending ad budget on weather-sensitive products like air conditioners during the US winter is unlikely to drive conversions. Conversely, snow boots will perform better in colder climates, so making weather-related adjustments can help you focus your spend where it matters most.

Set conditions to check the temperature and weather forecasts in your target locations and automatically modify ROAS/CPA targets based on these conditions.

Sample Conditions (if you’re selling winter equipment, for example):

 

Recommendation: Set up similar conditions to adjust keyword bids, ad group bids, and campaign budgets, or generate reports based on weather data. If your goal is to change campaign statuses and/or location targeting alone based on weather conditions, try our Weather-Based Campaign Optimization tool!

4. Stay on top of budgets

Rule Engine scope: Budgets

4a. Simple strategy to monitor spending

Overspending is always a concern, especially during high-spend seasons. Set up a rule to pause campaigns when they exceed your budget by a certain percentage.

Sample Conditions:

 

Recommendation: Add additional conditions to check if campaigns are converting or hitting your ROAS targets. You can also create reports for campaigns that exceed different spending thresholds, such as 150% of your daily budget, or check for underspending campaigns that could benefit from a budget boost.

If you prefer not to auto-pause, you can choose to receive daily reports or alerts instead by selecting the action “Include in Report”.

4b. Advanced budget monitoring strategy that considers campaign-level metrics

How do you modify campaign budgets based on metrics like impression share (which are available at the campaign level only)? Since Google Ads treats campaigns and budgets as separate entities, you can’t directly create rules to adjust budgets using campaign-level metrics.

But there’s a workaround! Use a 2-strategy approach with the advanced “Key Value Pairs” feature in the Rule Engine:

For a clearer explanation, we’ve recorded a video based on a real use case from one of our customers. Check it out here:

 

4c. Automating budget pacing for Demand Gen campaigns

Looking for a smarter way to manage budgets for Demand Gen and Performance Max campaigns?

Google’s native budget scripts don’t support these newer formats and often lead to overspending or underspending due to rigid assumptions about daily budget pacing. Manual checks take time, increase the risk of errors, and add stress, especially at month-end.

Our customer, Heather Darab from Blue Yarn Media created a strategy that offered more control and adapted to real-time campaign performance. Her setup essentially evens out budget pacing across the month using a formula-driven approach, with no manual checks or custom scripts required.

Sample conditions inspired by her strategy:

 

You can use custom metrics in both the conditions and actions of your rule, such as Monthly Budget, Days Remaining in Month, etc., using data recorded in a sample sheet like this:

 

“With a Rule Engine strategy I’ve set up to manage budgets for Demand Gen, I would say I save at least an hour a week. But beyond that, there’s also the intangible stress, wondering if I missed a campaign going over budget or whether we’ll hit the client’s goals because a detail was missed.

Peace of mind is a huge benefit. Now, there’s much less manual work and fewer errors, which helps maintain client trust too.” - Heather Darab, Founder, Blue Yarn Media

5. Monitor account changes made by your team

Rule Engine scope: Change History

Tracking changes in large teams is tough, especially during busy seasons. This rule generates a report of all changes made, including the email addresses of those making the changes and when they were applied.

Why do this?

Having a regular report of all changes helps you identify what made a campaign shine during the last month or troubleshoot underperforming ones.

Sample Conditions:

 

Recommendation: For large accounts, create separate rules for specific campaigns or team members by using conditions like “Campaign Name contains XYZ” or “User Email contains abc@example.com”. Pull these reports into a spreadsheet, using separate tabs for different accounts or team members.

6. Monitor keyword match types

Rule Engine scope: Keywords

Using this strategy ensures your keyword match types are correctly aligned with your campaign structure. This is crucial because keywords in the wrong match type groups can drastically affect your performance. Broad match types, for example, might bring in too many irrelevant searches if not carefully placed, and exact matches might restrict traffic if misused. This strategy flags such instances, helping you maintain a cleaner account structure.

Sample Conditions:

 

Recommendation: Apply this approach to monitor branded vs. non-branded keywords, ensuring they’re placed in the correct campaigns. Create conditions like “Campaign Name contains <Brand name>” & “Keyword does not contain <Brand name>” for this strategy.

Set these strategies up in your accounts now

This list barely scratches the surface of what’s possible with the Rule Engine, but it’s a great starting point to take your optimizations to the next level and stay ahead of competitors this season.

Need help setting up these rules? Reach out to our Support team!

If you’re not an Optmyzr customer yet, start a 14-day free trial and explore how Rule Engine can supercharge your campaigns.

FAQs

1. What is the Rule Engine?

The Rule Engine is Optmyzr’s custom rule builder, allowing you to generate reports, perform optimizations, and set custom alerts using “If-This-Then-That” rules. You can also automate these rules to run at your preferred frequency, combining automation with control.

2. What ad platforms does Rule Engine support?

You can use Rule Engine to optimize and analyze Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Amazon Ads, and Facebook Ads.

3. Does the Rule Engine automation directly apply any changes to the ad platforms without my approval?

You can choose whether the system directly applies changes based on your rules or sends you email or Slack/MS Teams notifications with suggestions, allowing you to review and apply changes manually.

 

The Cookieless Future That Wasn't: Why First-Party Data Still Reigns Supreme

In July 2024, Google hit pause on its plan to kill third-party cookies in Chrome.

After years of working on replacements like Privacy Sandbox and the Topics API, they quietly walked it back. Why? Legal headaches, industry pushback, and probably a dose of reality.

But this doesn’t mean we’re going back to business as usual.

It means first-party data is now even more important. If you want reliable, future-proof marketing that plays nice with privacy laws, collecting your own data is the way forward.

However, this has been the trend across the industry for quite a while now. Here’s a quick run-through of important events related to first-party data.

Period

Event

2015

Apple introduces Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) in Safari to limit cross-site tracking using third-party cookies.

Oct 2017

Firefox rolls out Enhanced Tracking Protection (ETP) to allow users to block known trackers and third-party cookies.

Oct 2018


Firefox 63 introduces content-blocking features for third-party cookies.

Sept 2019

Firefox 69 enables ETP by default, blocking third-party tracking cookies and cryptominers.

Jan 2020

Google announces plans to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome by 2022, launching the Privacy Sandbox initiative.

Mar 2020

Safari 13.1 becomes the first mainstream browser to block all third-party cookies by default.

June 2021


Google delays cookie phase-out in Chrome to 2023, citing the need for more testing and collaboration with stakeholders.

July 2022

Google again delays the phase-out of third-party cookies in Chrome, pushing the deadline to the second half of 2024.

Jan 2023

Google begins testing third-party cookie deprecation for 1% of Chrome users to assess the readiness of Privacy Sandbox APIs.

Apr 2024

Google delays third-party cookie deprecation to early 2025 to address regulatory and industry concerns.

July 2024

Google rolls back its plan to remove third-party cookies completely from Chrome, opting instead to offer user-level controls.

2025 (Ongoing)

Marketers increase focus on first-party data strategies as the preferred privacy-compliant method for targeting and personalization.

 

Of course, the real marketing Gs know that the solution to all this is to invest in first-party data, where you own the relationship with your audience directly.

What is first-party data?

First-party data is information you collect directly from your audience with their consent. It is information based on how they interact with your website: behaviors, actions, and interests.

How is first-party data different from third-party data?

Third-party data is compiled by independent researchers and companies that aggregate information from various websites and applications. Based on individual users’ online activity, this data is often sold to businesses for marketing and advertising purposes.

Here are some differences between the two, and also how first-party data is better than third-party data.

Criteria

First-Party Data

Third-Party Data

Accuracy and Reliability

Highly accurate and reliable, reflecting real customer interactions

Often less accurate, lacks depth, and lacks context

Understanding Customers

Allows granular understanding of personalized marketing campaigns

Generic and lacks depth for effective targeting

Privacy and Trust

Generally compliant with privacy regulations, building trust with customers

Raises privacy concerns, potential legal challenges, and erodes trust

Ownership and Control

Owned and fully controlled by your business, allowing management according to privacy policies

Owned and controlled by external entities, making your business vulnerable to changes and restrictions

Data Enrichment

Can be enriched with additional information over time, enabling accurate segmentation and personalization

Lacks flexibility for easy enrichment, limiting personalization options

Building Customer Relationships

Easier to build long-term relationships through personalized shopping experiences

May result in fewer personal interactions and lower customer loyalty

So, what is second-party data?

Second-party data is someone else’s first-party data. You borrow your neighbor’s cookies, freshly baked and privacy-focused, but you gotta ask nicely (or pay).

How to make the shift toward first-party data?

First-party data is often misunderstood and underutilized. Many businesses freeze in the face of privacy regulations and need help understanding its concept and impact.

Ronan Carrein, a former Google executive and current partner at the agency, Better & Stronger emphasizes that first-party data should not be perceived as a constraint, but rather as a driver of better business hygiene and higher ROI.

“There are several roadblocks preventing businesses from fully adopting and leveraging first-party data. Lack of data governance, intent, planning & understanding, and specialized skill sets are major obstacles.” - Ronan Carrein

He spoke to our Co-founder & CEO, Frederick Vallaeys on PPC Town Hall and discussed how businesses can effectively collect and work with first-party data.

 

In the episode, Ronan shared five tips for effective first-party data collection.

People talk about GDPR “compliance”, for example, as if it’s not a whole-company initiative and is just something to do with their analytics. First-party data should be something your entire business should run on and not just something only your marketing team cares about.

How to collect and use first-party data for your PPC campaigns?

Watch the PPC Town Hall episode featuring Kerri Amodio - Director, of Digital Advertising at Closed Loop, and Navah Hopkins - Former Evangelist at Optmyzr below to learn how to collect and manage first-party data.

 

You first need a solid strategy to collect first-party data effectively. Here are four steps to build one.

1. Be clear about how you want to use your first-party data.

Identify how you want to use your first-party data. Are you aiming for increased sales or seeking to boost customer loyalty?

Then, set clear objectives to track progress and quantify its impact. Did your targeted ads lead to higher conversions? Did personalized recommendations contribute to a reduced churn rate?

Some examples of first-party data goals:

2. Figure out how to collect and manage that data.

Identify what data you already collect: website visits, email signups, purchase history, etc. Then find more sources. Here are some common ones.

Remember: User consent is crucial for collecting first-party data.

Doug Thomas of Magniventris, an ethical digital marketing firm, emphasizes user consent. He says ->

“Managing first-party data starts with knowing what you’ve collected and what you have. It’s important to understand what data is useful for marketing and what isn’t.

And the next question is “Has the person consented to that use of their data?” It’s your call as an advertiser what “consent” means, but asking this question is an important one.” - Doug Thomas

Next, determine where this data is stored. Experts suggest using a CRM or a CDP (Customer Data Platform) or a marketing automation platform.

Navah Hopkins says using a CRM is necessary for any business.

“A common misconception in the e-commerce industry is that a CRM is unnecessary if you’ve already received payment from customers. This misconception often arises from the belief that the platform itself will handle everything.

However, neglecting to implement a CRM can hinder your ability to generate repeat sales and maintain a loyal customer base.” - Navah Hopkins

Duane Brown, CEO & Head of Strategy at the agency, Take Some Risk (which works with ecommerce, DTC, and retail brands) also recommends using a CRM to store and manage user data.

He adds they use Zapier to connect their clients’ Shopify accounts to Google Ads for managing ad campaigns and automating the data moving back and forth.

While collecting data, understand that different stages of your customer journey call for different tactics.

Chris Murray, Performance Marketing Manager at Kolekti talks more about it.

“We’re making first-party data collection a key part of our PPC strategies, actively valuing building the data pool, and pushing campaigns optimizing towards these ‘micro’ conversions.

Somewhat counterintuitively, we’re still opening up more content and upping production of this to provide value early, but then adding gates or contact requests to pages and content that sit lower down the funnel.

We’re also investing in new content tools to help, waving goodbye to static PDFs and creating more engaging destinations for our campaigns.”

However, your tactics should also vary depending on the type of client or business you work with and seasonality.

Meriem Nacer, Consultant at 4M Digital Consulting Ltd. breaks down how they approach it differently for ecommerce and B2B clients in their agency.

“Many of our ecommerce clients utilize loyalty schemes. Q4 presents a prime opportunity for us to enhance these schemes, especially since those who are already signed up can gain early access to Black Friday deals. Outside of Q4, we try to entice new sign-ups with birthday surprises and early access to sales.

In the case of B2B clients, the focus involves sharing knowledge and whitepapers, often gated behind a sign-up wall. While this strategy effectively builds our email list, unfortunately, these emails are typically the work domain. To utilize these lists in Google Ads, we usually need three to four times the data volume compared to ecommerce.”

While you’re gathering data from your audiences, you can begin analyzing their behavior. Let’s take website analytics as an example of a data source from the above list of data sources and understand the insights we can draw from our analysis.

The next you should do is analyze user trends. Your previous customers who purchased your products or services can help you learn valuable insights. Let’s take your CRM as an example to know what insights you can derive from them.

These trends help you refine your target audience and narrow down your ideal customer profile for targeted marketing campaigns.

4. Apply the findings from those insights and regularly review your data strategy.

One of the first steps in running an effective campaign is linking your accounts and setting up conversion tracking.

Here’s Navah Hopkins and Kerri Amodio talking about how advertisers can apply first-party data insights to their campaigns with proper conversion tracking.

 

Working with first-party data is a continuous process. You need to regularly review your strategy and make the necessary adjustments. 

You also need to make sure there’s no data decay and that the customer data is staying up-to-date. Doug Thomas of Magniventris further adds,

“For decay, the best thing to do is to cross reference and update on collection. If you’re doing it manually, you can have someone’s name be their index. If you’re doing it automatically, maybe email or a customer ID would be a better path.”

And you need to create a communication plan that involves multiple teams in your company to encourage data-driven decision-making across all of them.

Here’s Chris Murray again ->

“I’d suggest clear data governance processes and open lines of communication are the key to preparing for first-party data decay. Top priority, make friends with your Customer Success Managers, Sales teams, or anybody who’s in regular touch with your end customer.

They’re closest to this data as they speak to customers and leads daily, so they know whether that enterprise company’s contacts you want to add to a retargeting audience are still up to date or if there are new names and addresses.

If you’re in close communication with Email Marketers, CRM Admins, Customer Success, and Sales, you can be confident you’re working with up-to-date first-party data.”

Working with first-party data has lots of moving parts and many variables. And you can expect more policies around user privacy in the future. That’s why you also need to stay informed and adapt accordingly.

AI and privacy-centric marketing are going to be the two difference makers for businesses to grow in 2024.

 

You’ll likely see speed bumps on the road. But, a shift to first-party data can lead you to a better understanding of your customer journey, better decision-making, and ultimately greater results for your business.

And if you’re a business that spends money on advertising, and is looking to get better control over your ad campaigns while valuing user privacy, give Optmyzr a try. Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for a 14-day free trial today. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

How to Lower ACoS with the Right Amazon Bid Type

Bidding on Amazon isn’t just about picking a number and hoping for the best. With so many options: Up & Down, Down Only, Fixed, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or fall into autopilot. However, the best results don’t come from chasing the lowest ACoS or blindly increasing bids.

They come from aligning your bid strategy with your actual goals. Whether you’re launching a product, protecting your brand, or chasing profitability, the right bid type can make all the difference.

Amazon’s bid types

Not all bid types are created equal, and they’re definitely not interchangeable. Amazon gives you three core bidding options, and the trick isn’t to pick the most aggressive or conservative one. It’s to choose the one that aligns with what you’re actually trying to achieve.

At the center of Amazon’s bidding model are dynamic bids, letting Amazon raise or lower your bid based on the likelihood of a conversion, and fixed bids, where you retain full control. Here’s how they break down:

Bid Type

Strategic Function

Best For

Dynamic - Up and Down

Amazon raises bids (up to +100% for top placements and +50% for others) when a click is likely to convert, and lowers bids (up to –100%) when it is not. Essentially doubles your bid in high-conversion cases or drops it to preserve budget in low-conversion cases. Most flexible/ aggressive.

Aggressive growth: product launches, visibility pushes, ranking campaigns.

Dynamic - Down Only

Amazon lowers bids (up to –100%) for low conversion likelihood, but never increases above your set bid. You always pay your max bid or less, depending on the predicted conversion chance. Conservative/efficiency-focused.

Efficiency-driven goals: profit margins, cautious scaling, seasonal dips.

Fixed Bids

Amazon uses your exact bid every time (plus any manual placement adjustments). No automated changes based on conversion probability. Predictable/control-oriented.

Control-focused campaigns: branded keywords, tight margins, A/B testing.

 

Beyond these, Amazon also supports rule-based bidding, where you set custom rules to adjust bids based on performance, budget thresholds, or time-of-day trends. In Sponsored Display, you can go deeper with audience-based bidding, fine-tuning bids based on who’s seeing your ads (like past buyers or high-intent viewers).

Aligning bid types to business objectives

One of the most common missteps in Amazon ads is choosing a bid type out of habit, or worse, guessing. Too often, advertisers overlook how each bid type interacts with Amazon’s algorithm.

Amazon prioritizes relevance, user intent, and conversion likelihood. When your bid type aligns with your campaign objective, whether that’s profitability, brand visibility, or new product launches, you’re giving the algorithm the right signals to work in your favor.

Misaligned bids don’t just underperform, they waste impressions, burn budget, and leave growth opportunities on the table.

Smart bidding starts with strategic intent, not just settings.

How to use a bid type based on the outcome you’re targeting

Objective: Profitable Sales

Recommended Bid Type: Dynamic Bids – Down Only

Why it works: When profit margins matter, control is key. Down Only lets Amazon lower your bids when it predicts a low likelihood of conversion, helping you avoid wasted spend. It’s not about pulling back reach entirely, it’s about trimming the fat. For advertisers looking to protect ROI, this is your safest bet.

👉Trade-offs: The downside to Down Only is that it won’t capitalize on every high-value opportunity.

If a certain search or placement is very likely to convert, Amazon won’t exceed your original bid to win that auction aggressively.

Thus, you might miss out on impressions or sales in extremely competitive moments.

Objective: Keyword Ranking

Recommended Bid Type: Fixed Bids

Why it works: Climbing the ranks on Amazon requires volume and consistency. With Fixed Bids, Amazon won’t reduce your exposure just because early clicks don’t immediately convert. This matters during ranking pushes, when your goal is visibility and share of voice, not short-term efficiency. You’re trading precision for momentum, and that’s a smart call in this phase.

👉Trade-offs: Fixed Bids won’t lower the price for low-value clicks, which means you can overpay significantly in many auctions.

Without dynamic adjustments, a fixed bid might apply equally to a great query and a marginally relevant one.

For instance, if you bid $2 for a keyword, you’ll pay up to $2 whether the click converts or not, whereas Down Only would have trimmed that for a low-conversion scenario.

Objective: Product Launch

Recommended Bid Type: Dynamic Bids – Up & Down

Why it works: Launching a new ASIN? You need flexible reach. Up & Down bidding lets Amazon lean in when signals look promising, while dialing back in low-quality auctions. It fuels Amazon’s learning phase, helping you ramp faster without throwing budget at poor placements.

👉Trade-offs: Your cost-per-click can rise, and you must be comfortable spending up to 100% more per click in those high-conversion scenarios.

If Amazon’s predictions are too “enthusiastic” or if your conversion rate falters, Up & Down can lead to higher ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sales) and spend. Close monitoring is critical, and you’ll want to watch if the extra spend is delivering proportional sales.

The good news is Amazon does cap the increases (doubling at most for top-of-search). Still, be sure your margins and budget can support the potential bid spikes.

Objective: Brand Protection

Recommended Bid Type: Fixed Bids

Why it works: Branded terms convert well, but they’re also where competitors love to poach. With Fixed Bids, Amazon won’t downscale your visibility based on perceived efficiency. You stay visible, dominant, and in control of your brand defense strategy.

💡Optmyzr Tip: With Rule Engine, you can create logic-based strategies that automatically increase bids for high-performing keywords or pull back when ACoS climbs. Just set your targets, and let the system recalibrate based on real performance.

 

Placements vs. Bids: Don’t default to bid increases

When performance dips, many advertisers instinctively raise bids. But that’s not always the smartest, or most cost-effective move. Instead of blanket increases, Amazon gives you a better option: placement modifiers.

Placement modifiers let you boost bids selectively based on where your ad appears, offering more control without overspending across the board. The two key placements you should care about:

Instead of applying the same bid across every auction, placement modifiers let you layer intent, raising bids only where it matters most. It’s a smarter way to scale performance without lighting your budget on fire.

💡Optmyzr Tip: The Placement Performance Audit shows you exactly which placements are driving conversions, clicks, or wasting spend. Combined with your campaign-level ACoS or sales data, you can decide where to add (or reduce) Top of Search modifiers, intelligently and confidently.

 

Most advertisers optimize too early

One of the most costly mistakes in Amazon advertising? Optimizing too soon.

It’s easy to panic when you’ve spent money and haven’t seen conversions roll in. The knee-jerk reaction is to pause keywords, slash bids, or shut the campaign down entirely. But here’s the truth: Amazon doesn’t operate in real time.

When you act too early, you’re making decisions based on incomplete data. Worse, you could interrupt Amazon’s learning process and shut down campaigns that might have performed well if given the chance.

It’s better to build in a delay before optimizing. Give new campaigns or bid strategy shifts at least 3 to 7 days before making adjustments.

Let the data breathe. Let Amazon learn. Then step in with structured changes, not reactive ones.

Use Amazon’s suggested bids

When it comes to setting bids, intuition isn’t strategy. Amazon Ads provides real-time, data-backed bid recommendations, more likely to achieve better results.

What are suggested bids?

These aren’t random numbers; they’re Amazon’s best estimate of what it will take to stay competitive in a given auction environment.

Use these as your baseline, not your ceiling. For example, if the suggested bid is $1.20 and your campaign is converting efficiently at $1.05, stick with what works.

But if performance lags, consider moving closer to the upper end of the range.

Keyword match types and their role in bidding strategy

Your keyword match type doesn’t just define who sees your ad; it also shapes how you should bid. Think of it like casting a net: the wider you go, the more cautious you need to be with your budget. The narrower the focus, the more you can afford to be aggressive.

Here’s how to align bidding strategy with match intent:

Exact match

Best For: Branded searches or high-converting, well-known keywords.

Why: You want your ad to show only when someone searches for a specific, high-intent term, like your product name or a top-performing keyword.

Bidding Strategy: Use Fixed Bids or high Dynamic Bids to dominate impressions. This is ideal for brand protection and ranking pushes, where visibility is non-negotiable.

Phrase match

Best For: Mid-funnel discovery and niche targeting with moderate intent.

Why: Phrase match lets you appear for queries that include your keyword in order, giving you more reach without sacrificing too much precision.

Bidding Strategy: Use moderate Dynamic Bids (Down Only) or rule-based bidding to scale efficiently while keeping ACoS in check.

Broad match

Best For: Exploration and data gathering in the early stages of a campaign.

Why: Broad match casts the widest net, capturing long-tail and unexpected search terms. But with that reach comes risk.

Bidding Strategy: Bid low and cautiously. Layer in negative keywords early, and consider using Optmyzr Express to block irrelevant traffic and promote high-converting terms quickly.

When to trust Amazon’s automation and when not to

Use automation when:

Use manual control when:

Optmyzr Express can further help you make manual control scalable. It uses a 45-day lookback (with a 3-day offset) to surface:

You stay in charge; nothing changes unless you click ‘Apply’. Or hit ‘Snooze’ if you’re not ready.

Ad format-specific bidding rules

Not all Amazon ad formats play by the same bidding rules, and that matters when structuring your campaigns. Each format offers different controls, objectives, and data visibility, so your bid strategy should adapt accordingly.

The most versatile format, Sponsored Products supports all three bid types: Dynamic Up & Down, Down Only, and Fixed Bids. It also allows placement modifiers and keyword match types, making it ideal for performance optimization, A/B testing, and scale.

Use it to drive conversions at the ASIN level and to test bidding strategies across different goals.

🔄 Feature update: New-to-Brand (NTB) audience targeting is now available within Sponsored Brands campaigns. You can apply a dedicated bid boost for shoppers who haven’t purchased from your brand in the past 12 months.

 

With this, you can:

NTB bid boosting aligns especially well with dynamic bidding strategies when aiming to scale brand visibility and acquisition during competitive shopping periods.

Sponsored Brands campaigns, those headline ads with logos, are designed for brand awareness and top-of-funnel visibility. They support Fixed Bids and Dynamic Bids – Up & Down only.

Since Sponsored Brands often target broader audiences, they benefit from higher bids on high-converting terms but should be monitored closely for ACoS performance.

Geared for retargeting and audience targeting, Sponsored Display supports Fixed Bids or audience-based bidding, depending on the targeting type (e.g., views, interests, purchases).

While you lose keyword-level control, you gain precision through behavioral signals, making this format great for cross-selling, brand defense, or re-engaging past shoppers.

Knowing what each format allows and what it’s best suited for lets you plan campaigns that actually align with your strategy, not just your spend.

Make every Amazon bid count with Optmyzr

Smart bidding on Amazon isn’t about tweaking numbers all day; it’s about knowing what success looks like for your business. Instead of asking, “How much should I bid?”, ask, “What am I trying to achieve?” Whether that’s increased visibility, improved margins, or saving time, the right strategy begins with clear goals and the right tools.

Optmyzr helps you stay focused on what matters—your goals, not the grunt work.

Curious to see it in action? Try it for free for 14 days and decide if it’s a fit for you.

Amazon Ads and Inventory: When to Hit Pause and Why

One of the most important rules of selling on Amazon is not to run out of stock. Yet even the best-organized brands can’t always ensure this when unexpected factors like port delays or sales spikes occur.

If you’re running ads for such products on Amazon, the most important thing is to turn them off before the inventory runs out. Now, you might be wondering: Doesn’t Amazon automatically stop ads when a product is out of stock? So then, why is this relevant?

Well, there are a few reasons for that:

  1. If stock is low but more inventory is on the way, temporarily pausing ads and discounts helps sellers stretch existing supply and buy time until the restock arrives, avoiding last-minute scrambles or disruptions to campaign momentum.
  2. If you’re about to run out of stock, turning off ads helps you make more profit on the last few items, since they’ll likely sell without extra push
  3. When inventory is low, your products might not be available in every warehouse. That means some customers will see longer delivery times, which can make them less likely to buy, driving up your ACOS.

If you only have about two weeks or less of inventory left, it’s a good idea to pause your ads to avoid selling out too quickly.

How to pause ads in Optmyzr when inventory runs low

Keeping an eye on inventory is essential, especially to avoid wasting spend or pushing products that are about to stock out.

With Optmyzr, you can set up a Rule Engine strategy to automatically pause ads when inventory levels fall below a certain threshold. The process starts with uploading your FBA inventory report (available through Amazon Seller Central) into a spreadsheet. This sheet then acts as the data source for Optmyzr’s Rule Engine strategy.

Here’s how the workflow typically looks like:

  1. Download the FBA Inventory Report from Amazon Seller Central
  2. Transfer key data (like ASIN and days-of-supply) into a simplified Google Sheet. This sheet will serve as the source for your Optmyzr strategy
  3. Create a Rule Engine strategy in Optmyzr that checks this Google Sheet and pauses ads for ASINs that fall below your inventory threshold

Once the data is in place, Optmyzr checks product inventory against your defined thresholds and automatically pauses ads that need attention. This helps you:

Getting inventory supply levels from Amazon

The most reliable way to track inventory levels for this strategy is through Amazon’s FBA Inventory Report. Since this report isn’t available as a scheduled export, you’ll need to pull it manually or set up a method to retrieve it as needed.

Depending on your tech setup and team bandwidth, there are a couple of ways to do this:

Preparing your inventory data in Google Sheets

Once you’ve downloaded your FBA Inventory Report, the next step is to extract only the columns you need to inform your ad decisions—typically ASIN, available inventory, and days of supply. Copy this filtered data into a new Google Sheet, which will serve as the reference file within Optmyzr.

Remember: If you manage both FBA and merchant-fulfilled SKUs in separate campaigns, and your ad structure is SKU-based rather than ASIN-based, make sure to filter and match data accordingly by SKU.

 

You can do this step manually or use a script to automate the transfer, depending on how frequently the inventory data changes. Before proceeding, rename the column that contains your product identifier (typically ASIN or SKU) to “Key”—this allows Optmyzr to correctly match inventory status with the corresponding ASINs.

Selecting the correct report columns

Creating the rule in Optmyzr will be easier if you only include relevant columns in the Google Sheet you are going to use to run the rule.

We recommend using the “days-of-supply” column for this automation, as it reflects available inventory based on forecasted demand. Avoid using Total Days of Supply (including open shipments)—while it may look more optimistic, those units aren’t sellable yet, and relying on them can hurt performance.

Amazon’s FBA Inventory Report has similarly named columns—this table highlights the key differences to help you choose the right one for your Optmyzr rule.

Column Name

Amazon Definition

Notes

Days-of-supply

The estimated number of days that your current inventory supply will last based on the projected demand for your product

Short-term historical days of supply

Short-term historical days of supply (last 30 days)

Long term historical days of supply

Long-term historical days of supply (last 90 days)

Using this date can be useful if you want to have a longer lookback period. It will be less accurate coming into or heading out of a high sales period.

Total Days of Supply (including units from open shipments)

Total Days of Supply (including units from open shipments)

Using this data will not provide the same results and is generally not recommended.

 

Building strategies in Rule Engine for smarter ad control

With Optmyzr’s Rule Engine and a connected spreadsheet, you can create a smart, responsive system that automatically pauses ads for low-stock items and re-enables them when inventory is replenished.

The Rule Engine allows you to match inventory metrics from an external spreadsheet to entities like ads, campaigns, or product groups. This is done using Key Value Pairs, where:

The Rule Engine uses the Key to match ASINs to their corresponding inventory levels and then evaluates the Values (like Days of Supply) to decide whether to pause or re-enable the ads for those ASINs.

Learn more: How Optmyzr customers use the Rule Engine to build powerful automations

Strategy 1: Pause ads when inventory is low

Goal: Avoid spending on products that are nearly out of stock.

How it works:

The rule checks if:

  • Days Supply (ASIN) ≤ Low Inventory Threshold (e.g., 50)

  • AND the ad is currently Enabled

Then: Pause the ad.


Using Key Value Pairs, the rule knows which ad corresponds to which ASIN and applies the pause logic only when the condition is met.

Strategy 2: Reactivate ads for restocked products

Goal: Resume ads for products that are back in stock without delay. Here we apply three mandatory conditions for the ad to be re-enabled.

First, the product must have over 50 days of supply, above the low inventory threshold, to safely resume ads. Next, the ad must currently be paused, so active ads aren’t affected. Finally, the rule applies only to ads in a specific list: those previously paused by Optmyzr due to low inventory.

How it works:

The rule checks if:

  • Days Supply (ASIN) > Low Inventory Threshold (e.g., 50)

  • AND the ad is currently Paused

  • AND the Ad ID exists in the spreadsheet

Then: Re-enable the ad.


In the next section, we give you a step-by-step walkthrough of how you can implement this in Optmyzr

Setting up the rules in Optmyzr

Once your inventory data is cleaned and added to a Google Sheet, with ASIN or SKU labeled as “Key” you’re ready to build a rule in Optmyzr that uses this external data to pause ads for low-stock products.

In the Rule Engine, create a rule that looks up your campaign or product data against the Google Sheet. The condition you’ll typically set is to pause ads when “Days of Supply” falls below a defined threshold (e.g., 14 days). This approach gives your team more proactive control over spend and margin, especially during periods of tight supply

You can tailor this rule depending on whether you want campaigns to pause immediately when stock runs low or if you’d prefer a buffer window. Many brands choose to be conservative, pausing ads slightly before stockouts occur, to avoid poor delivery experiences and rising ACOS caused by delayed fulfillment windows.

Remember: Don’t forget to set up a corresponding rule to resume ads once inventory recovers, typically when Days of Supply goes back above your threshold. This ensures campaigns restart without manual intervention when products are restocked.

Setting up the Google Sheet to add inventory data to the Rule Engine

1. In Seller Central, go to Reports > Fulfillment

2. Click Request .csv download and then ‘Download’

 

3. Open ‘Upload into New Google Sheet’ or ‘Copy and Paste over existing Google Sheet’

4. Click ‘Share’ to update share settings

5. Delete all other columns except for ASIN and quantity available. You should be left with Column A showing ASIN.

 

6. Change ASIN to Key and quantity available to Days Supply

 

How to set up the Rule Engine strategy to pause ads when inventory runs low

Once you have the inventory data ready to be linked to Optmyzr, simply follow the steps in this walkthrough to set up the rules to pause and re-enable ads using the Rule Engine.

 

Wrapping up: Smarter ad decisions when inventory runs low

By anticipating stockouts and adjusting ad visibility before they happen, you can protect margins, preserve campaign efficiency, and avoid disappointing customers. Using data from Amazon’s FBA Inventory Report and combining it with campaign-level controls in Optmyzr gives you a practical way to stay ahead of low-inventory risks, without having to make manual changes every week.

If you’re looking for a smarter, faster way to manage your Amazon ads alongside performance data, give Optmyzr a try. Sign up for our free 14-day trial, so you can see how easy it is to set up rules that work the way your business does.

Author Bio

Robyn has been heralded as one of the country’s foremost leaders on the topic of selling and marketing products on Amazon.com. Robyn has been a guest on shows like Entrepreneur on Fire, Confessions of A Marketer, and regularly speaks at shows all over the world about marketing on Amazon including SMX Munich, Pubcon, Prosper, and more.

Robyn is the co-founder of Marketplace Blueprint, a digital agency that specializes in listing optimization and advertising on Amazon. She has over a decade of experience of selling online on Amazon, eBay, and other eCommerce venues.

This article is a reflection of the author’s experiences and opinions. Optmyzr believes that there are many ways to win in digital advertising, and is committed to presenting a diverse range of ideas and approaches.

8 Common Amazon Ads Mistakes (And How to Fix Them)

Amazon ads can be incredibly powerful, but not always predictable.

Sometimes your strategy is solid, but it’s the overlooked patterns that quietly drain performance: brand terms showing up where they shouldn’t, auto campaigns running on autopilot, or decisions made too quickly on partial data.

This blog lists common mistakes in Amazon ads and how to troubleshoot them, the kind of fixes that actually improve efficiency, visibility, and return, not just check a box.

8 Mistakes Amazon advertisers make and how to fix them

Mistake #1: Mixing match types and goals in one campaign

One of the most common and costly mistakes advertisers make on Amazon is combining different match types and campaign goals in a single campaign or ad group. Think broad match for discovery, exact match for conversions, and phrase match for consideration, all lumped together.

The result? A confused algorithm and inefficient ad spend.

Amazon optimizes at the campaign level. So if your campaign is juggling discovery and brand defense keywords, the algorithm doesn’t know whether to go wide or go deep. It might pour budget into broad terms, which get clicks but rarely convert.

Meanwhile, exact match keywords, which are primed to convert, get sidelined.

To fix this, structure campaigns by match type and intent. Create separate campaigns for exact, phrase, and broad match keywords and align each with a specific goal.

For discovery, use broad match with tight controls. For conversions, use exact match and bid accordingly. This segmentation gives you cleaner data, smarter bids, and far better performance.

Mistake #2: Graduating keywords from auto campaigns too soon

Seeing a few conversions from an auto campaign can feel like a green light to move that keyword into a manual campaign. But acting too soon can backfire. Auto campaigns don’t just convert, they discover.

They surface valuable long-tail variations and let Amazon’s algorithm optimize bids dynamically. Prematurely pulling a keyword disrupts that discovery and may inflate costs in a manual campaign.

To avoid this, follow a deliberate three-step approach:

Step 1: Mirror the keyword.
When a search term shows consistent conversions and a healthy ACoS over time, add it as an exact match in a manual campaign. Do not remove it from the auto campaign yet.

Step 2: Validate performance in parallel.
Let both campaigns run side by side and look for clear, consistent wins in the manual setup.

Step 3: Move only after proof.
Once the manual version outperforms, apply a negative exact match in the auto campaign to avoid bidding overlap. This ensures smooth graduation without sacrificing discovery.

A tool like Optmyzr’s Magic Quadrants is invaluable here. It can help you visually map keywords across performance metrics like conversion rate and cost to help you identify which ones are ready to scale.

Say a coffee brand sees “Ethiopian Yirgacheffe whole bean” convert a few times in auto. Before graduating it, they check the quadrant view: if it lands in “Potentials” or “Stars” (strong conversion rate, sustainable cost), that’s the signal it’s ready to scale.

 

If it’s in “Laggards,” it needs more refinement before moving.

This visual, data-backed validation ensures you’re not promoting premature performers and sets your Amazon campaigns up for long-term profitability.

Mistake #3: Blending branded and non-branded keywords

One of the most overlooked mistakes in Amazon Ads strategy is combining branded and non-branded keywords in the same campaign. While it might seem efficient, this blending distorts performance data and undermines your ability to scale.

Branded terms, like your product or company name, naturally convert better because users already know you. Non-branded terms are used by shoppers still in the discovery or consideration phase.

When these keywords are lumped together, high-performing brand terms inflate overall metrics, masking the true efficiency (or inefficiency) of your acquisition efforts.

Here’s how to fix it:

 

💡Pro Tip: Set up custom segments in your reporting dashboards to analyze performance, excluding branded traffic. This allows you to benchmark true customer acquisition costs (non-brand ACoS) and identify which keywords or products are driving incremental growth, essential for scaling profitability.

 

Mistake #4: Letting auto campaigns run on autopilot

Auto campaigns are powerful, but only when used with purpose. A common mistake advertisers make is treating them as a permanent traffic source rather than what they truly are: a research and discovery tool.

Left unchecked, auto campaigns often pull in loosely related or irrelevant search queries.

Without regular oversight, this leads to wasted spend, inflated ACoS, and bloated search term reports filled with noise instead of insight.

On the flip side, relying too heavily on auto campaigns can stall your keyword strategy by keeping you reactive instead of proactive.

Here’s the fix:

💡Optmyzr Tip: Run the “Sponsored Products: Manual vs Automatic Targeting” audit in Optmyzr to evaluate your campaign mix. If your account relies heavily on automatic targeting, it’s a red flag that you may be underleveraging the control and efficiency of manual campaigns.

Use this audit to guide rebalancing, gradually shift top-performing search terms into structured manual campaigns while tightening auto campaign controls to drive smarter discovery.

 

Mistake #5: Advertising products that are out of stock

Running ads for products that are nearly or completely out of stock is one of the most expensive (but avoidable) mistakes in Amazon ads.

While Amazon does stop ads when a product is fully unavailable, it often happens too late.

Meanwhile, your budget bleeds into campaigns that can’t convert efficiently, and shoppers may encounter delayed shipping, leading to poor user experiences and higher ACoS.

Even worse, if inventory is running low but hasn’t hit zero yet, your ads may continue to serve aggressively, driving demand you can’t fulfill.

This disrupts campaign momentum and can damage organic ranking if stockouts occur.

With Optmyzr’s Rule Engine and a connected inventory spreadsheet, you can build a responsive system that automatically pauses ads for low-stock ASINs and re-enables them when inventory recovers.

Here’s how it works:

This goes beyond what native tools offer, adding automation and customization that adapts to your goals.

💡 Remember: Don’t just pause ads. Set up a re-enablement rule too. Once Days of Supply rises above your threshold (e.g., back over 50 days), Optmyzr can automatically restart ads, ensuring you never miss out on momentum once stock returns. Learn more about it here!

 

Mistake #6: Relying on ads to make up for weak listings

High-performing Amazon ads don’t work in isolation; they depend on strong, optimized product listings to convert. Even the most finely tuned campaign can fall flat if the landing page experience doesn’t match shopper expectations.

When listings are incomplete, poorly written, or missing visuals, Amazon’s algorithm penalizes them with low relevance scores and poor click-through rates. That means fewer impressions, higher costs, and underwhelming return on ad spend. Ads might drive traffic, but they can’t fix a broken listing.

Here’s how to fix it:

Make listing optimization part of your ad strategy, not an afterthought. Clear, keyword-rich titles, compelling bullet points, and high-quality images all play a direct role in improving ad delivery and conversions.

Here are a few listing optimization tips that directly impact ad performance:

👉 For a full walkthrough on what to fix and why it matters, read How to Optimize Your Amazon Listings to Boost Ad Performance.

Mistake #7: Slashing bids to improve ACoS

A high ACoS can be alarming, but slashing bids across the board isn’t the solution.

In fact, lowering bids without context can make things worse. Lower bids often mean your ads show less frequently or in less competitive placements, which hurts CTR. And when fewer (and less qualified) shoppers click, your conversion rate suffers too.

That’s where you spend less per click but sell fewer products, pushing your ACoS even higher at times.

A better approach:

 

⚠️Avoid Overcorrecting: Don’t rely solely on short-term ACoS data to make bid decisions. Sudden drops or spikes may reflect anomalies like seasonality, stockouts, or one-time promos.

Always pair bid changes with context from sales trends, listing health, and campaign goals to avoid overcorrecting.

Mistake #8: Making decisions based on same-day data

Amazon Ads data doesn’t tell the full story right away, and acting on it too quickly can do more harm than good. Sales attribution on Amazon can take 3 to 5 days to fully settle. Conversions often appear with a delay, especially in categories with longer purchase cycles.

So, when advertisers make bid or campaign changes within hours of launch, they risk disrupting performance based on incomplete or misleading data.

Read more: Amazon Ads reporting delay is killing your conversions. Here’s the fix (lessons from studying 14,991 campaigns)

✨Consider this scenario: A brand launches a new Sponsored Products campaign for a seasonal product. By the end of Day 1, the ad appears to be underperforming, with zero sales and a high ACoS. In response, the campaign is paused.

But over the next few days, as delayed-attribution purchases are logged, the data reveals a strong ROAS and several conversions tied directly to those initial clicks. The early decision cut short a promising campaign based on a false negative.

 

The better strategy:

💡Optmyzr Tip: Use Optmyzr’s Amazon Account Alerts to set alerts at the account or campaign level, covering key metrics like ACoS, ROAS, CTR, clicks, conversions, and more.

While anomaly detection isn’t supported (due to delayed attribution), the alert system ensures meaningful changes don’t go unnoticed, even when data takes time to settle.

 

Fix what’s holding back your Amazon Ads with Optmyzr

The most common Amazon ads mistakes often aren’t dramatic; they’re subtle, recurring issues.

Bidding too soon, ignoring inventory signals, trusting same-day data, these are the habits that quietly drain performance over time.

But they’re fixable with the right structure, automation, and visibility.

Start by tightening campaign structure, reviewing data over time (not just today), and using tools that help catch what manual checks often miss.

Optmyzr’s pre-built strategies and intelligent automations are designed to help advertisers do exactly that!

Want to catch more of the small issues that lead to big wins? Sign up for a fully functional 14-day trial today.

How to Run a Seasonality Analysis of Your PPC Data Using ChatGPT

Most people assume Q4 is the busiest time of year. But assumptions aren’t analysis.

Every business experiences seasonality differently. Understanding your specific demand patterns—when performance surges or slumps—is how you allocate budgets smarter, optimize campaigns, and predict what’s next.

You don’t need a data science team. You don’t need a PhD in statistics. You need a clean export, a bit of prep, and GPT. Let’s break down how to do seasonality analysis using ChatGPT.

This approach draws heavily on insights shared by Cory Lindholm during one of my PPC Town Hall podcasts, where he talked about seasonality analysis, offering a straightforward way to sharpen your PPC strategy.

What is seasonality analysis?

Seasonality analysis is about pattern recognition. It uncovers recurring spikes and dips in performance over time, helping you stop reacting and start planning.

If you’ve ever wondered:

Then you’re already looking for seasonality. A formal analysis just answers those questions with data, not guesswork.

What is seasonality decomposition?

It’s the process of splitting your time series data into three parts:

  1. Trend – the long-term movement (up or down)
  2. Seasonality – the predictable ups and downs (e.g., Q4 spikes)
  3. Residual – the randomness (e.g, a one-off campaign anomaly)

Two models are commonly used:

That’s the math out of the way. Here’s how GPT does the heavy lifting for you.

How to perform a seasonality analysis using GPT

Here’s the step-by-step process I followed, including a few important checks to ensure reliable results.

Step 1: Export your weekly PPC data

Start with Google Ads Report Editor. Create a report that includes the metrics you want to analyze, such as clicks or conversions, and include “Week” as a row dimension. This creates the time series structure needed for analysis.

Export the report as a CSV file. To get the most out of GPT’s analysis, use at least one full year of weekly data. Seasonality decomposition relies on repeated patterns, so anything shorter may produce misleading or incomplete results.

Step 2: Ensure your data is clean and complete

Before uploading the file, review your data for inconsistencies. Check for missing weeks, duplicate entries, or formatting issues such as commas in column headers or entity names.

In my test, GPT detected and corrected formatting problems automatically. However, starting with clean input data improves reliability and reduces the chances of errors during analysis.

Step 3: Upload the dataset to GPT-4o

Use GPT-4o with the Advanced Data Analysis model. After uploading your CSV, use a prompt like: “I have weekly ads data. Can you perform a seasonality decomposition on it?”

GPT will load your data and ask which metric you want to analyze. You can choose clicks, conversions, or any other time-based KPI included in your report.

 

Then it asked me which of the KPIs I wanted to analyze for seasonality and replied with: “The data has been cleaned and displayed for your review. Now, I’ll perform the seasonal decomposition on one of the metrics, like Clicks or Conversions, depending on which one you’d prefer to analyze. Should we proceed with Clicks, or would you prefer a different metric?”

I responded with the prompt: “Please perform decomposition on Clicks.”

GPT then responded with the following chart:

Additional tips:

If you want to explore the underlying trends, seasonal patterns, and residual variations in your dataset (like clicks, conversions, or other metrics) across weekly time periods, you can perform time series decomposition.

There are several ways to expand on this.

Analyze by product lines or business segments

Brand vs. Non-brand analysis

Agency-level analysis: Vertical vs. advertisers

Forecasting PPC budget requirements

Seasonality insights for inventory management

Optimize marketing strategies

Cross-compare channels

This process is made easier by simply swapping the datasets you use for each channel. Whether you’re analyzing clicks, impressions, or conversions for Google Ads or Facebook Ads, the same approach applies; just change the dataset to reflect the relevant channel.

Fine-tune your PPC campaigns for maximum efficiency.

You already have the data. Seasonality analysis turns it into leverage.

It’s how you stop chasing performance and start anticipating it. With a single GPT prompt, you can surface trends your competitors are still guessing at. Forecast demand. Time your spend. Outsmart seasonality instead of getting blindsided by it.

No more “gut feels.” No more blown Q4 budgets. No more surprises.

Just sharper campaigns, better timing, and marketing that actually plans ahead.

You’re not just reacting to seasonality. You’re using it.

Google Ads Gets You Seen. Amazon Ads Gets You Sold. Here's How To Use Them Together.

Brands selling across multiple channels are adapting to how people actually shop — blending performance with discovery, and tailoring touchpoints around real behavior. A journey might start with a Google search, continue through a YouTube ad, and end with a purchase on Amazon.

But here’s the problem: these campaigns are often run in silos. Separate budgets, separate teams, and disconnected strategies.

This creates friction.

A shopper might click a YouTube ad, read your blog, then buy on Amazon—yet your data shows three disconnected actions. Attribution breaks, messaging misaligns, and worse, you may end up bidding against yourself for the same customer.

This is why advertisers who run both shouldn’t just run them side-by-side. Instead, they should consider a dual platform strategy.

It’s not just about doubling your spend. Rather, it’s about aligning platforms to the right funnel stages, routing traffic based on intent, and retargeting users where they’re most likely to convert.

In this blog, we’ll show you how to leverage a cross-platform ad strategy for your business and turn it into a smart system for better ROI.

Why combine Google and Amazon ads?

As consumers, we rarely move neatly from search to purchase. Instead, we zigzag between discovery and research, backtrack, and switch between tabs like the digital window shoppers we are.

Both Google and Amazon represent two distinct stages in this journey.

🔎Google: Often, where the journey begins, customers type in questions, compare different options, read reviews, and scan prices. It’s the platform for intent-based discovery and top-to-mid funnel engagement. You catch them while they’re curious.

🛒Amazon: Here, the mindset shifts. Shoppers come here with a higher intent to purchase. This is the platform for transactional behavior where searches more often than not translate into purchases.

🔑Key takeaway: If you’re looking to maximize visibility while guiding intent toward action, the strategic move is to leverage both platforms in tandem. When you show up at both the moment of consideration and the moment of conversion, you build a presence that moves with the customer across the funnel.

 

Mapping the funnel: Google + Amazon

An efficient ad strategy combines both Google and Amazon so that they complement each other. The goal is to align each platform with the stage of the customer journey it best supports.

Top of funnel

This is where discovery happens.

The goal is not to really convert but to spark interest and highlight your USP. A great place for your brand story to shine.

Use YouTube, Display, and broad-match Search ads to build awareness around your brand, especially for category-defining terms.

📌Example: A prebiotic granola brand runs a YouTube ad titled “Why Your Breakfast May Be Missing Gut Health Support”, paired with broad-match Search ads targeting queries like “healthy cereal alternatives” or “foods for digestion”. The goal is to educate and attract interest from wellness-conscious shoppers who may not know the brand but are open to the category.

Mid-funnel

This is the consideration phase where shoppers are evaluating their options.

The objective is to reinforce the interest you’ve earned. That means reminding shoppers why they engaged with your brand in the first place. Serve ads that help customers make informed decisions. It could be through product comparison pages, customer reviews, or even a ‘why choose us’ page.

Retargeting through Google Display campaigns brings them back to your product or educational pages, while your Amazon Storefront acts as a trust-building touchpoint, offering social proof, pricing, and delivery clarity.

📌Example: A shopper who searched for “healthy granola for gut health” is retargeted with a Display ad linking to a blog post titled “3 Reasons Our Prebiotic Blend Works”. Meanwhile, they visit Amazon to compare reviews and see Prime delivery. The brand stays top-of-mind across both platforms.

Bottom funnel

Here the goal is simple— conversion.

Once the shopper knows what they want, Amazon becomes the closer. Sponsored Product and Sponsored Display ads work well here—capturing high-intent searches like brand or product names and retargeting users who’ve already shown interest.

📌Example: A shopper who previously viewed a prebiotic granola brand on Google now searches “[Brand Name] granola” on Amazon. A Sponsored Product ad appears at the top of results. It features a familiar name, a Prime badge, and a discount! One click, and they convert.

 

How to launch a dual-platform funnel

Step 1: Set up your Google ads for broad reach and high-intent targeting

💡Pro tip: Use Optmyzr’s Keyword Lasso to identify high-performing search queries from the Search Terms Report and add them as mid-funnel keywords or SKAGs. This helps capture proven intent and tighten campaign structure as performance data grows.

 

Step 2: Optimize your Amazon storefront to function like a high-converting landing page

💡Pro Tip: Use the “ASINs with Higher Orders” audit in Optmyzr to identify your top-selling products and prioritize them in your Storefront layout—feature them in hero sections, comparison blocks, or as bestsellers to increase shopper trust and drive faster conversions.

Step 3: Route traffic smartly to get the best out of your ads

💡 Pro Tip: Use custom conversions in Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to identify high-interest, low-purchase search terms. These users are still in the research phase. Route them to brand.com for nurturing, not to Amazon, where conversion pressure is higher.

Step 4: Stay visible and relevant after shoppers show interest

💡Pro Tip: Use Explore Traffic Segments to identify high-engagement audience groups from Google Analytics and score them by performance. Sync top segments into Google Ads (via Customer Match or audiences) for behavior-based retargeting and smarter routing decisions.

 

Pitfalls to avoid

Launching a dual-platform strategy without proper guardrails can be a dangerous gamble and hurt your ROI before you can even catch it. Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Overlapping audiences

Avoid targeting the same set of users in both brand and Amazon campaigns without segmentation.

For example, say you run a Google Ads campaign targeting “gut health granola” and direct users to brand.com. Simultaneously, you run a YouTube campaign using the same Custom Intent audience and drive that traffic to your Amazon Storefront.

Without exclusions, the same user could be shown both ads, driving up CPMs and CPCs across platforms. Plus, if they convert on Amazon, it’s unclear which campaign deserves credit, and your attribution gets muddled.

✅The fix: Use clear audience exclusions or labels to make sure each campaign targets the right people with the right message. This way you make sure every stage of your marketing funnel targets the right users with the right message and that your ad budget is being used smartly.

2. Poorly designed landing pages

When a user clicks on your ad, especially if it’s for a high-intent search, they’re definitely expecting a page that gives them all the information they need and makes it easy to convert.

A landing page with no clear explanation of benefits, reviews, trust signals, or product details can create doubt and may cause the user to bounce. You’re wasting a very valuable click and hurting your return on ad spend (ROAS).

✅The fix: Think of the landing page as your salesperson. Make sure you highlight the value props, include customer reviews and ratings, add FAQs, and use high-quality images and benefit-focused descriptions.

3. Gaps in internal readiness

You run great ads and manage to attract several high-intent customers. But all of this amounts to nothing if your backend systems aren’t running properly. Even the best ads won’t convert effectively, and worse, you’ll end up creating a poor customer experience.

✅The fix: The most important thing is to make sure your Amazon inventory levels are healthy. Avoid running ads on products that are or on the verge of going out-of-stock. Also ensure shipping, handling, and customer support are ready to handle increased volume.

 

Measuring what matters across platforms

So you’ve set up a cross-platform ad strategy across the funnel. Now you want to measure how this adds value over time.

Here are a few different things you can do to measure and optimize your ad strategy.

1. Amazon Attribution

This is essentially a free, advertising and analytics measurement solution that gives you insights into how your marketing strategies across non-Amazon channels like search, social, display, video, email, and other campaigns helped customers discover and purchase your products on Amazon.

You can simply add Amazon Attribution tags to your Google ads to understand whether upper- or mid-funnel Google campaigns are assisting conversions that close on Amazon.

📌Example: You discover that 25% of users who clicked your Google ad didn’t buy on brand.com but later bought the product on Amazon. This makes it clear that your Google Ads are influencing Amazon sales.

2. Google Analytics

Pair Amazon Attribution insights with Google Analytics to map user journeys and track how many touchpoints it takes before a user converts. You can also see whether your brand content plays a role in educating or nurturing a customer before a purchase.

📌Example: GA shows that users often visit your blog before they buy, indicating that your brand.com content plays a key role in assisting customers during their purchase journey even when the final sale happens on Amazon.

3. Amazon’s New-to-Brand metrics

New-to-brand metrics allow you to measure orders, sales, and detail page views of your products generated from first-time customers of your brand on Amazon. They can help measure customer acquisition and tailor your campaign strategies.

📌Example: Amazon’s dashboard reveals that 60% of purchases from Sponsored Brand ads are from first-time customers. This means your Amazon ads aren’t just converting but they’re also acquiring new customers, which boosts long-term value.

 

Align your ad strategy to match shopper behavior and not just platforms

Instead of treating Amazon ads and Google ads as two separate platforms, sequence them according to your shopper’s mindset. This allows you to keep up with your customers with the right messaging as they move from discovery to consideration and finally, conversion. It lets you capture high-intent traffic, track them, and optimize better so you aren’t simply spending more but actually driving results from your ad campaigns.

Optmyzr comes with a comprehensive set of tools that can be used to automate your campaigns, segment audiences, and even run-rule based optimizations to keep your funnel efficient across platforms.

Try out Optmyzr’s free 14-day trial and explore how you can scale your campaigns the smart way.

Amazon Buy Box Basics: What It Is and Why It Matters to Your Ads

If you’re running Amazon ads without keeping an eye on the Buy Box, you’re flying blind.

Your campaigns are active. Your budget’s burning. And conversions? They’re going to whoever happens to own the Buy Box at that moment, which might not be you.

It’s not that your ads are broken. It’s that your strategy isn’t synced to the most important piece of the puzzle.

Optmyzr helps fix that. It gives you the automation and visibility you need to connect Buy Box status with ad performance, so you’re only spending when you’ve actually got a shot at the sale.

Let’s dig into what the Buy Box really controls and how to build smarter campaigns around it.

The Buy Box: Amazon’s shortcut to the sale

The Amazon Buy Box is the section on the product page where shoppers can choose to ‘Add to Cart’ or ‘Buy Now’. The box contains information about the price, when the item will be delivered, and the quantity you’re ordering.

What is the significance of the Buy Box?

Multiple sellers often offer the same product on Amazon, but only one can win the Buy Box at a time, which is the most prominent call-to-action on the page. This spot drives the majority of sales.

When you click “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now,” you’re buying from the seller currently holding the Buy Box. Check back later, and a different seller might be in that spot, based on real-time performance and pricing.

 

Other sellers can still be found under “Other Sellers on Amazon,” but the Buy Box winner gets prime placement, which is crucial for visibility and conversions.

How does Amazon select the Buy Box winner?

Only one seller at a time can “win” the Buy Box because Amazon wants to streamline the buying experience.

Instead of making the shopper compare multiple offers, Amazon automatically selects the seller it deems best based on factors like:

Why the Buy Box deserves your attention

1. Ads can still show even without the Buy Box

Your ads will run even if you don’t currently occupy the Buy Box position. It can drive traffic, but not conversions.

The impact: Unless you win the Buy Box on the product detail page, your offer won’t be the one customers check out with. That sale often goes to a competing seller. So you’re paying for visibility, but someone else is closing the sale.

2. Conversion rates can drop without the Buy Box

Amazon’s Buy Box streamlines the shopping experience for customers. In fact, 83% of all sales go to the seller occupying the Buy Box position.

The impact: Even with strong ads and optimized product listings, sellers without the Buy Box may see a significant decline in sales.

3. Low Buy Box Win Rates = Higher Ad Costs, Lower Visibility

Amazon’s algorithm considers your Buy Box win rates when determining ad relevance and performance. A low win rate can lower your ad’s quality score since your offer may seem less competitive.

The impact: A lower quality score often results in higher CPCs since Amazon needs more incentive to show less competitive ads. Aside from this, Amazon might assume that your offerings are less relevant to shoppers, and this can impact your organic rankings.

 

The 5 Buy Box factors that can make or break your ads

Winning the Buy Box is all about strategically balancing different factors so your offering is the most competitive and reliable option for Amazon shoppers.

1. The pricing strategy

Amazon looks at something called the landed price (item price + shipping cost) and checks if it is competitive enough to win or retain the Buy Box. Offering the cheapest pricing doesn’t guarantee you the Buy Box. In fact, if the price drops too low, your listing can be suppressed or the Buy Box may go to another seller.

👉 Watch out for pricing mismatch across channels—offering a better deal on your own site or another marketplace can cause Amazon to pull your Buy Box.

2. Fulfillment

If you’ve outsourced shipping and logistics to Amazon (called FBA or Fulfillment By Amazon), you’re likely to get some preferential treatment over sellers who handle shipping in-house. They are also eligible to win the Buy Box but unlike FBA sellers, these sellers will also need to rely on other factors like shipping speed, order defect rate, seller ratings, and on-time delivery rates.

3. Inventory

If your inventory on Amazon runs out of stock frequently, Amazon can delist your products even if you offer the lowest price. This is because Amazon prioritizes sellers who can consistently fulfill orders quickly and reliably.

💡Pro Tip: Optmyzr’s Rule Engine allows you to set up a strategy so you can automatically pause/re-enable ads based on your inventory levels. This way you’re not paying for clicks that cannot convert and avoid negative signals that can impact your Buy Box eligibility.

4. Account health

Amazon doesn’t just look at what you sell or how much—your day-to-day seller behavior matters as much. This makes it very important to closely monitor account health metrics like order defect rate, late shipment rate, cancellation rate, and on-time delivery.

When your account metrics stay within Amazon’s performance thresholds, you stay eligible more often, even against sellers with slightly lower prices.

5. Listing quality

Your Amazon product listing is the first thing shoppers see when they’re browsing for something. Poor images, weak titles, and low relevance can impact your conversions and ranking, both of which play a role in higher buy box win rates. Make sure you use richer visuals, detailed product storytelling, and highlight benefits to improve your listing score.

A strong listing creates a positive feedback loop by increasing conversions. This in turn tips the scale in your favor with stronger metrics, more visibility, and subsequently more Buy Box wins.

How to align your ads with the Buy Box

Running Amazon ads without owning the Buy Box means compromising your ad spend, conversions, and CPCs.

Here are a few tips on how you can adopt a smarter ad strategy around the Buy Box.

1. Understand the Buy Box status

Check your Buy Box status at the moment you plan to activate or scale your ads. If you’re not winning it, especially for high-competition or shared listings, you may want to consider delaying your ads or adjusting the ad investment. This ensures you’re only spending when you have a real shot at converting and owning the sale.

📌Example: You launch a new product. You don’t have reviews yet, so your Buy Box share is unstable.

Instead of launching a full campaign, you:

  • Start with low-budget branded ads or video ads for awareness.

  • Monitor if you gain Buy Box ownership through organic or test conversions.

  • Once you see Buy Box stability at certain hours, ASINs, or fulfillment regions, you increase your ad investment.

2. Monitor the Buy Box daily for active campaigns

When you’re actively advertising your products, it’s important to keep a daily check on your Buy Box status to see whether you’re winning or not.

This makes sure you don’t miss windows where your ads are burning the budget and helps in diagnosing sudden performance drops. More importantly, if you have a record of daily data, you can actually use automation to pause ads or lower bids based on the Buy Box share.

You can check your Buy Box share or percentage on Amazon’s Business Reports.

📌Example: If your Buy Box share drops to 25%, only 1 in 4 shoppers can actually buy from you. With Optmyzr’s Rule Engine, you can automate your ad strategy based on Buy Box data. Just feed your Business Reports into Optmyzr via custom data integration, then set up rules like:

Tactic 1: If Buy Box % < 30% AND ROAS < 2 THEN reduce bid by 40%

Tactic 2: If Buy Box % > 80% AND CPC is stable, THEN Increase bid by 15%

3. Let ad data guide pricing

Noticed your CPCs suddenly spiking but conversions staying flat? That’s often a sign you’ve lost the Buy Box or your price isn’t competitive anymore.

When that happens, Amazon sees your offer as less relevant, so CPCs go up, and shoppers start buying from someone else.

Keeping an eye on your ad data can help you spot this before it reflects in your Buy Box report.

Use Optmyzr’s Account Alerts to notify you whenever there is a spike in CPC, a decline in ROAS, or a rising ACoS.

Any changes in these metrics may mean you need to reassess your pricing strategy. It may also mean that Amazon sees your offer as less competitive, which can cause your relevance to drop.

4. Run Sponsored Product ads to protect visibility

Say you lose the Buy Box but still want to keep your listing in the game till you win it back to protect organic rankings, traffic, and sales.

Instead of disappearing completely, a good strategy is to run Sponsored Product ads so you still show up in searches and protect your brand presence. Even if conversion is lower, you stay top-of-mind and may still pick up sales from comparison shoppers.

5. Use brand defense strategies

If your competitor wins the Buy Box on your listing, you’re no longer the default seller. In such scenarios, you want to retain shopper attention, reduce sales to low-quality sellers, and protect your brand.

This is where you can run brand defense strategies such as:

6. Manage ad performance during inventory transitions

If you’re transitioning from FBM (Fulfilled By Merchant) to FBA or waiting for an FBA restock, your chances of winning the Buy Box decrease temporarily. This is because during this period, your fulfillment method is weaker or delayed.

During such periods, it’s best to scale back on your ads or switch tactics to protect campaign and budget performance. What you can do is:

How to review Buy Box impact over time

Once your ad strategy is aligned with the Buy Box, the next step is to track performance consistently. It’s always best to establish a proper reporting cadence so you can continuously optimize your ad efficiency and spot issues before they escalate.

Here are a few tips on how you can structure your reporting frequency.

1. Weekly reviews

Buy Box winners can rotate daily, sometimes even hourly, based on different factors. Weekly reviews can help you identify patterns that may be affecting your ad performance.

During weekly reviews, look out for:

2. Monthly reviews

While weekly checks catch short-term fluctuations, monthly reviews reveal structural trends, like why you’re consistently losing the Buy Box on certain SKUs.

During monthly reviews, keep an eye out for:

3. Quarterly reviews

Quarterly reviews help you zoom out and optimize ad spend at the portfolio level.

What to look for:

Smarter Amazon ads start with Buy Box awareness

The Amazon Buy Box is a critical feature that can directly impact a seller’s sales and profitability. But winning the Buy Box depends on a combination of factors. The most important takeaway for sellers is that it’s absolutely essential to make sure that every part of your ad strategy is strategically aligned with your pricing, inventory, fulfillment, and real-time Buy Box status, so you’re only spending when you have the best shot at winning the sale.

Optmyzr offers several advanced capabilities that allow you to automate ad decisions, monitor key metrics, and stay ahead of costly surprises.

Sign up for Optmyzr’s 14-day free trial to see how you can easily turn your Amazon ads into a profit engine.

How to Launch Social Media Campaigns Faster and Beat the Trend Cycle

If you’re running social media campaigns, you know speed isn’t optional; it’s the edge.

Top brands aren’t just moving fast; they’re structured to do so.

They cut the clutter, target their audience precisely, and automate social media campaigns to maintain sharp performance.

When your campaign depends on seasonal trends, product drops, or cultural moments, there’s no time to wait. Miss the moment, and you miss the engagement and the revenue.

In this article, we break down the three tactics that help launch social media campaigns faster, enabling you to move with precision, adapt at speed, and stay ahead of the feed.

Why timing is crucial in social media advertising

Campaigns tied to holidays, product launches, or seasonal pushes live and die by timing.

Marketers need to be equipped with real-time campaign management, ready to ride viral trends or pivot fast when social platform algorithms shift. If you don’t, you miss the surge of interest that drives clicks, conversions, and brand lift.

The reality is that competition never hits pause.

New offers flood feeds every day. Fresh, creative, and aggressive bidding strategies fight for attention, and slow campaign launches get drowned out by louder, quicker messages.

On top of that, social platforms constantly change their algorithms.

These shifts can suddenly impact how ads are prioritized and delivered, making agility not just an advantage but a necessity to optimize social ad performance.

Consequences of delayed social media campaigns

Running successful social media campaigns requires you to show up right when attention and intent peak. When campaign launches lag, the impact ripples across performance, operations, and brand perception.

Here’s what’s at stake with delays during cross-platform ad management:

How to manage social campaigns faster: 3 key tactics

From rapid campaign builds to smarter audience segmentation and automated optimizations, here are three tactics that can help you launch social media campaigns faster.

1. Rapid campaign creation tools & workflows

In paid social, it’s not about launching fast once, it’s about doing it consistently at scale.

Using a multi-platform campaign builder lets marketers skip the repetitive setup work and focus on strategy. When a trend breaks or a competitor drops big news, the brands that launch fastest capture visibility, clicks, and conversions.

A 24-hour delay can mean fewer clicks, missed momentum, and a tougher climb to results.

Take a B2B software company promoting a webinar. They need to reach decision-makers on LinkedIn and broader influencers on Meta.

Instead of a multi-channel campaign launch strategy, their team wastes hours duplicating work across ad platforms with different UIs, creative specs, and targeting rules.

The result? Fewer eyes on your message and fewer opportunities to make your moment count.

Optmyzr’s Paid Campaign Launcher eliminates this fragmented workflow and enables teams to build once and launch everywhere.

Here’s how that webinar campaign can be tailored for all platforms: The marketing team sets their creative theme, configures brand profile details (brand colors, CTAs, logos), and tailors the campaign to each platform’s specifications, all from one interface.

 

They preview everything, fix inconsistencies before launch, and push campaigns live on multiple platforms simultaneously.

 

Instead of juggling disconnected workflows, they focus on what actually drives results: strategy, timing, and performance.

This edge in speed pays off across campaign types, from high-stakes launches to everyday optimizations:

💡 Power Shortcut: Let AI handle the basics. Optmyzr’s AI can auto-scan your website and pre-fill your brand profile, suggesting CTAs, USPs, logos, and visuals in seconds. Go from blank canvas to launch-ready in a fraction of the time.

 

Also Read: How to Manage Meta and LinkedIn Ads Together Without Losing Your Mind

2: Smart audience targeting for better social ROI

Impressions alone don’t drive results; relevance does. Many marketers still spend their budget targeting audiences too broad or too cold, leading to ads that rack up views but fall short on engagement and conversion.

As ad costs climb and third-party data becomes harder to access, marketers increasingly rely on meta ads targeting strategies that use first-party audience targeting built from real behavior and engagement. These strategies not only improve ROAS on social media, but also ensure your budget flows toward users most likely to convert.

Instead of relying solely on platform-level targeting presets, they build layered audience structures that mirror the customer journey.

We call this the Audience Ladder: a four-tiered framework that helps marketers prioritize budget and messaging for maximum efficiency.

📍Cold Prospecting: Broad or lookalike audiences used for awareness campaigns

📍Warm Re-engagement: People who interacted with content, visited key pages, or engaged with your social channels

📍High-Intent Targeting: Returning visitors, cart abandoners, CRM segments, or app users showing strong intent

📍Loyalists & Cross-Sell: Existing customers who can be upsold, reactivated, or rewarded

 

Each stage calls for tailored creative, precise messaging and a clear sense of what success looks like. The goal isn’t just to move people through the funnel but to avoid wasting spend on users unlikely to take action.

Optmyzr’s faster approach to building and activating custom audiences can support this strategy by helping advertisers define and deploy more granular segments.

This includes the ability to:

📌Example: Let’s say a skincare brand launches a new product line. They want to re-engage users who watched a tutorial on Instagram but didn’t convert. Combining engagement data with promotional messaging can help them retarget a warmer segment with more personalized creative. This leads to more relevant impressions and potentially stronger results.

This kind of audience segmentation supports:

💡 Optmyzr Tip: Set performance-based alerts on your audiences. If your “lead form openers” segment suddenly sees a spike in cost per conversion, Optmyzr flags it instantly, so you can pause, tweak, or reallocate spend before budget gets burned.

3. Real-time social ad optimization

Campaign performance isn’t static, and in social advertising, even small delays in response can have an outsized impact. Whether you’re running a 3-day flash sale, a time-bound product launch, or a registration push for a webinar, waiting too long to optimize can mean wasted spend and missed outcomes.

Marketers today require more than just scheduled reports. They need real-time visibility and actionable insights across every layer of their campaigns to keep performance on track.

That’s where prioritizing these three things becomes essential:

Here’s how you can do it with Optmyzr’s paid social automation tools:

1. Detect ad-level issues early

Performance issues often begin at the ad level, and catching them early can prevent wasted spend. The Ad Analyzer helps you:

 

You can export these insights, share them with your team, or save customized views to monitor specific goals.

One of our early users told us:

“Personally, I found the Ad Analyzer perfect, because I don’t really have any tool that does that for us at the moment… and this is one of the things that I don’t really see in any other tools either.”

— Laura L., Senior Consultant Social Media, morefire GmbH

2. Make campaign-wide changes quickly

Optimization doesn’t stop at the ad level. The Social Campaign Manager provides a consolidated view of performance across campaigns, ad sets, and audiences, letting advertisers:

 

This centralized control helps teams act faster without wasting time switching between interfaces.

3. Automate recurring fixes at scale

For larger teams or advertisers managing multiple campaigns, responding in real time isn’t always feasible. The Rule Engine provides scalable automation by allowing users to build strategies that trigger actions based on performance logic.

You can build rules like ‘pause high-spend, no-conversion ads’—then decide if Optmyzr should flag it, fix it, or file it.

 

This ensures that even in complex environments, campaigns remain aligned with performance goals.

💡What You Can Automate with Custom Rules

  • Pause high-spending ads or ad sets with zero conversions

  • Increase budgets for top-performing campaigns

  • Lower bid caps when the cost per result exceeds your target

  • Flag ads with declining CTR for quick review

  • Pause campaigns with lots of impressions but no results

  • Boost budgets for winning ad sets during promotions

  • Add underperformers to a report for action tracking

  • Adjust the target cost per result when performance dips

  • Automatically stop weekend campaigns after Sunday

  • Send weekly reports on all converting ads

 

Launch social campaigns faster with Optmyzr.

Fast execution isn’t just a competitive edge in social advertising, it’s the baseline. What sets teams apart is how efficiently they get there.

Streamlining campaign creation, refining audience strategy, and responding to performance in real time lets you stay ahead of trends, competition, and wasted spend.

Optmyzr’s suite of cross-platform paid social tools brings together creation, targeting, and optimization into one seamless workflow.

Curious how fast your team could move with the right social media automation tools?

Explore Optmyzr with a 14-day trial and see how much easier and faster social campaign management can be.

Introductory pricing starts at just $99/month after the trial.

FAQs

1. How can I speed up the creation of social media campaigns across multiple platforms? Ans. The best way to speed up social media campaign creation is by using a cross-platform ad management tool that lets you build once and launch everywhere. These tools support brand profile templates, dynamic variables, and live ad previews to help you launch faster without compromising quality or consistency.

2. How can I monitor campaign performance in real-time without manual checks? Ans. To monitor campaign performance in real time, use paid social tools with real-time ad optimization features. These platforms automatically surface performance shifts like rising CPAs or dropping CTRs, to help you act immediately instead of manually refreshing dashboards.

3. How do I ensure consistent messaging across different social media platforms? Ans. Use a centralized social campaign builder that supports platform-specific customizations. Start with a unified brand message and then adapt it per channel using tools that preserve core CTAs, visuals, and tone while fitting each platform’s format and audience behavior.

4. What steps can I take to improve the overall efficiency of my social media campaigns? Ans. To improve campaign efficiency, first simplify your workflow. Then use automation tools for social media ads to handle repeatable tasks, like pausing underperforming ads or reallocating budget.

5. How do I automate social media campaigns without losing control? Ans. Use platforms that offer performance-based triggers, real-time feedback, and cross-platform preview tools. The best systems let you set up rules and alerts without sacrificing strategy.

 

How to Manage Meta and LinkedIn Ads Together Without Losing Your Mind

If you’re someone managing Meta and LinkedIn Ads across multiple accounts, you’re juggling disconnected dashboards, duplicate reports, and platforms that refuse to play nice.

Budgets are shrinking. Costs are climbing. And you’re wasting hours just trying to answer one simple question: What the heck is working?

It’s not a tooling problem. It’s a fragmentation problem. And it’s badly affecting your performance.

Optmyzr fixes that. It unifies your paid social campaigns across Meta and LinkedIn, giving you one clean control center for strategy, reporting, and optimization. No more platform ping-pong. No more spreadsheet gymnastics. Let’s break down how it works—and how it puts you back in control.

1. The chaos: You’re managing ads in silos.

If you’re managing multiple Meta and LinkedIn Ads accounts across different regions or brands, you may be grappling with multiple logins, spreadsheets to reconcile, and performance trends scattered across platforms.

💡The fix: All Portfolio Dashboard

Optmyzr’s All Portfolio Dashboard brings all your portfolios into a single, centralized space. Each portfolio can contain any number of Meta and LinkedIn Ads accounts.

You get to visualize performance data and find optimization opportunities for ALL your accounts.

Plus, accounts can be grouped into portfolios based on brand, geo, funnel stage, or business unit. This simplifies the way you work.

📌Example: If you have Meta and LinkedIn ad accounts for Nike campaigns in the U.S., group them into one ‘Nike - US’ portfolio. This lets you track performance, budgets, and trends for all U.S. campaigns across platforms in one place.

Similarly, you can group Meta ad accounts in different European countries into one portfolio— ‘EU Meta’. This lets you analyze and compare performance across the whole region instead of looking at each country or account individually.

Other key features of the all portfolio dashboard include:

💡Pro Tip: If you want to avoid alert fatigue, use ‘Allowed Deviation’ in alerts to set a tolerance range around your target metric. This prevents constant alerts for minor, normal shifts in performance and helps you focus only on significant changes that may need action.

2. The blind spot: You can’t see what’s actually driving results.

Smart decisions come from context. So you know which campaigns are performing. But do you know where the results are coming from and why they’re happening?

What you need is a way to compare key metrics like engagement rate, cost per unique user, and ROAS across platforms, portfolios, and time periods so you can pinpoint exactly where to invest for the best returns.

💡The fix: Cross-channel performance clarity

The portfolio dashboard provides clarity into cross-channel performance. You can filter by campaign type, customize date ranges, and build side-by-side views that make trends and gaps immediately visible.

📌Example: Imagine running Nike campaigns in France and Germany. The Portfolio Dashboard shows side-by-side performance: France has higher engagement, Germany has better ROAS. With these insights, you can reallocate budget to boost sales or optimize weaker campaigns. The dashboard provides a unified view for smarter, data-driven decisions.

If you want to dig even deeper, the dashboard lets you:

3. The reporting problem: You’re wasting hours on a slide that says nothing.

Every report is a copy-paste marathon. You’re juggling screenshots, CSV exports, and half-baked conclusions. And most of it isn’t actionable.

💡The fix: Automated, actionable reporting

With Optmyzr’s Reports, you can build reports quickly and easily. It features several pre-built, plug-and-play widgets that you can use to create comprehensive, performance-driven reports.

Here’s how you can use each of these widgets can be used in your reporting workflow:

1. Portfolio summary

Get a snapshot of overall account performance for a selected date range to highlight cross-platform results.

📌Example: If you're running awareness campaigns for a client on both Meta Ads and LinkedIn Ads, you can use this widget to compare how each platform performed during that time, all in one view.

2. Performance comparison

Compare the performance of two segments of information, like two date ranges or different campaign types, for the accounts in your portfolio for the same date range.

📌Example 1: Compare how your Meta Ads account performed this month vs. last month to track improvement or spot drops in key metrics. This is a use case for time-based comparison.

📌Example 2: Evaluate how ‘Awareness’ campaigns on Meta stack up against ‘Brand Awareness’ campaigns on LinkedIn to identify which channel drives better visibility. This is an example ofa campaign type comparison.

3. Time-wise stats

Break down performance by day, week, or month to spot trends and seasonality in your portfolio.

📌Example: You're reporting performance for the last 6 months. Use the Time Wise Stats widget to break down your portfolio’s results by month to quickly spot trends like rising CPC in February, a steady drop in conversions in March and April, etc. This way, you can link changes to specific campaigns or events.

4. Top Campaigns in Portfolio

Identify high-performing campaigns by sorting and filtering based on your most important KPIs.

📌Example: Meta and LinkedIn lead gen campaigns side by side using key metrics like cost, conversions, and ROAS to quickly spot which ones to scale or fix.

5. Top Ads in Portfolio

Drill down to your best-performing ads across accounts to double down on winning creatives.

📌Example: You review the top ads across your Meta and LinkedIn accounts in a portfolio. By including key metrics like click-through rate, conversions, and cost per conversion, you quickly spot which ads are driving the best results and identify underperforming ads to optimize or pause.

6. Metric Trend Chart

Visualize performance trends for selected metrics over time using flexible chart options.

📌Example: Use the Metric Trend Chart to compare impressions and conversions over the last three months. By visualizing both metrics side-by-side, you easily spot periods where impressions rose but conversions didn’t, helping you identify when and why campaign performance dipped.

7. Distribution by Accounts

Compare how each account contributes to total performance to identify strong or weak performers.

📌Example: You’re managing multiple client accounts in one portfolio. Using the Distribution By Accounts widget, you spot that Account A is driving 60% of your total conversions, while Account B lags behind. With this insight, you can focus your optimization efforts on underperforming accounts to boost overall results.

4. The scaling struggle: You don’t know which ads to kill or boost.

When you manage Meta and LinkedIn ads together, it can get challenging to isolate which ads are driving results and which ones are draining your budget.

💡The fix: Ad Analyzer

The Ad Analyzer helps you drill down across multiple campaigns and platforms to easily spot your top performers, expensive ads, or those struggling to engage.

You just have to select the campaigns you want to review, and the Ad Analyzer will instantly show you key metrics like impressions, clicks, cost, conversions, and CTR—all in one customizable table.

Aside from this, with Ad Analyzer, you can:

✅Use preset filters like Top Spending Ads, High Converting Ads, or Ads with Declining CTR to narrow your view

✅Build custom filters tailored to your unique goals

✅Click any ad to open a side panel with a live preview, performance trends, and platform-specific insights like Meta’s Quality Score and placements

Simplify your social campaigns with Optmyzr.

When you’re running ads across Meta and LinkedIn across multiple accounts, it’s easy to get slowed down by scattered data and time-consuming reports.

But, with Optmyzr, you wouldn’t.

Optmyzr’s social ad management tools bring important insights and key metrics across different campaigns and accounts into a single, cohesive space. This way, you can quickly spot what’s working, fix what’s not, and make smarter decisions.

Try Optmyzr free for 14 days and explore how you can start managing Meta and LinkedIn Ads the smart way.

The 4-Part Amazon Ads Strategy to Drive Real Profit and Scale With Confidence

Amazon advertising can be complex, and success comes down to mastering a few critical elements. It begins with a product listing engineered to convert interest into decisive purchases.

From there, a focused keyword strategy ensures budgets are spent on terms that truly deliver results. A clear campaign structure then provides the control needed to scale efficiently.

Finally, disciplined optimization uncovers opportunities before they slip away.

This guide breaks down the four essential pillars of an Amazon Ads strategy that drives sustainable growth and profitability.

Before you dive in: Key terms to know

  • ACOS (Advertising Cost of Sale): ACOS tells you how much you’re spending on ads for each sale you make. Lower ACOS means you're spending less on ads to make more sales.

  • ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): ROAS shows how much money you make for every dollar spent on ads. A higher ROAS means your ads are bringing in more money than they cost.

  • TACoS (Total Advertising Cost of Sale): TACoS looks at both your ad sales and organic (non-ad) sales. It helps you understand the overall impact of ads on your total sales, not just the ads themselves.

  • CTR (Click-Through Rate): CTR is the percentage of people who click on your ad after seeing it. A higher CTR means your ad is interesting and relevant to people.

  • Conversion Rate: Conversion rate tells you how many people buy your product after clicking on your ad. A higher conversion rate means more people are buying after seeing your ad.

  • Impression Share: Impression share is the percentage of times your ad shows up compared to the total number of opportunities for it to show. A high impression share means your ad is often seen by your target audience.

1. Make sure your listing can actually convert before you increase ad spend.

Before increasing ad spend, it’s worth stepping back to ask: Is the listing built to convert?

Ads can drive traffic, but it’s the product page that needs to close the deal. Without a compelling listing, those clicks often lead nowhere.

What to optimize first

These are the essentials to dial in before scaling ad efforts:

🧠Pro Tip: Don't underestimate the impact of video on your product listings. While you're optimizing your images and text, consider adding high-quality product videos. Shoppers today often prefer to see a product in action. Think about including product demos, lifestyle shorts in video format, or customer testimonials in video.

Why this matters

When conversion rates improve, Amazon takes notice. Strong listings can earn better ad placements and lower CPCs, creating a healthier feedback loop for growth.

Before scaling spend, a listing audit is often the first (and smartest) move.

💡Optmyzr Tip: Our Amazon-specific audits can help catch issues that might be hurting conversion rates. Test out audits like Products not Delivering to catch ASINs with zero impressions, Campaigns with Less ROAS to find underperformers that might be tied to weak product pages, and Expensive Keywords to spot where you're spending without seeing returns.

2. Start broad with keywords, but refine quickly based on real performance.

Keyword strategy can make or break Amazon campaigns. It’s not about adding more keywords, it’s about focusing on the ones that drive results.

It can be helpful to start broad and then refine. Automatic campaigns can provide insights into how shoppers are searching, and some search terms might be different from expectations.

Once you have some data, get intentional with your targeting.

Keyword strategy tips

Use negatives when needed

Cleaning up traffic is just as important, as not all visits may lead to the desired outcomes. It can be useful to evaluate spend efficiency, especially if certain terms consistently use a significant portion of a product’s price without generating conversions.

This could be a signal to reconsider those terms.

Negative keywords, when applied at the right level, whether campaign or ad group, can help curb unnecessary spend.

Regular audits are a good practice, as keywords that didn’t convert last month may still be affecting the budget, making it worth checking in on performance periodically.

To make this process easier, Optmyzr’s Rule Engine includes a pre-built strategy that flags non-converting search terms and ASINs, so you can quickly add them as negatives and keep your campaigns efficient.

{{< figure src="/forestry/optmyzr-amazon-ads-non-converting-keywords-and-asin-terms.webp" >}}

Similarly, missing out on converting search terms means leaving potential revenue on the table.

That’s where another pre-built strategy, “Add converting search terms as keywords,” helps you capture these valuable opportunities.

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This way, you’re not just spending efficiently, but also driving real profit from terms that convert.

3. Structure your Amazon Ads account like a blueprint for scalable growth.

A messy campaign structure leads to wasted spend and missed opportunities. If you want to scale efficiently, your account needs to be clean, organized, and easy to optimize.

Think of structure as your growth blueprint. It’s what gives you visibility, control, and the ability to scale what’s working

Here’s a simple but effective framework:

1. Start with discovery through Automatic Campaigns.

Automatic campaigns in Amazon Ads are campaigns where Amazon decides which search terms and product pages your ads show up for, based on your product listing content (title, bullets, description, backend keywords, etc.).

These campaigns act as search engines. Use them to uncover real search terms your customers are using, often different from what you expect.

Let Amazon match your products to related queries and ASINs. Watch what gets clicks, what converts, and where your wasted spend is going. Then mine those insights for manual targeting and negatives.

2. Get specific with manual keyword targeting.

Once you’ve identified high-performing search terms, move them to manual campaigns where you can optimize bids, match types, and placements. This gives you full control over your strategy, enabling you to maximize ROI.

For example, let’s say a brand sells wireless smart speakers. After running automatic campaigns, it discovers that terms like “best wireless speaker for home,” “smart speaker with Alexa,” and “portable Bluetooth speaker” are generating solid clicks and conversions.

These high-performing keywords can now be transferred to a manual campaign, where the brand can adjust bids for each term.

3. Outsmart competitors with product targeting.

Product targeting offers a more direct approach than traditional keyword targeting.

While keyword targeting involves bidding on search terms that potential customers might use, product targeting lets you place your ads alongside specific products, categories, brands, or product features.

You can compete directly with other brands by showing your ads on their product pages. This strategy can help draw attention away from their listings and direct it toward yours.

For example, if a brand sells premium coffee makers, they could use product targeting to display ads on product pages for similar coffee makers or within categories like “coffee machines” or “home brewing equipment.”

Moreover, it’s not limited to Amazon’s platform. Sponsored Display ads extend your reach beyond Amazon, appearing on external websites or apps that your potential customers visit.

4. Double down on what works with winner campaigns.

Don’t let your best keywords or targets stay buried in broader campaigns. Once a product or term consistently hits your performance benchmarks, move it into a dedicated campaign.

This gives you tighter budget control, clearer reporting, and the ability to scale spend without interference from underperformers in the same campaign.

Best practices for a manageable and scalable structure

💡Optmyzr Tip: When scaling winning campaigns, budget caps can create unexpected slowdowns. Optmyzr’s Spend Projection Tool forecasts which campaigns are on track to max out before it happens. It analyzes trends, seasonality, and recent performance to deliver a smart spend range and help adjust budgets proactively to keep top performers running strong when it matters most.

4. Use automation and alerts to respond faster to performance shifts.

Success on Amazon isn’t a one-time effort, it’s about ongoing analysis and action. Regular optimization ensures that you’re staying ahead of the competition and making the most out of your ad spend.

Track and act on these key metrics:

💡Optmyzr Tip: Set up account alerts to get notified instantly when key metrics such as ACoS, ROAS, and Conversion Value shift. This helps you react quickly to changes, avoid overspending, and seize new opportunities without monitoring your campaigns manually.

What to do & when

Take control of your Amazon Ads with Optmyzr.

Amazon Ads success largely depends on four things: listings that convert, keywords that work, campaigns built to scale, and constant optimization that protects your profit.

But managing all these components can quickly become complex and time-consuming.

That’s where Optmyzr makes a difference. Our tools simplify campaign management by uncovering high-impact keywords, organizing account structure for scalability, and automating routine optimizations, freeing you up to focus on strategy and growth.

Ready to take control of your Amazon advertising performance? Start your fully functional 14-day free trial today!

Amazon Ads Strategy 2025: How to Boost Visibility, Sales & Organic Rankings

Amazon is one of the largest product discovery and shopping platforms globally, with millions of high-intent shoppers searching every day.

For ecommerce sellers and advertisers, this offers real-time access to a vast, ready-to-buy audience. The key advantage? Most shoppers on Amazon are already deep in their purchase journey. Advertising here means reaching the right customers when they’re most likely to convert.

In this blog, we look at why Amazon advertising is a must-have strategy in 2025, how different ad types impact visibility, and the key tactics sellers can use to improve rankings, scale performance, and grow profitably on the world’s biggest ecommerce stage.

Why advertisers cannot ignore Amazon ads in 2025

Research shows that the average conversion rate for Amazon Ads is approximately 9.5 to 10%, significantly outperforming the average ecommerce conversion rate of around 1.33% on non-Amazon platforms.

This high conversion rate is attributed to Amazon’s ability to target users who are deep in the decision-making phase, increasing the likelihood of purchase and making it attractive to sellers.

Aside from this, Amazon’s algorithm is designed to promote:

So when you run ads, it directly influences both of these factors, which in turn influence your organic rankings.

Amazon’s unique edge lies in its first-party data. Advertisers get insights into shopping behavior from the data collected directly from customers who use Amazon and its services. You get to target specific customer groups, customize the data for advanced analytics, and even track off-Amazon conversions.

How to get seen: Winning visibility in competitive categories

The average customer probably sees dozens of listings for a single search. This is not surprising since it is common for thousands of brands to sell similar products on Amazon, sometimes even in the same price range.

To stand out, you would need a strong strategy that drives visibility for your products.

But before we dive into this, it is important to understand how different Amazon ad types impact visibility.

What are the different types of Amazon-sponsored ads, and how do they work

1. Sponsored Products

These are targeted ads that appear in search results and product detail pages. They are shown to shoppers actively searching for a product. Sponsored Products can be used to capture high-intent traffic and drive direct conversions.

For example, if a shopper searches “wireless earbuds,” your Sponsored Product ad can show up at the top of search results if you bid on that keyword.

Sponsored Products

2. Sponsored Brands

Sponsored Brands focus on brand awareness and allow businesses to customize ads by including their brand logo, a custom headline, and multiple products within product detail pages and shopping results.

Sponsored Brands

 

They are great for increasing awareness across your product line and driving traffic to your Amazon store.

3. Sponsored Display

This is a type of display advertising where you can target specific audiences based on their browsing behavior on Amazon. Ads will be displayed on Amazon as well as on third-party websites and apps for a wider reach. You can reach customers who viewed your products but didn’t purchase, or even shoppers browsing competitor products.

Sponsored Display

 

Sponsored Display ads can be used to stay top-of-mind and bring shoppers back to your offerings.

4. Sponsored TV

Sponsored TV is Amazon’s premium video ad format that lets brands appear on streaming content via Amazon Freevee, Fire TV, and other connected TV (CTV) placements. These are non-skippable, full-screen ads that reach audiences watching shows, movies, and live sports.

Sponsored TV

 

Sellers can use Sponsored TV for building brand awareness at the top of the funnel, especially for launches or seasonal campaigns.

Key levers to boost visibility and sales on Amazon

1. Understand Amazon’s A9.

The Amazon A9 algorithm is the system that determines which products should rank within search results. Since Amazon’s goal is to sell products, the algorithm will prioritize products with high-performing ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Number).

The A9 algorithm also prioritizes listings based on:

When you understand these ranking signals, you can optimize your listing and advertising strategy to trigger them. For example:

Optimizing your listings for conversions by working on product images, title, bullet points, description, A+ content, and price, and growing your review count.

💡Pro Tip: Use Optmyzr’s automated reports to identify keywords that are bringing in the most visibility and sales so you can prioritize them in your product listings. You can use pre-built strategies in Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to automate the report delivery so you don’t need to manually set up anything.

2. Study competitor pricing strategy.

Amazon shoppers often view multiple product listings to compare prices before making a purchase. If your pricing does not match your customers’ expectations or what your top competitors are offering, you risk losing clicks and sales.

To improve your pricing strategy:

3. Use Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display strategically.

Sponsored Product ads are displayed to shoppers who are actively searching for a product, making them great for conversions. But if you’re in a crowded market, it’s very important to build brand recognition and trust.

A stronger strategy may look like this:

This allows you to cover every stage of the buyer journey, improving visibility and conversions, especially in competitive categories.

💡Pro Tip: Optmyzr allows you to identify campaigns hitting budget limits— ones that could scale further if given more budget. You can then use Optimize Budgets to allocate more budgets to these high-potential campaigns.

 

Optimize budgets

4. Maintain stock availability.

One of the most important principles when selling on Amazon is that you don’t run out of stock. However, unexpected spikes in sales or port delays can cause stockouts even for the most well-planned brands.

During such instances, it’s important to pause your ads before your stock runs out.

While Amazon automatically stops ads once a product is out of stock, proactively pausing them helps preserve margin and gives your incoming inventory time to be received and restocked, avoiding wasted ad spend and poor customer experience.

You can set up a strategy on Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to automatically turn off ads when your inventory levels are running low.

Define the threshold for low inventory using your preferred metric, such as days of supply, and link a Google Sheet that lists ASINs below that threshold. Campaigns associated with those ASINs can be paused until inventory recovers.

Pause ads

 

You can also create a complementary rule to re-enable ads once inventory levels rise above the defined threshold, ensuring your campaigns resume without manual effort.

Watch: Supercharge Your Amazon PPC Campaigns with This Toolkit

Using ads can boost organic growth on Amazon

Amazon’s algorithm, like we discussed before, ranks products based on their sales velocity, conversion rates, and customer experience.

There’s a catch, though. New listings will struggle to rank because they lack reviews, sales, and CTR data.

Without visibility, it would be harder to get the momentum needed to improve rankings.

In scenarios like this, using ads can help you kickstart the performance of your listings and help them rank higher. Here’s how you can use them strategically:

How to amplify what’s working for you

Once you’ve identified what’s driving results, the next step is to double down on high-performing campaigns and product lines. Here’s how brands can scale smartly:

1. Use Amazon ads to amplify top-performing products.

2. Cross-sell and upsell with Sponsored Brand and Display ads.

3. Scale profitable campaigns.

4. Use Amazon Attribution to get the full funnel picture.

5. Use dynamic bidding and placement adjustments to scale.

Power up your Amazon PPC with data-driven automation.

Running Amazon ads in 2025 is a crucial growth lever for e-commerce businesses. Ads can boost organic rankings, improve visibility, and drive high-intent traffic that converts into sales.

However, running successful campaigns on Amazon means making sure you have the right data on what’s working and what’s not and then using those insights to optimize performance and scale your winning strategies.

With automation tools like Rule Engine, budget optimization, and custom reporting, Optmyzr makes it easy to identify high-performing campaigns, scale them intelligently, and eliminate wasted spend.

Sign up for Optmyzr’s free 14-day trial and explore how you can scale your Amazon PPC campaigns for success.

 

Why Layering Automation on Native Bidding Can Outperform Proprietary Systems

When it comes to PPC bidding, the conversation can sometimes sound more divided than it actually is. Native bidding, proprietary algorithms, and manual rules each have their place, and for many advertisers, the real strategy lies in how you blend them.

Most campaigns don’t succeed by choosing one method and sticking to it rigidly.

Instead, layering different levels of automation helps you adapt to changing goals, data availability, and platform dynamics.

Maybe your campaign isn’t ready for Smart Bidding yet. Maybe you’re migrating from a platform that offered more control.

Or perhaps even with automation in place, you’re still spending too much time micromanaging it.

This article breaks down when and why Smart Bidding makes sense, where it can still fall short, and how automation layering gives you a smarter way to guide rather than surrender to machine-driven strategies.

What is proprietary bidding?

Proprietary bidding refers to third-party bidding systems that use their own custom algorithms to manage bidding in online ad auctions.

Each proprietary algorithm has its distinct logic, mathematical models, and optimization strategies. These are the intellectual property of the developing entity and are often a key differentiator in the market.

These systems operate outside the ad platforms’ native Smart Bidding and typically require campaigns to run on manual strategies such as Manual CPC.

That’s because they need direct access to keyword-level or ad group-level bids to function, whereas Smart Bidding automatically adjusts bids in real time during the auction. The key distinction is that external systems make bidding decisions through API-based rules or scripts, rather than participating directly in the ad platform’s real-time bidding process.

Why do advertisers choose proprietary bidding?

Advertisers often turn to proprietary systems when they need more control, customization, or flexibility than native Smart Bidding allows.

This can include applying specialized industry knowledge, enforcing business-specific rules, optimizing for custom KPIs, or addressing a lack of trust that Smart Bidding will bid as efficiently for their specific needs.

However, proprietary systems face some limitations.

They don’t have access to many of the ad platforms’ real-time auction signals, which can impact their ability to optimize bids as precisely as Smart Bidding.

Some platforms have developed partial workarounds to layer proprietary logic on top of certain Smart Bidding strategies, but these approaches often come with constraints and are typically best suited for specific, well-defined scenarios.

How smart bidding stacks up

Let’s clear one thing up: Smart Bidding isn’t a “set it and forget it” strategy. It’s more like “set it, guide it, and check in regularly.”

At its core, Smart Bidding is auction-time bidding. That means ad platforms adjust your bid in real time, right as the auction happens, based on what they know about the person seeing your ad.

It taps into hundreds of signals, many of which you’ll never see in the Google Ads UI or even through the API.

That’s where Smart Bidding shines: it reacts instantly to signals humans (or rules) can’t process fast enough. In many cases, it outperforms even the most well-crafted manual strategies or proprietary bidding rules.

But not always.

Smart Bidding has important limitations you need to account for.

Limitations of Smart Bidding

To its credit, Smart Bidding has improved significantly over time, especially in handling multiple conversion types, new customer acquisition goals, and broader campaign types like Performance Max.

But it’s still not a perfect fit for every advertiser or every campaign.

Sometimes Smart Bidding needs a nudge. Sometimes it needs to be tested against your legacy approach before you can trust it. Sometimes it just needs better inputs and oversight.

That brings us to the automation dilemma: how to get the best of Smart Bidding without giving up your ability to guide and refine it.

Finding the middle ground: where strategy meets automation

Automation was supposed to save time, and in many ways, it does. However, for a lot of advertisers, it’s become a new type of time sink.

Instead of adjusting bids manually, you’re now fine-tuning automated settings, testing scripts, unpausing rules, and double-checking if ad platforms’ automation really aligns with your goals.

Our CEO, Frederick Vallaeys, calls this the binary trap in his book Unlevel the Playing Field: The Biggest Mindshift in PPC History. You either give the ad platforms full control and risk mediocrity, or you micromanage every lever and lose scalability.

Some try to break out of this trap by turning to proprietary bidding platforms. These solutions offer specialized capabilities, particularly for certain industries or campaign types where more customized approaches deliver value.

However, there are important trade-offs to consider when using systems that operate independently from ad platforms’ native automation.

Ad platforms analyze numerous auction-time signals for each search in real time. These signals include everything from device type, location, time of day, to historical conversion likelihood and beyond.

While proprietary algorithms bring their own strengths, they may face challenges accessing the full range of real-time data that Smart Bidding utilizes directly.

That’s why many successful advertisers aren’t choosing between external solutions and native automation: they’re layering their own logic on top of native automation, combining the strengths of both approaches.

That’s where automation layering changes the game.

Automation layering: the smarter middle path

Automation layering is the antidote to that binary thinking. It’s a strategy-first approach that embraces native automation like Smart Bidding but surrounds it with intelligent, customized layers of control.

It’s a way to avoid blindly trusting the ad platform while still taking advantage of what it does well.

Instead of handing over the keys or constantly fighting the system, you guide automation in the right direction. You define the strategy. You intervene when needed. You keep your campaigns from drifting into inefficiency.

Think of it this way: if Smart Bidding is the engine, automation layering is your steering system.

The beauty of this approach is its flexibility.

Your automation layering strategy can be tailored to your specific situation, whether you’re managing high-volume ecommerce campaigns requiring minimal oversight or specialized B2B campaigns where every lead requires careful qualification.

You can dial the degree of control up or down based on factors like conversion volume, business seasonality, and your competitive landscape.

And it’s not just theory, it’s increasingly the go-to strategy for savvy advertisers looking to scale without sacrificing performance.

Four primary ways to layer automation

Google Ads has a wealth of automation options, but these principles are adaptable across other platforms like Microsoft, Meta, or Amazon.

While we’ll focus on Google Ads here, you’ll find that many of the same concepts can be applied wherever you’re managing campaigns.

Google’s built-in tools

These are native to the platform, meaning they don’t require third-party integrations or external platforms, but they do require advertiser input for setup and configuration.

Examples:

Great for: Simple safeguards or when you want to stay entirely within Google Ads

Imported scripts

Google Ads scripts let you automate using JavaScript, either by writing your own or importing them from an external library. These scripts provide more flexibility and customization compared to the built-in scripts in the Google Ads UI.

Examples:

Great for: Mid-level customization, fast deployment, and tasks that need daily checks or actions

Third-party tools

Tools like Optmyzr, Skai, and Adalysis offer prebuilt automations, alerts, and optimization features that go beyond what the ad platforms provide.

Examples:

Great for: Advertisers and agencies who want powerful features without writing code

Custom solutions using the Google Ads API

For brands with dev resources or unique use cases, the Google Ads API enables full control.

Examples:

Great for: Advanced users or large-scale advertisers with unique business logic

What can automation layering help with?

Automation layering gives you the best of both worlds: the speed and scale of Smart Bidding, plus the strategic oversight and customization you need to hit your goals.

Let’s now go through some specific scenarios where automation layering makes a dramatic difference, along with the Optmyzr tools that make these strategies accessible. 👇

Catching performance fluctuations early

Automation layering is a powerful way to stay on top of performance changes and catch fluctuations before they turn into bigger issues.

With the right automation in place, you can get alerts the moment something goes off track.

Signal to watch:

How to layer in control:

Set up automated alerts for core metrics across campaigns.

Native Google Ads tools like custom rules can flag these changes, or third-party solutions like Optmyzr’s Anomaly Alerts can detect and notify you automatically.

You don’t need to manually set them up as they are automatically triggered by the system.

📌Example: A sudden 40% drop in impressions on a top campaign could signal a budget cap, a bidding issue, or ad disapproval. Catching it early can help prevent a bigger revenue dip.

Adjusting targets without disrupting campaigns

When managing smart bidding strategies like Maximum Conversions or Maximum Conversion Value, you can’t manually adjust bids for individual keywords or product groups.

Instead, you optimize your campaigns by tweaking your Target CPA or Target ROAS.

However, it’s crucial to adjust these targets carefully. If you make drastic changes, you risk throwing your campaigns into learning mode, which can disrupt performance and cause delays as the system re-adjusts.

Signals to watch:

How to layer in control:

When adjusting Target CPA or Target ROAS, make small, incremental changes (5–10%) to avoid sending campaigns back into learning mode.

That’s where tools like Optimize Target CPA and Optimize Target ROAS come in. These tools let you adjust targets at the ad group level without upsetting the balance.

 

Here’s how it works: If an ad group is converting well but losing impression share due to a low ad rank, the tools will help increase the target CPA or lower the target ROAS.

 

This allows Google Ads to bid higher, improving ad rank and capturing more impressions.

On the flip side, if an ad group is already performing well, exceeding the target CPA or ROAS, you can gradually reduce the target CPA or increase the target ROAS.

This helps avoid over-allocating the budget and maximizes ROI.

Avoid budget surprises with smart pacing alerts

Budgets don’t usually fail all at once; they quietly drift off course. Maybe you overspend in the first half of the month and scramble to rein things in later.

Or you underspend and leave conversions on the table. Either way, performance takes a hit.

Signals to watch:

How to layer in control:

Set up automated pacing alerts that track your spending against monthly targets and expected patterns. Configure these alerts to notify relevant team members when spending deviates from the expected pace.

Set up budget pacing alerts using Optmyzr’s custom alerts

 

It’s a simple way to keep your campaigns consistent and avoid those end-of-month surprises.

Pausing underperforming keywords

There’s a hidden cost to keeping underperforming keywords active for too long.

They don’t just waste money but dilute your campaign performance, slow down learning, and make it harder for automated bidding to focus on what actually works.

Yet, many accounts still let these keywords run unchecked because manually reviewing them takes time.

This is where automation layering can make a real difference.

Signals to watch:

How to layer in control:

Implement systematic reviews that identify and pause non-converting keywords once they’ve received statistically significant traffic. Use tools like Optmyzr’s Pause Non-Converting Keywords that automatically identify keywords that have received enough traffic but haven’t converted during a selected date range.

Make hyper-specific DSAs doable at scale

Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) are powerful for capturing long-tail traffic, but they can quickly become a mess if everything’s lumped into one ad group. Microsoft Ads supports standalone DSAs, offering advertisers a valuable tool for campaign structure.

That’s why advanced advertisers go granular and create one ad group per product detail page (PDP) to align ad copy, keywords, and landing pages for better relevance and higher conversion rates.

Signals to watch:

The problem? Doing that manually for thousands of products isn’t practical.

How to layer in control:

With Microsoft Ads, you can still use feed-based automation to build and maintain granular DSA campaigns that mirror your product structure. Tools like Optmyzr’s Campaign Automator can help you build these granular campaigns in under an hour.

It pulls directly from your product feed to create ad groups and ads that reflect the actual product name, price, and promo, so you stay relevant and efficient.

Trigger campaigns based on real-world signals like weather

For seasonal businesses, showing ads at precisely the right moment can dramatically improve performance. Yet standard automation alone can’t respond accurately to external factors like weather conditions.

Signals to watch:

How to layer in control:

Use weather APIs and geo-targeting rules to activate campaigns only when conditions are ideal for purchases. Combine these environmental triggers with Google’s native automation for maximum impact.

For example, Matthieu Van-Tran, a Google Ads consultant who has managed over $350M in ad spend, shared an interesting approach.

For a premium swimwear brand, he implemented weather-triggered automation that activates Performance Max campaigns only when temperatures reach 27°C or higher in top-converting cities. The system pushes fresh seasonal creative across Google’s network precisely when shoppers are most likely to buy, resulting in more sales.

Matthieu shares plenty of real-world advice on how he uses automation layering for his clients. If you want to learn more, check out the session here.

Excluding irrelevant YouTube placements

Excluding irrelevant YouTube placements is crucial to ensure that your ads only appear in front of the right audience.

Signals to watch:

For example, let’s say you’re launching a premium business software campaign, and you’ve allocated a significant portion of your advertising budget to YouTube.

But instead of reaching professionals, your analytics reveal that your ads are appearing on gaming channels, kids’ content, and other irrelevant placements, with minimal conversions to show for it.

How to layer in control:

Create automated rules that analyze placement performance and content categorization to exclude underperforming placements.

Use Google Ads exclusion lists or tools like Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to systematically refine placement quality.

Here’s a simple yet effective rule used by Amy McClain-Ponder, Group Director of Paid Search at Beeby Clark+Meyler (BCM), to deal with irrelevant YouTube placements:

 

The Rule Logic:

The Action:

 

💡Optmyzr Tip: Rule Engine also has pre-built strategies to exclude Gaming and Kids placements for PMax campaigns to prevent wasted spend. Check out our full list of pre-built strategies here.

When Smart Bidding isn’t the right fit (yet)

Not every campaign is ready for Smart Bidding out of the gate. Maybe it’s too new. Maybe there’s not enough conversion data.

Or maybe you just want a little more control while things ramp up.

That’s where rule-based bidding can still play a big role, especially if you’re coming from a platform like Marin or have a performance-focused workflow you’re trying to replicate.

When you might need rule-based bidding

Before diving into the specific rule-based moves, let’s set the stage:

If any of these sound familiar, rule-based bidding could be the right choice for now, with the flexibility to transition to Smart Bidding as you gather more data and insights.

Smart rule-based moves you can set up in Optmyzr

Now, let’s look at a few powerful rule-based automation strategies that you can create using Optmyzr’s Rule Engine. These rules are pre-built but fully customizable to suit your specific needs.

You can set your own thresholds, so you have the flexibility to refine them as you see fit.

Here’s what you can do:

Modify device bid adjustments at the ad group level

Some devices perform better than others in converting your ad clicks to actual sales or leads.

This rule helps you automatically adjust your bids to push more budget toward the devices that are performing well and away from those that aren’t.

How It Works:

Reduce bids for expensive keywords

Even with all your keyword research and testing, some keywords just end up being budget drains. This rule automatically identifies and reins in keywords that are costing too much compared to their performance.

How It Works:

 

And if you’re seeing similar performance issues at the product group or ad group level, you’re covered there too.

Optmyzr has prebuilt rules for adjusting bids on underperforming product groups and ad groups based on the same logic, whether it’s a high CPA, too many clicks without conversions, or just general inefficiency.

Set audience bid adjustments to target cost/conversion

The cost per conversion can sometimes fluctuate wildly across campaigns. This clever pair of rules helps you automatically keep your bids in check without constant checking.

The more expensive your conversions, the more aggressive the correction.

How It Works:

 

The adjustments only trigger when you have meaningful data (minimum 100 impressions, 10 clicks, and 3 conversions).

And that’s not all! You can create additional tailored rules for gender, age range, household income, and device targeting to refine your approach even further.

 

Creating these demographic-specific rules helps by allowing you to automatically shift budget toward high-performing segments and away from underperforming ones.

Optimize bids to target ROAS

This clever sequence of rules automatically adjusts your ad group bids to hit your target return on ad spend (ROAS) based on the freshest reliable data available.

What makes this approach so brilliant is the progressive lookback windows.

The system first checks your most recent 7-day performance, then expands to 14 days, 30 days, 60 days, and finally 90 days until it finds enough conversion data to make confident decisions.

How It Works:

 

The rules only trigger when you have at least one conversion in the lookback period and when your campaign uses CPC bidding. This prevents crazy bid adjustments when there’s insufficient data or when you’re using different bidding strategies.

There’s also a similar rule for keywords that works on the same principle.

It lets you set keyword-level bids to help you meet your target return on ad spend, using the same progressive lookback windows.

Optimize bids to Target CPA

This rule automatically sets your ad group bids to achieve your target cost per acquisition (CPA) goals based on reliable performance data.

How It Works:

And just like with target ROAS, there’s another strategy that lets you set keyword bids to optimize for a target CPA.

Reduce bid gaps in Shopping campaigns

In Shopping campaigns, bid gaps (where your bids are higher than what you’re actually paying) can lead to unexpected cost spikes.

This rule helps close those gaps to keep your bids in line with actual costs, which prevents overspending.

How It Works:

Striking the Balance: layering automation with strategic insight

When it comes to PPC, automation is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s essential. But it’s not just about letting the system run on autopilot.

Relying solely on Smart Bidding or any one-size-fits-all automation can leave room for inefficiencies and missed opportunities. The real power comes from combining the ad platforms’ automation with your own strategic insights.

Think of it as finding the balance: automation handles the repetitive tasks while you steer the campaign with your expertise. And with the right tools, you can apply this smarter, more flexible approach no matter the size of your account.

Want to see how? Sign up for a full functionality 14-day free trial

How to Use Portfolio Bidding and Campaign Groups (And Actually Track Their Impact)

Managing bids across multiple campaigns shouldn’t feel like a daily firefight. But it often does. One campaign burns through the budget overnight. Another gets zero conversions.

Smart bidding helps, but only to a point. Especially when campaigns are isolated and goals aren’t aligned.

That’s where portfolio bidding and campaign groups come in. They help you group campaigns by goal, share data more effectively, and make smarter decisions with less micromanagement.

In this guide, you’ll learn:

Let’s break it down.

What is Portfolio Bidding?

Portfolio bidding is a feature available in both Google Ads and Microsoft Ads that lets you group multiple campaigns, ad groups, or keywords under a single automated bidding strategy, like Target ROAS (tROAS) or Target CPA (tCPA). The platform then uses real-time signals to adjust bids across the portfolio to hit your shared goal.

It’s especially useful for advertisers who want to let Smart Bidding distribute budget and optimize bids across campaigns based on performance potential, instead of managing each one in isolation.

Even if you’re not grouping multiple campaigns, portfolio bidding is how you unlock features like bid caps and bid floors. So it’s common to set up a portfolio strategy for a single campaign just to gain that control.

Here’s what makes it powerful:

Example: A B2B advertiser on a tCPA strategy sees CPC spikes up to $25 on low-demand days. By switching to portfolio bidding and adding a Max CPC of $9, they put a “guardrail” in place to prevent budget blowouts, while still giving Smart Bidding enough flexibility to optimize toward their $30 CPA goal.

Is Portfolio Bidding right for any advertiser?

No. Portfolio bidding isn’t for everyone. It’s a smart way to unify and stabilize your bidding if you’re running multiple campaigns with the same conversion or revenue goals, or your campaigns suffer from low data volume.

When to use Portfolio Bidding?

When..

Example: You’re managing five ecommerce campaigns all targeting a ROAS of 700. With portfolio bidding, the platform treats them as a single unit, reallocates budget as needed, and Optmyzr helps you enforce smart guardrails using bid min/max automation.

When not to use Portfolio Bidding?

When..

What are Campaign Groups?

Campaign Groups in Google Ads are a way to organize and evaluate multiple campaigns that share a common business objective. You can think of them as a container that holds campaigns together so you can track their combined performance using shared KPIs like conversions, CPA, or ROAS.

They don’t influence bidding, but they provide a higher-level performance lens and let you define specific targets across all included campaigns.

Example: An ecommerce brand runs a mix of Search and Shopping campaigns to promote its seasonal product lines. They create a campaign group for all campaigns focused on summer inventory and set a performance target of 500 conversions with a target ROAS of 4.5. Within a week, they monitor the group’s performance and spot one campaign with a much lower ROAS. They quickly adjust product targeting and bids, helping the group trend back toward the overall goal.

When to use Campaign Groups?

When…

Example: You’re running 6 campaigns for a Mother's Day promo across YouTube, Search, and Display. Use a campaign group to track conversions and CPA from all of them combined.

When not to use Campaign Groups?

When…

How to measure success at the portfolio and group level?

This is where most people get stuck. You’ve turned on tCPA across five campaigns, grouped them under a portfolio… now what?

Here’s how to make sure you’re tracking the right outcomes:

💡 Pro tip: Use Optmyzr to create deviation-based alerts. You can set alerts to flag campaigns that are underperforming the portfolio average by, say, 50%, so you can course-correct quickly.

 

For campaign groups, Google lets you set performance targets that track your progress over time. You can define conversion goals, CPA ceilings, ROAS floors, and even track by time periods (monthly, quarterly, or custom windows).

Here are some common mistakes to avoid

1. Setting a Max CPC cap that’s too tight

In portfolio bidding, especially with tCPA, setting a Max CPC can be a smart guardrail. But if you set it too low, you’ll end up constraining smart bidding altogether.

Tip: Don’t treat Max CPC like a strict ceiling. Instead, use it as a flexible limit that allows for variation. Setting it at 50–100% above your average CPC gives enough breathing room for algorithms to work effectively without overspending.

2. Combining campaigns with unrelated objectives

When using portfolio bidding or campaign groups, mixing campaigns with different goals (like one focused on visibility and another on sales) can confuse Google’s algorithms and skew your results.

For example, if you group a brand awareness campaign with a performance-driven campaign in a portfolio, you’ll get inconsistent signals that make it harder for Google to optimize toward any one outcome​​.

Tip: Keep your groups clean. Align on goal type, like all campaigns driving purchases, or all campaigns aiming for a specific ROAS.

3. Optimizing only at the campaign level

One of the biggest missed opportunities with portfolio bidding is continuing to analyze performance campaign by campaign. The whole point of a portfolio strategy is that Google uses cross-campaign insights to optimize toward the shared goal.

If you don’t look at aggregate outcomes, you might mistakenly pause a campaign that’s strategically helping the portfolio overall.

Tip: Regularly review the overall performance of the portfolio (conversion volume, CPA, ROAS, and how budget is distributed). Use tools like Optmyzr’s deviation-based alerts to flag outliers so you can spot issues without losing sight of the bigger picture​.

4. Failing to revisit performance targets regularly

Campaign group targets, like conversion or CPA goals, can drift out of alignment if market conditions change. If you’re not updating these benchmarks quarterly or after key campaigns, you could be aiming at the wrong outcome.

Tip: Use historical benchmarking in tools like Optmyzr to compare current performance against past time periods. This gives context to what’s working and what needs adjusting.

How Optmyzr helps you, the way Google Ads doesn’t

While Google Ads gives you the basics, Optmyzr adds advanced control, visibility, and automation to make portfolio bidding and campaign groups easier to manage and scale.

Here’s what you get:

  1. Performance alerts for campaign portfolios based on deviation ratios
  2. Cross-campaign monitoring via dashboards and KPIs
  3. Quick identification of outliers to help make informed decisions on adjusting budgets, targeting, or tactics accordingly
  4. Automated rules and scripts to adjust bids when metrics fall outside target ranges

1. Performance alerts based on deviation ratios

Why it matters:

Optmyzr’s alerts help you catch campaigns that aren’t pulling their weight, like one that’s spending three times more than others but failing to deliver results.

 

📈 Optmyzr’s strategic alerts trim Morefire’s workload by 15% per account

Use it for:

Learn more: How to set up your alerts to monitor KPIs

2. Cross-campaign dashboards and KPI tracking

Why it matters:

View performance across all your campaigns in one place using the All Accounts Dashboard. It makes it easier to compare trends and track progress without jumping between multiple accounts or spreadsheets.

 

Use it for:

Learn more: How the All Accounts Dashboard gives you a bird’s-eye view

3. Quickly identify outliers to make informed decisions

It’s not just about tracking totals. Benchmarking helps you quickly spot which campaigns in a group are outperforming or falling behind so you can adjust strategy before small issues become big problems.

 

“Our entire team loved the PPC Investigator tool for its capacity to deliver clear insights into the root causes of changes in campaign performance.”

- Mike Rhodes, WebSavvy

📈 Optmyzr empowers WebSavvy to prioritize client profitability over Google’s interests

Use it for:

Learn more: How PPC Investigator helps you clearly identify performance changes

4. Automated bid rules and scripts

Why it matters:

You can adjust bids automatically based on how your campaigns are performing, so you don’t have to make changes manually every day. The Rule Engine is one of Optmyzr’s most powerful tools that allows for complex and customized bid management strategies.

{{< youtube id=“DKbQIYLEy98” title=“Rule Engine for PPC Automation” >}}

 

“At Anicca Digital, we use Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to manage bids to a target ROAS.”

- Holly Kelly

📈Anicca boosts ROAS with rule-based bids for an energy broker using the Rule Engine

Use it for:

Learn more: 6 Rule Engine Strategies: How Optmyzr Customers Bypass Google Ads Limitations

What does the data say about bidding strategies?

Our 2024 bidding strategies data study offers some guidance on choosing a bid strategy:

So instead of asking “which is best?”, ask:
“Do I’ve enough conversions?" “Are my goals realistic?” “Am I giving Google enough to work with?”

That’s when automation (and portfolio bidding) really starts to pay off.

It’s time to get strategic with automation.

Using portfolio bidding and campaign groups isn’t about giving up control. It’s about replacing micromanagement with strategy. These tools help you streamline bidding, share learnings, and prioritize what matters most—business goals.

With the right setup and the right tools (hey, Optmyzr), you can:

So if you’ve been hesitant to give portfolio strategies a shot, or if you’ve used them but haven’t measured success properly, now’s the time to rethink your approach.

And if you want the best of both worlds — powerful optimization and clear reporting — use Optmyzr to fill the gaps with alerts, rules, and portfolio-level insight you won’t get natively in Google Ads.

Sign up for a 14-day free Optmyzr trial today.

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Let your bidding strategy scale with your ambition.

 

How to Build Inventory-Based PPC Campaign Templates That Scale

Inventory moves fast. If your campaigns can’t keep up, you’re either missing revenue or wasting spend.

In today’s market, PPC teams are facing tighter budgets, shifting consumer demand, and mounting pressure from leadership to justify every dollar spent. With unpredictable costs and cautious spending across industries, there’s little room for error.

If you’re managing products or listings that change often, or juggling multiple accounts, manual campaign creation quickly becomes unsustainable. Rebuilding campaigns every time your inventory updates is a time sink. And if you’re transitioning from an older tech stack that no longer meets your needs, you’re likely searching for something more reliable and scalable.

You need a smarter, more adaptive system: one that responds in real time to changes in your inventory so your ads stay relevant, accurate, and efficient. This guide shows you how to do just that by creating inventory-based campaigns that update themselves using dynamic templates and your live product feed.

You’ll learn how to personalize messaging at scale, stay in control, and stop rebuilding from scratch. Whether you’re promoting cars, clothing, properties, travel packages, or job listings, this approach helps you save time, boost performance, and scale your campaigns without the chaos.

What are inventory-based campaigns?

Inventory-based campaigns are created using a live feed of your products or services. Instead of manually updating every ad, you build a reusable template that pulls in real-time attributes like price, availability, or model. As the feed changes, your ads update automatically.

If your stock changes daily or you manage many campaigns across accounts, manual updates aren’t practical. Automated campaigns built from templates keep your ads accurate, timely, and efficient—perfect for industries like ecommerce, travel, real estate, jobs, and automotive.

Glossary: Key terms in this guide

Why templates are the smartest way to scale

Let’s say you manage thousands of SKUs, like sports gear or seasonal products. Manually creating campaigns for every category or product line would take days. One catch-all campaign might be faster, but it gives you zero control.

Templates solve this. You set one campaign structure, define how to pull in key data from your feed, and let automation do the rest. You get targeted ads, organized ad groups, and relevant keywords—without starting from scratch.

You’re not locked into generic messaging. You can create dynamic rules like: “Prices starting from $<min(Price)>” or insert values like {Brand}, {Category}, or {Discount}. That’s flexible, scalable, and personalized automation.

Building campaigns that adapt automatically

Templates are only useful if they stay in sync with your inventory. That’s where Optmyzr’s Campaign Automator comes in:

Example: Add a new product line to your feed? A new campaign is auto-created with the right structure, ads, and targeting.

Inventory filters: Show what’s relevant

You don’t need to advertise everything. With Inventory Filters, you can:

Inventory Filters

 

This keeps your budget focused on what really matters.

Dynamic ads, assets, and keywords

Templates shine when paired with dynamic content—this means using placeholders in your campaign setup that pull live data from your feed. For example:

Dynamic Insertion

 

Your campaigns stay relevant, even as inventory and pricing evolve.

Automating without losing control

Automation doesn’t mean giving up control. Campaign Automator includes helpful features that let you stay on top of everything:

Use cases by industry: What this looks like in the real world

Ecommerce

Automotive

What our customers achieved:

These aren’t just improvements—they’re proof that smarter automation leads to bigger wins.

Real estate

Travel

Job listings

DSA campaigns

Matthieu Tran-Van saved 96% of the time he used to spend on campaign creation using Campaign Automator to launch DSA campaigns. Structured feed data powered fully dynamic ads—without losing quality.

Why Campaign Automator makes this easier

Campaign Automator is purpose-built to create, manage, and scale inventory-based campaigns without compromise:

Campaign Automator is just one part of Optmyzr’s all-in-one PPC platform. That means you don’t need separate tools to build, monitor, or improve your campaigns. You can create search, display, or DSA campaigns from your inventory, track performance trends using built-in reports, and use tools like Rule Engine to analyze what’s working and update your templates to make everything better.

It’s a full loop of creation, optimization, and scale—all in one place, without the chaos. And because everything is trackable and adjustable, you’re not only saving time. You’re also making smarter, more defensible decisions. So when your CFO asks how your ad budget is driving growth, you’ve got clear, data-backed answers.

Next steps: Build it once, evolve it always

Templates aren’t a hack, they’re a strategy. One that supports Optmyzr’s core philosophy: automation layering with PPC insurance. You scale fast, but stay safe.

You’re not stuck with rigid black-box automation or bloated workflows. You get:

No more manual rebuilds every time your catalog changes. Just evolving campaigns that do the heavy lifting without losing relevance, performance, or visibility.

Assets Created

Try Optmyzr’s Campaign Automator now

Launch your first dynamic inventory-based campaign in under 30 minutes—no repetitive work, no stress. Campaign Automator turns your product feed into high-performing, real-time ads with zero manual rebuilds.

Start your 14-day free trial and use our plug-and-play templates, designed for common industry verticals, so you can pick what fits and customize it quickly to get started.

Already a customer? Campaign Automator is free for one Google or Microsoft Ads account, and you can easily upgrade to manage more.

Need help? Check out our detailed user guide, or contact support@optmyzr.com to get a guided demo for easier setup.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is an inventory-based campaign, and how does it work?

A campaign built using your live product or service feed. Templates dynamically update ads based on real-time attributes like price, availability, or product type.

2. How do I create scalable PPC campaigns from a product feed?

Use a tool like Optmyzr’s Campaign Automator to turn your feed into dynamic campaigns using templates, filters, and real-time syncing.

3. What is Campaign Automator, and how much does it cost?

It’s Optmyzr’s tool for automating the creation and update of inventory-based search, display, and DSA campaigns. It’s free for one Google or Microsoft Ads account for existing Optmyzr customers. For non-customers, pricing starts at $89/month.

4. Is Campaign Automator a good fit for managing large or complex inventories?

Yes. It’s built for advertisers managing frequent inventory updates across ecommerce, automotive, real estate, travel, and job verticals.

 

Simplify PPC Analysis: Proven Frameworks, Checklist & Trends in One Guide

Analysis plays a critical role in modern PPC advertising. Right now, where there’s less insight into your data and more control being taken away by the ad platforms, it becomes even more important to understand what’s happening in your account.

However, most advertisers struggle with it. Some of them don’t know where to start. Some don’t have the time or the expertise to do it themselves. And some make costly mistakes while performing an analysis.

In this article, you’ll learn:

What is PPC analysis?

PPC analysis is the process of examining and evaluating the performance of your PPC campaigns. It involves tracking and measuring key metrics such as clicks, impressions, click-through rate (CTR), quality score, conversion rate, cost per click (CPC), etc. By analyzing this data, you can identify areas where your campaigns are performing well and where they need to improve.

What is the purpose of PPC analysis?

The purpose of PPC analysis is to:

And how does it help? It helps you prove ROI, track progress and trends, and brief leadership or clients on the performance of your campaigns.

A framework for analyzing PPC reports

The way you present your PPC analysis report can impact the rest of your project.

If your clients don’t understand your analysis, it can lead to more questions for everyone involved, even if you’re doing a great job.

For starters, you’ll need to know where to look and what to look for.

Where to look?

The ad platforms already offer a bunch of reporting tools. But if you need better insight into what’s going on with your account performance, you can use a third-party tool.

What to look for?

During the analysis, look at the key metrics that are relevant to your goals. These metrics will vary depending on your specific business, but some of the most common metrics include:

3 tips to cleanly interpret PPC reporting data

1. Segment your data: Segmenting helps you identify specific areas of your campaigns that need more detailed evaluation. For example, you can segment your data by campaign, ad group, or keyword and find where things need to improve.

2. Identify causes for performance swings.

This is where you can flex your PPC expertise. If an important metric sees a rise or a fall, it’s time to find the reason that caused that shift.

Why the Google Ads editor isn’t ideal for PPC analysis

If you run Google Ads, chances are that you use the Google Ads editor to evaluate those shifts. Although it is a decent tool to help you with simpler analysis tasks, it’s not the ideal tool for deeper analysis like pinpointing the exact problems with your campaign performance.

A manual investigation of why performance in an account changed involves several steps in the Google Ads interface.

Here’s a video where Juan, our Senior Customer Success Manager explains it in detail.

 

The data we’ve shown in the video is only from a demo account that only has a few ad groups. Imagine analyzing campaign performance in a bigger account with dozens of campaigns, hundreds of ad groups, and hundreds of keywords. It can be as difficult as finding a needle in a haystack.

Optmyzr’s Root Cause Analysis tool can help you evaluate those performance shifts with ease.

Optmyzr’s Root Cause Analysis

 

3. Compare your performance to benchmarks: How your campaigns compare relative to your competitors or your industry is an area you can’t overlook. If you need help with this, look no further than Optmyzr’s PPC Vertical Benchmarks dashboard which lets you compare the performance of your account against other accounts in the same industry vertical or across verticals.

 

Tactics to improve your PPC campaigns + a post-analysis checklist

We reached out to a few experts and daily practitioners to learn what they do to improve their campaigns. Here’s what they suggest.

Amy McClain-Ponder, Group Director - Performance Media at Beeby Clark+Meyler said you should regularly check in on your Search Partners’ performance and exclude low-performing search queries. And speaking about if you should go broad, she said exact match worked wonders for them over broad and phrase match.

Related: Is It Time to Re-Evaluate Your Broad Match, Exact Match, and Smart Bidding Strategies? An Optmyzr Google Ads study

Here’s more detail into her tactics.

Benjamin Sulka, Paid Search & Acquisition Coordinator at Cleveland Clinic suggests tweaking your campaigns regularly.

“On a day-to-day basis, make sure all your efforts are approved. Any disapprovals should be addressed and fixed immediately. Analyze the search term report to ensure that your keywords match with relevant searches and the correct search intent.

Exclude all that are irrelevant and add them to your negative keyword list. And checking notifications for disapprovals and other issues allows you to make fixes as soon as they come up.” - Benjamin Sulka, Cleveland Clinic

He also listed several other tips below:

After consolidating all these tips, here’s a daily, weekly, and monthly PPC analysis checklist for you.

Daily PPC analysis checklist

  1. Check Ad Spend: Review your daily budget to ensure you’re not overspending. Monitor for any unexpected spikes in spending.
  2. Monitor CTR: Monitor your CTR daily to catch any sudden drops or spikes in click performance.
  3. Keep an eye on search query performance: Keep an eye on the performance of your high-value or high-cost keywords to prevent overspending or identify opportunities for bid adjustments.
  4. Check Ad Position: Check your ad positions to ensure they remain within your target range. Adjust bids as needed to maintain position.
  5. Review Search Term Report: Regularly review search term reports to identify irrelevant or costly search terms. Add negative keywords to filter out unwanted traffic.
  6. Review Negative Keywords: Review your negative keyword list and add any new negative keywords based on the week’s search term report.
  7. Review Ad Extensions: Check the performance of ad extensions, such as site links and callout extensions. Optimize or pause underperforming extensions.
  8. Adjust bids: Make real-time bid adjustments based on performance data. Increase bids for top-performing keywords or decrease bids for low-performing ones.

Weekly PPC analysis checklist

  1. Conduct a performance review: Assess the overall weekly performance of your campaigns. Look for trends and changes that need further investigation.
  2. Review A/B tests: Review the results of any A/B tests you’re running, such as ad copy, landing pages, or bidding strategies. Make adjustments based on your findings.
  3. Check Quality Score: Check Quality Scores for your keywords. Identify keywords with low scores and work on improving ad relevance and landing page quality.
  4. Review ad copy performance: Evaluate the performance of different ad copies and test new variations based on the data.
  5. Monitor competitors: Monitor competitors’ ads and strategies to stay competitive. Identify new competitors or changes in ad copy.
  6. Monitor budget allocation: Ensure your budget is being allocated efficiently. Shift the budget to campaigns or ad groups that are performing well.
  7. Review geographical performance: Analyze how different regions are performing and adjust geo-targeting settings as needed.
  8. Review device performance: Check how your ads perform on various devices (desktop, mobile, tablet). Adjust bids and ad copy for each device based on performance.

Monthly PPC analysis checklist

  1. Conduct a comprehensive monthly performance review: Conduct a comprehensive review of your monthly performance comparing it to previous months and assessing progress toward your goals.
  2. Conduct ROI Analysis: Calculate the ROI for your campaigns to ensure they align with your business objectives.
  3. Analyze your conversion funnel: Review the customer conversion journey and identify potential areas for improvement in the funnel.
  4. Check your audience segments: Analyze audience data and create or refine custom audience segments for more targeted advertising.
  5. Review all landing pages: Evaluate the performance of your landing pages. Make any necessary improvements to enhance user experience and conversions.
  6. Plan budgets: Plan your budget allocation for the upcoming month based on the performance data and goals.
  7. Adjust ad schedules: Review ad scheduling performance. Adjust the timing of your ads as needed based on monthly insights.
  8. Review ad messaging: Refresh your ad copy and messaging to keep it relevant and engaging.

Easily identify performance changes in your PPC account using the PPC Investigator and PPC Policy & Audits

PPC Investigator

The PPC Investigator is an insights tool that’ll help you find exactly which element in a given account caused a metric to increase or decrease, and whether it’s a keyword, placement, or an entire network that caused the changes.

Optmyzr’s PPC Investigator

 

It has two components:

  1. Cause Chart
  2. Root Cause Analysis

 

Cause Chart

The Cause Chart is based on the fact that the performance of every metric depends on the performance of other underlying metrics. It uses the relationships between different metrics to show potential causality.

Root Cause Analysis

After identifying which metric needs to be worked on, the Root Cause Analysis goes a step further and highlights the exact Campaigns/Ad groups/Product partition/Keywords, etc. that were responsible for the change in an account.

It shows top movers who are significant contributors to the change in the account when compared across the two date ranges. You can view the top three positive and negative movers for a particular account.

Optmyzr’s PPC Investigator testimonial

 

Here’s an example of how you can use the PPC Investigator. You can ask, “Why did my clicks change during this quarter as compared to the previous quarter?”

How to use Optmyzr’s Root Cause Analysis

 

Or, if you want to be specific about the date range, you can construct a question like, “Why did my Cost per conversion change during Aug. 10, 2023, and Aug. 15, 2023, compared to July 5, 2023, to July 10, 2023?”

And then wait for the tool to give you a visual answer.

You can see in the image above how the tool starts with one question or one ‘Why’ from you and then charts out the reasons by asking multiple whys in the process automatically.

Or if you’d like to know how your traffic from mobile devices has changed over say the last 30 days, this tool can figure out the root causes for the improved performance on mobile devices. This insight will help you plan future strategies for different devices.

Now, you need not necessarily use this tool only to identify problems in performance. You’d also want to know why something was working for you. For example, in the same image above, the display impression share has actually increased, which helps you understand what you are doing right.

The PPC Investigator is a favorite among our users and we don’t doubt why. If you’re serious about learning how your campaign performance has changed, you should give this tool a try.

PPC Policy and Audits

The PPC Policy and Audits is a tool to audit your accounts, specifying the parameters to be considered, and receiving an overall average performance grade to see how everything is doing.

PPC Policy and Audits

 

 

The tool lets you find if you have the right number of ads and keywords based on the latest best practices and suggests fixes if there are any issues. It can also detect missing RSAs, duplicate keywords, conflicting keywords, and more.

A way toward effective PPC performance analysis

Analyzing your campaigns is an ongoing process. It requires continuous evaluation, strategic thinking, and a commitment to adapt and refine campaigns based on changing market conditions and business goals.

However, many advertisers still neglect it, either because they don’t have the time or expertise to do it themselves, or they haven’t found an effective tool that can make it easier for them, or because they don’t see the value in it.

We would advise this: Start small. Focus on the most important metrics that matter to your bottom line. Don’t try to analyze every aspect of your campaigns at once.

And if you need help, make use of the Optmyzr tools mentioned in this article.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Amazon PPC Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide to Cut Wasted Ad Spend

Wasted ad spend doesn’t just hurt campaign performance, it slows growth.

When ACoS rises and sales stall, scaling becomes harder. Even experienced Amazon advertisers often struggle to trace where the budget is leaking or which campaigns are pulling their weight.

That’s why audits matter. They’re not just a fix — they’re PPC insurance. Regular audits safeguard your budget, protect performance, and catch issues early. It’s part of Optmyzr’s approach to campaign management: keeping your account resilient with layered automation that flags inefficiencies before they snowball.

This guide walks through what to check, how often, and why, so you can reduce waste, align with your TACoS goals, and keep your Amazon ad strategy as efficient as it is scalable.

What wasted spend looks like in Amazon PPC

If your ACoS is climbing and your ROAS is dipping, something’s off. Here’s how wasted spend typically shows up:

Often, the problem isn’t what you’re doing — it’s what you’re missing, like overlooked negative keywords or campaign structures that don’t match buyer intent because of poor audience targeting.

Let’s fix that.

Amazon PPC audit framework: a step-by-step guide

Step 1: Monitor key performance metrics regularly

Start by tracking the basics:

It’s not just about watching them — it’s about understanding how these metrics are trending and what they mean for your profitability.

💡 Pro tip: Set up automated alerts to catch changes early. You don’t want to discover a runaway ACoS after you’ve already blown through half your monthly budget.

If you’re looking for a platform to help you with this, Optmyzr’s Alerts Management System is a great place to start. You set the threshold, and the system flags metrics that are off-track.

Triggered Cost Alert

Step 2: Identify expensive keywords and search queries - and add negatives

Few things bleed budget more quietly than irrelevant traffic.

Pull your Amazon Search Term Report regularly. Flag:

Regularly adding negatives based on this data prevents repeat waste — this is where implementing a strong harvesting strategy and search term isolation comes in.

Want to speed this up? Optmyzr generates automated reports for:

The best part? These are pre-built strategies available in Optmyzr’s Rule Engine. You can customize them to match your goals and automate the report delivery with just a few clicks — no manual setup required.

Step 3: Audit non-converting products

Some ASINs just don’t perform well in ads — and that’s okay. But they shouldn’t drain your budget.

Review ASIN performance to identify products that:

Note: This isn’t always a “pause it” situation. Sometimes, it’s a signal to:

You can use Amazon’s Advertised Product reports for this, or audit faster with Optmyzr’s Audit tool, which flags inefficiencies like poor ASIN performance, low-converting placements, and missed opportunities tied to weak retail readiness.

Open SKU Performance Audit

 

Step 4: Review budget pacing and bid strategy

Budget pacing often gets overlooked, but it’s one of the fastest ways to either waste money or miss growth opportunities.

Ask yourself:

It’s worth setting alerts to monitor budget burn and checking spend projections mid-month. Even better, build automation safeguards that continuously monitor pacing and flag bid inconsistencies early.

If you manage bids manually, keeping everything aligned can get tedious fast, especially across multiple campaigns. That’s where automated budget pacing and smart bid rules can save time and protect spend.

As Inés Martín, Head of Performance at Línea Gráfica, puts it:

“My favorite aspect of managing Amazon Ads with Optmyzr is how easy it is to manage manual bidding compared to how tedious it is to do it directly on Amazon Ads.

With Optmyzr, in just a glance it’s easy to understand which bids I’m interested in modifying and how, without requiring cumbersome and time-consuming analysis.”

Step 5: Check campaign structure for hidden inefficiencies

Your campaign structure directly affects ad delivery, budget allocation, and ROI.

Watch for:

Structure issues can swing both ways — either you’re overspending on poor matches or starving your top performers. Both cost you.

Beyond that, strong Amazon campaign structures often align with product lifecycle stages (launch vs. scale) or repeat-purchase behavior, ensuring ads are matched to how people actually buy.

Use Amazon’s Campaign Reporting or Ads Console to regularly spot these inconsistencies, especially around suppressed listings or Buy Box loss.

Metrics that reveal wasted spend

Track these Amazon PPC performance metrics closely:

As a baseline, CTRs below 0.3% often indicate targeting issues, while ROAS under 2x typically signals poor campaign efficiency.

Mistakes advertisers make during manual audits

You’re not alone — we’ve seen these over and over:

1. Overlooking Amazon’s auto-suggestions

These reflect what customers actually type in. Reviewing them can validate your keyword strategy (or reveal what needs to be negated).

2. Reacting too slowly to KPI changes

Catching the issue is one thing. Fixing it quickly is another. Build workflows to take action fast — like adjusting bids on overvalued placements that aren’t converting.

3. Only auditing before client reviews

Audits should be monthly or even weekly. If you’re only doing them before a stakeholder check-in, you’re missing growth opportunities — and probably bleeding budget in the meantime.

4. Over-relying on Amazon’s default recommendations

While helpful, Amazon’s default suggestions often prioritize visibility over profitability. Blindly applying these can lead to inflated ACoS and wasted spend.

How to automate and scale Amazon PPC audits

Running manual audits across multiple accounts? Painful. That’s where audit automation makes a huge difference — and not just in time savings.

Platforms like Optmyzr help automate:

Watch this quick video to see how Optmyzr helps you audit and optimize during peak seasons.

 

And here’s what that looks like in practice: Morefire was able to cut 15% of their account management hours per week using Optmyzr, with audit automation playing a key role in that time savings. That’s not just time saved — it’s bandwidth reallocated toward growth-driving tasks.

The ROI of eliminating wasted spend

Cutting waste improves profitability across the board:

Final thoughts: Get audit-ready, gain efficiency

Audits aren’t just a maintenance routine — they’re your PPC insurance. Regularly checking for spend leaks, structural inefficiencies, and underperforming ASINs helps you safeguard your budget and performance. That’s the idea behind automation layering: setting up proactive systems to catch issues early, before they snowball.

Here’s what you should consistently track:

Whether you’re managing one account or a portfolio, structured audits are how you stay competitive and profitable.

And if you’re ready to scale without the manual slog, start your free Optmyzr trial and run a smart, automated Amazon Ads audit — covering 25+ performance and structure checks in minutes.

People Also Ask

1. How do I identify wasted ad spend on Amazon?

Start by reviewing key performance metrics like ACoS, ROAS, CTR, and Orders. Look for keywords, search terms, or ASINs that are spending budget but not driving conversions. Regularly audit your campaigns to catch issues like irrelevant queries, underperforming SKUs, or poor budget pacing. Use tools like the Amazon Search Term Report and Advertised Products Report — or automate the process with audit platforms that flag inefficiencies across keywords, products, and structure.

2. What are the most common causes of poor ROAS in Amazon Ads?

Poor ROAS is often caused by irrelevant keywords, weak negative keyword management, poor product targeting, and underperforming ASINs receiving too much budget. Other common issues include campaigns running out of budget too early, misaligned bids, and weak campaign structure. Regular audits help catch these problems before they impact profitability.

3. What does out-of-budget mean in Amazon Ads?

In Amazon Ads, “out-of-budget” means a campaign has exhausted its daily budget and is no longer eligible to show ads for the rest of the day. When this happens, Amazon may stop ad delivery entirely or significantly throttle impressions for the rest of the day. Either way, you risk missing out on valuable traffic, especially during high-converting hours. Monitoring budget pacing helps you avoid these drops and make sure your best campaigns stay live when it matters most.

Why Quality Score Still Deserves Your Attention in 2025

Coke vs. Pepsi, ketchup vs. mustard, caring about Quality Score vs. ignoring it – some debates are as old as time itself.

With more advertisers relying on first- and third-party automation to deliver great performance with less hassle, everybody has access to the same bid management tools. The assumption is that ad rank is impacted solely by bids and so the effort that goes into raising Quality Score (QS) is less important or rewarding.

Now, before going into the details, let’s back up a bit and understand what quality score actually is and the factors that contribute to it.

What Is Quality Score?

According to Google,

Quality Score is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Higher quality ads can lead to lower prices and better ad positions.

How is Quality Score calculated?

Image courtesy Instapage.com

Factors affecting Quality Score

Advertisers tend to depend largely on bidding strategies to gain a winning position in the ad auction, but overlooking Quality Score can actually harm your position. That’s because the things that improve your QS also make your ad more appealing to search users:

1. Ad Relevance

This component looks at how close your ad is to the search query. Google is looking at how closely the message in your ad matches the search term and its intent. This component is something you can manage more easily than the others on this list.

2. Expected Click-Through Rate (CTR)

This component is based on the historical performance of your keywords and ads. Google estimates how likely your ad is to be clicked based on things like ad text relevance, ad creativity, keyword relevance, and historical performance.

3. Landing Page Experience

Are your customers happy with what they see after clicking on your ad? Google is looking at how relevant your landing page is to the keyword and ad. But it also takes into account factors like transparency, ease of navigation, original content, and page load times, as they affect the overall user experience.

Google compiles these three factors to assign a score of 1 through 10 to every keyword. What this means is that this number is only a representation of the aggregate relevance of the keyword across auctions. It is not used to rank ads as a whole.

Since your ad rank is recalculated each time your ad is eligible to appear, your ad position can fluctuate each time. This makes auction time QS more granular than a 1-10 number.

It depends on several other factors, which not only fluctuate all the time but are also different for every single search that happens on Google. These contextual elements include:

Because QS is so granular and volatile, ignoring your ads (even ones that started out with a great score) can harm your performance over time. But what it also means is that you can always improve your ads and revitalize your low QS. All you have to do is keep optimizing your ads.

Essentially, Google’s machine learning algorithms monitor how and what users interact with on the SERP to make predictions about future interactions. User behavior is constantly changing, so what may be relevant today may not seem so in the next few months. In other words, a history of not caring about your ad relevance and putting all your eggs in the bid basket will count against you.

Keep an eye on how relevant your ads are to users, how closely they relate to what people search for, and their experience after the click.

Why is Quality Score still worth your time?

Here are 3 reasons why you should still care about Quality Score:

The finer points of Quality Score calculation might seem complex, but that shouldn’t discourage you. Quality Score still plays a significant part in ad rank calculation. Unless your brand has bottomless pockets and can afford to bid crazy amounts to rank first, neglect Quality Score at your own risk.

Max Bid x Quality Score = Ad Rank

The above formula is a simplified version of the actual calculation, but the core principle behind it is still valid, and Ad Rank is still based on these two components – Quality Score and Maximum Bid – so a low Quality Score can hurt your position as much as a low bid. Of course, the upside is that paying attention to Quality Score can bring down your CPC.

That’s because the ad in the highest position generally needs to bid less for a click than the ads below it. Advertisers with an excellent Quality Score get a discount that’s something of an open secret in PPC Land.

Want proof? Our customer Zeller Media managed to achieve a Quality Score of over 9.0, lower CPCs by 18%, and save $36,000 a month by using our Quality Score Tracker.

Not only does Optmyzr’s Quality Score Tracker show you the data that Google Ads gives you for quality score, but it goes above and beyond with great visuals while also aggregating account, campaign, and ad group quality score data.

No need for us to go into the details here, our CEO, Frederick Vallaeys has already done that by writing down Five Ways That Optmyzr Tracks Quality Score that Google Ads Can’t.

How do I get a high Quality Score in Google Ads?

It’s simple (if not easy) to get a high Quality Score: make your ads more relevant, target the right keywords, build a track record of ads with high CTR, and improve your landing page experience.

Improving keyword quality is probably the most crucial. If historical data shows that a keyword has a low CTR, that’s an indication to Google that users haven’t found your ad relevant to that search. This calls for more specific keywords and improved account structure.

Here are 5 simple ways to improve your Quality Score.

Never stop optimizing your ads

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again (and again and again, until the heat death of the universe) – never stop optimizing your ads. Use Quality Score as an indicator, not the end result. You know what’s best for your account, so don’t be afraid to deviate from our advice if your particular situation demands it.

Ultimately, all advertisers are looking to deliver the best possible performance within their available budget. So it’s almost a no-brainer to do things that can get you more clicks within the same budget. If you end up making the search and purchase experiences better for users along the way, all the better!

And if you need help with improving your Quality Score and reducing your CPCs, take our 14-day free trial today.

Google Ads Bid Management 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Higher Conversions

Whether you’re looking to drive more traffic, raise brand awareness, or boost conversions using Google Ads, your bid management strategy can make or break your results.

Choosing the right bidding strategy and scaling it properly can make a huge difference in getting the best results from your campaigns.

However, with so many bidding strategies to choose from, constant updates, and the delicate balance between automation and manual tweaks, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.

In this article, we discuss the different bid strategies in Google ads and provide tips on choosing the best one for your business and scaling it for the best results.

A step-by-step guide to setting up bid strategies

We’re starting with a guide on how you can access and configure bid strategies in your Google Ads account. Feel free to skip ahead if you’re already familiar with the setup.

  1. Sign in to your Google Ads Account.
  2. Choose ‘Campaigns’ from the menu on the left.

 

  1. Choose the campaign you want to modify, hover your mouse over the campaign name, and click on the gear icon. Alternatively, you can also click the campaign and access the settings at the top.

 

  1. In the menu that opens up, click on ‘Bidding’.

  1. Click on ‘Change Bidding Strategy’.

In the dropdown menu that appears, you’ll be able to choose between Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Values.

6. There are also some hidden bidding strategies. To opt for these, click on ‘Select Bid Strategy Directly’.

7. Here you will be able to choose from Maximize Clicks, Target Impression Share, and Manual CPC.

 

To make the best out of your Google Ads budget, it’s always best to understand how these bidding strategies work for different campaign types. And that’s what we’ll cover below.

Examples of bidding strategies for different campaign types

Google offers various types of bidding strategies based on different campaign types and business goals. Choosing the right strategy is highly dependent on whether you want to increase brand awareness, maximize conversions, drive traffic, or achieve a specific ROAS (return on ad spend).

Here are some practical examples to illustrate this:

1. Search campaigns

A B2B SaaS company wants businesses to sign up for a free demo. Since each demo could be a potential customer, the company would want to bring in as many sign-ups as possible within a defined budget.

Opting for tCPA (target cost per acquisition) is telling Google to strive for a target CPA while getting as many conversions as possible. You get the most sign-ups without exceeding your cost per lead.

If your campaigns don’t have enough conversion data (~30 conversions in the past 30 days), our latest study on bidding strategies finds it effective to start with Maximize Clicks with a bid cap (so you don’t spend too much per click) to gather the initial conversion data. You can figure out what your traffic costs and if it fits within your budget.

When setting a bid cap, ensure it’s not more than 10% of your daily budget or you’ll risk not getting enough clicks. Also, since Maximize Clicks focuses more on volume of clicks, ensure you’re only running Google search, opting out of search partners and display expansion.

💡Optmyzr Tip: Configure Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to adjust keyword bids based on campaign-level CPA. For example, if a keyword’s CPA is 50% higher than the campaign average, lower its bid by 20%.

 

2. Shopping campaigns

An online ecommerce store selling gadgets has an inventory in which some products have higher profit margins than others. Their aim is to sell enough of the right products to maximize revenue without sacrificing profitability.

Setting a tROAS (target return on ad spend) translates to Google trying to bid higher for products or users that are likely to generate high-value transactions. Instead of simply prioritizing more sales, tROAS optimizes for more revenue.

💡Optmyzr Tip: Use the Smart Product Labeler to segment your products based on their performance — targeting top sellers with higher bids and lowering bids for others. This ensures budgets are allocated according to product potential, increasing the overall ROAS.

 

3. Display campaigns

A company selling an online course on its website wants to retarget users who’ve started enrolling but did not complete it. Since these users have shown a high level of interest in the course, the company uses a display retargeting campaign for two reasons.

  1. A user who has abandoned the enrollment is just a few steps away from converting. Visual ads with clear USPs might be more effective in nudging such users to complete their enrollment than text ads.
  2. Display campaigns can re-engage qualified users and remind them to complete the enrollment by reaching them across websites, apps, and even YouTube even if they’re not searching

Since a successful enrollment counts as a conversion, the company calculates it can afford $100 per conversion. Based on this, they choose Target CPA bidding, allowing Google to optimize bids at $100 or lower for placements most likely to drive enrollments.

Ensure Google tracks the right conversions. In this case, completed enrollments would count as the primary goal, while actions like clicking “Enroll Now” or viewing the course page count as secondary conversions. This helps the algorithm optimize for actual enrollments and not other website interactions.

It is also important to secure user consent according to regulations like GDPR before using cookies and other tracking technologies for retargeting and other remarketing audience types such as video RLSA.

4. Video campaigns

A business just launched a new product and they use a video ad to create brand awareness. Since people are not aware of the product and not actively searching for it, the aim is to push the video ad to a large audience for maximum visibility.

Using tCPM (target cost per thousand impressions) maximizes the number of people who see your ad within the budget you’ve defined. It increases visibility and is good for brand recall but may not result in immediate clicks or engagement.

💡Pro Tip: Layering tCPM with YouTube remarketing audiences can be useful in converting viewers to customers. Link your YouTube channel to your Google Ads account and create data segments based on different actions like viewing a specific video. Use these lists in your Google Ads campaigns to target them with relevant ads.

5. Performance Max campaigns

A custom home decor brand wants to maximize profitability by reaching potential customers across various Google platforms like Search, YouTube, and Display.

Since they want to maximize ad efficiency across these channels with minimum manual intervention, the seller considers running PMax campaigns to automate ad placements according to their revenue goals.

Opting for Maximize Conversion Value in this case allocates budgets across channels so as to prioritize high-value sales and increase revenue. Bids are optimized more aggressively on customers who are more likely to indulge in high-value purchases.

To enhance this strategy it is important to connect your CRM with Google Ads. This helps in tracking actual customer conversions and their revenue, allowing Google to optimize bids based on real sales value rather than low-value actions.

How to make the most of Google’s Smart Bidding strategies?

Smart bidding is a subset of automated bidding that focuses on conversions. Also known as auction-time bidding, it optimizes bids based on real-time auction insights.

Bids are optimized based on 60+ signals exclusive to Google’s smart bidding, including:

Smart bidding uses these signals to adjust bids in real time to optimize ad spend. This means that the algorithm might increase bids if a user is more likely to convert. Conversely, it can also lower bids in cases where the likelihood of a conversion is low.

This is why advertisers switching from manual (where they have more control over individual bids) to smart bidding may see fluctuations in their CPC.

Now if you want some degree of control, smart bidding allows you to set bid floors and ceilings (min and max bid limits) through portfolio bidding so you avoid overspending without sacrificing profitability and visibility.

When to use smart bidding for maximum results

1. When you have enough conversion data
Since smart bidding utilizes machine learning and historical data, you need to have sufficient data to optimize conversions. Google recommends at least 15 conversions over a month or longer for every campaign for target ROAS. But, we found that most advertisers clear 50+ conversions in a 30-day period and see better performance compared to accounts with fewer conversions.

This is because smart bidding strategies need extensive historical data to identify the patterns and signals that correlate to conversions. Our study shows that campaigns with more conversion data and stable performance give better results with smart bidding.

If you don’t have enough conversions, start with simpler strategies like Maximize Clicks to collect initial conversion data and then switch.

2. When you have a relatively stable ad spend
Smart bidding strategies require something called a ‘learning period’ which is the time it takes for Google’s algorithm to adjust to changes in your campaign.

If your campaigns have predictable patterns in spends, it becomes easier for the algorithm to identify what works and adjust bids in response. This is especially important for Target ROAS or Target CPA where consistent spending is key to predicting the likelihood of conversions.

On the other hand, inconsistent ad spend results in longer learning periods, delaying bid optimizations.

Our studies indicate that the sweet spot for ad spend when it comes to smart bidding seems to be between $10K-$50K.

3. When you want to maximize revenue and not just conversions
If your primary business goal is to grow your revenue rather than simply increasing the volume of conversions, smart bidding is a good strategy since it can optimize for both conversion count and value.

Accurately tracking conversion values will give you a clear picture of the revenue generated by your ad campaigns. This is key to testing out different strategies to figure out how to strike a balance between profit and volume.

4. When you have clearly defined and properly valued conversion actions
Some advertisers think that smart bidding works only for higher ad spends. However, this is not entirely true. Smart bidding can be used effectively even if you have lower budgets if your conversion tracking is set up accurately.

For instance, you can consider including micro-conversions in your conversion tracking if you have limited data to work with. But each action needs to be assigned an appropriate value so Google allocates budgets to actions that matter most.

Practical advice on how to make smart bidding work for you

Bid smarter, not harder: Solutions to common bidding issues

Effective bid management can be a useful tool to maximize the ROI of your PPC campaigns. However, when bids are not optimized correctly, they can lead to wasted spend, missed opportunities, and poor campaign performance.

In such instances, you need to first identify your underperforming bids.

Signs your bids are underperforming

Fixing overbidding and wasted ad spend

Overbidding your ads can deplete your budgets too quickly and reduce profit margins. It can even result in your ads showing up for loosely related searches, attracting low or mismatched-intent audiences. To fix this:

💡Optmyzr Tip: Use geo-bid adjustments in Optmyzr’s Rule Engine to identify locations that have higher CPA or no conversions at all and reduce bid adjustments on them to reduce wasted ad spends.

 

Solving underbidding and lost opportunities

Keeping your bids too low your ads may not show up at all or have reduced visibility in high-traffic areas. This results in lower CTR, reduced conversions, and put you at a disadvantage if your competitors are bidding higher for valuable ad placements.To counter this you can:

When to use automated vs manual bidding in Google Ads?

As an advertiser, it’s easy to be confused between choosing automated or manual bidding for your campaigns. The key is to understand your goals and the type of campaign you want to run. Here’s a quick overview of both approaches to help you choose the right bid management strategy for your ads.

Criteria

Automated Bidding

Manual Bidding

Control

Less granular control, more automation

Full control over each bid

Efficiency

More efficient for large-scale campaigns

Requires constant monitoring and adjustments

Data dependency

Needs sufficient historical conversion data

Doesn’t rely on a lot of data

Adaptability

Highly adaptive to changes in auction dynamics

Less adaptive to real-time changes

Complexity

Simplifies bid management

More complex since it requires manual adjustments

Best for

Large campaigns, goal-based objectives, businesses with consistent data

Niche campaigns, specific keywords, small budgets

Automated bidding

Pros:

Cons:

Manual bidding

Pros:

Cons:

When to use automated or smart bidding for ads

Best practices for scaling bids based on campaign performance

Scaling bids too quickly can exhaust your budgets while doing it too slow can make it difficult to reach your campaign goals. The key is to make gradual, informed decisions that drive growth without overspending. Here’s how you can do it.

1. Leverage performance data

Identify strengths and weaknesses in your campaigns by tracking metrics like CTR, CPC, ROAS, and CPA. Regularly tracking these metrics can give you insights into trends or patterns that can inform bid adjustments.

If you individual campaigns don’t have enough data to make informed data, Optmyzr’s bid management capabilities allow you to pull up data for similar campaigns so you can study them. It puts data into easy-to-visualize formats like charts or graphs so its easier to understand and spot opportunities.

Tip: Segment performance data based on factors like device, audience, and location to identify where the highest value conversions occur and refine bid adjustments

2. Use incremental bid increases

Scaling your bids too fast can push you into expensive auctions and spike your costs. It’s always best to increase your bids gradually (e.g. 10-15%) and then monitor the impact of changes for a few days before adjusting it even further.

Optmyzr customers can use if-then statements in Rule Engine to automate bid increases. For instance, if a campaign achieves a 10% increase in ROAS, then raise bids by 10%.

Tip: Instead of making bid adjustments across several campaigns at once, try running tests on a subset of ad groups or keywords to minimize risks. It also gives you a glimpse into what works before you implement the changes at scale.

3. Prioritize high-converting segments

If you find that certain keywords or audience segments are giving you consistent conversions at a lower cost, you may want to consider increasing bids for these high-converting segments. Even a slight increase in bids can capture more clicks, conversions, and impressions and scale without losing profitability.

Tip: Use audience bid adjustments to increase or decrease bids based on conversion data. For instance, you can increase bids for users who have visited your site or fall into the demographic profile of high-converting audience segments.

4. A/B test bid adjustments

Run experiments to find out which bidding strategies are the most effective for you (e.g. manual vs smart bidding). For instance, you can target ROAS in smart bidding against manual bidding to see which one delivers better ROI.

Similarly, if you find that retargeting audiences are converting well, you might want to try increasing bids for them first before doing it for a broader segment.

Tip: For an effective A/B test, choose a campaign with consistent traffic and conversion volume—this ensures you use statistically meaningful results when comparing smart bidding vs manual bidding strategies.

Maximize your Google Ads performance with effective bid management

Effective bid management in Google Ads is a blend of strategic planning, continuous optimization, and leveraging automation where appropriate.

Whether you’re opting for manual, automated, or smart bidding, the key is to make careful, data-driven adjustments, balancing automation with manual control so your campaigns stay agile and you’re getting the most out of your ad spend.

Try Optmyzr’s bid management tools to streamline your Google Ads strategy. Sign up for a 14-day free trial today!

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

 

The Secret to Lower CPCs and Higher Conversions: PPC Bid Management Explained

Every time you advertise online, you’re entering an auction. And like any auction, winning or losing comes down to your bidding strategy.

As platforms like Google, Microsoft, and Meta advance, we’re at a fascinating crossroads between human intuition and machine learning. Some campaigns thrive on smart automation that processes thousands of signals in real time. Others benefit from a more hands-on approach to strategy.

So, how do you manage bids in a way that drives results? When does manual bidding make sense, and when should you let automation take over? Let’s break down what goes into a winning bid strategy.

What is PPC bid management?

PPC bid management is the process of strategically setting and adjusting bids for your ads in platforms like Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, etc. The goal is to maximize ad visibility while controlling costs, ensuring you get the best ROI for every click.

And bids matter—they help determine both where your ad shows up and how much you’ll actually pay when someone clicks. The challenge is that bidding is dynamic. What works today might be too expensive tomorrow or too low to keep your ad visible.

Effective bid management means staying ahead of these shifts, using automation wisely, and making data-driven adjustments to ensure your campaigns deliver results.

Types of bid management

There are three primary approaches to managing bids, each offering different levels of control and automation. The right choice depends on your campaign goals, available data, and how much hands-on management you prefer.

1. Manual bidding

Manual bidding gives you complete control over your bids. You set and adjust your bids at the keyword, ad group/ad set, or campaign level based on your own analysis.

This is ideal for advanced advertisers who know their bids should be and are comfortable adjusting bids based on market conditions. You can layer in bid adjustments, such as for device type or location, but it requires ongoing monitoring and frequent tweaks.

The strategy requires time and expertise, but that doesn’t mean you must do everything by hand. Many advertisers build their own automated bidding systems using scripts and rules. Optmyzr makes this even easier with ready-to-use strategies that help you stay on top of shifting factors like seasonality, competitor activity, and user behavior.

2. Automated bidding

Automated bidding simplifies bid adjustments by using predefined strategies to optimize for specific goals, such as increasing traffic or maintaining ad visibility. Instead of manually setting bids, advertisers choose a strategy that aligns with their objectives, and the system automatically adjusts bids based on performance signals.

Unlike Smart Bidding, which focuses on getting conversions, automated bidding is more about hitting broader goals. You choose a strategy that fits your goal, whether it’s getting more clicks, showing your ads more often, or staying within a budget, and the system adjusts your bids accordingly.

Different platforms offer a variety of automated bidding strategies. Here’s the breakdown:

📌Google Ads: Options like Maximize Clicks (aims to get the most clicks within budget) and Target Impression Share (adjusts bids to maintain ad visibility in a specific position) help advertisers optimize for reach and traffic

📌Amazon Ads: Features like Dynamic Bidding – Up and Down automatically increase bids when an ad is more likely to convert and decrease them when it’s less likely. This approach helps sellers compete for high-intent traffic while controlling cost

📌Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram): You can use Lowest Cost Bidding (bids are set to get the most results at the lowest cost) or Bid Cap (sets a maximum bid to maintain cost control). These strategies focus on balancing reach, engagement, and cost efficiency

📌Other Platforms (LinkedIn, TikTok, Microsoft Ads, etc.): Each platform has variations of automated bidding, often with options to maximize clicks, impressions, or engagement based on advertiser goals

Choosing the right automated bidding strategy for your goals

3. Smart bidding (conversion-driven)

Smart Bidding is all about helping you get more conversions, like sales or sign-ups, by automatically adjusting your bids in real-time. Instead of manually setting bids, it uses machine learning to figure out the best bid for each situation based on the chances of a conversion happening.

It looks at things like user behavior and auction data to make sure your ads are shown to the right people at the right time. This makes it a great choice if your main goal is to drive more valuable actions from your ads.

📌Example: You're running an eCommerce campaign for a seasonal sale on winter jackets. With Smart Bidding, the system can analyze data such as whether someone is using a mobile device or desktop, their location (are they in a cold area?), and even the time of day.

If it's a chilly evening and someone is searching for jackets on their phone, Smart Bidding can increase your bid for that specific user, maximizing the chances of conversion.

 

While Smart Bidding can be highly effective, many advertisers default to it without checking if they have enough data. Our research revealed that smart bidding works best with at least 50+ conversions per month. Without this, performance can be volatile and unpredictable.

It also revealed that many advertisers start with one strategy and then transition to the other as their campaign picks up. This approach allows them to maintain control early on and switch once they have enough data for automation to work effectively.

If you’re considering Smart Bidding, here are the key strategies to know:

📌Maximize Conversions (with optional Target CPA): This strategy automatically adjusts your bids to get the most conversions (sales, sign-ups, leads) possible within your budget. It’s a good option if you are focused on driving volume and have a consistent budget.

While it aims to maximize conversions, it’s often beneficial to pair this strategy with a Target CPA. This tells Google the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for each conversion, and it will try to get you as many conversions as possible at that cost.

The combination is ideal when you have a specific CPA goal in mind and want to maximize conversions within that cost constraint.

📌 Maximize Conversion Value (with optional Target ROAS): Instead of just increasing the number of conversions, this strategy focuses on driving the highest total revenue from your ad spend. It’s ideal if you have different conversion values (e.g. different purchase amounts) and want to prioritize higher-value conversions.

It’s often recommended to use this strategy with a Target ROAS. Target ROAS lets you set a specific return you want to achieve on your ad spend (e.g., a 300% ROAS). Smart Bidding will then optimize your bids to maximize conversion value while trying to hit your target ROAS.

This combination is best when you have a specified ROAS target and want to maximize the overall value of your conversions.

Conversion-focused bidding strategies on other platforms

While Google Ads offers Smart Bidding, other advertising platforms also provide automated bidding strategies designed to help you achieve similar conversion-focused goals. Here’s a look at what some other platforms offer:

📌Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram): If your goal is to drive conversions or maximize the conversion value of Facebook and Instagram, Meta Ads offers several relevant bidding strategies. Highest Value Bidding optimizes your bids to target users most likely to make high-value purchases.

This is particularly useful for eCommerce businesses with varying product prices. Meta also offers other conversion-focused strategies like Lowest Cost and Value Bidding.

📌Amazon ads: For sellers on Amazon, Dynamic Bidding can help optimize conversions. The Up and Down variation automatically adjusts your bids on the likelihood of a conversion, increasing them when a sale is highly probable and decreasing them when it’s less so. This allows you to compete effectively for high-intent shoppers.

📌LinkedIn ads: If your focus is on lead generation or other B2B conversions, LinkedIn’s Bid for Conversions is designed to optimize your campaigns for specific actions, such as form submissions, sign-ups, or website visits.

📌Microsoft ads: Microsoft ads offer a similar suite of conversion-focused bidding strategies. Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize Conversions, and Maximize Conversions Value function much like their Google Ads counterparts, allowing you to optimize for specific cost or return targets.

Choosing the right conversion-focused bidding strategy for your goals

💡Pro Tip: Use express optimization suggestions in Optmyzr to test smart bidding strategies like Maximize Conversion Value, Target CPA, or Target ROAS before fully committing to a strategy. It reviews Google’s recommendations and lets you run trial campaigns to measure performance before making full-scale changes.

 

Manual Bidding vs. Automated Bidding vs. Smart Bidding: When should you choose which?

Choosing between manual, automated, and Smart Bidding depends on your goals, experience, and the level of control you need.

When to use manual bidding?

Manual bidding can be suitable in the following instances:

📌Limited data availability: Smart Bidding relies on conversion data to optimize bids. When there’s not enough data, bids may be set too high or too low based on incomplete signals. In such scenarios, manual bidding gives you control to align bids with actual auction conditions rather than relying on uncertain automation

📌Targeting brand keywords: For campaigns targeting brand-specific keywords, manual bidding can offer tighter control over bids, ensuring optimal positioning without over-reliance on automated systems.

📌Resetting data: When there’s a need to reset or clear historical data, manual bidding can be employed temporarily to establish a new performance baseline before transitioning back to automated strategies.

📌Ensuring specific ad positions: If maintaining a particular ad position is crucial, manual bidding provides the control necessary to achieve and hold desired placements.

📌Managing low-performing segments: In scenarios where certain segments underperform, manual bidding allows for targeted adjustments to improve efficiency and performance.

Shawn Walker of Symphonic Digital suggests manual bidding can be especially valuable when you’re just starting with a new campaign: * *

“A lot of the time if we’re starting a brand new campaign where there’s not much background and the client doesn’t know exactly who the audience is, we will start with manual bidding… just to get some volume out there.”

When to use automated bidding?

Automated bidding is ideal when you want to optimize for clicks or visibility without constant manual adjustments. It’s a great fit:

📌 When your goal is traffic or visibility (brand awareness campaigns) – Strategies like Maximize Clicks and Target Impression Share prioritize getting the most clicks within your budget or securing a specific ad placement. However, remember that more clicks don’t always equal more conversions. These strategies are less focused on direct conversions and more on expanding reach.

📌 When you don’t have enough conversion data – If you lack sufficient conversion data to leverage Smart Bidding, automated bidding can be a good starting point. It allows you to optimize for clicks or impressions while you gather more conversion data. However, note that these strategies do not optimize for conversions. They are a stepping stone towards conversion-focused bidding once you have enough data.

📌 When you’re managing large-scale campaigns – If you’re running campaigns with a lot of keywords and ad groups, it can be overwhelming to adjust bids manually. Automated bidding can help by adjusting bids across all your campaigns to save you time. However, if you have enough conversion data, Smart Bidding can take it a step further and optimize specifically for conversions, helping you meet your goals more effectively.

📌When competition and costs keep changing: In industries where CPCs are constantly shifting, automated bidding can help you stay on top of things by adjusting bids quickly. One big advantage is the ability to set bid caps, which let you control the maximum amount you’re willing to pay for a click. This helps prevent overspending while still keeping your bids competitive.

That said, if the market is really volatile, you’ll still want to check in regularly to make sure your strategy is working.

When to use smart bidding?

Smart Bidding works best when:

📌 You have enough conversion data – While the minimum threshold can vary, more conversion data generally leads to better performance. Aim for a significant number of conversions (e.g. 50-100+ per month per conversion action) for more reliable optimization. The more data, the better Smart Bidding can understand patterns and predict future conversions.

📌 Your tracking is accurate – Smart bidding works best with precise conversion tracking. Make sure your setup is correct across all platforms.

Each platform has its own tracking system. Check their documentation to ensure accurate data collection. The better your tracking, the smarter your bids.

📌 You’re optimizing for revenue, not just traffic volume– If your goal is to maximize the value of your conversions, Smart Bidding strategy like Maximize Conversion Value is the way to go. It focuses on getting the highest value for each conversion, even if that means you get fewer conversions overall.

On the other hand, Max Conversions aims to drive as many conversions as possible, so it’s important to make sure that those conversions (and the leads they generate) are actually profitable.

📌 You’re in a competitive market – Smart Bidding’s real-time adjustments are especially useful in competitive markets with fluctuating CPCs. While automated bidding adjusts based on general trends and manual bidding relies on constant manual adjustments or scripts, Smart Bidding makes real-time adjustments using auction-time signals.

This makes Smart Bidding particularly effective when your goal is to drive conversions or revenue, not just clicks or visibility. It adapts quickly to market changes and targets high-value actions, making it ideal for competitive environments.

Still, it’s important to monitor performance, particularly during major market changes.

💡 Pro Tip: Smart Bidding helps automate your bids, but it’s not always perfect. Sometimes, your best ad groups don’t show up as often as they should. Since Smart Bidding controls bids, you can’t change them directly, but you can adjust the targets to guide it in the right direction.

 

Lowering Target ROAS or raising Target CPA can increase volume, while stricter targets improve efficiency but may limit traffic. Since Smart Bidding factors in signals not available in manual bidding device, location, and time of day, adjusting targets for these variables can improve results.

 

Optmyzr’s Rule Engine helps by identifying when your targets need adjusting and providing data-backed suggestions, so you can keep your campaigns performing at their best.

 

How to choose the right bid strategy?

When it comes to selecting a bid strategy, it’s essential to choose one that aligns with your campaign goals. Below are some of the most common bid strategies, each tailored to different objectives.

Maximize Clicks

Ideal for: brand awareness campaigns, new campaigns where you want to drive early traffic, and building an audience list for future retargeting

The Maximize Clicks strategy is designed to drive as much traffic to your site as possible within your budget. It’s useful for:

✔️ Growing an audience list for future retargeting
✔️ Driving early traffic before optimizing for conversions
✔️ Understanding auction dynamics and keyword costs

However, not all clicks turn into conversions, so monitor engagement metrics like bounce rate and time on site.

📌Example: If you’re launching a new campaign and need to attract a broad audience, Maximize Clicks will help you generate traffic to your site, gathering valuable data before shifting to a more conversion-focused approach.

 

When to switch: Once you’ve gathered enough data (typically a few weeks or a certain number of clicks/impressions) and have a clearer understanding of your target audience and keyword performance, it’s time to consider switching to a more conversion-focused strategy. Look for patterns in which keywords or audiences are driving the most engaged traffic, even if it’s not the most traffic.

Conversions (CPA/ROAS - Cost Per Acquisition/Return On Ad Spend)

Ideal for: eCommerce, SaaS, subscription services, performance marketing, app installs and in-app actions

Conversion-focused bidding strategies including Target CPA (Cost per Acquisition) and Maximize Conversions, are ideal when your primary objective is to drive specific measurable actions on your website or app.

These strategies empower the ad platforms to automatically optimize bids for maximum conversions within your budget or at your desired cost. They are particularly well suited for businesses with clear conversion goals and accurate tracking.

📌Example: For an online course platform, you could use CPA bidding to pay only when a user registers and completes a course purchase. This ensures that your ad spend is focused on actual conversions, not just clicks.

 

When to switch: Begin with Maximize Conversions/Value when you have sufficient conversion data, well-defined goals, and accurate tracking. Refine this strategy by adding a Target CPA/ROAS constraint when you want to:

➡️Stabilize spending: If your cost per acquisition or return on ad spend is too volatile, a target constraint will create more predictable spending

➡️Increase efficiency: If you’re achieving a good volume of conversions but believe you can do so more cost-effectively, a target constraint will optimize your budget

➡️Meet profitability goals: If you need to maintain a specific profit margin, a target constraint allows you to directly manage customer acquisition cost

You’re not necessarily switching strategies; you’re enhancing Maximize Conversions/Value with a target constraint to balance conversion volume with cost control. Later, you can adjust or remove the constraint if you want to prioritize volume growth.

Brand Awareness (CPM - Cost Per Thousand Impressions)

Ideal for: New product launches, entering a new market, building brand recognition, reputation management, programmatic display ads

Brand awareness campaigns have a different objective than direct response campaigns focused on conversions. They’re about getting your name, product, or message in front of a broad audience to increase familiarity and recognition.

With CPM bidding, you’re paying for impressions rather than clicks or conversions. This approach is ideal when your focus is on maximizing visibility, ensuring your ads reach as many people as possible rather than driving direct interactions.

📌Example: A streaming service launching a new show could run CPM ads on YouTube, Instagram Stories, and connected TV platforms (Roku, Hulu) to build hype. They’d prioritize high-impact placements, such as homepage takeovers or in-feed video ads.

 

When to switch: Brand awareness campaigns are often ongoing. However, you might consider switching to a different strategy for specific campaigns focused on driving direct response or conversions, such as limited-time promotion. You may also switch to a different awareness-focused strategy like CPV if you’re shifting to a video-centric approach.

Views (CPV - Cost Per View)

Ideal for: YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram Reels, in-stream video ads

CPV is an ideal bidding strategy for video campaigns, where your goal is to drive views and engagement with your video content. You only pay when a user watches your video or engages with it (such as liking, commenting, or sharing).

This strategy is particularly valuable for campaigns focused on building engagement with video ads rather than driving immediate conversions.

📌Example: A fitness brand launching a new workout app could run CPV ads on YouTube, paying only when users watch 30+ seconds. To boost engagement, they might A/B test different video hooks and CTA placements.

 

When to switch: If your video campaign objective shifts from views to conversions (e.g. app installs or website visits), you’ll want to switch to a conversion-focused bidding strategy like CPA or ROAS. If you find your CPV is too high, you might want to experiment with different video creatives or targeting options.

Goal

Clicks (CPC)

Conversions (CPA)

Brand Awareness (CPM)

Views (CPV)

Increase Website Traffic

✅

❌

❌

❌

Drive Sales or Conversions

❌

✅

❌

❌

Boost Brand Visibility

❌

❌

✅

❌

Maximize Video Engagement

❌

❌

❌

✅

Poor bid management can cost you dearly

Bid management isn’t just about adjusting numbers—it’s the difference between a profitable campaign and one that drains your budget. Without the right strategy, you risk:

❌ Overpaying for low-quality clicks that don’t convert
❌ Losing valuable traffic because your best keywords aren’t getting the bids they deserve
❌ Wasting time on manual adjustments that never quite hit the mark

That’s where Optmyzr can help by putting your bids on autopilot—without losing control. Instead of manually adjusting bids and hoping for the best, it helps you automate the process based on your specific goals, so you don’t have to worry about missing the mark.

Here’s how:

 

Choose the bid strategy that works for your goals

The right bid strategy really comes down to what you’re aiming for and how much control you want. If you’re an experienced advertiser, manual bidding gives you total control to adjust bids based on things like device, location, and time.

Automated bidding is perfect if you want to drive traffic without worrying too much about conversions. And if your main goal is to drive conversions, Smart Bidding is the way to go.

Still unsure which bidding strategy truly delivers: manual, auto, or smart?

Stay tuned for our next article, where we’ll walk you through the best strategies for each campaign goal and share valuable insights from analyzing over 14,000 accounts to help you choose the winning approach.

Or, skip the wait and try Optmyzr free for 14 days. Test different bidding strategies, optimize faster, and see what works (before competitors do).

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

 

Optmyzr’s Customer Favorites: Top 6 PPC Tools of 2024

2024 has been an eventful year for PPC, with several interesting trends shaping the advertising landscape. A couple of the most critical ones include:

In response, we’ve been hard at work, adding innovative new features and enhancing the existing ones to match the evolving needs of the PPC community.

For instance, our recent Performance Max study provides insights into effective strategies for maximizing ROI with Performance Max campaigns.

While our Ad Strength & Creative study analyzes over one million ads to identify optimization strategies that drive meaningful performance improvements.

These studies, in combination with our comprehensive suite of tools, have helped advertisers stay ahead of the curve throughout the year.

If you’re curious about what we’ve been up to, keep reading for a quick walkthrough of Optmyzr’s standout tools and updates this year. You’ll also get insights into how you can use these popular features and improvements to maximize your campaign performance and set the stage for the year ahead.

Newly launched features by Optmyzr in 2024

1. Amazon and Microsoft Ads updates

With Amazon’s global ad revenue climbing up to $49 billion in 2023 and Microsoft gaining steady momentum with around $12.58 billion in search advertising revenue (2024), it’s no surprise that these platforms are playing a crucial role in reaching a bigger audience.

But if you’re someone handling all these campaigns at scale and doing it all manually — you’re probably losing time and maybe even money.

To help you deliver better results on these platforms but with less effort, we’ve expanded support for them.

Amazon Sponsored Brands support

Handling multiple ad groups or legacy setups on Amazon’s native ad platform means a lot of work — pausing underperforming ads, updating budgets, or having to frequently analyze campaign performance. These tasks simply drain time and resources that could be better utilized elsewhere.

Optmyzr now helps you:

 

Non-Endemic campaign creation for Amazon Ads

Even if you don’t directly sell your products on Amazon, you can still leverage its vast audience base and data to drive traffic to your website. This is called non-endemic advertising.

You can make use of its display ads, video ads, or even create custom solutions if you want. Non-endemic campaigns run on wide-reach platforms like Amazon Prime Video and third-party partner sites like IMDB and Twitch.

The only catch is that if you’re new to non-endemic advertising, it can be challenging to set up and manage these campaigns on Amazon.

But with Optmyzr, you can set them up within minutes from an existing Google Ads or Microsoft Ads account (the data gets automatically imported to Amazon).

Once your campaigns are in full swing, Optmyzr offers detailed insights on performance. You can combine this with rule-based automations and ensure that your campaigns are always optimized to drive relevant traffic to your website.

URL Checker for Microsoft Ads

A broken landing page is a huge no-no for two reasons — it’s frustrating for the user and wastes precious dollars from your budget.

With the Landing Page URL Checker, you don’t have to worry about invalid pages. It is a nifty solution designed to analyze landing pages for 404 errors or indicators of product unavailability.

 

You can use the tool to either generate scheduled reports of such pages or take it a step further and auto-pause them.

 

Campaign Automator for Microsoft Ads

Imagine creating ads for a large inventory of products, each with its own unique attributes. You’d have to manually enter product details for each SKU into Google Ads, constantly update their availability, and tweak ads to reflect seasonal price changes. It’s a never-ending manual grind.

But thankfully, you don’t have to do it that way. Instead, you can integrate your product catalog as a whole into Optmyzr’s Campaign Automator to automatically generate ads for every product in your inventory.

 

The tool pulls product titles and descriptions directly from your product feed and updates them in real-time whenever there is a change in product availability or pricing.

SearchLab Digital Boosts Client’s Conversion Rate by 42% With Campaign Automator

2. Optmyzr for Social

Managing social media campaigns whether it’s on Meta or on LinkedIn requires precision and efficiency.

With Optmyzr for Social, you get a robust set of tools that can help you seamlessly run high-performing campaigns on Meta, LinkedIn or both. They are designed to help you simplify your workflows, track anomalies, and get actionable insights so you can focus on driving impactful results.

Optmyzr for Social is priced at a $99/month flat rate with unlimited ad spend and accounts. And if you’re an existing Optmyzr customer, you get a 20% discount, bringing down the price to just $79/month.

Learn More About Optmyzr for Social Here.

3. Shopping and PMax Campaign updates

Smart Product Labeler

If you manage a large product catalog, segmenting products by performance is crucial for smart budget allocation. Otherwise, all the products are grouped together and you end up spending the same budget and setting similar budgets for all of them irrespective of how they’re performing.

But product segmentation can quickly become tedious if you plan on doing it manually. Even if you decide to use Google Ads scripts, you will need some level of coding knowledge to implement it correctly.

You can make things easier by creating a segmentation strategy with the Smart Product Labeler.

 

Set up rules to differentiate products by their performance or other attributes like product type, price, availability, etc. The Product Labeler uses these rules to group the products in your feed.

This differentiation makes it easier to create product-specific advertising strategies to maximize ROI. For instance, you can bump up the bids on high-performing products to increase visibility while dialing back the bids on underperforming ones to reduce wasted spend.

Excluding expensive PMax listing groups

Underperforming listing groups can eat up your budgets and that means there is less money to allocate to your high-performing segments.

To tackle this, we’ve introduced a new pre-built strategy that identifies underperforming or expensive listing groups with Rule Engine (a custom rule-based strategy builder). Users can customize the rules of this strategy so it aligns with their specific campaign goals.

This way your budgets can be allocated to ads that actually drive conversions, maximizing your ROI on campaigns.

Search term reporting for PMax

With PMax campaigns, advertisers find it challenging to get search term reports that can help them narrow down:

But, we now have a dedicated PMax Search Term reporting tool that gives you more granular control over your PMax campaigns. It automatically pulls data from your campaigns and then compiles them into a spreadsheet.

Once you have this data, you can easily manipulate it for custom analysis and look for search term patterns that tell you how to optimize your PMax campaigns better.

4. AI Updates

Ask custom questions in Optmyzr Sidekick

Think of Sidekick AI as your personal PPC assistant that can help you save time and simplify ad management. You can ask custom questions about your campaigns. For instance, how specific ads or keywords in a campaign are performing.

 

Sidekick delivers AI-driven insights at every level — account, campaign, ad, or keyword instantly. It’s like having an expert at hand, ready to help you make smarter decisions to optimize our PPC campaigns.

AI-powered Blueprints

Advertisers managing large accounts may find that a good chunk of their time gets caught up in tackling repetitive, but critical tasks.

Optmyzr’s Account Blueprints is like a built-in task manager that you can use to streamline and automate your workflows so nothing gets overlooked.

 

Blueprints can be used to create checklists for any process — onboarding clients, assigning tasks, optimizing campaigns, and more.

The best part is, instead of creating a whole Blueprint of tasks from scratch, you can simply mention your goal, and Optmyzr’s AI will create a relevant Blueprint for you. It can be customized according to your needs, saving that much more time.

5. Optmyzr Labs - our new innovation hub

Optmyzr Labs is where you can find the latest experimental features that could potentially shape our platform in the future. You can test our projects like the Magic Quadrants Tool to visualize account performance on an interactive quadrant chart or evaluate how well your landing page aligns with your target audiences using the Web Page Audience Fit Analyzer.

While all of our features are key to driving performance, some in particular have stood as absolute favorites among our customers.

Here’s a quick overview of the top six audience favorites:

1. Optimize budgets: Get recommendations to reallocate budgets across multiple accounts and platforms. Ensure you never over or underspend on any campaign and allocate budgets according to campaign performance.

 

2. Rule Engine: Exercise better control over your campaigns by leveraging Rule Engine’s simple “if-this-then-that” automation. Create custom optimizations or use pre-built templates to make bulk changes to ads.

 

3. A/B testing for ads: Conduct A/B testing for both RSAs (Responsive Search Ads) and display ads. Test out different ad variations and identify which ones resonate best with your audience.

4. PPC Investigator: Find out why your account showed a sudden increase or decrease in clicks, conversions, and other metrics with the PPC Investigator. Understand which metric caused the change and why.

 

5. Shopping campaign management: Create your shopping campaigns and ensure they’re always synced with the latest feed data, all in one hub. Get thorough insights into performance, and configure automated rules to take care of repetitive tasks.

6. Reports: Track the impact of your PPC campaigns using custom reports or simply use one of our pre-built templates. Get a bird’s eye view of everything happening with your account in a visually engaging manner. Don’t forget to create a report schedule to save time on creating the same report every month or week.

 

“I think all features make Optmyzr a powerful tool to gain a competitive advantage. We didn’t take time to dig deep into the features and that was a mistake. Encourage your account managers to make use of all the different tools and features, it was a total game changer for us.”

- Alexander Sperber, CEO, United Ads

Bonus - A hidden gem of Optmyzr you shouldn’t miss out

Optimizing budgets for your PPC campaigns based on performance can be tricky since Google does not allow you to link insights at the campaign level to budgets. For example, if you’d like to set a rule to change budgets automatically based on impression share, you might not be able to directly do it, because impression share metric isn’t available at the budget level.

But there is a workaround using a feature called ‘Key-Value Pairs’ in Optmyzr’s Rule Engine. It’s a two-step process where you use campaign insights or the ‘key’ to set up a rule to perform a certain set of actions at the budget level (the ‘value’).

To explain this better, here’s a demo based on a real use case from one of our customers:

Start 2025 with smarter PPC management

The tools added to Optmyzr’s platform in 2024 are specifically meant to help advertisers across industries make their daily work much easier, while also seeing their ROAS soar. They’ve been thoroughly used by our customers with some remarkable results on campaign efficiency and ROI.

From smarter automation to deeper insights, Optmyzr has everything you need to manage your paid marketing campaigns with greater precision and control.

Looking ahead to 2025, now is the perfect time to explore some of these tools and see how Optmyzr works for you.

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, you can talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

Sign up for our free 14-day trial today.

 

Google Shopping Campaigns: 3 Examples You Can Copy Now

For a business, Google Shopping ads are a new channel to reach customers. Half of the top retail advertisers are already using it.

50% of top retail advertisers use Google Shopping ads

50% of top retail advertisers use Google Shopping ads

But not every Google Shopping campaign will get people bombarding the ‘‘Add to cart’’ button. It might help to look at a Google Shopping ads example for inspiration.

Lucky for you, we discuss three examples below.

What Makes a Google Shopping Ads Example Worth Following?

Every Google ads campaign has two notable phases.

A common mistake many marketers make is that they focus solely on the pre-click phase. Their ads look stellar with great copy and graphics.

However, when the audience clicks on the ad, they are directed to a terrible landing page.

And that’s when it all falls apart.

A model-worthy Google Shopping campaign should have both phases working together like a well-oiled machine. It should also have the following components:

By persuasive copy, we mean that the language should be compelling enough for a customer to take action.

For instance, a lawyer could use a persuasive CTA on their landing page. Instead of saying, “Sign with us!” say, “Click Here for a Free Case Evaluation!”

This creates a sense of urgency and highlights the benefits the customer can get.

This is what the Patel Firm does on their homepage:

Keeping these components in mind, we’ve selected three Google Shopping campaigns you can learn from.

3 Google Shopping Ads Campaigns for Inspiration

For any Google Shopping campaign, there are three main steps:

Let’s see how the following companies have perfected these steps.

1. DW Candles

DW Candles is a scented candle brand that also makes home fragrances. The company has a wide range of candle options, such as pillars, votives, jars, etc.

The thing about the candle market is that it’s pretty saturated. Big brands like Yankee Candle and Bath & Body Works dominate the market.

DW Candles uses Google Shopping ads to increase its reach and attract new customers.

DW Candles Google Shopping ads

DW Candles Google Shopping ads

In the pre-click phase, you can see that the brand has an assorted collection of candles on their Google Shopping ad. Here are some noteworthy things about these ads:

Note that potential customers can see all of this without even clicking on anything. That’s brilliant!

You want to give your customers enough information to make up half their decision right at the pre-click phase.

Now, let’s look at the post-click phase of this Shopping Campaign. You click on a candle — let’s say the Tierra Santal — and go to the landing page.

DW Candles landing page

DW Candles landing page

First impression: it’s sleek and easy to navigate. There’s only one CTA — Add to Cart.

We also see the fragrance details. The copy is concise and crisp. Also, the important details, such as burn time and weight, are also right there.

Takeaways

Here are some takeaways from this campaign:

2. Paper Culture

Paper Culture is an eco-friendly stationery company that produces 100% recycled products.

In talks with Google, the CEO of Paper Culture, Chris Wu, said that a challenge they face as a small business is that they don’t have the ‘‘brand of our larger competitors.’’

Google Shopping Ads helped the company bridge this gap. Paper Culture used this campaign in addition to the search ads strategy.

Let’s look at why this campaign helped the company increase its return on investment by 3x compared to any other channel.

Like DW Candles, Paper Culture also shows high-quality images of the company’s products. Again, we see generous use of keywords. For example, keywords like ‘’Paper Culture,’’ ‘’stationery,’’ and ‘’cards,’’ ensure a higher chance of these ads popping up when someone searches for these products.

Since the products are on promotion, there’s a Sale tag on the ad. The prices (new and old) are clearly evident. One thing that you’d notice is consistent is the social proof.

Paper Culture also displays the product rating along with the number of reviews. Again, most people are likely to believe that a product with 1.6k positive reviews MUST be good.

One way Paper Culture takes the Google Shopping campaign a step further is by showing the estimated delivery time. That’s a good touch. Here’s why.

The products Paper Culture makes (cards, etc.) often have a lot of emotional value attached to them, especially when purchasing for occasions like birthdays or anniversaries. Also, these are event-specific products and not everyday-use items like candles or shoes.

So, the customer has no use for them if the product doesn’t arrive on time. Therefore, displaying the estimated delivery time helps build trust and reassures customers that they will receive their products in time for their special occasions.

Onto the post-click phase!

As soon as you click on a product and come to the landing page, you see an offer: 50% off on your first purchase if you sign up for emails.

Paper Culture landing page

Paper Culture landing page

Moving forward, again, you see a single CTA: Personalize. The landing page is super easy to navigate. Everything from the product images to the customization options is right there without the need to scroll even once.

Paper Culture product page

Paper Culture product page

If you have a similar business model where customers can personalize items, we recommend having a live chat widget on the landing page. It will resolve customers’ personalization-related queries in real-time.

Takeaways

The takeaways from this campaign are:

3. Buttercloth

Buttercloth is a mid-range clothing brand known for its soft and high-quality men’s shirts.

They worked with an agency called MuteSix, which was responsible for creating the brand’s Google Shopping campaign. One of their primary goals was to reduce budget wastage through efficient campaign segmentation.

Campaign segmentation helped the brand optimize its budget allocation and pitch top-selling products. As a result, Buttercloth saw an 8% increase in return on ad spend and a 1.25% click-through rate, which was higher than the 0.8% they got from their Main Shopping campaign.

Buttercloth’s Google Shopping campaign goes beyond what you see above. For instance, the company knows social proof matters.

What did they do to get it?

They started a tiered rewards system. Customers get points to share their reviews. If they add pictures and videos, the rewards are even higher.

The system really helped the brand get reviews to show on the Google Shopping ads.

Also, the product titles are keyword-rich and give the viewer enough information about the product. Let’s take ‘’Buttercloth Executive Position in Icy Cotton - M Regular Fit.’’

Without even clicking on the link, we know this product will be high-quality (cue the name). It has a regular fit, and it’s in an icy blue color.

The price, rating, number of reviews, and estimated delivery time are all mentioned in the ad.

One thing Buttercloth does differently from Paper Culture or DW Candles is that they display the ‘’Buy Now’’ button on the ad. That’s one less step for the customer to reach the checkout page.

For products that are on sale, the ad shows ‘’$x below typical’’ to let the customer know how much money they’re saving. It just saves a lot of mental gymnastics for the customer.

As for the post-click performance, all you have to do is click the ‘’Buy Now’’ button, and you’ll come to the checkout page.

As evident, Buttercloth really makes Google Shopping what it’s supposed to be: Google Shopping. You don’t even go to their product page. You basically shop on Google and pay on the company’s website.

Takeaways

These are the takeaways from Buttercloth’s campaign:

Wrapping it Up

By drawing inspiration from some great Google Shopping ad campaigns, you can run better ads for your business. If you liked this article and want to learn how to optimize your shopping campaigns for better performance, read this article.

And if you’re in need of a solution to run better shopping campaigns, give Optmyzr a try. Our tools provide you with great automation capabilities giving you the control.

You can sign up for a 14-day free trial here.

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

How to Find, Add, and Use Negative Keywords to Target the Most Relevant Audiences

Ever feel like your ads are getting clicks, but not the right kind? If your ad budget feels like it’s vanishing without seeing those sales or leads, you could be falling victim to irrelevant searches.

Here’s the good news: We’ve managed millions in ad spend for ecommerce businesses just like yours and have picked up a few tricks for maximizing your results. It’s time to introduce you to one of the most underutilized weapons for success – negative keywords.

By the end of this guide, you’ll know exactly how to harness negative keywords to send irrelevant traffic packing. Your budget, your campaigns, and your ideal customers will thank you!

Negative Keywords – Your Budget’s Best Friend

Think of negative keywords like bouncers at the hottest club in town. Their job is to keep the line free of riff-raff and ensure only your target audience gets through the door. They stop people who are just browsing, have the wrong style, or aren’t looking to spend serious money. It’s the same with your ads – negative keywords block the wrong kind of searches.

Benefits of Negative Keywords for Ecommerce Businesses

Types of Negative Keywords & When to Use Them

The bouncer analogy still holds up – with the added twist that you get to hire three different types of bouncers, each with different levels of strictness. Let’s break them down.

Picking the right bouncer for the job is key - a balance between keeping out the wrong crowd and welcoming those ready to spend their money with you!

How to Hunt Down Bad Keywords?

It’s time to pinpoint those wasteful clicks and send them packing. Here’s where to start your search:

1. Search Terms Report: This treasure trove, found in your Google Ads account, shows you every search that triggered your ads. Use this to spot irrelevant terms or phrases to block.

2. Google Suggest: Start typing something related to your products into Google to see what autocomplete suggestions pop up (ex: ‘buy home decor…’). This often surfaces search terms you wouldn’t have thought of!

3. Negative Keyword Finder (Search): This tool analyzes the search terms report from your Google Ads and Microsoft Ads accounts. It identifies individual words that are part of the search queries and are not performing well. It recommends adding them as negative keywords because they may not be relevant to your account.

4. Traffic Sculptor: This tool helps you show more relevant ads and direct traffic to the ad group that matches the search term exactly. You can use it to find the ad group that wrongly matches a search term and add the search term as an exact match negative.

Get strategic about the search terms that aren’t right for your ideal customer:

The more precise your negative keywords are, the easier it is for your ideal shoppers to find you.

The Negative Keyword Workflow

It’s not enough to just hunt down bad keywords - you need a system to keep them from wreaking havoc! Here’s a simple workflow to keep you organized:

1. Research: Start digging for negatives using the tools we discussed. Think about those categories we mentioned – irrelevant product types, misspellings, etc.

2. Categorize: A jumbled mess of negative keywords is as bad as none at all. Create different lists with clear themes. These might be based on ‘Competitor Names,’ ‘Freebie Seekers,’ or even ‘Misspellings.’

3. Implement: It’s time to actually add your organized lists to the relevant campaigns or ad groups within your ads account. Don’t forget to use the right match type (broad, phrase, or exact) depending on how broad a “block” you need.

4. Monitor: Don’t assume the job is done. Regularly review your Search Terms report to see if any new pesky search terms pop up. Be ready to add them to your negative lists. As your business evolves, refine your lists – maybe something that was irrelevant last month is now perfectly okay thanks to new product lines.

Pro Tip: Many ad platforms allow you to create shared negative keyword lists. This means instead of manually adding the same negatives to multiple campaigns, you do it once, and voila! – consistency reigns supreme. Time saved is extra money in your pocket.

Keep in mind that negative keyword management is an ongoing process of discovery and refinement. The more time you invest in this, the smarter your ads become!

Avoid “Negative” Overkill

It’s easy to get carried away cleaning up those irrelevant searches. There’s a fine line between laser-focusing your campaigns and suffocating them with too many restrictions. Here’s how to do it right:

The goal is to create a healthy, sustainable keyword ecosystem where quality shines while potential budget drains are quickly eliminated.

Every Irrelevant Click Is a Missed Opportunity

By using negative keywords, you’ll focus your campaigns in the right direction and make the most of your ad budget. You’ll drive targeted traffic, improve campaign performance, and ultimately connect with those customers who are ready to buy.

And if you think Optmyzr is the tool for you, sign up for a 14-day free trial today. Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Start Strong, Sell More: A Beginner’s Guide to Google Shopping Ads

In this post, you’ll learn

What are Google Shopping Ads?

Remember the last time you turned to Google to search for a product — let’s say, “Air Jordans.” You would have come across something like this:

This is Google Shopping Ads at work. The product listings you see on the top of Google search results and the Google Shopping tab are all Google Shopping Ads.

When customers search for a product online, these ads display relevant products from ecommerce businesses, along with their prices, images, and merchant information.

The purpose of Shopping ads, like all other ad formats, is to connect users with a purchase intent to relevant products and deals from retailers. And for ecommerce businesses, shopping ads are a way to get their products in front of people searching for what they sell.

How Much Do Google Shopping Ads Cost?

Figuring out the cost of Google Shopping ads can be tricky since there is no one-size-fits-all answer. But here are some factors that can give you an idea of how much they might cost you:

Source

While it’s impossible to predict an exact cost-per-click, understanding these key factors provides a better sense of what to expect and allows you to allocate a budget for your Google Shopping campaigns accordingly. Apart from these factors, closely monitoring performance and making data-driven decisions is also crucial to maximizing ROI.

How Do Shopping Ads Differ From Traditional Search or Text Ads?

While both are PPC ad formats served by Google, Shopping ads have some key differences from regular text-based search ads:

FeatureGoogle Shopping AdsGoogle Standard Text Ads
Ad TypeProduct-basedText-based
Primary UsePromoting specific products and their features. Ideal for ecommerce sites looking to promote and sell products directlyPromoting a website or service through text. Ideal for businesses aiming to increase site visits, calls, or spread awareness
Ad VisualsIncludes product images, title, price, store nameNo images, only text
PlacementGoogle Shopping tab, Google Search results, Google Display Network, YouTube, and GmailGoogle Search results, Google Network sites
TargetingBased on product data submitted through Google Merchant CenterBased on keywords chosen by the advertiser
Pricing ModelCost-Per-Click (CPC)Cost-Per-Click (CPC), others depending on campaign settings
Campaign ManagementManaged through Google Merchant Center and Google AdsManaged through Google Ads
Ad CreationGenerated automatically from the product data in Google Merchant CenterCreated by the advertiser
Required Account(s)Google Merchant Center account is required in addition to Google Ads accountOnly a Google Ads account is required
Audience TargetingBased on user searches, product categories, and more detailed product attributesBased on keywords, user interests, demographics, etc.
Optimization & Bidding StrategiesFocuses on product groups, feed optimization, and bidding strategies specific to product categoriesFocuses on keyword selection, match types, and ad copy effectiveness

When to Use Shopping Ads?

For ecommerce advertisers, Shopping ads have several benefits over other ad formats. The comparison between shopping ads and search ads often boils down to competitiveness and cost-effectiveness. Shopping ads tend to be more competitive and pricier in terms of cost-per-click (CPC). However, they often result in higher conversion rates, making them a worthwhile investment despite the higher CPCs.

On the other hand, search ads can sometimes be overlooked as a tool for ecommerce brands. While they generally come at a lower cost compared to shopping ads, they may not always attract as much attention from searchers. This is because searchers are more inclined to click on shopping ads, potentially overshadowing search ads in terms of visibility and click-through rates.

Shopping ads allow multiple product ads in search results, giving more real estate.

Most ecommerce verticals are price and impression-sensitive, and they might benefit from Shopping ads more than text ads. For example, if you’re selling shoes, people are more likely to click on a picture of a nice pair of shoes rather than an ad that says “Comfortable sports shoes.”

Ultimately, the choice between shopping ads and search ads depends on various factors, including budget, target audience, and campaign objectives. Finding the right balance between the two can lead to a comprehensive advertising strategy that maximizes ROI and drives sales effectively in the competitive digital landscape.

You can also split your budget between Shopping and Search Campaigns to drive traffic to your site. Shopping and text ads can also appear together, doubling your visibility.

Types of Google Shopping Campaigns

You can create two types of Google Shopping Campaigns: Standard Shopping Campaigns and Performance Max Campaigns. Let’s discuss more about these two in detail:

1. Standard Shopping Campaigns

Standard Shopping campaigns have been a part of Google Advertising for a long time now. You organize ad groups in a campaign, each group bundling similar products with matching settings like location and language. Inside these ad groups, you can showcase ads for individual items.

To use Standard Shopping campaigns, you set up a Merchant Center account and submit your product data feed. Then, within your shopping campaign, you can create ad groups and add products to them from your feed. This approach allows granular control over your campaigns and ad group settings.

2. Performance Max Campaigns

Performance Max is Google’s automated campaign type that accesses all of a user’s advertising inventory from one campaign.

It uses advanced automation and machine learning to optimize bids, ad placement, budget allocation, and other factors to maximize ROI. It also shifts spending to better-performing ads and products to drive results.

The key difference between Standard Shopping and Performance Max is that, in the latter, Google handles targeting and optimization for you. You provide assets such as ads and landing pages, while Google’s AI decides how the ad is served.

Both Standard and Performance Max Shopping campaigns can be effective. While Standard campaigns give more control over the ads, Performance Max takes a broader cross-channel approach with automation.

We’ll take a broader look at the differences between the two types of Shopping Ads in the following section.

Differences Between Performance Max and Standard Shopping Campaigns

Here are some key differences between Standard Shopping campaigns and Performance Max campaigns:

AspectPerformance Max CampaignsStandard Shopping Campaigns
Setup ProcessModerately complex setup  process. You will have to create a campaign in Google Ads, set campaign objectives, and configure bidding strategy, integrate with Merchant Center and other Google services. You will also have to set up ad creatives and assetsRelatively straightforward. You will have to create a campaign in Google Ads, link your Merchant Center account, define campaign settings, create product groups, and set bids and negative keywords
Level of AutomationAlmost full automation using Google's AIFull manual control over campaigns, along with the option to run with automated bidding
Ad PlacementAds are displayed across the Google network- Search, Display, YouTube, etc.Limited to Google Images, Shopping tab, and Search
OptimizationRelies fully on Google's automation for optimizationsManual control allows granular adjustments and optimizations
ReportingLimited reporting information is currently availableDetailed reports available on search queries and performance
Negative KeywordsCan add negative keywords only at the account levelCan add negative keywords at the ad group, campaign, and account level
Targeting AccuracyPotentially less accurate unless relevant audiences are addedHighly accurate, product-based targeting
Bid AdjustmentsNot possible to make manual bid adjustmentsFull control to make bid adjustments as and when needed

Should You Run Standard Shopping and Performance Max Together?

There has been some debate on whether Standard Shopping campaigns can run successfully alongside Performance Max campaigns or if Performance Max takes priority and pauses Standard Shopping.

Dhiraj, our in-house Shopping expert at Optmyzr says, “Technically speaking, if the same products are being advertised through both campaign types, Standard Shopping is likely to not get anything.

The debate is that if you’re using products from the same Merchant Center, will Performance Max cannibalize standard shopping even though they advertise on different products?

It’s possible, especially if the final URL expansion is ON. But even if it is not, there is a possibility that with the way Performance Max works, it can broadly match with other products too. If the final URL expansion is OFF, you can use Performance Max and Standard Shopping for different sets of products and it should ideally work better.”

If you run a Performance Max campaign concurrently with a Standard campaign for the same set of products, Google’s algorithm kicks into action to ensure your advertising investments produce the best output for you. This means that ad prioritization is likely to favor the Performance Max campaign and is most likely to take precedence over the Standard one.

So should you run Standard Shopping and Performance Max together? It really depends on your specific goals and strategies.

Ryan Wilton from The Co-operative Group says, “We run standard shopping alongside Performance Max in all of our accounts. They get traffic if the Performance Max budget is exhausted or for whatever reason don’t trigger in the auction. (Running them simultaneously can also come) handy to get some search term data too.”

Running these campaigns together can help you maximize exposure and use Google’s advanced algorithms for ad prioritization. However, it is important to monitor and optimize your campaigns regularly to make the most of this combination.

Advertisers have seen some advantages of running Performance Max campaigns with brand negatives and then running Standard campaigns with exact-match brand keywords.

Nibha Gupta from Digital Champ says, “I have always run Performance Max with shopping ads as that setup has helped me limit Performance Max to only non-brand keywords. Once I solely ran a Performance Max campaign with brand negatives and another Performance Max campaign without any, I saw that the overall ROAS I got from this setup was lower than when I had a shopping brand campaign.”

Requirements for Setting up Google Shopping Ads

There are a few requirements you’ll need to meet to be able to set up Shopping Campaigns using the Merchant Center feed:

1. Merchant Center Setup

Product Data: Ensure your product data is accurate and up-to-date according to Google’s product data specification guidelines. This includes details like titles, descriptions, images, prices, and availability.

Policy Compliance: Verify that your business type, products, promotions, and website comply with Google’s Shopping ads policies to avoid disapproval or suspension.

2. Connect Google Merchant Center and Google Ads

Link your Google Merchant Center and Google Ads accounts to enable seamless transfer of product data and campaign management. This integration allows you to create and optimize Shopping campaigns directly from Google Ads, utilizing the product feed from Merchant Center.

You can read more about the policies and guidelines here.

What is Google Merchant Center?

Simply put, the Google Merchant Center account, allows you to upload and manage your product data so that your products appear across Google Search, Maps, YouTube, and more.

How to Set up a Google Merchant Center Account?

You can find a quick walkthrough of how to set up your Merchant Center Account in this video.

For further assistance and details regarding the Merchant Center, you can refer to this article.

Merchant Center Next Is Replacing Merchant Center

Google unveiled a more simplified version of the Merchant Center at the Google Marketing Live 2023. Apart from a simpler look and easier navigation, Merchant Center Next also allows you to populate products on the campaign directly from your website.

You can read more about what to expect from Merchant Center Next in this article.

How to Create a Google Shopping Campaign?

Using Google Ads

You can create and manage Shopping campaigns, including updating campaign settings and product groups directly in your Google Ads account.

1. Start a New Campaign:

2. Connect Merchant Center:

3. (Optional) Select Feeds:

4. Choose Campaign Settings:

5. Click “Save and continue” to proceed.

6. Create Ad Group:

7. Manage Product Groups:

You can find a quick video walkthrough of the steps here:

Using Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Builder

The Optmyzr Shopping Campaign Management tool simplifies the creation and oversight of Shopping and Performance Max Retail campaigns. By integrating it with your Merchant Center, you can streamline repetitive tasks and free up your time for more meaningful tasks

Here’s how you can do it:

Creating a Shopping Campaign with Optmyzr takes significantly less time compared to using Google Ads. This means less hassle and more opportunity to focus on refining your campaign strategies.

Automation from Performance Max and Merchant Center Next has made running ads accessible and convenient to more advertisers than ever before.

And Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Management Tool gives you the ability to create your own automations that you can control and security over your ad spend, bidding, and targeting, instead of relying on those created by Google’s platform.

A strategic approach to Shopping Campaigns is what can set you apart from PPC novices who depend on system automations, and help you unlevel the playing field yet again.

How to Sync Your Shopping Campaigns With the Merchant Center Feed?

Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Management Tool offers customizable automations that complement Google Ads’ existing platform features.

You can refresh product groups and listing groups manually or schedule automatic syncs using the tool. Refreshing or syncing your campaigns/campaign groups will allow you to

The Automatic Sync Schedule option allows you to set up automated sync at intervals of your choice. You can also use the tool to see if a sync schedule has been set up, and when it’s scheduled to run if no automation has been set up, or if the automation has been paused.

You can create and edit schedules based on various parameters including automation type, frequency, and more.

Go From Setup to Sales

Google Ads has become very competitive over the years. But it’s still a tremendous channel for high growth if you do it right. Combine automation layering with that and you will be able to run campaigns where you hold the control.

And if you need help with that, try using Optmyzr’s toolkit. You can sign up for a 14-day free trial here.

Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — worldwide use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year. Plus, if you want to know how Optmyzr’s various features help you in detail, talk to one of our experts today for a consultation call.

You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

How to Generate Performance Report of Products Overlapping Across Standard Shopping and PMax Campaigns

Have you ever wondered how many products you have overlapping or present in your various shopping (Standard or Performance Max) campaigns?

In Optmyzr, we have a set of tools that provide rich insights at different levels, to not only solve the question about overlapping but also help you make better decisions on your campaigns.

Here’s a 3-step process to help you compare your products’ performance across those campaigns.

Step 1: Get an Audit of the Products and Campaigns.

In Shopping Feed Audits, you can get among other relevant audits from your merchant feed, a list of products active in various campaigns in the same ads account; just make sure to enable this individual audit before you run the preview mode:

Image 1 - Sample feed policy product level

In the full audit report, you will find this audit in the Product level section, along with the full list of item IDs, number of repetitions (campaigns), and the campaign names. You can download this audit individually as well:

Image 2 - Download audit

For the next step, we recommend creating a Google Sheet with the information on the product IDs.

Step 2: Load Your Results in Rule Engine.

With the help of our solution for custom optimizations and automation - Rule Engine, you can create a strategy and report your products from shopping and Performance Max campaigns.

Under Rule Engine, create a new strategy at the Shopping/PMax Product scope:

Image 3 - Create new strategy

If you have a Google Sheet ready with the information from the previous audit, you can connect it to the Rule Engine strategy with the help of External List Data and use the column containing the item IDs:

Image 4 - Connect data from spreadsheet

This attribute will help us report the products with the same IDs from the audit results.

In your first rule, you can create a condition in the form of “Item ID (aggregated by Account) in (ignore case) list (column from the Google Sheet)”:

Image 5 - External list data column

Once this is ready, you are free to add more conditions in the rule with performance metrics at the product level, such as impressions, clicks, ROAS, cost, etc, and the thresholds you prefer (for example >= 0).

Image 6 - Products in multiple campaigns

Something worth mentioning is that products with no impressions during the selected date range will be excluded from the analysis. Plus, it’s important to consider a date range similar to the audit to have consistency in the analysis.

Step 3: Compare the Products’ Performance Across the Campaigns.

Finally, on the View Suggestions page, you can visualize all the matching results.

Here we recommend clicking on the “Product Item ID” header so the sorting groups the same IDs in the list:

Image 7 - Product item IDs list

Based on this view you can easily identify in which campaigns the products performed better and then apply the adjustments or decisions you prefer.

So, those are 3 simple steps that’ll help you compare your products’ performance across your Standard Shopping and Performance Max campaigns.

If this looks like something you’re interested, go ahead and try it out in Rule Engine. And if you have any questions, or if you’d like us to have a look at your recipe before you start running it just email us at support@optmyzr.com – we’ll be glad to help you.

Top 10 tools 10,000+ advertisers used in 2023 to maximize their PPC ROI

PPC in 2023 was a whirlwind, fraught with dynamic shifts and challenges. From the widespread adoption of Performance Max to Google’s continuous pursuit of automation, advertisers faced a landscape that demanded adaptability. However, amid these transformations, Optmyzr emerged as a steadfast partner, empowering advertisers through innovation and support.

We also celebrated a decade of commitment and success, bagging the prestigious Global and US Search Awards 2023. The year witnessed a surge of tools and enhancements, revolutionizing the way advertisers navigate and optimize their campaigns. 

In this article, you’ll learn about ten tools advertisers loved to use in 2023 for their PPC management and optimization workflows. You’ll also get a peek into what lies ahead in 2024.

Optmyzr Express - Get quick, actionable optimization suggestions across multiple accounts 

Optmyzr Express shows you optimization suggestions for your Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Amazon Ads accounts. It is designed to work as a to-do list for you to breeze through multiple optimization tasks in minutes.

Picture it as your digital advertising checklist, effortlessly guiding you through a spectrum of optimizations, from re-enabling converting keywords to refining PMax asset group targeting.

Here’s what PPC Expert Matthieu Tran-Van had to say about Optmyzr Express:

“I love features embedded in the Optmyzr tool like Optmyzr Express, which gives you an overview of all the kinds of optimizations that you can take right now in your account to improve the hygiene of the account and also enhance its performance.”

The tool underwent a transformative upgrade in 2023. Three exciting suggestions added to it are:

Optmyzr Sidekick: Your AI PPC Assistant

Meet the Optmyzr Sidekick, your AI PPC assistant! Found on the Account Dashboard, it analyzes various aspects of the account and KPIs, provides quick optimization suggestions, and even answers your custom queries. 

Bid farewell to surfing through hundreds of account and campaign performance reports; the Sidekick simplifies it. Just ask for what you need! 

Remember, the Sidekick is always learning. Share feedback, integrate it into your PPC workflow, and experience a dynamic, AI-powered boost for your PPC endeavors!

Wondering how Generative AI can help you manage your campaigns? Here’s a Town Hall on leveraging ChatGPT in PPC.

Invalid Traffic Protection - Your ultimate budget guard

Shield your budget from unwarranted depletion with Optmyzr’s Invalid Traffic Protection. Newly integrated into the Account Dashboard, this vigilant widget is your trustworthy companion, ensuring your budget stays intact.

In collaboration with Cheq, a top-tier invalid traffic detection technology, it helps you effectively monitor and block invalid traffic to discern how much of your budget is spent on non-converting clicks.

You can activate traffic monitoring and blocking by simply clicking on the widget and following the tool’s steps, which include adding a code snippet to your website URL for seamless monitoring. What’s more, Optmyzr goes beyond traffic monitoring; you can use the Smart Exclusions tool to detect and exclude invalid placements before they start accruing costs, ensuring significant savings as you kickstart your year.

Optimize campaigns based on weather forecast

For those marketers managing weather-dependent products or services, Optmyzr unveils a sophisticated campaign optimization tool meticulously designed to align with your weather-conscious strategies. Yes, it boasts advanced features, yet its essence lies in inherent simplicity. Our customers have simply loved using this tool for various use cases ranging from managing clients selling firewood, to air conditioning-related businesses.

Creating weather-based rules through this tool takes almost no time at all; simply target or exclude locations, and pause/enable campaigns in response to real-time weather condition changes.

Envision your ads seamlessly adapting to sunny days or pausing during thunderstorms - pure magic! You can even automate the process, setting it to run on a schedule or activating it later with a simple click. 

For those seeking more granularity, the Rule Engine enables customized conditions, allowing advanced actions like budget adjustments, ad group target CPA modifications, and campaign target ROAS settings based on weather forecasts. After all, advertising should mirror the dynamic nature of the weather!

Change History - Easily spot why your account performance changed

Efficiently managing Google Ads campaigns depends heavily on tracking performance changes and reaching desired objectives. Yet, sifting through hundreds or thousands of “Change History” entries can be a daunting task.

This long process is now easy for you; just use Optmyzr’s “Change History” feature! For instance, while analyzing performance insights with the PPC Investigator, you can easily unveil recent changes across ad groups, campaigns, and keywords made by different account managers. What’s more, you can even automate “Change History” reports through the Rule Engine!

Why is this beneficial? 

It helps you quickly assess auto-applied optimizations by Google and Microsoft Ads, track team-driven account alterations, enhancing accountability and control. This tool not only uncovers the ‘what’ but also the ‘why’ behind account performance, offering valuable insights to elevate future campaign management. A smarter way to learn from successes and setbacks!

PPC Vertical Benchmarks - Get insights about the industry your account belongs to

The next tool in our list, PPC Vertical Benchmarks, is your pivotal asset in the competitive PPC landscape. This tool serves as a compass, providing nuanced insights into your Google Ads campaign performance relative to industry peers. You can explore your account’s performance via key metrics - Average CPC, Conversion Rate, CPA, CTR, and ROAS, to refine your advertising strategy accordingly.

Additionally, you can go beyond standard evaluations and delve into keyword-specific data, comparing your match type spread with industry benchmarks for finely tuned keyword strategies. This tool unfolds insights and provides strategic advantages like:

Shopping Campaign Management - Create and manage e-commerce campaigns in one page

In our ongoing commitment to enhancing e-commerce management, Optmyzr proudly presents the new “Shopping Campaign Management” tool - an all-in-one solution for seamless control and analysis of all shopping and PMax campaigns on a single page.

Navigating the tool is a breeze. Simply locate the “Create new campaign” option and swiftly set up Standard Shopping Campaigns, Optmyzr Smart Campaigns, and PMax Retail Campaigns, both with and without assets.

The real gem lies in Optmyzr’s latest update to this tool. Crafting performance-based Shopping or PMax Campaigns has long been a go-to strategy. In the traditional process, multiple steps were involved, ranging from obtaining product reports to incorporating custom labels in campaigns.

Here’s how the tool’s newest update streamlines this entire process. 

This update ensures a more efficient and intuitive approach to crafting and managing performance-driven Shopping and PMax campaigns, offering advertisers a simplified yet powerful tool for navigating the complexities of e-commerce.

Here’s what Byron Trzeciak, Director, PixelRush, had to say about the shopping campaign structuring feature of Optmyzr:

“Segmenting and structuring shopping campaigns by high-performing products (in terms of structuring around the product value and how many sales our products have gotten) - that was an area that the Optmyzr team definitely helped us with.”

Rule Engine - Analyze high and low-performing entities and filter suggestions based on business knowledge

Optmyzr’s Rule Engine, your personalized optimization builder, is now enhanced with novel features. Firstly, the Top/Bottom operators swiftly pinpoint low and high-performing entities, thus enhancing your optimization and analysis processes. Two popular scenarios our customers use this feature for are:

But the innovation doesn’t stop there. Our latest update: the “External List Data” feature, gives you precise control over the entities like search terms, placements, etc. involved in the Rule Engine strategy. Simply input a set of entities based on your business insights, and the system will let you include or exclude them from the strategy. Your optimization journey just became more powerful and nuanced, putting you in the driver’s seat for unparalleled campaign management!

“Rule Engine is certainly one of the amazing sections of Optmyzr because it’s really like your dedicated, highly flexible, and scalable optimization hub where you can automate a lot of very valuable optimizations for your clients with infinite customizations.” - Matthieu Tran-Van, PPC expert and author

Google Analytics 4 - Optmyzr’s got your back with the UA transition!

Responding to Google’s move from Universal Analytics to GA4, Optmyzr has taken proactive steps for a seamless user transition. Embracing this evolution, our dedicated Product Team unveiled a revitalized toolset to maximize GA4’s potential in analyzing your campaigns’ performance.

Reporting

Within the Reports tool, you can seamlessly blend Google Ads and Analytics insights with new GA4 widgets. You have the option to showcase GA4 performance through the Key Performance Metrics table, track emerging or declining trends in specific segments with the Dimension Trend widget for GA4, and more.

Segment Explorer

Delve into audience segments with the Explore Audience Segments tool, merging GA4 metric insights. Smoothly import all dimensions, metrics, and events into the tool for comprehensive exploration and analysis. 

Are you looking for tips on setting up GA4 in your accounts? Optmyzr’s Town Hall on Google Analytics 4 would be a great starting point; do check it out below!

Elevate your Sponsored Display Campaigns on Amazon with Optmyzr’s latest updates, which offer you unprecedented control and efficiency.

Gain control over campaign traffic with Rule Engine

The popular ‘Product Targets’ section in Rule Engine now seamlessly extends its prowess to Sponsored Display campaigns too! This compatibility allows you to precisely track campaign-generated traffic by targeting relevant product targets/categories, ensuring that your ads resonate with users actively seeking and expressing interest in your advertised product category. 

You can also identify expensive targets to filter out irrelevant traffic and adjust their bids and statuses to optimize ad spend.

Master Audience Targeting

You can now navigate Sponsored Display ads’ audiences effortlessly through Optmyzr’s various tools like Rule Engine, Account Dashboard, and Reports.

Use the Rule Engine to pinpoint underperforming or top-performing audiences, and explore high-traffic audience segments and maximize their ROI with Account Dashboard widgets like “Top Elements." 

Optmyzr ensures your Amazon Ads strategy remains ahead of the curve; so check out our features now!

What’s in store for you in 2024?

Embark on a transformative journey with Optmyzr in 2024! Two major updates to look out for are:

The future is here, and it’s fueled by Optmyzr’s commitment to innovation and empowerment. Get ready to conquer 2024 with Optmyzr’s unparalleled tools and capabilities!

Final thoughts

As we continue to explore the boundless possibilities of the features introduced by Optmyzr in 2023, it’s clear that innovation never takes a backseat. From Optmyzr Express streamlining your optimizations to the prowess of Optmyzr Sidekick and its AI-powered insights, the journey has been nothing short of extraordinary.

Looking ahead to 2024, brace yourself for ‘Optmyzr for Social’ and more advanced budget management options, promising a year filled with unparalleled tools and capabilities.

Ready to take the leap and experience the platform firsthand? Connect with our Sales team now! Schedule a personalized demo, explore these attractive features, and sign up for a no-strings-attached free trial now. Your journey to advertising excellence starts here - empower your strategies, exceed your goals, and conquer the future with Optmyzr!

How to Diagnose Your Ecommerce Performance Max Campaigns

Need to evaluate Performance Max? Start here.

In this article, we’ll explore the many areas to consider and explore when evaluating Google Ads Performance Max (i.e. PMax) campaigns.

Given the current limitations of insights we can pull from these campaigns, it can be difficult to understand the causes of performance fluctuations. This guide is here to make accomplishing that task easier than ever.

First Principles: Getting Familiar With The Context Of Our Data

Let’s begin with some first principles.

First off, it might be too soon to freak out!

Familiarize yourself with your estimated conversion reporting delay and the average days to conversion after the first ad interaction in your account for the conversion action that you’re analyzing.

Does it usually take 7 days before all conversion metrics are reported? Does it usually take 11 days until a customer completes a purchase after their first interaction with your ads?

In either case, if it’s only been a few days since your last major change to the campaign, it might be best to wait several more days before rushing to any major conclusions about performance.

Try to have as much of a complete picture of conversion metrics and the typical buying journey of your customers as you can before judging the outcome of your recent changes too harshly.

One quick way to check your recent average conversion reporting delay is by navigating to the Campaigns section of your account and changing the date range to Today, then hovering your mouse over the Conversions metric in the Account row.

This helps you understand, on a high-level, how long it takes customers who see and click your ad to complete a particular conversion action. Conversions can be reported up to 90 days after the click, depending on the conversion window you’ve chosen for that particular conversion action.

Pro Tip: If you’d ever like to see the conversions that actually occurred on a given date, use the “Conversions (by conv. time)” metrics. Do note, however, that conversion by time data is only available after March 6, 2019.

Now take an account-level look at the average days to conversion for the conversion action you’re analyzing by navigating to the Attribution > Path metrics section of your account. You’ll find this section under “Tools and settings” (top-right of page) > Measurement > Attribution.

Then click “Path metrics” on the left-side of the page. Once there, change the “Conversion action” filter as needed, choose an appropriate attribution Lookback window, choose a conversion window to analyze by changing the date range, then change the “Measure from last interaction” to “Measure from first interaction.”

Note the difference between Lookback window and Conversion window, per Google:

To see this in more detail and view the average days to conversion for the PMax campaign you’re investigating, add the Conversions > Days to Conversion segment to your Campaigns data table.

Usual Suspects (Non-PMax Specific): Most Common Indirect Causes Of Performance Fluctuation

Okay, so we’ve identified that we are indeed justified in our freakout. What now?

Let’s first investigate the “usual suspects” of major changes to PMax performance.

Conversion Tracking

Have there been any changes that may have affected conversion tracking?

For example, has there been any changes to the source code of your site or Google Tag Manager, or are there any error messages showing in the Conversions section of Google Ads, the Diagnostics section of any of your Primary conversion actions in Google Ads, the Overview section of your Google Ads account, or the Google Ads Tag or Google Analytics sections of your Google Ads account within the Your Data Sources area of Audience Manager?

Budget, Bidding, Asset Group, & Listing Group Changes

Have there been any changes to the campaigns budget, bidding, or Asset Groups since performance improved or worsened?

Changes to any of these three can have major impacts on performance - especially relatively large budget increases or decreases, bid strategy type changes, enabling or disabling of Asset Groups, or Listing Group product additions or exclusions.

Google Merchant Center Issues or Major Product Feed Changes

Check the Diagnostics section of your Google Merchant Center account for any recent disapprovals or warnings. Also, check the bell icon on the top-right of your Google Merchant Center account to see if there are any other notifications of issues that may be impacting the performance of your Shopping ads.

If you’re utilizing a Content API setup within your Google Merchant Center, don’t forget to check the Diagnostics report within the Content API section of your Google Merchant Center account as well. Are there major or consistent failed API calls occurring that may be impacting your Shopping ads?

Have there been any changes to your product feed that may have affected performance? If Supplemental Feeds are in use, are they still in sync and up-to-date with your primary product feed?

Site Changes

Have there been any changes to your site such as site navigation, checkout flows, CMS plugins, web hosting, or product pages?

Even seemingly minor changes to the site can cause major, unexpected negative consequences to the performance of your PMax campaigns.

Make sure you remain “in the loop” of any changes that occur to the site so you can closely monitor their potential impacts on performance - especially any changes that might impact conversion tracking or the product pages of best sellers.

Any recent changes to products going in or out of stock on your site, especially for any best sellers? Any recent changes to product pricing or promotions, customer shipping costs or free shipping offer thresholds?

Any extremely negative reviews showing on the site, or elsewhere for your products (e.g. on Amazon, on high-traffic volume review sites)?

Google Search Console

If you use Google Search Console, are all pages on your site that you want Google to crawl indexed with Google Search Console? Are there any important URLs that are now showing as “Failing” in the Core Web Vitals section of your Google Search Console account?

Market

Evaluate changes in the search behavior for your products by reviewing, if available, the Search Terms and Search Trend Insight data in the Insights section of your Performance Max campaign and your Google Ads account as a whole.

Pay particular attention to high search volume Search Categories and search terms that have incurred large positive or negative shifts in metrics like impressions and conversions.

Outside of high search volume terms, are you seeing major shifts in the performance of other terms you’ve deemed are important, such as branded, competitor, top-of-funnel, or commercial-intent-oriented searches?

Note that Search Trend Insight data is not available for all advertisers, or these insights may not be very relevant to the products you’re offering, but do check-in periodically to see if new insights emerge.

Google will, at times, provide a notification to new insights such as these in the “Notifications” feature of your account - found by clicking the bell icon in the top-right corner of your Google Ads account.

Similarly, check Google’s built-in Keyword Planner tool and Google Trends for any outliers in interest over time for high search volume or high conversion volume search terms.

When using Google Trends, try different search terms, topics, categories (e.g. Web search, Shopping, YouTube), and date ranges to uncover potential insights into changes in search behavior.

Have people recently changed or started to change the way they’re searching for the products you offer? Are there new major competitors who’ve recently entered the market?

Is there seasonality at play or global dynamics that may be affecting the buying behavior of your products or consumer spending in general that is apparent through this analysis?

Other areas to check, depending on if these features are available to you, are the Site Search > Search Terms section of your Google Analytics account and the Best Sellers section of your Google Merchant Center account.

Are there any outliers in how people use the search feature on your site? If applicable, are you seeing similar changes in search behavior in your Microsoft Ads account? Have any of your top selling products changed in popularity rank recently?

Note that the popularity rank is the popularity of the item on Shopping ads and free listings, in the selected category and country, based on the estimated number of units sold.

Have your competitors started getting more or less aggressive in their bidding? Check the Auction Insights section of your PMax campaign to investigate. Don’t forget to check both the Search and Shopping filter of this section.

Other Marketing

Google Ads doesn’t work in a vacuum. Have you recently pulled spend away or dramatically increased spend or marketing efforts towards another marketing channel that may have caused a ripple effect to Google Ads performance?

Common examples include changes to social media marketing, email or SMS marketing, affiliate and referral marketing, or third-party remarketing channels.

Check for metric fluctuation outliers in your Google Analytics Source/Medium report or your third-party attribution software, if you have one, for more detailed performance insights.

Don’t forget to analyze the Shopping Behavior and Product Performance section of your Google Analytics account as well to locate any performance fluctuation outliers.

Non-PMax Campaigns

Have you added, paused, or made any major changes to any other non-PMax campaigns in the account?

Performance Max campaigns tend to be sensitive to and affected by relatively major changes to other active Google Ads campaigns, such as, but not limited to, Display, YouTube, Discovery, and Search campaigns using Dynamic Search Ads.

Diving Deeper (PMax Specific): Performance Fluctuations Directly Correlated To Performance Max Campaigns

Now that we’ve investigated the usual suspects found outside of PMax, let’s dive deeper into the PMax campaign in question to see if there are more causation insights we can uncover.

Google Bidding & Targeting Algorithm Shifts

Has Google started showing your ads more or less on the Shopping ads network? Build a custom report to find out using the “MC ID” dimension. This is the ID of the Google Merchant Center account associated with the products being advertised.

Note: Expect impression metrics in campaign data tables in the Campaigns section of your account to be lower than the number of impressions shown for an associated MC-ID.

Per Google: “When an ad shows many products in an individual ad slot, each product collects an impression. However, the campaign, Asset Group, and ad recognize that only a single ad was showing and will count it as one impression.”

Get a glimpse of recent optimizations made by Google’s automated bidding strategy by reviewing the Top Bidding Signals report in the Overview tab of your campaign.

Investigate the landing pages Google has been sending Performance Max ad clicks to by building a custom report using the Landing Page dimension:

Note: This report is especially important to check if Final URL Expansion is enabled for a given PMax campaign.

Additionally, in many cases, you’ll want to download this data so you can, at a minimum, run the data through pivot tables to find categorical patterns, such as the performance of blog pages vs product pages, different product categories, best sellers vs other products, home page vs product pages, etc.

Performance Metric Outliers

First, if the Performance Max campaign has reliable historical data, familiarize yourself with what “normal” performance fluctuation looks like for it. This will help stifle recency bias.

Look for metric outliers when comparing pre and post major increases or decreases in performance.

Pay special attention to diagnostic and micro-volume metrics like Avg. CPC, CTR, Impr., Conv. rate, Value / conv., Views, Avg. CPM, as well as other major performance indicators like sales-based Conversions and Conv. Value / cost or Cost / Conv.

Open the Products section of the campaign and look for any outliers in Product-specific performance outliers pre and post major drops in performance.

Look at product-specific metrics as a whole for the campaign as well as by Asset Group by adding the Asset Group table filter.

Pay particular attention to differences in high vs low Value/conv. and high vs low priced products, products with a relatively high number of impressions and relatively high CTRs vs relatively high Conv. rate products with statistically significant click data historically, and best seller impressions vs others product impressions.

Is Google now predominantly pushing lower or higher Value/conv. products? Is Google now predominantly pushing products with high CTRs but not products with high conversion rates?

Is Google now favoring to show products that aren’t your bestsellers or products you need to push?

It’s important to note that the Conversion metrics found in this Products section represent products in your product catalog that were clicked and led to the sale of some product of yours, they do not necessarily represent the number of sales of that product after an ad click.

Make sure you compare the product sale metrics you see here with what you find in the Product Performance section of your Google Analytics account with an audience filter that just shows traffic from Performance Max.

To investigate performance change outliers for Listing Groups (performance of product attributes as assigned in Merchant Center and as segmented within an Asset Group), perform the same analysis to the Listing Groups section of your PMax campaign as you did in the Products section.

Note that you will be limited in your ability to analyze comparison metrics in this section because, at the time of this writing (November 2022), comparison values are not available in the Listing Groups section of Performance Max campaigns.

Lastly, check whether there has been a change in approval status to any assets within your Asset Groups or Ad Extensions, such as Eligible (Limited) or Disapproved.

Situation-Dependent Causes Of Performance Fluctuation

It’s important to mention that there will be special case scenarios to consider when evaluating why Performance Max improved or worsened in performance that will only be relevant for some accounts.

I’ve listed many of the most common of those below.

What’s Next?

Warning: Don’t Make Too Many Corrective Changes At Once

Once you’ve identified areas of opportunity for corrective action or scale, don’t make too many potentially high-impact changes at once, such as changing the bid strategy type AND excluding some high-volume products from your PMax campaign.

With the limited insights we can already gather from this campaign type, the last thing you’ll want to have is a situation where you don’t know which major change you made was the cause of greatly improved or greatly worsened performance.

Where to go from here depends highly on what you found in your analysis and on many other factors that will vary dramatically from business to business, such as, but not limited to, aversion to experimental risk, available ad spend budget, profitability thresholds, goals of the business, and internal resources for account management.

This is where Google Ads is most tricky and often where businesses will turn to PPC professionals for assistance in correcting ad spend inefficiencies or scaling success in a way that is uniquely tailored to the needs and available data of the business.

Performance Max is an ever-changing new-ish product offering from Google Ads, so expect some technical areas of this guide to possibly become quickly outdated.

However, there are also many high-level data analysis principles baked in that I don’t see changing much anytime soon.

While this guide doesn’t cover every possible situation or reason for performance changes in your Performance Max campaigns, my hope is that it will be a solid starting point for most.

I’m also sharing a checklist below to help you get started quickly.

You don’t have to go through every single one of these points. Just go over the ones that are relevant to your business.

I also discussed some of these points on PPC Town Hall with Frederick Vallaeys and Mike Rhodes. You can watch the full video here:

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Performance Max 44-point evaluation checklist for ecommerce businesses

Investigate…

  1. Estimated conversion reporting delay.
  2. Average days to conversion from first ad interaction (account-wide and campaign-specific).
  3. Conversion tracking and recent changes to conversion actions.
  4. What “normal” PMax performance fluctuation looks like for the account (if appl.)
  5. Recent changes to budget, bid strategy type, Asset Groups, and Listing Groups
  6. Google Merchant Center product disapprovals and warnings, account issues, and feed issues.
  7. Changes to the site (e.g. navigation/checkout, plugins, hosting, page designs)
  8. Changes to in-stock products, especially best sellers.
  9. Changes to pricing, customer shipping costs, and promotions listed or previously listed on the site.
  10. Extremely negative reviews on and off the site
  11. Google Search Console for “Failing” URLs
  12. Changes in relevant search and buying behavior via the Insights section of your PMax campaign and your account as a whole, Google’s Keyword Planner, Google Trends, your site’s search feature (if appl.), Best Sellers section of Google Merchant Center (if appl.), and Microsoft Ads (if appl.).
  13. New competitors in the market or competitors who are changing their level of competitiveness within ad auctions you compete in.
  14. Major changes in other marketing and site traffic channels outside of Google and Microsoft Ads (e.g. Facebook Ads, email automation, affiliates, third-party remarketing channels)
  15. Major changes in on-site shopping behavior (e.g. cart abandonment, check-out abandonment, sessions with transactions)
  16. Shifts in Shopping network-specific performance for PMax.
  17. Top Bidding Signals report for optimization changes recently made by automated bidding.
  18. Performance shifts of landing pages PMax ad clicks are being sent to.
  19. Major changes made to non-PMax campaigns that may have impacted the performance of PMax.
  20. Major shifts in the performance of high-volume or high-performing search terms, geographies, devices, days, days of the week, hours, audiences, match types, or campaign types in non-PMax campaigns.
  21. Performance metric outliers for the campaign pre and post-major increases or decreases in performance.
  22. Performance metric outliers for the products advertised in the campaign - at the campaign-level and Asset Group-level.
  23. Performance metric outliers for the Listing Groups in the campaign.
  24. Asset Group assets or Ad Extensions with Eligible (Limited) or Disapproved status.
  25. Seasonality Adjustments not being added for major promotions, or for other major expected spikes or dips in conversion rates.
  26. Improperly added Data Exclusions, or for instances where Data Exclusions should have been added but were not.
  27. Scripts or Automated Rules that made changes to the account that may have had an impact on Performance Max.
  28. Account changes by other users who are not the primary account manager.
  29. Auto-applied recommendation changes made by Google.
  30. Customer match list additions, removals, or edits.
  31. Custom Experiments recently ended in the account.
  32. Value rules or conversion value adjustments were added, edited, or removed.
  33. “Best” rated assets inside top performing Asset Groups had a recent change in rating.
  34. High-performing or high-volume search categories or terms shifted away from a high-performing or high-volume Asset Group.
  35. Edits made to a Business Feed or Custom Variable that affected any non-PMax campaigns.
  36. CRM integration issues.
  37. Negative Keyword List was added to the PMax campaign being evaluated per the request of another user.
  38. Negative keywords were improperly added to a Negative Keyword List that is applied to the PMax campaign being evaluated.
  39. YouTube ads were opted out of by another user.
  40. Mobile app placements not owned and operated by Google had major increases or decreases in impressions.
  41. Mobile app category exclusions were applied at the account or campaign level.
  42. Location or Ad Schedule exclusions were added or removed for the PMax campaign being evaluated.
  43. Improperly setup Performance Max URL Exclusions.
  44. Auto-generated YouTube videos were added by Google to the PMax campaign being evaluated.

Want to safeguard your Performance Max campaigns? Click here to learn how.

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Performance Max: 5 Effective Ways to Safeguard Your Campaigns in 2024

Performance Max is one of the biggest automated campaigns from Google in the last few years. It replaced Smart Shopping and Local campaigns in September 2022 making it very clear to us that Google has it as the top focus in its ad strategy and that more automation is on the way.

Whether we like it or not, this is the world we live in. So we have to start to work together with the machines because Google is making us and also it generally tends to provide better results.

Of course, you should never give up control of your Performance Max campaign and let automation take over. And this brings us to the concept of automation layering, which in simpler terms means adding a layer of your own automation over that of Google’s to safeguard your campaigns.

In this article, you’re going to learn how you can safeguard your Performance Max campaigns in the five following areas.

1. Account structure

2. Alerts

3. Budgets

4. Experiments

5. Placements

Let’s go into detail and learn how you can do that using Optmyzr’s tools.

1. Create the account structure that supports your business goals

When Google says “build a Performance Max campaign”, they don’t mean that you have to build just one. You can create multiple Performance Max campaigns and we recommend you do that.

For instance, you can create multiple campaigns based on margins, because margins also determine what your bidding target should be.

For high-margin products, you can afford to bid much higher and more aggressively and still make a profit. For low-margin products, on the other hand, you might want to have a different ROAS target.

Now, you could’ve also created a structure based on seasonality because you’d want to prioritize budgets at different times of the year.

By creating and maintaining multiple campaigns, you can change settings in response to promotions, seasonality, and other business factors.

And how can you do this in Optmyzr? You can build a dynamic Performance Max campaign (for retail) structure or a shopping campaign structure with Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Builder 2.0.

You can set up how your listing group structure has to look like. For example, say you want to use a custom attribute as your first level of division and one campaign for each different custom label.

This custom label could include your margin data—high margin, low margin, or mid margin. You can also add as much granularity to it as you want. And then as the second level of division, you can create separate asset groups by ‘brand’ which enables you to put in different messaging and creative for each brand that you sell.

And what comes out of it is a split with many campaigns and listing groups that allow you to quickly check what’s new in your product feed and automatically put new products into the correct structure on a daily basis.

P.S. We spoke to two of the best ecommerce experts, Andrew Lolk and Menachem Ani, on PPC Town Hall 71 to learn how to better structure your Performance Max campaigns.

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2. Set guardrails with alerts

You can get alerts whenever your Performance Max campaign deviates from the expected performance.

In this example, you can see that we’re saying we’d like to get alerted if the CPC (cost per conversion) is going off target. And here we can see it has gone 135% off target and is currently trending down.

You can also build custom alerts using the Rule Engine.

Setting up alerts like the one above helps us clearly understand what is automation doing to our campaigns.

3. Optimize budget allocation

You can allocate and optimize budgets effectively and achieve the right level of spend for your campaign(s).

If you have multiple accounts associated with a client (say, five accounts on Google Ads, plus one Facebook and one Microsoft account), you can bring all of those together under one client.

And underneath that, you can create budget groups. For instance, you can create a budget group for all of your branded campaigns and non-branded campaigns, and assign different budgets to each of them. Then you can make sure that you don’t exceed the total allocated budget for any of these budget groups.

One of the things we’ve added is budget optimization capability in the Rule Engine. So if you want to build something really custom based on past performance and on your own business data, you can set up a Rule Engine strategy and optimize it automatically.

4. Experiment effectively to find winners faster

Here’s the truth: nobody in PPC knows exactly what the best strategy to win is. But the person who experiments the most effectively is going to win. The way you get to the right strategy is by iterating and experimenting faster and more effectively.

But the problem that we found with experiments is Google makes it really tedious to see how your experiments are doing, which stage they’re in, and so on. And you have to go to multiple accounts and pages within each account to check your experiments.

But Optmyzr can simplify that for you. We bring all of your experiments onto a single dashboard to quickly show you what experiments are working, which ones you can promote, and which ones you should terminate or maybe replace with a new experiment.

We’re going to add more capabilities in the future, but if you haven’t tested it out yet, go and take a look at it today.

5. Stop ads from showing on low-quality placements

You can use our Rule Engine to exclude placements at the account level.

And we also have a brand new tool for that called Smart Exclusion automation. This is an add-on tool. If you want to know more about it, just talk to your Optmyzr account rep.

This tool uses Optmyzr-wide data to prevent you from wasting money on say, some new, random mobile app that’s click-baiting people into clicking on your ads that are wasting a lot of ad spend but are not converting enough.

We can proactively place it in your account based on the Optmyzr-wide data that we see and prevent you from ever wasting money on that sort of clicks. And we’ll even give you a prediction of how much money you can save and then you can decide if you want to turn this feature on or not.

Take back control of your Performance Max campaigns

Performance Max is not 100% automated. You need to provide it with good data and value-focused optimization so that Google clearly understands what it is that your business really wants and what a ’conversion’ means to you.

Nobody understands your business better than you. So why let Google make decisions for you?

Get started with a 14-day free trial today.

Do Not Start a PPC Agency in 2024 Until You’ve Understood These 7 Things

I spoke to 4 all-star PPCers to discuss different career journeys including the decision to head out on our own (for those who have started an agency or consultancy). After the call, Harry Makins on Twitter asked a follow-up question that got me thinking more about the difference between starting an agency in 2010 and now.

A tweet about starting a PPC agency

I think it’s easier and more difficult. If you’ll allow me to ponder on this, I’ll share my musings below and then perhaps we can continue the conversation on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Oh, and one other important thing. Because these are my musings, I might be wrong. So listen to what I have to say, weigh it to determine whether the logic makes sense, then let me know if you see something in the industry that suggests otherwise. I’d love to keep learning too, with your help.

Deal? Let’s get started.

3 Reasons Why Starting a Digital Marketing Agency in 2024 is HARDER Than Ever

Reason #1: The Digital Marketing Space is More Crowded Than Ever.

That doesn’t even include international agency growth that can service the US!

There are so. Many. Agencies out there right now.

Even in my small network, every time I turn around, another friend is announcing their intent to “go it alone” and try this freelancing thing.

So immediately, we recognize that it is harder out there simply because there are literally more agencies than there used to be.

Reason #2: Companies Are Aggressively In-housing Digital Marketing Services.

Another trend I’m seeing lately is the desire to eliminate vendor relationships and move paid media in-house. There are a number of reasons not to be discussed now for going in-house, or going agency with your media.

However, for the sake of this article, there are MORE agencies than ever, and yet MORE businesses are moving their ad buying in-house.

Seriously, while writing this post I ran across yet another DTC person (Patrick Coddou of Get Supply) announcing his move away from using agencies!

Reason #3: The Market Is More Mature & Also More Picky.

One thing I’m seeing personally is that people are savvier than they were a decade ago, and this works its way into many things.

Sales, for instance.

It used to be easier a decade ago to get into a Google Ads account, identify some immediate opportunities, and tell them to a befuddled marketing manager who said some variation of “okay, okay, what do you charge, you’re hired.”

I’ve found it’s not enough just to “know Google Ads better than the next guy” in order to land clients these days (and remember, there are just more agency options out there competing).

I’ve also found accounts we take over tend to be (on average) managed better than they were 5 years ago which makes improving them more challenging than the “glory days” when we could take over a new account in shambles and expect to see immediate results by adding in a few exact match keywords plus ads that actually land the user on the correct landing page (this is a general observation, rather than a prescribed rule, of course. There are still REALLY bad managers out there making bad accounts).

4 Reasons Why Starting a Digital Marketing Agency in 2024 is EASIER Than Ever

Okay, so we ran over some reasons why it’s harder than ever to start a new agency. Is there any good news? Actually, I think there is a lot of good news here!

Read on.

Reason #1: Online Businesses Are Booming.

It’s no secret (normal tech growth followed by a pandemic forcing ecommerce growth) that the newfangled-internet-thing continues to grow as an important part of any business.

Ecommerce sales made up only 5% of retail sales in 2011 (remember, back when the number of agencies was smaller), and in 2021 it has climbed to around 13%. So, while there are more agencies, there is more to manage for those agencies.

What is really mind-boggling to me, is the potential for continued growth here. In 2018 (admittedly, almost 5 years ago, but still) a whopping 46% of small businesses DID NOT EVEN HAVE A WEBSITE. Do you realize how much opportunity there still is in some of these niche markets?!

Reason #2: People Are More Willing to Hire True Experts.

I remember from conversations with prospects 5 years ago, that people wanted “an agency who does it all! We want one point of contact.”

Whereas, lately, our contacts have communicated to us: “we want to hire the best people in each marketing channel to build a super team, like the Traveling Wilburys of marketing.”

I think that shift is really fascinating (and it’s one of the reasons we’ve never had an issue being a Paid Search only agency), as it shows people are now seeing more value in having a truly skilled practitioner rather than in having fewer points of contact.

What this tells me, is that the savvy freelancer will identify an area in which she can become THE true expert, work hard to become that expert, and then attract clients who need that skill set. It’s time to ditch the small agency “we do it all” mentality!

I think the key to survival as a freelancer in 2024 and beyond is being satisfied with niching out (somehow: product, vertical, whatever). This may prevent you from growing into a mega-agency but I am convinced it can help you establish a profitable and stable business built on your network.

Reason #3: People Are Less Likely to Hire Based on “Agency Brand Strength” Alone.

I have to be careful here since I have a lot of respect for smart people I know in large agencies. However, what I have learned lately, is that businesses are less attracted to the “brand strength” that a larger, international agency used to carry simply by walking into the room.

I think this goes hand in hand with clients getting savvier. They want to make sure their account isn’t going to be managed by the interns when they were sold by the professionals.

In this way, I think it’s easier for a skilled freelancer who can sell well AND deliver on that promise, to win bids against larger agencies who used to have a substantial advantage simply because of their name.

Reason #4: Businesses Who Can’t Afford In-House Still Need Help.

Finally, I’m finding that there are certain businesses that simply can’t afford in-housing, even with all of the moves to in-housing that larger brands are making. In other words, there will ALWAYS be businesses that need assistance in various stages.

Rather than try to battle against in-house, I think the savvy freelancer of the future will instead look to those businesses who can’t afford to do in-house, and build a pricing package and work scope that works for both the smaller business and the freelancer.

Oh, and these may tend to be local, and I think the smaller freelancers also have a distinct advantage in that way, by rubbing shoulders with their neighbors.

So there you have it, I think there are concerns about starting a freelance or agency in 2024, but I also think there is a great opportunity. What do you think? Let’s continue the conversation on Social Media!

May the Auctions Be Ever In Your Favor.

Reduce Wastage: Manage Your Google Ads Budget for Optimal Results

At the heart of every successful Google Ads campaign lies a well-structured and meticulously managed budget. It’s the lifeblood of your campaign, dictating its reach, visibility, and effectiveness.

However, advertisers often struggle to manage their Google Ads budgets due to a combination of factors — some of which are in their control, and some that aren’t: campaigns overspending and underspending, lack of budget monitoring, seasonal fluctuations, a changing competitive landscape, and Google manipulating ad prices.

In this article, you’ll learn:

What is a Google Ads budget?

A Google Ads budget is the maximum amount you’re willing to spend on a campaign per day. However, your actual daily spending may vary depending on how well your ads perform. Some days, Google might spend less than your daily budget, and on others, you might spend up to twice as much.

How do Google Ads budgets work?

After you set a budget and start running your campaign, Google “paces” your budget spending throughout the day or month. This means that it’ll try to spend your budget evenly over the selected period of time. However, there may be days when you spend more or less than your daily budget, depending on factors such as competition and consumer demand.

Google Ads has two spending limits:

  1. Daily spending limit: This is the maximum amount you can be billed for a campaign on a given day. It’s calculated as 2 times your average daily budget.
  2. Monthly spending limit: This is the maximum amount you can be billed for a campaign in a given month. It’s calculated as 30.4 times your average daily budget.
Google Ads' daily spending limits

Google Ads’ daily spending limits (Source: Google Ads Help)

How to set a Google Ads budget?

Before setting your budget, there are 3 things you need to consider:

  1. Your business goals: Be clear about what you want to achieve with your Google Ads campaigns. Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or drive sales? Your budget should be aligned with your business goals.
  2. Your target audience: The next thing to consider is your audience. Who are you trying to reach with your ads? How competitive is the market for your keywords? The more competitive the market, the higher your budget will need to be.
  3. Your budget: And, lastly, the budget. How much money can you afford to spend on Google Ads each day or month? It’s important to set a budget that you’re comfortable with but that won’t break the bank.

Here’s how to set a Google Ads budget:

  1. Determine your budget type: Google Ads offers two primary budget types: daily budgets and shared budgets. Daily budgets control your spending on individual campaigns or ad groups each day, while shared budgets allow you to allocate a single budget across multiple campaigns. Choose the budget type that aligns with your campaign structure and objectives.
  2. Set a competitive budget: Research your industry and competition to determine what a competitive budget might be. What are other advertisers in your space spending? While you don’t need to match their budgets, understanding the competitive landscape can tell you what number you should set.
  3. Set a daily limit: Decide how much you want to set as a daily budget for your campaign.
  4. Set a bid strategy: Choose a bidding strategy that aligns with your goals. Whether it’s maximizing clicks, optimizing for conversions, or targeting a specific return on ad spend (ROAS), your bidding strategy influences how much budget is utilized.

How are budgets applied at the campaign level?

At the campaign level: Google Ads uses a hierarchical structure, with campaigns being the top-level entities. Each campaign has its own budget. You allocate a budget to a specific campaign when you create it.

At the ad group level: Within each campaign, you can further structure your budgeting by creating ad groups. Ad group budgets are optional and allow you to allocate a portion of the campaign’s budget to specific sets of ads and keywords.

Distribution of budgets: Your daily or monthly budget is distributed evenly over the selected time frame by default. However, as we told you earlier, Google Ads may spend more on high-performing days and less on slower days, as long as it doesn’t exceed the budget cap for the entire time frame.

4 tips to efficiently manage your Google Ads budget

1. Use historical data to predict future ad spend.

Why is historical data important?

When you know how much money you have spent on Google Ads in the past, you get a better idea of running a campaign and hence can set a budget that is realistic and achievable. Historical data can help you to identify trends and patterns in your ad spend.

For example, you may notice that your ad spend tends to increase during the holiday season or that certain keywords are more expensive than others. This information can help you make more informed decisions about your future ad spend.

It can also help you track your progress better over time.

How to predict your future ad spend?

1. Gather all your historical data: This includes your daily or monthly ad spend, clicks, conversions, and other relevant metrics. You can export this data from your Google Ads account.

2. Analyze your data: Look for trends and patterns in your historical data. For example, do you spend more money on advertising during certain months of the year? Do certain campaigns or keywords consistently drive more clicks and conversions?

3. Use a forecasting tool: There are a number of tools available that can help you forecast your future ad spend based on your historical data. These tools typically take into account factors such as seasonality, trends, and competition.

Or, you can try this script to forecast your ad performance.

4. Adjust your budget as needed: Once you have a forecast for your future ad spend, you can adjust your budget accordingly. You may need to increase your budget if you are planning to launch a new campaign or expand into new markets.

2. Allocate your budget efficiently for better performance.

Efficient budget allocation is important for various reasons: to reduce costs, improve performance, and maximize ROI. Here are some tips:

You can find more tips in the best practices section below.

3. Identify and fix lost impression share.

Lost impression share is the percentage of impressions that your ads were eligible to receive but didn’t receive. A few reasons why you could be losing impression share are lower budget, lower ad rank, and higher competition.

While it may seem like simply increasing your budget and ad rank while targeting lesser competitive keywords is enough to counter that, it’s not that straightforward.

Some PPC experts suggest you do the following:

4. Automate budgeting for more effective management.

Considering how powerful Google Ads’ machine learning has become, it’s a no-brainer to make use of it to run almost any campaign for any kind of use case these days.

Here’s one: if yours is a business that sees a higher demand for your product or service during certain days of the week or times of the day, you can use Google Ads automation to set higher budgets during those periods.

If you’ve got a similar use case, you should check out this really powerful script by Andrea Atzori.

Common Google Ads budget problems (and how to fix them)

Let’s break down some common problems advertisers face while managing budgets with possible causes and solutions.

Problem #1: Your campaigns are frequently overspending.

Cause #1: You’re not monitoring your broad match keywords.

How to fix it?

Cause #2: You’re bidding on too many or irrelevant search terms.

How to fix it?

Cause #3: You’re not using relevant or any ad extensions.

How to fix it?

Cause #4: Your post-click user experience needs work.

How to fix it?

Cause #5: Your campaign has conversion tracking issues.

How to fix it?

Cause #6: It’s not you, it’s Google.

How to fix it?

Check your Change History tool for any strange occurrences in your account. Sometimes Google Ads faces glitches or runs experiments that can waste your budget.

Related*:* 

Problem #2: Your campaigns are frequently underspending.

Cause #1: You’re overemphasizing saving costs rather than growing returns.

How to fix it?

Cause #2: You added too few keywords or those with low search volume.

How to fix it?

Cause #3: Your CTR is too low.

How to fix it?

Cause #4: Your target location is not broad enough or incorrect.

How to fix it?

Cause #5: You’re running the ads during inactive hours or for a very short time.

How to fix it?

Problem #3: Your daily ad spend is constantly fluctuating.

Cause #1: You may have set up scheduled bid adjustments.

How to fix it?

Cause #2: Google is optimizing your ad spend based on your goals.

How to fix it?

Scott Ostermiller, a PPC consultant based in Utah shared his experience regarding such fluctuations.

“One thing I generally do is anticipate my budgets to spend somewhat wildly on the 1st (and sometimes 2nd) of every month because Google likes to “test” things out and use its leeway to spend up to double your daily budget.

I combat this by gradually trimming my budget down in the last 7-10 days of the month so that we come in at around 70-80% of our average daily budget. And then I start to gradually ramp up to around 120% of the daily average by the middle of the month. Then the trimming starts again. Imagine a bell curve. 

The trick is to ramp/trim budgets in such a way that it doesn’t throw the campaign back into learning mode (which shouldn’t happen if your changes are less than 10% difference).”

Whether you’re just starting out in Google Ads or are a seasoned veteran, it helps to know how the trends are shaping up and where the industry stands today. Granted, the budget benchmarks vary depending on the industry, business size, and marketing goals.

But it can give you a general idea of what to expect in terms of advertising costs in your industry. Speaking of which, Databox conducted a Google Ads survey across 15 industries and we thought it’d be a good idea to answer some questions you may have below.

What does the average business spend on Google Ads?

Across all industries, the monthly median business spend on Google Ads is $2,266.7.

Google Ads business spend across industries

Source: Databox

How much should I spend on Google Ads?

While there’s no minimum spend on Google Ads, you can’t go too low and expect to see any practical results with $2 or $5 as your daily budget. However, for beginners, several PPC practitioners suggest spending anywhere from $10 to $50 per day at least considering factors such as your client’s business, industry, objectives, location, etc. On a monthly basis, they suggest increasing it to $5,000 with regular monitoring.

What does it cost to run Google Ads?

If you’re just starting out and want to see a tangible ROI, it’s better to get some expert help. So, taking into account their service fee plus your Google Ads budget, it should cost you anywhere from $10,000 to $40,000 at least per month.

Does Google Ads work for small businesses?

Like most other answers in PPC, the answer to this question too is: it depends. You need to realize that Google Ads follows a cycle of “test, learn, iterate, and repeat”. So you can’t guarantee which search queries or ads leading to which landing pages will bring you good results. It’s a process where you constantly learn from experience.

With that said, don’t spend too much or spread your budget too thin in the initial stages. Experts suggest testing a larger budget for a shorter period of time to 

For example, spend $5000 each month for 3 months instead of spending $2000 each month for 12 months.

Maximize ROI and boost performance with these Google Ads budget best practices

1. Set clear goals for your campaigns.

As cliched as this may sound before you dive into budget management, define your advertising objectives. Whether it’s increasing website traffic, generating leads, or driving sales, clear objectives will guide your budget allocation.

2. Choose the right keywords.

Keywords are still the major signals that direct your campaigns in the right direction. Choose relevant keywords that can drive growth and use negatives to cut through the noise.

3. Start with a test budget.

If you’re new to Google Ads or launching a new campaign, start with a modest test budget to assess performance and refine your strategy before committing to a larger budget.

4. Allocate ad spend strategically.

Allocate your budget strategically across your campaigns and ad groups. Prioritize higher-performing campaigns that drive the most value, but don’t ignore lower-performing ones that have the potential to improve with optimization.

5.  Understand your (or your client’s) sales cycle.

This is more of a general piece of advice, but clearly understanding the length of your sales cycle really helps you allocate budgets better. For businesses with longer sales cycles, be prepared to allocate budget over a more extended period to capture leads at various stages.

6. Use Google Ads Smart Bidding.

Make use of Google’s Smart Bidding strategies (e.g., Target CPA, Target ROAS) to automate bid adjustments based on your performance goals. Smart Bidding can help you optimize your budget by bidding more efficiently.

7. Adjust budgets for seasonality.

Be prepared to increase or decrease your budget based on seasonal trends in your industry. For instance, retail businesses may need to allocate more budget during this upcoming holiday season.

8. Make performance-based adjustments.

Increase budgets for high-performing campaigns when they are limited by budget. You don’t want to cap the success of a campaign that’s delivering a strong ROI. Similarly, decrease or pause budgets for underperforming campaigns.

9. Optimize your Quality Score and make use of ad extensions.

Invest in ad extensions and ensure that your ad copy and landing pages are optimized. Relevant, higher-quality ads earn a higher quality score which means better ad placements and less budget to maintain visibility.

10. Use budget alerts.

Set up budget alerts to notify you when your spending reaches a certain threshold.

When to increase your budgets

When to decrease your budgets

Manage Google Ads budgets using Optmyzr.

1. Monitor budgets and project future spend.

With Optmyzr’s Spend Projection tool, you can analyze your recent and historical performance and trends, and calculate a projected spend range. This way, you can monitor your spending throughout the month, proactively identify potential overspending or underspending, and ensure that you stay within your desired budget limits.

Optmyzr's Spend Projection Tool

Screenshot: Spend Projection Tool

You can also share a projection by scheduling a report to the appropriate people at the right time.

Optmyzr's Spend Projection Performance Reports

Screenshot: Performance Reports

2. Avoid overspending and underspending.

With the Optimize Budgets tools, you can avoid common budgeting issues like over and underspending.

Let’s take a couple of examples:

Example 1: Avoid overspending.

In the below example, it becomes evident that the account is at risk of exceeding the allocated monthly budget of $11,000. To address this issue and effectively manage costs, you have the option to select specific performance metrics for analysis and experiment with different daily budgets. This enables you to observe the changes in the Projected Spend column and make necessary adjustments to ensure optimal budget allocation.

Optimize Budgets - Avoid Overspending

Screenshot: Optimize Budgets - Avoid Overspending

To optimize costs without compromising conversions, consider reducing the daily budget for the Retail Campaign, which has lower potential and average daily spend compared to the budget amount. Meanwhile, note that the Non-Brand Pri campaign is currently the highest spender. By prioritizing budget reductions on the Retail Campaign, you can effectively control costs while minimizing the impact on conversions.

Example 2: Avoid underspending.

In our second example, we have clicked on the ‘Get Optimization Suggestions’ button, which provides us with various spending scenarios to consider. By analyzing these scenarios, you can evaluate the impact of reallocating budgets on campaign performance. Use this feature to explore different budget allocations and assess how they would influence KPIs.

Optimize Budgets - Avoid Underspending

Screenshot: Optimize Budgets - Avoid Underspending

In this scenario, the budget group is unlikely to reach the $1,500 monthly target. To optimize budget allocation and maximize conversions, you must identify campaigns where excess budget can be effectively utilized. By selecting the second row, you can explore suggestions for new daily budgets in specific campaigns that can potentially generate 110 additional conversions by month-end. Implementing these suggestions would increase overall spend by 27% and bring you closer to your monthly target.

3. Find and fix lost impression share.

The Fix Impression Share Lost Due To Budget - Campaign Budget express optimization focuses on boosting the budget for campaigns experiencing impression share loss due to budget constraints. By increasing the budget, you can capture a greater number of impressions and improve visibility. The tool provides initial suggestions and allows for further adjustments, giving you flexibility in optimizing your campaign’s budget allocation.

Fix Lost Impression Share tool

Screenshot: Fix Lost Impression Share tool

4. Manage budgets using automation that’s in your control.

Flexible Budgets is an Enhanced Script™ for Google Ads that provides automation for budget management. If you’ve been spending time manually checking budgets on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to make sure you’re not overshooting the target, this script will automatically do this for you every single hour.

By setting up this script, you can automate the process of pausing campaigns, ad groups, and keywords and labeling them when the cost exceeds the specified maximum. You can also have the script re-enable the same entities when your budget resets.

Let’s take an example: Pause campaigns when the weekly spend cap is reached.

Here’s how you’d set this one up to prevent an account from spending significantly more than $5,000 per week:

Pause Campaigns When Weekly Spend Cap Is Reached

Screenshot: Pause Campaigns When Weekly Spend Cap Is Reached

This script can be copied and pasted into Google Ads (either at the Manager/MCC or individual account level) and scheduled to run automatically every hour.

5. Allocate different budgets for different days of the week.

With the Rule Engine, you have the power to tailor your daily budgets to align with performance metrics and even external factors like the day of the week.

Imagine having the ability to fine-tune your budget allocation with precision. The Rule Engine empowers you to do just that; you can set logical rules that automatically adjust your daily budgets based on specific criteria and schedule your strategies to run on partial or full automation. 

Here’s an example: Lower budget for weekends and holidays.

Depending on your business, you may see lower conversion rates or potential customer activity on specific days - e.g. on public holidays or certain days of the week.

Lower Budget For Weekends And Holidays

Screenshot: Lower Budget For Weekends And Holidays

To maintain a consistent ad presence throughout the week while prioritizing higher budgets for weekdays, you can easily implement a rule similar to the example provided above: “Allocate a daily budget of $100 if today is Saturday or Sunday. For all other days, set the daily budget to $120.”

By employing this rule, you gain precise control over your budget allocation, tailoring it to specific days of the week. This approach enables you to maintain visibility and engagement over the weekend while strategically allocating higher budgets to weekdays.

Related*:* 

Effectively start managing your budgets today.

Managing budgets in Google Ads isn’t just about numbers and figures. It’s a process that involves strategic thinking, continuous monitoring, and timely adjustments.

That’s why it’s very important you learn the critical aspects of Google Ads budgets, including setting budgets, avoiding overspending, and preventing underspending and common issues advertisers face along with possible causes and fixes.

With these best practices and the Optmyzr tools mentioned here, you now have the superpowers to effectively manage Google Ads budgets in your hands.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

The Methodology Behind Target CPA and Target ROAS Optimizations

Smart bidding strategies have transformed bid management for the better. However, advertisers often grapple with the challenge of gaining greater control over their campaign optimizations. At Optmyzr, we’ve been at the forefront of addressing this concern, and one common question we receive is, “How can I adjust keyword bids when using smart bidding?”

The initial response might appear simple: “You can’t.” But there’s a twist.

Although you can’t directly modify bids for individual keywords, you can strategically signal the algorithms to influence your campaign’s performance and have a significant impact on your bids

How to adjust targets to influence bids?

If you’ve set a Target ROAS or Target CPA in your bidding strategies, you can influence bids through subtle adjustments to said targets at either the campaign or ad group level. These adjustments serve as signals to communicate your intentions to Google’s bidding algorithms.

If your goal is to raise your bids to increase your chances of conquering impression share and push for success in the auction, you can do the following:

Now, if you think that most of the available revenue or conversions are already being captured,  or that there’s some inefficient spend to remove and you want to decrease bids: 

To help illustrate these concepts, the graph below outlines the expected behavior of your CPCs as you adjust each target:

CPC Vs. Bidding

CPC Vs. Bidding

In summary:

How can Optmyzr help you?

Within the Optmyzr toolset for automated bidding, we have four ready-to-use rule-based tools called:

The primary goal of optimizing your targets is to fine-tune bidding strategies within campaigns or ad groups. This kind of optimization process relies on two key sets of rules:

First: Optimizing high-potential performers

Optimizing High-Potential Performers

Optimizing High-Potential Performers

The initial set of rules concentrates on identifying ad groups or campaigns with significant potential for improved performance. Specifically, we pinpoint ad groups or campaigns that are actively generating conversions but are losing impression share due to ad rank, and that don’t have any budget constraints.

In such cases, we want to increase our bids. Not arbitrarily but with a clear intention: to recover lost impression share and enhance the visibility of your ads. This can lead to higher click-through rates and increased exposure to potential customers.

Bidding up to regain lost impression share due to a lower ad rank in a converting campaign or ad group is a smart strategic move that can amplify the campaign’s reach, and ultimately, drive more valuable conversions. 

Second: Optimizing high-performers

Optimizing High-Performers

Optimizing High-Performers

In the second set of rules, the focus shifts to ad groups or campaigns that have already surpassed their performance targets. In these cases, we look for opportunities to make our bidding strategies more cost-efficient.

The process here closely resembles the first set of rules, with a key difference. Now, we’re reviewing ad groups or campaigns that have excellent impression share performance and have exceeded their current targets by a substantial margin (e.g. 140% of their targets). These are the ad groups or campaigns for which we may be paying more than necessary.

In this context, the objective is to reduce our bids.

Things to keep in mind

A few common questions and recommendations often arise when it comes to implementing this type of optimization. Let’s address them:

How often should I adjust targets?

Frequently adjusting your targets may not be the best approach. While the ideal frequency depends on your account’s characteristics and strategy, we typically recommend making these adjustments once or twice a month. Keeping a balanced approach allows for smoother performance and ensures that any learning phases triggered will be significantly shorter.

By default, our Optimize Target ROAS and Target CPA tools refrain from suggesting changes to entities you’ve already modified in the last 14 days. You also have the flexibility to adjust this threshold by customizing the tool into your own Rule Engine strategy.

Won’t it reset my campaigns to the learning phase?

To mitigate the risk of your campaigns re-entering the learning phase, we advise against making drastic changes to your targets. In fact, our tools will only suggest small adjustments. So, along with the recommended optimization frequency, you can avoid prolonged learning phases and maintain campaign stability.

Campaign duration before implementation

It’s a good idea to allow your campaigns to accumulate enough data before making adjustments. By default, the tool operates based on the last 30 days of campaign performance data. The more traffic volume and conversions your campaigns generate, the easier it’ll be for the algorithms to recalibrate, and the richer the dataset the tools can use to offer valuable suggestions.

Audience Bidding on Smart Bidding

We have been aware that sometimes, mistakenly, advertisers put audiences on “Observation” and then mix it with this type of strategy, hoping that Google will increase bids for those audiences as well. While we would love to be able to say that it works, this is not the case.

For campaigns that use Smart Bidding, first-party audience segments added under the “Observation” setting will be used as signals for Smart Bidding strategies to help prioritize certain audiences, or, sometimes will simply be ignored by Google.

Customization is key

Remember that you’re not bound to the examples outlined in this post or the default logic of our tools. Customization is the key to tailoring strategies to your account’s unique context and your specific goals.

For instance, if you’re pursuing aggressive competition for top-of-page impressions, instead of optimizing around Search Impression Share, consider focusing on metrics like Search lost top impression share (rank) or Search lost absolute top impression share (rank). 

Final thoughts

In the vast universe of accounts and campaigns, each with its unique context, it’s important to remember that there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy set in stone. What we’ve discussed here highlights that the success of automation depends on your input. These strategies serve as examples of how we can transform traditional bid management and optimization approaches into valuable signals that help algorithms perform even better.

For those of you looking to apply this knowledge to optimize and manage campaigns at scale and save time, tools like Optmyzr are ready for you.

If you haven’t joined us yet, we invite you to take a 14-day free trial. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with any questions, feedback, or ideas you may have. Our team is always happy to help you!

Unlock Efficiency and Savings with Optmyzr’s Landing Page URL Checker

In the dynamic world of Google Ads, ensuring the smooth functioning of your landing pages is paramount. Broken landing pages not only frustrate potential customers, but can also lead to wasted Google Ads budget. This is where Optmyzr’s Landing Page URL Checker comes to the rescue. This powerful tool is designed to meticulously scan and verify the integrity of all landing pages within your Google Ads account, helping you maintain a healthy online presence while optimizing your advertising budget.

About the tool

The Landing Page URL Checker is your dedicated ally in the battle against broken landing pages. It scrutinizes landing pages for dreaded 404 errors or any indicators of products being out of stock. Designed as an in-house solution, it ensures you never hit script timeouts or get bogged down by the limitations of external systems or services.

Getting started

Getting started with the Landing Page URL Checker is a breeze. Simply navigate to the ‘Monitoring’ tab in the Optmyzr interface, and you’ll find ‘Landing Page URL Checker’ listed under the ‘LANDING PAGE MONITORING’ section. The dashboard offers a clear view of your existing settings, complete with IDs, names, scope, and action buttons for editing, duplicating, or deleting them.

Creating a new setting is straightforward. Click the ‘+ADD SETTING’ button, and a side tray will open, guiding you through the basic settings.

Basic settings

In the initial settings window, you can assign a name to your setting and specify whether you want the tool to inspect URLs associated with ads, keywords, sitelinks, and/or PMax asset groups. This flexibility allows you to tailor the tool’s focus to your specific needs.

You also have the choice of running the tool in ‘Preview mode’ to generate a report or in ‘Apply mode’ to enable automatic changes within your Google Ads account based on your selected criteria.

In ‘Apply mode,’ the tool can pause ads, keywords, or asset groups in your account, as determined by the chosen options. Conversely, in ‘Preview mode,’ the tool generates a comprehensive report highlighting entities with broken URLs but refrains from making any changes.

Additional settings

The Landing Page URL Checker doesn’t stop at the basics; it offers a range of additional settings to fine-tune your URL monitoring:

The tool also offers options to check entities with zero impressions, mobile URLs, wrapped URLs, and more.

Reporting and Automation

The final step in harnessing the power of the Landing Page URL Checker is setting up reporting and automation. You can schedule the tool to run at your convenience and specify your notification preferences.

Conclusion

In a fast-paced digital advertising landscape, broken landing pages can be a costly setback. This tool empowers advertisers to proactively manage their landing pages, ensuring a seamless user experience and maximizing the return on advertising investment. With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, it’s an indispensable tool for any Google Ads account holder looking to optimize their campaigns and boost their performance. Don’t let broken landing pages drain your budget - take control with Optmyzr’s Landing Page URL Checker today.

Note: This feature is part of Optmyzr Core. Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Sign up for a free trial now.

Know Where Your Account Stands Among Competitors With PPC Vertical Benchmarks

In the fast-paced world of digital advertising, where trends shift like quicksilver, staying ahead of the competition is not just a goal—it’s a necessity for success. Recognizing the challenges advertisers face in navigating this ever-evolving landscape, Optmyzr has unleashed a game-changing tool onto the scene: PPC Vertical Benchmarks. 

This innovative tool is not just a lifeline; it’s a powerhouse that allows advertisers to gain a competitive edge by meticulously comparing the performance of their Google Ads account with others in the same industry vertical or across various verticals. As we delve into the intricacies of this tool, get ready to discover how it can revolutionize your Google Ads campaigns and propel your advertising strategy to new heights. The world of digital advertising is dynamic, and with Optmyzr’s PPC Vertical Benchmarks, you’re not just keeping pace - you’re leading the charge. Let’s explore how this cutting-edge tool can be your secret weapon in the pursuit of advertising excellence.

Understanding the PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool

The PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool is designed to provide advertisers with a comprehensive view of their Google Ads campaigns’ performance relative to their industry peers. It empowers you with the ability to measure and compare key metrics that directly impact your advertising success. Here’s what this innovative tool provides you with:

Industry-specific insights

By selecting your industry vertical, you can access performance data that is relevant to your specific niche. This insight allows you to gauge how your Google Ads campaigns are performing against competitors in your industry, giving you a clearer picture of where you stand.

Key Metric comparison

The PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool provides a side-by-side comparison of essential metrics with other accounts, including:

1. Average CPC

This metric reveals the average cost-per-click for your keywords. Understanding how your CPC compares to others can help you optimize your bidding strategy for better cost-efficiency.

2. Conversion Rate

The conversion rate is a critical indicator of your campaign’s effectiveness. Knowing how your conversion rate stacks up against industry benchmarks can guide your efforts in improving ad relevance and landing page performance.

3. CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)

Achieving a low CPA is a primary goal for most advertisers. With this tool, you can assess whether your CPA aligns with industry standards and work on strategies to improve it.

4. CTR (Click Through Rate)

The CTR measures the effectiveness of your ad copy and targeting. Analyzing your CTR in comparison to industry peers can help you identify opportunities for ad copy refinement and audience targeting.

5. ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

Ultimately, ROAS determines the success of your Google Ads campaigns. This tool provides insights into whether your advertising efforts are delivering the desired return on investment when compared to others in your vertical.

Keyword traffic analysis

In addition to comparing your overall account performance, the PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool also lets you drill down into keyword-specific data. This feature empowers you to compare the keyword match type spread of your account compared with others in the industry. It’s a game-changer for advertisers looking to fine-tune their keyword strategies.

Performance rank percentile

Understanding where your account stands within your industry is crucial. The tool provides a performance rank percentile, helping you visualize your relative position in comparison to other advertisers. This information is invaluable for setting realistic performance goals and tracking your progress.

How the PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool benefits advertisers

Optmyzr’s PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool offers a host of benefits for advertisers seeking to improve their Google Ads campaigns:

  1. Data-driven decision making: Access to industry-specific data empowers you to make informed decisions, ensuring your PPC strategy is aligned with industry standards.
  2. Competitive advantage: By identifying areas where your account outperforms or underperforms compared to industry benchmarks, you can focus your efforts on areas that matter most.
  3. Efficient budget allocation: Use the insights gained from this tool to allocate your budget more effectively to propel your account’s performance beyond your competitors’. Allocate more resources to areas that need improvement and capitalize on your strengths.
  4. Goal setting and monitoring: The performance rank percentile allows you to set realistic goals and track your progress over time, fostering continuous improvement.

In conclusion, the PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool from Optmyzr is a game-changing addition to the arsenal of any PPC advertiser. It provides industry-specific insights, facilitates data-driven decision-making, and helps you stay competitive in the ever-evolving world of digital advertising. Harness the power of this tool to optimize your PPC campaigns, achieve better results, and propel your business to new heights in the digital landscape.

Note: This feature is part of Optmyzr Core. Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Sign up for a free trial now. Elevate your Google Ads game and stay ahead in the competitive digital advertising landscape with Optmyzr’s PPC Vertical Benchmarks tool.

Supercharge Your Google Ads Campaigns with Optmyzr Express: Quick Byte-Sized Optimizations

Imagine this scenario: Your Google Ads campaigns are operating at peak performance, delivering a torrent of conversions and captivating your target audience. The twist? You’re not grappling with the complexities of optimizing them manually for each account. Instead, you’re navigating the Google Ads landscape with grace and ease, all thanks to Optmyzr Express.

This remarkable tool streamlines your advertising efforts, making optimization feel like a walk in the park. Whether you’re managing one account or many, Optmyzr Express revolutionizes your approach. It’s akin to having a dedicated optimization expert at your service, offering valuable insights and actionable suggestions. In this article, we’ll delve into the wealth of optimization categories and techniques Optmyzr Express provides. We’ll illustrate how it enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of your Google Ads PPC campaigns, ultimately boosting your ROI and giving you a competitive edge. Prepare to optimize your way to digital marketing triumph!

Ad Suggestions

1. Add Missing Ads (RSA)

Optmyzr Express kicks off by identifying ad groups without active responsive search ads (RSAs). Don’t let these ad groups sit idle when you can craft new RSAs with high-performing components in them from existing Expanded Text Ads (ETAs). With the help of Open AI’s suggestions in Optmyzr, you can create compelling ads that resonate with your audience, all with a single click.

2. Fix Ads with Issues (RSA)

For those underperforming RSAs, Optmyzr Express offers an array of suggestions to revamp them. Fine-tune your RSA assets using recommendations from existing ads and suggestions from Open AI. The tool also reveals top-performing keywords and search queries to help you craft relevant ads. 

3. Pause Low-Performing RSAs

Don’t let underperforming RSAs drag down your ad group’s overall effectiveness. Optmyzr Express provides proactive suggestions to identify and pause low-performing RSAs, ensuring that high-performing RSAs receive more traffic. It’s a simple yet effective way to optimize your ad groups and improve results.

Enhance the relevance and click-through rate of your ads by adding sitelink assets. Optmyzr Express identifies campaigns lacking sitelinks and allows you to quickly add multiple assets, hence helping you boost your ad’s appeal and improve user experience.

PMax Asset Groups with no Audience Signal

Optmyzr Express helps you maximize your audience targeting efforts for PMax campaigns  by identifying asset groups without any audience signals. You can add existing audience signals from your account or create new ones. Customize your audience segments based on interests, purchase intentions, or top-performing search queries. 

Create Experiments to Test Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, and Target ROAS Bidding Strategies

For campaigns currently running on manual bidding, Optmyzr Express suggests creating experiments to test automated bidding strategies like Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, and Target ROAS. By comparing the performance of the new strategy with the current manual bidding approach, you can determine which strategy works best for your goals.

Bid Suggestions - Manual Bidding Campaigns

1. Gender Bid Adjustments

Gain valuable insights into how different genders perform in your ad groups and set bid adjustments accordingly. Optmyzr Express identifies significant differences in click-through rates (CTR) among genders and provides bid adjustment recommendations. Customize these adjustments to fine-tune your campaign targeting.

2. Age Range Bid Adjustments

Similar to gender bid adjustments, Optmyzr Express helps you optimize bids based on age ranges. Identify age groups with varying CTRs and adjust your bids accordingly. This fine-grained control can enhance your campaign’s performance and ROI.

3. More Traffic for Converting Keywords

Boost the impression share of converting keywords that are losing impressions due to low bids. Optmyzr Express recommends bid increases for these keywords, providing them with more opportunities to drive conversions.

4. Push Keywords to First Page

Ensure your keywords make it to the coveted first page of search results. Optmyzr Express suggests bid increases for keywords with a good Quality Score, helping you achieve better visibility and click-through rates.

Shopping Campaign Suggestions

1. More Traffic for Converting Products

Apply bid adjustments to converting product groups that are losing impression share due to their current bids. This optimization allows you to increase your bids strategically and maximize your product visibility to potential customers.

2. Simplify Merchant Feed Optimization with Optmyzr Express

Optmyzr Express identifies products with missing essential attributes like Title, Description, Price, Link, Image Link, and Brand and helps you add these attributes through the tool.

What’s even better is that you don’t have to laboriously set up rules for every single product with missing attributes, just input the changes through a Supplemental Feed. Optmyzr Express lets you focus on improving just five products at a time, making the process manageable and efficient.

Budget Suggestions

1. Budget Suggestions from Google

Optmyzr Express works seamlessly with Google’s budget recommendations and analyzes them to give you the best set of suggestions for Google Ads budget optimization. It shows predicted changes in cost, conversions, and cost per conversion, and helps you make informed decisions about budget adjustments to enhance your campaign’s performance.

2. Fix Impression Share Lost Due to Budget - Campaign Budget and Shared Budget

Identify campaigns that are losing impression share due to budget constraints, even though they bring in conversions. Optmyzr Express empowers you to modify campaign budgets strategically, ensuring you capture more impressions and conversions. The tool provides suggestions for both campaigns with individual budgets and campaigns belonging to shared budgets.

Keyword Suggestions

1. Add New Keywords

Expand your keyword arsenal by adding relevant queries as keywords to your Google Ads account. Optmyzr Express identifies well-performing search terms that are absent from your keywords. Quickly add them and manage their bids and ad copies for optimal results.

2. Enable Converting Keywords

Revive dormant converting keywords that have been removed from your campaigns. Optmyzr Express highlights keywords that have generated conversions in the past 120 days but are currently inactive. Re-enable relevant ones (that may have been paused by Google’s auto-apply recommendations) to capitalize on their performance.

3. Fix Conflicting Negative Keywords

Eliminate conflicts between negative and positive keywords that may reduce ad impressions. Optmyzr Express provides a curated list of conflicting negative keywords, allowing you to resolve conflicts by pausing positive or negative keywords strategically.

4. Keyword Suggestions by Google

Leverage Google’s keyword recommendations within Optmyzr Express. The tool offers an extra layer of analysis on top of Google’s recommendations to present you with valuable and relevant keyword ideas.

5. Use Broad Match Keywords

Turbocharge your keyword strategy by identifying low-traffic keywords in exact and phrase matches and converting them to broad match if you prefer. Optmyzr Express goes the extra mile by analyzing Google’s recommendations and presenting you with the most relevant keyword suggestions in the tool. It’s all about expanding your reach and targeting a broader audience, effortlessly.

Placement Suggestions

1. Exclude Low-Performing Placements - Campaign Level

Trim wasted ad spend by identifying and excluding low-performing placements from your campaigns. Optmyzr Express helps you pinpoint placements that drain your budget without delivering conversions. Exclude placements on websites, mobile applications, YouTube videos, and YouTube channels to boost your ROI.

2. Exclude Low-Performing Placements for Performance Max - Account Level

Extend the power of placement exclusions to Performance Max campaigns at the account level. Eliminate unproductive placements across websites, mobile applications, YouTube videos, and YouTube channels to optimize your advertising spend effectively.

Expand Your Reach with Search Partners

Optmyzr Express takes the guesswork out of expanding your Google Ads reach. It identifies campaigns with untapped budget potential and strategically suggests opting them into the search partner network. By analyzing Google’s recommendations, Optmyzr Express ensures that your Google Ads budget is distributed well, connecting with audiences who share relevant interests on partner sites.

In Conclusion

Optmyzr Express is a powerhouse of optimization techniques designed to elevate your Google Ads campaigns. Whether you’re fine-tuning ad creatives, experimenting with bidding strategies, or expanding your keyword and placement reach, this tool streamlines the process and helps you achieve better results in less time. The suggestions are data-driven and can be applied with a single click, making optimization effortless. Make Optmyzr Express a part of your daily workflow, and watch your accounts’ performance soar. Your path to PPC success starts here!

Note: Optmyzr Express is part of Optmyzr Core. If you’re not an Optmyzr customer yet, sign up for a free trial now and experience the power of quick, effective Google Ads optimizations.

Optmyzr's Holiday Magic: New Features to Sleigh Your Shopping Season Goals!

The Holiday Season is here, and it’s time for some serious e-commerce action! We’re thrilled to announce that Optmyzr is your ultimate partner, delivering a bag of brand-new features to simplify the management of your Performance Max and Shopping campaigns during this festive period. From fine-tuning your merchant feed to monitoring product performance, we’ve got your back. So, grab your hot cocoa, get cozy, and let’s explore what Optmyzr has in store for you.

Shopping Feed Audits

Keep your shopping feed in top-notch condition with Optmyzr’s standout tool of the year, Shopping Feed Audits. This powerful tool offers a comprehensive report on your feed’s health, allowing you to tackle any issues like products getting disapproved, products missing key attributes like Title, and so on, before they pose a problem for your campaigns. Think of it as a checkup for your e-commerce success!

Simplify Merchant Feed Optimization with Optmyzr Express

Don’t let missing attributes in your merchant feed slow you down, as Optmyzr Express is here to simplify feed optimization. You can easily identify products without values for essential attributes like Title, Description, Price, Link, Image Link, and Brand.

This is a great way to streamline your feed optimization process by working on just five products at a time. And there’s no need to set up rules for all your products with missing attributes. Simply create a ‘Content API’ supplemental feed in your merchant center account and share the supplemental feed ID with us, and we’ll handle the rest. Feed optimization has never been this hassle-free!

Performance-Based Campaign Creation:

Imagine creating campaigns split by product performance without the headache of setting up scripts and importing them as custom labels. Well, say hello to Optmyzr’s flagship launch of 2023! This new update to the Shopping Campaign Management tool lets you create campaigns based on performance metrics like ROAS, conversions, clicks, cost, and more, and also based on product price. No more importing product reports from Google Ads – it’s all about simplicity and efficiency. 

Plus, we offer budget and Target ROAS recommendations based on historical data for added convenience.

Monitoring Products with Precision

In the bustling holiday season, keeping a close eye on your products is key. Optmyzr has introduced two new alerts to ensure you’re always in the know. First up, we’ve got a custom alert to notify you when the percentage of disapproved products in your merchant feed goes over your set limit. Say goodbye to potential traffic and sales losses due to disapprovals. This feature works for both Google Merchant Center and Microsoft feeds.

But that’s not all! We’ve also introduced performance alerts for products in your Shopping and Performance Max campaigns, making it effortless to keep tabs on your top-performing and underperforming products. For example, create a custom alert to flag products with a sudden dip in ROAS compared to the previous period. If you prefer automated product performance reports, you can create a Rule Engine strategy under the “Products” scope. Think of it as your holiday helper for your campaigns!

Saving Budget on PMax by running frequent URL Checks

Budget-conscious during the holidays? We’ve got your back! Our new feature in the URL Checker lets you check for broken URLs for all campaigns (including Performance Max). No more wasted budget on faulty URLs. The tool even scans for terms like ‘Out of stock’ or ‘Not found’ on landing pages, alerting you promptly about them or pausing the corresponding asset groups. Your budget is precious, and we’re here to make sure it’s spent wisely.

Rule Engine Strategies for the Win

Want to boost your campaigns even further? Consider using Rule Engine strategies to exclude low-performing location targets, placements, and listing groups. It’s a smart way to fine-tune your campaigns for maximum efficiency.

In conclusion, this Holiday Season, Optmyzr has your e-commerce needs covered from A to Z. With these new features and optimizations, you’ll be well-prepared for the busiest shopping season of the year. And remember, we’re not stopping here! Stay tuned for more exciting updates throughout the year. Happy holidays and happy optimizing!

Note: These features are a part of Optmyzr Core. Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Sign up for a free trial now.

A PPC Practitioner’s 13-Step Guide to Optimizing Paid Ads

Optimizing paid search campaigns is essential for any account. When optimizing, the objective is to ensure that the ads reach the right audience at the right moment. Optimization also involves making updates and changes to meet business goals.

I typically follow these steps in sequence, but it’s not always necessary to execute every step during optimization. Often, merely analyzing the data and deciding to refrain from making changes is the best course of action.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how I optimize paid search campaigns for brands of all sizes:

1. Define clear objectives.

Before diving into optimization, clearly define your goals. Whether it’s boosting website traffic, generating leads, or increasing sales, having distinct objectives will steer your optimization efforts.

In 2024, brands must understand that not all traffic is of the same quality. While traffic campaigns might seem enticing, they can attract visitors who don’t align with a specific goal. Such campaigns can result in minimal conversions and a low return on investment. Instead of merely aiming for higher traffic, brands should focus on campaigns that bring in qualified traffic, ensuring tangible outcomes.

After setting clear objectives, also align with stakeholders on key metrics, such as a CPA goal for lead generation or a ROAS goal for sales accounts or those using value-based bidding.

In one of the larger accounts that I manage the goal is to drive website sales and store visits.  For this account, I worked with the team to have brand campaigns optimized towards sales with a ROAS goal.  Then the non-brand or category terms are optimized for a store visit. 

The reason for the shift in goals is because this product sells better when the customer can have a hands-on sales experience.  The account can still result in sales, but the overall account goal and objective shifted based on where the customer was at in their journey. 

This is an example of a time when having a clearly defined goal to increase sales translated down to a key optimization in the paid search account.

Have a clearly defined goal

Have a clearly defined goal

2. Monitor and adjust budget.

Allocate a larger budget to top-performing campaigns and consider cutting or reallocating funds from underperforming ones.

I suggest evaluating campaigns based on spend, performance, and intent when adjusting the budget. Segmenting campaigns by these three categories is vital because intent varies with the keyword. If you overlook the broader objective, you might allocate the entire budget to campaigns that excel in conversions but don’t necessarily foster account growth.

This is especially relevant for brands not fully utilizing their brand traffic. By not exploring non-brand traffic campaigns, brands lose the chance to attract new customers and expand their market share. Hence, over-relying on brand traffic can hinder growth.

This underscores why all optimizations should align with clear objectives.

Adjusting budgets in the accounts I manage is generally something that can be changed 1 time a month, however when I am managing an ecommerce client I will make budget shifts a few times a month to align with promotions and sales.

3. Adjust campaign targets.

High-performing campaigns: Lower CPA/ROAS for campaigns meeting goals or based on business insights, such as significant sales or events like Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

Low-performing campaigns: Consider raising CPA/ROAS targets for these campaigns to bid less aggressively.

With Black Friday/Cyber Monday coming up, I will make changes to ROAS targets throughout the day and weekend as the sales data and conversion data align.  If traffic volume is high and the account is converting well lowering the ROAS target allows the account to scale to the demand during tent pole moments.

I often say that during these sale moments in ecommerce, paid search managers know more than the bidding algorithm.

4. Evaluate ad group performance.

Examine each ad group. This step ensures that every ad group aligns with its objectives and yields the best results. Here, I assess metrics to determine which keywords need further scrutiny. I also evaluate the ads since they are at the ad group level.

There are also times when ad groups need to be turned off or on.  When I was managing paid search in the auto industry the campaigns were often segmented by new and used.  The used car campaigns had to be changed daily as the account might be running keywords for 1 used car only. 

When that car sold the ad group needed to be turned off quickly, so the account didn’t waste money on terms for a car make and model that was no longer available.  This also could have potentially resulted in a poor customer experience. 

5. Optimize ad copy.

In 2024, when refining ad copy, I ensure all headlines and descriptions are utilized. I also assess performance rankings in the platform and replace underperforming assets. Additionally, it’s crucial to ensure no extra assets were inadvertently created by the platform due to campaign settings.

6. Evaluate keyword performance.

The approach for keywords mirrors that of ad groups. If the primary aim is account growth and the CPA/ROAS metrics are within range, I’m less stringent about pausing keywords. However, if keywords are too broad and metrics are off-target, I adjust the match type down to a phrase or exact.

Adjust the match type

Adjust the match type

Adding negative keywords: Excluding irrelevant keywords that might activate your ads but don’t lead to conversions is vital. This strategy not only saves on advertising costs but also enhances the campaign’s overall performance.

One of the ways that I can find negative keywords in the accounts I manage is to review the search terms report regularly.  Another helpful tip is to use the Google Keyword Planner or Google Suggest. This will show you common terms that are searched with your main keyword and you can remove the terms that aren’t relevant.

7. Evaluate ad extensions.

Ad extensions offer additional information and can boost click-through rates (CTR). However, they’re often overlooked. Regularly review extensions to ensure they’re up-to-date and relevant.

For ecommerce brands sales can be updated in the promo extension, or if there is a page with a portion of the inventory on sale, I will go into the account and create a site link and direct traffic to the promotion page.

One important note is that ad extensions can be scheduled to run for certain days.  This is helpful for workflow, so you aren’t finding yourself in a situation where you must find and manually turn off all the additional pieces of ads where you have added a limited time frame ad copy.

8. Create relevant landing pages.

Ensure that the landing page you’re directing traffic to is relevant to your ad and provides a seamless user experience. A mismatch can increase bounce rates and decrease conversions.

This is something I will look at quarterly across all accounts I manage.  Sometimes brands will make changes to the site and landing pages should be changed for a better experience.  Other times campaigns can be going to PDP pages vs category pages and depending on the size of the category the category page has better conversions.

9. Test and refine.

Testing is integral to any optimization process. Regularly conduct A/B tests on headlines, descriptions, and landing pages to pinpoint areas for performance optimizations.

The easiest test to run is the ‘Optimize Text Ads’ experiment.  Some ideas for tests are headline swaps as well as landing page tests.  In one of the accounts, I was managing the client created a landing page all about the category that was more educational, and we tested that page against the product page (PDP) and learned that the customers needed more information before the purchase.  Based on the data the educational product page converted better than the PDP.

Test and refine your ads

Test and refine your ads

10. Segment your audience data.

Many accounts I manage feature hundreds of audiences in observation mode within each campaign. If a campaign underperforms, review its performance data, and consider switching the targeting settings from ‘observation’ to ’target’. While this narrows the campaign’s reach, it effectively refines and then you can gradually expand its scope based on performance.

11. Consider bid strategies.

Depending on the account goals look at the bidding strategy.  By targeting a high impression share, you ensure that you’re not missing out on potential visibility opportunities. This is especially crucial for brand campaigns where the goal is often to be seen by as many relevant users as possible.

12. Stay updated.

While this isn’t necessarily an account optimization tip, this will help you optimize your tactics. Paid search platforms, especially Google Ads, frequently update their features and algorithms. Stay updated with the latest trends and best practices to ensure your campaigns remain effective. You can do this by reading blogs like the one you are reading now, watching YouTube videos, and listening to industry podcasts.

13. Seek expert advice.

If you’re unsure about certain aspects of your campaign, consider seeking advice from paid search experts or agencies. They can provide insights and recommendations based on their experience.

In conclusion, optimizing paid search campaigns is a continuous endeavor. Consistent monitoring, testing, and refining are crucial to ensure your campaigns remain effective and achieve the desired outcomes.

And if you need help, give Optmyzr a try.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Google Ads Reps: Friend, Foe, or Some Third Nebulous Entity?

“This is your Google Ads rep speaking. Please fasten your seatbelt—it’s about to get reeeeeal bumpy.”

No, that’s not a real message anyone’s ever received from their ad rep. But after reading some of the news headlines and PPC practitioner stories in recent months, you can’t fault them for expecting a message like this next.

Between dubious advice and pushing automated recommendations that prioritize Google’s bottom line over account performance, it’s understandable that many agencies and practitioners have grown wary of speaking to ad reps.

But it wasn’t always like this, especially before ad revenue saw a few consecutive quarters of decline.

I’ve heard firsthand accounts of reps taking agency owners out to dinner, getting them into beta tests and events, and of course conducting deep strategy sessions with agency and client goals at their heart.

Unfortunately, those new to paid search missed that “golden age” of Google Ad reps and only know the sales-aligned approach.

What exactly does a Google Ads rep do?

When a Google Partner agency reaches a certain threshold of managed spend, they gain a degree of importance. Given how much revenue contribution they influence (and how much more they could), it’s no surprise that Google would want to stay in their good graces.

Part of this process included assigning a dedicated product expert—someone with a deep understanding of the Google Ads product as well as marketing objectives—to manage the relationship with an agency and keep the money flowing (and growing).

Critically, these reps’ goals aligned with those of the agency.

Clients who got great results with Google Ads would be happy to keep spending (or spend more) instead of diverting any budget to new platforms. And this would keep agencies invested, since many of them would bill based on the amount of ad spend managed.

But somewhere along the way, Google Search and its adjoining ad products became too important to revenue generation and too big to ignore. With the balance of power now in the ad engine’s favor, everything became about tech adoption and revenue maximization.

The difference between in-house and third-party reps

Today, ad reps are split between those employed full-time by Google and those who work for third parties contracted by Google to manage client relationships.

Paid search specialists and agency owners report a stark difference in approach between the two types of reps, with the latter typically focused on increasing spend and hitting adoption metrics with little concern for what best benefits the account.

This prioritization of “quota attainment” over a product-centric one is the source of agencies’ frustration, along with some unprofessional responses when practitioners choose not to align with their goals.

To truly understand the two reps’ difference in approach and knowledge, you have to first understand what motivates someone employed by one of the companies to which Google outsources this function.

When a vendor is told that they will be measured on certain numbers and targets, that’s what they’ll put first and get their people to prioritize as well. One independent Google Ads expert’s foray into that world reveals more.

How third-party reps are incentivized

Boris Beceric is a freelance Google Ads consultant. Like several of his colleagues, he faced issues with Teleperformance, one EU-based company that handles partner agency relationships on behalf of Google.

Being the mad scientist he is, Boris decided the best way to get to the bottom of why Teleperformance does what they do was to interview with them and get a job offer.

Sounds reasonable.

I’ll let you go through this Twitter thread from Boris explaining what he discovered.

What happens when ad reps go rogue

Most complaints about ad reps these days center on them being pushy or unaware of the Google Ads product. Sometimes, reps will go further and disrespect the sanctity of the business relationships that have existed in advertising for decades.

They push too hard on communication

The PPC practitioners and agency owners I know are busy folks, managing multiple accounts and servicing those clients on a daily basis.

It’s unrealistic for them to get on calls that don’t actively move those goals forward—and unwise when those calls are aimed at achieving adoption and increasing ad spend with no consideration for whether those are the right actions for the account.

I understand their frustration with third-party ad reps whose own performance is measured by how many calls they book, how many automated recommendations they enable, and how much additional ad spend they influence—conversions be damned.

They make questionable requests (and demands)

With ad engines obscuring more data than they show, it’s understandable that agencies and the advertisers they represent don’t want to provide them with any more information than is absolutely necessary.

But even in the best of times, asking for client data that has no bearing on campaign performance or account security is a dubious request. That goes double when the ask comes from a third party acting on behalf of the ad engine, and even more so when they already have read-only access to what they need to see.

They disregard the relationship between agency and client

So the partner agency says “no” to calls and “no” to requests for client data. What’s the right thing to do here?

If you said “back off”, you won’t make it as a third-party ad rep.

Truly unfortunate PPC practitioners like Jonni Lomax have to deal with reps who break the sanctity of the client/agency relationship, choosing to bypass the service provider and go straight to the folks who pay the advertising bill.

It’s a bold move, Cotton, but one that’s sure to tarnish an ad engine’s reputation.

How top Google Ads practitioners work with ad reps

As much as it surely bugs them to have to fight this fire on top of the many others raging in PPC land, the best practitioners know that it’s a battle they must face. More importantly, they have a process to address issues and maintain client trust.

But not all of it is bad. Several practitioners have good stories and praise for their reps, even if there are conditions and limitations attached.

“Everything we do had better relate to our goals”

If ad reps are going over our head, we often don’t hear about it. When I get emails from a rep, I often don’t reply. I let the client know the first few times and tell them why I won’t be talking with them. I’ve never had an issue in seven years of running the agency.

A few Facebook reps went directly to the client. One client met a few more times with the rep last year, but I’m unsure what happened after. Another met them a couple of times and then stopped as they found it to be a waste of time.

Regardless of where the rep works, if they want to have our clients’ best interests in mind, having us in the loop is key. When you are managing 10-20 clients and each client is on three or four platforms, it can be hard to do two hours of calls a month with reps. I think that is the part each platform does not take into account.

If I do meet with a rep, I state our goals, why they are what they are, and what our focus is. Everything we do from that point had better relate to our goals; I won’t accept anything less. If reps have an issue emailing ideas, I won’t talk with them either. No one has the time to do two hours of calls a month per client, and that doesn’t even take into account all the reps from ad platforms who want our business.

Since our clients trust us and we have shown what we can do, we don’t have an issue with them letting us lead. We don’t take on clients who want to micromanage or have ad platforms call the shots; there would be no reason to have us.

We do work with a few members of Google’s growth team who have helped with industry reports, getting access to betas, and sometimes coming up with campaign ideas for brands. Even Google’s support team has moved fast to add a client’s GMC to our agency MCA when onboarding a client.

Duane Brown, CEO, Take Some Risk

“Our rep is focused on our client’s goals”

I want to offer praise for our Google Ads rep, who has worked hard to try to resolve an issue that we’ve been having with remarketing campaigns serving to expanded audiences despite that setting being turned off.

From the beginning of our relationship with this rep, prior to the expanded audience issue, he’s been helpful and valuable. Stories abound of Google reps who just want to push auto-apply recommendations and higher budgets, but ours has focused on our client’s goals and offered useful recommendations to achieve them. He’s been a great partner in working with us to get results for the client.

When the expanded audience issue cropped up, the rep jumped in and escalated the support ticket immediately. He’s followed the issue all the way to a (less than ideal) resolution, and has continued to fight for us to get a refund despite the official word from Google support saying we are not due one.

All in all, we’ve been extremely happy with our Google Ads rep!

Melissa Mackey, Director of Paid Search, Compound Growth Marketing

“The higher the budget, the more experienced the rep”

When getting in touch with Google reps, I’ve had both positive and negative experiences.

In one scenario, a representative caused issues between the marketing agency I worked at and their client. Without ever getting in touch with the PPC specialist, this rep directly emailed the client stating that they found very important issues in the account that need to be resolved as soon as possible: “Poor ad strength”, “Poor ad rank” and “Selected features that are impacting the performance of the campaign”.

Obviously, the client got very upset and emailed the agency demanding answers.

An email that’s been signed by “Google” has stronger authority of expertise over a PPC specialist, and it’s easy to harm the client/agency relationship this way—especially if it happens in the early stages of the relationship, as it was in this case.

But I’ve also dealt with an ad rep who was knowledgeable and provided recommendations relevant to the business. A few months ago, I had a discussion with a Google representative who took the time to understand the client’s business and main goals.

Based on the discussion, the representative suggested relevant optimizations that could be implemented in the account, while also mentioning that things like Broad Match keywords (recommended in every other instance by every other rep I’ve talked to) should be avoided in this specific account considering the niche terms that were required.

Even when going through the Recommendations tab, there was no pressure to select all of them. Instead, they explained each of the options while insisting that I should avoid most of them.

I should note, though, that this client has a significant budget. I’ve learned that the more spend a Google Ads account has, the more experienced its allocated representative.

Sofia Akritidou, PPC Director, ThinkWise Digital

“Exceptional dedication helped navigate peak ecommerce season”

If you have been in paid search as long as I have you, you likely remember Google actively assisting agencies with tasks like campaign uploads and account restructuring, relieving us of significant workloads, particularly during periods of substantial account expansion.

Though such services have become rarer, there are circumstances where having Google perform a task is advantageous.

During a frenzied Black Friday and Cyber Monday, our strategist went above and beyond, offering unwavering support, budget reports, and projections related to search volume. This exceptional dedication helped our advertiser navigate the peak demands of the ecommerce season.

Acknowledging the natural skepticism within the paid search community regarding this partnership, it’s essential to emphasize that successful collaboration can indeed thrive. In this case, the balance struck between strategists and advertisers—combining support and sales—proved not only effective but helpful for our collective success.

Sarah Stemen, Owner, Sarah Stemen LLC

A partner who’s always got your back

Dealing with pushy ad reps can be frustrating for agencies, but open communication with clients and firm boundaries can reduce some of the stress. And in the instance that you stumble upon a rep with your genuine interests at heart, do everything in your power to hold on to them.

Because when you add in the black box nature of auctions and the motives that drive Google Ads as a product, it can feel like it’s you against the world’s biggest ad network.

After all, there’s a fundamental clash of business priorities.

If you’ve ever wished you had a buffer, consider managing your campaigns via a third-party platform like Optmyzr. Not only will you save time on investigations and apply custom strategies at scale, but you’ll get a partner with an outstanding reputation for support; one whose growth goals align with your own.

Cross-Channel Advertising: Challenges & Strategies (With an Example)

Juggling PPC campaigns across Google Ads, Facebook, and LinkedIn? You’re not alone in this high-stakes game of cross-channel marketing. According to a Nielsen study, a well-executed strategy can amplify consumer interaction by 250%. But how do you navigate the complexities?

That’s where this guide comes in. Brought to you by the UAWC marketing agency, we’ll break down platform-specific rules, smart budgeting, and more. Our aim? To help you maximize your ROI in the challenging landscape of cross-channel advertising.

What is Cross-Channel Advertising?

Cross-channel advertising is when businesses advertise across multiple digital platforms, ensuring their ads are seen by a wider audience. This approach is vital because today’s consumers are everywhere - from social media to search engines.

Now, you might hear “multi-channel” and “cross-channel” and think they’re the same. Not quite.

Multi-channel campaigns mean you’re on multiple platforms, but each one operates in its own bubble. Cross-channel, on the other hand, is more integrated. It’s about making sure all your campaigns talk to each other and give a unified message.

What are the major players in Cross-Channel advertising?

Diving into cross-channel PPC means getting familiar with the big players in the game. Let’s break them down:

Each platform offers unique advantages. Google captures intent, Microsoft provides cost-effective reach with niche targeting, Meta capitalizes on detailed demographic insights, LinkedIn zeroes in on professionals, and TikTok engages through interactive content. The key is aligning platform strengths with your audience and campaign goals.

How to overcome challenges in Cross-Channel advertising?

Managing cross-channel PPC isn’t a walk in the park. Here are some hurdles you might face:

1. Developing Unified Messaging

Maintaining a consistent message across platforms like Google Ads, Facebook, and LinkedIn is increasingly challenging. Each platform has its own set of rules, audience behaviors, and ad formats. 

This complicates the task of delivering a uniform brand message across various channels, requiring marketers to adapt their strategies to each platform’s unique environment.

2. Developing a Unified Tracking Strategy

Data is the lifeblood of PPC campaigns, but the sheer volume can be overwhelming. Each platform offers its own set of metrics, from click-through rates to impressions to conversions. 

This creates a challenge in developing a unified tracking strategy that can be applied cross-channel. Marketers must discern which metrics are most relevant to their goals and find a way to standardize these across all platforms for easier analysis.

3. Budget Optimization

Budget allocation becomes a complex task when managing cross-channel PPC campaigns. For instance, if Google Ads is consuming a significant portion of the budget but failing to deliver expected results, marketers are faced with a dilemma.

Should they reallocate funds to more successful channels, or continue investing in Google Ads in the hope that performance will improve? This decision-making process becomes even more complicated when considering the unique cost structures and bidding options of each platform.

4. Consistent Branding

Maintaining a consistent brand image across multiple platforms is a significant challenge. Each platform has its own set of guidelines and limitations for ad creatives. 

For example, LinkedIn’s professional atmosphere may require a more formal tone and specific visual elements, while Instagram’s casual setting allows for more creative freedom. The challenge lies in adapting the brand’s core message and visual identity to fit the unique requirements of each platform without diluting the brand.

5. Audience Segmentation

Different platforms attract different demographics, making audience segmentation a complex task. LinkedIn is often more effective for B2B marketing, while platforms like TikTok or Instagram may be more suitable for targeting younger demographics. 

This requires marketers to develop multiple audience personas and craft tailored messages for each, complicating the campaign management process.

6. A/B Testing

A/B testing is a standard practice in PPC campaigns, but its complexity multiplies when applied across multiple platforms. An ad that performs well on Facebook may not yield the same results on Google Ads due to differences in audience behavior and ad display algorithms. 

This necessitates running multiple sets of A/B tests, each tailored to the specific requirements of the individual platform, making the process time-consuming and resource-intensive.

7. Staying Updated

The digital marketing landscape is constantly evolving, with platforms regularly rolling out new features, ad formats, and algorithms. 

Marketers must not only stay updated on these changes but also understand their implications for cross-channel PPC campaigns. This requires continuous learning and adaptation, making it a demanding aspect of campaign management.

What are the strategies for effective Cross-Channel Campaigns?

To navigate the maze of cross-channel PPC, you need a solid strategy. Here’s a roadmap to guide you:

1. Platform-Specific Content Creation 

Craft content tailored to each platform’s strengths and audience. While the core message remains consistent, the presentation should vary. For instance, a detailed infographic might work for LinkedIn, while a catchy short video is more suitable for TikTok.

Ambr Eyewear ran a cross-channel PPC campaign using Google Ads and Facebook Ads. On Google Ads, they utilized concise, keyword-focused ad copy along with ad extensions to provide additional information.

On Facebook, they took advantage of the platform’s robust demographic and interest-based targeting, using visually engaging ads with short, compelling copy. This tailored approach allowed them to effectively reach different customer segments, thereby optimizing their ROI across both platforms.

2. Centralized Analytics Dashboard 

Use a unified analytics tool that aggregates data from all platforms. This allows for a holistic view of performance metrics and helps in making informed decisions based on cross-channel insights.

3. Cross-Platform Remarketing

For effective cross-platform retargeting, it’s crucial to know which platforms work well together. Here’s a breakdown:

Tips:

4. Unified Customer Profiles

Unified customer profiles are essential for understanding the customer journey across platforms. CRMs like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Zoho offer integrations with multiple advertising platforms, allowing you to create a more cohesive cross-channel strategy.

Tips:

5. Synchronized Campaign Launches 

When launching a new campaign, synchronize the timing across platforms. This creates a buzz and ensures that your audience receives a consistent message, no matter where they are.

6. Cross-Promotion Between Platforms 

Use one platform to drive traffic to another. For instance, tease content on Instagram and direct users to view the full content on YouTube or your website.

7. Optimize for Cross-Channel Conversions

Recognize that a user might discover your product on one platform and convert on another. Ensure that the transition between platforms is seamless and that there’s a consistent call-to-action guiding them.

The role of automation in Cross-Channel Advertising

Cross-channel advertising is a multifaceted field. It involves various platforms and strategies.

Automation tools can be the answer to this complexity. They ensure your campaigns are optimized and run efficiently.

Why embrace automation?

Managing ads across different platforms is a challenge. The sheer diversity can be daunting.

A PPC automation tool, like Optmyzr can adjust bids dynamically, stop underperforming ads, reallocate budgets in real-time, and much more to help you run profitable ads.

Case Study: Successful Cross-Channel Campaign

Brand: Ambr Eyewear - A visionary eyewear brand from Dublin.

The Challenge:

Ambr Eyewear was founded to address the need for stylish computer glasses. While they had a unique and quality product, their brand was relatively unknown. Their primary challenge was to make a mark in a competitive market, targeting users who spend long hours in front of screens.

The Strategy (with UAWC’s Assistance):

UAWC, a renowned digital marketing agency, stepped in to elevate Ambr Eyewear’s marketing game.

Channels:

Strategy:

Insights & Results:

Key Takeaways:

In conclusion, with UAWC’s expert guidance, Ambr Eyewear transformed their digital marketing approach. Their journey is a testament to the power of a well-strategized cross-channel PPC campaign. With the right partners and approach, even a niche brand can achieve remarkable success and recognition.

Conclusion

Navigating the world of cross-channel PPC is undeniably complex, but it’s a challenge worth embracing. As showcased by successes like Ambr Eyewear, understanding and adapting to these complexities can lead to remarkable results. 

So, as you delve into cross-channel campaigns, see each challenge as an opportunity. With the right approach, the digital realm offers vast potential. Embrace it, adapt, and thrive.

And if you need help, give Optmyzr a try.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

20 PPC Optimization Strategies to Take Your Performance From Good to Great

PPC Optimization, or Pay-Per-Click Optimization, is a continuous process of analyzing and improving your ad campaigns to maximize their effectiveness and achieve specific business objectives.

Types of PPC Optimizations

PPC Optimization can involve a range of activities like:

Let’s break it down and learn how to optimize each of these elements.

Optimize keywords

1. Get high-performing keyword suggestions with Keyword Lasso.

Since its launch, this has been one of our customers’ favorite tools for search term management.

The Keyword Lasso offers you a clean list of great keywords that do not yet exist in your account. It also lets you get suggestions from the Google Ads Keyword Planner as well. This means you can now see how some search terms you don’t yet have as keywords have performed compared to the competition and the average monthly searches they receive.

Pro tip: Use turbo mode with custom filters to identify new themes and even get negative keyword ideas.

Try Keyword Lasso now

2. Identify non-performing keywords easily with the Negative Keyword Finder.

This tool has helped some of our customers save thousands of dollars every month.

As the name suggests, the Negative Keyword Finder helps you quickly find negative keywords out of search terms that have not been performing well for the entire account over the past few days and are inefficiently spending your budget.

Try the Negative Keyword Finder now

3. Get the right traffic by adding exact match negatives using the Traffic Sculptor.

If you’re using any broad or phrase match keywords, it is likely that some search queries will match less relevant keywords and show a less relevant ad. 

The Traffic Sculptor analyzes search terms and keyword data and suggests adding some search terms as exact match negative keywords at the ad group level so that the right ads show for each search query in your account.

Try the Traffic Sculptor now

4. Find duplicate keywords within the same campaign or across campaigns using the Keyword De-Duper.

Duplicate keywords that are present more than once in the same account end up competing against each other and thus dividing the traffic.

The Keyword De-Duper finds absolute duplicate keywords in your Google Ads account, both within and across campaigns. The system analyzes the data and then suggests the best-performing duplicate keyword to keep.

Try the Keyword De-Duper now

Optimize manual CPC bidding campaigns

1. Identify keywords with a high Quality Score that missed Google’s first page with the First Page Bridger.

The First Page Bridger analyzes the performance data for each keyword and gathers the ones with a high Quality Score but with a bid that’s slightly below the first-page bid (up to 20% lower). 

It’ll then display the list of keywords that would have the largest impact through a minimum bid increase. By doing so, you’ll increase their chances of appearing on the first page of search results, which ultimately results in more traffic and sales.

Some tips for using the First Page Bridger

We suggest segmenting keywords into three sections based on impact and the required bid increase to meet the first page requirements:

Because the bid increase can take some time to affect the account performance, we recommend running the optimization every 7-14 days. Keep in mind that the lower the Quality Score, the higher the required bid to get a good ad rank.

Try the First Page Bridger now

2. Get more conversions using the Conversion Grabber.

The Conversion Grabber looks for keywords in your Google Ads account that have had conversions, but which are currently losing impression share due to ad rank. It’ll then recommend selective bid increases for the keywords that would have the most positive impact on conversions.

The analysis looks at data for the last 30 days. You can change the date range to look at a different period as well.

We recommend running this optimization every two weeks.

Try the Conversion Grabber now

3. Reduce bids of expensive keywords with the Find Expensive Keywords tool.

We created this optimization using the Rule Engine to help you find expensive keywords and reduce their bids.

The keywords suggested are ones with a higher CPA than a keyword would typically have in the campaign, or keywords without conversions but which have still undergone more clicks than normally required to get at least 1 conversion.

Try the Find Expensive Keywords tool now

4. Adjust bids by the hour based on performance with the Hour of Week Bidder.

The Hour of the Week Bidder recommends time-based bid adjustments based on the performance of KPIs.

Unlike Google Ads where you have to create time slots first, and then set bid adjustments one by one, this optimization recommends and lets you set bid adjustments with a single click. You can also create custom time slots to analyze performance and create ad schedules.

Important note for Microsoft Ads accounts: As you may know, unlike with Google Ads, in Microsoft Ads each campaign can have a different time zone. In the Hour of Week tool, this translates into the following:

The system fetches data for the selected campaigns irrespective of each campaign’s time zone, which means that if a campaign accrues, for example, 5 impressions from 12:00 AM to 4:00 AM, the data will be fetched properly for that hour range, no matter what the time zone is. This also works when selecting multiple campaigns.

Try the Hour of Week Bidder tool now

5. Set bid adjustments to a geolocation using the Geo Bid Adjustment tool.

The Geo Bid Adjustment tool makes recommendations for bid adjustments on locations based on performance. It analyzes the performance for each location your ads show in and makes recommendations at a campaign level.

Even if you’re not directly targeting a location, you can analyze the performance and the tool will add it as a target, and set the bid adjustment. You can set bid adjustments at country, region, city, and zip code/pin code level.

Try the Geo Bid Adjustment tool now

More tools to optimize manual CPC bidding

Optimize automated bidding campaigns

1. Manage Target ROAS or Target CPA.

When your campaigns have automated bidding strategies set up in Google Ads, it is not possible to manually edit the bids for keywords (except Enhanced CPC). The way to optimize the campaign’s performance is by modifying the target Cost-per-Acquisition (CPA) or Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) values at the ad group or campaign level for the strategies Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value.

You can also teach Google more about how you value conversions from different segments when your campaigns run on value-based bidding.

For this purpose, we have created 6 optimizations using the Rule Engine to help you manage and optimize your campaigns on automated bidding: Optimize Target ROAS for Ad Groups and Campaigns, Optimize Target CPA for Ad Groups and Campaigns, Non-Converting Queries (Search), and Non-Converting Queries (Shopping). 

Optimize Target ROAS for Ad Groups

Modify Target ROAS for ad groups performing well to reduce the ROAS gap and increase conversions.

Optimize Target CPA for Ad Groups

Modify Target CPA for ad groups performing well to reduce the CPA gap and increase conversions.

Optimize Target ROAS for Campaigns

Modify Target ROAS for campaigns performing well to reduce the ROAS gap and increase conversions.

Optimize Target CPA for Campaigns

Modify Target CPA for campaigns performing well to reduce the CPA gap and increase conversions.

Non-Converting Queries (Search)

Add non-converting queries with zero conversions, high cost, and low CTR as negative keywords.

Non-Converting Queries (Shopping)

Add non-converting queries with zero conversions, high cost, and low CTR as negative keywords.

You can find these optimizations under the Optimizations tab > For Automated Bidding.

We built these strategies using the Rule Engine. Read more here to see how you can get started creating your own custom strategies. If you need any help on how the Rule Engine works, feel free to reach out to our support team or at support@optmyzr.com, and we’ll be more than happy to help!

2. Bonus tools for automated bidding

Score segments of your audience based on how valuable they are to your business with the Segment Scorer.

The Segment Scorer provides you with the Analytics data that could be assessed while scoring a segment. It serves to consider other important business aspects like Customer Long Term Value or Expected Contract Value while making value adjustments.

It’s not just the usual machine data that is already observable by Google, but your own knowledge and understanding that’s put into work.

Adjust conversion values using Optimize Value Rules.

The ‘Optimize Value Rules’ tool suggests conversion value rules that you can set up in your Google Ads account. It gives you these suggestions by using the data from the segments you scored in Segment Scorer. You can read more about how it works here.

Optimize ad text

1. Fix underperforming RSAs with the Ad Text Optimization tool.

This optimization tool helps you identify the high-performing ad text components in your account. Sort by metric to see what’s working and what isn’t, modify or edit text in bulk, and create new ads while pausing the old ones.

Try the Ad Text Optimization tool now

2. Pause underperforming ads and create and A/B test new ads with the A/B testing tool.

Once you make changes to ad text, visit the A/B Testing for Ads tool to see ads by performance breakdown. Here you can filter by ad type to see only Responsive Search Ads and create new ads. Modify headlines and descriptions, then run more tests.

To A/B test your Microsoft Ads, read this guide

Try the A/B testing tool now.

3. Find underperforming landing pages with the Landing Page Analysis tool.

In addition to underperforming Responsive Search Ads, your ad group may be suffering from a weak landing page experience.

The Landing Page Analysis tool:

Try the Landing Page analysis tool now.

Optimize budgets

1. Optimize Budgets for a single account (Google Ads or Microsoft Ads)

The Optimize Budgets - Single Account tool lets you optimize budgets for Google Ads and Microsoft Ads by translating them from monthly to daily budgets. This can be done to achieve a target or allocate more budget to campaigns that are driving more leads/sales. 

Try the tool now.

2. Optimize Budgets Across Multiple Account Portfolio

This tool lets you track, monitor, and change campaign budgets across multiple accounts and platforms (Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Facebook).

You’ll first need to create a portfolio using the PPC Portfolio Manager. A portfolio can include more than one account from different platforms. 

Try the tool now.

Optimize shopping campaigns

Here’s an overview of the shopping tools we built to help you optimize your campaigns.

If you want help with managing your campaigns for this Q4 holiday season, watch the video below:

For more tips on managing your Performance Max campaigns, implementing seasonality bid adjustments, and more, watch this video.

Other optimizations

1. Breeze through multiple optimization tasks in minutes with the Optmyzr Express.

Going through Optmyzr Express is like going through your email inbox every morning. It shows you optimization suggestions across accounts. It is designed to work as a to-do list for your Google Ads, Amazon Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Yahoo Japan Ads accounts.

Try the Optmyzr Express now.

2. Optimize your campaigns by weather.

This tool enables you to target or exclude locations and even pause/enable your campaigns based on the weather conditions of the specified locations, whether they are directly targeted in your campaigns or not.

Try the tool now.

3. Exclude unnecessary placements.

Finally, it’s important to regularly analyze the performance of your campaigns and exclude any placements that are not performing well. This will ensure that your campaigns are optimized for performance and that your budget is being spent on the most valuable products.

Mobile Apps Exclusion

This optimization allows you to exclude all the low-performing mobile app placements that are costing you money but not resulting in any conversion. 

The tool will list out all your mobile app placements with exactly 0 conversions in the last 30 days and with costs greater than zero.

You can exclude both types of automatic placements; for IOS and Android apps at the ad-group level in bulk. 

You can access the tool here and the detailed user guide here.

Display Placements Exclusion

With the Display Placements Exclusion optimization, you can find placements that are resulting in wasted spend and exclude them based on a business goal – Branding, Traffic, or Conversions. This tool also makes it possible to see sites that are part of search partners and exclude them.

You can access the tool here and the detailed user guide here.

Account-Level Placement Exclusions 

Excluding placements from an account helps prevent your ads from showing up on certain placements on the Display network or YouTube, overriding any campaign-level placement targeting.

For some cases, as with Smart Shopping and Smart Display campaigns, account-level placement exclusions are a great solution, as Google doesn’t support excluding placements through a negative list or by excluding them at the ad group level.

You can access the tool here and the detailed user guide here.

Execute, measure, and optimize

Optimizing ad campaigns is an ongoing process. It requires experimentation, continuous testing, data analysis, strategic thinking, and a commitment to adapt and refine campaigns based on changing market conditions and business goals.

And if you need help, make use of these tools.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

7 Proven Retargeting Strategies for Higher Conversion Rates

Retargeting is an advertising technique for reaching out to your previous website visitors. Paid search, social media, and email marketing channels let brands and other advertisers create retargeting campaigns.

However, it also requires browser cookies enabled from the user’s side. Advertisers can identify user behavior with the help of a unique code courtesy of browser cookies. Tracking user behavior and seeing whether they complete the call to action determines whether to retarget that user.

For example, if somebody abandons a shopping cart, a retargeting ad functions as a reminder mechanism to complete the transaction.

Benefits of Retargeting

Retargeting campaigns would not be so prominent without the multiple benefits they bring. According to FinancesOnline, about 70% of marketers rely on retargeting to raise brand awareness. Other benefits include:

According to a survey by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, 92% of marketers found retargeting to outperform search, email, and display advertising.

Overall, retargeting is a valuable technique to grow your revenue, but the question is how to make the most out of it.

Here are 7 retargeting strategies that should push you in the right direction.

7 Proven Retargeting Strategies

1. Focus on the Copy Rather Than the Image.

Let’s start with the copy. If you look through various ads on different channels, brands aim to prioritize assets users are familiar with, such as logos and slogans.

Taking this approach with retargeting ads doesn’t make a lot of sense. After all, your targeted audience is already familiar with the brand. These people visited your site but did not complete the transaction. 

Instead of the visuals, focus on the copy. Determine the customer hesitations and build a tailor-made ad to address these hesitations.

Check out Optmyzr’s AB Testing for Ads optimization tool.

It helps you find ads that meet your business goals or contribute to the success of your advertising campaign, pause underperforming ads, and create new ones to continue testing.

The tool also recommends high-performing headlines, description lines, and display URLs (from your best-performing ads) to create new ads in the ad groups where you are pausing ads with a lower performance.

Try the tool now

2. Incentivize Target Audience With Discounts.

Online shoppers have an easy time comparing product prices to get the best deal. Bouncing from one site to another is not even necessary, as you can simply install a price checker extension on your browser.

The odds are that prospective customers did not complete a purchase because they believed that they could find a better deal. Leaving a site once is enough to potentially lose a user. And not because they could find a more appealing offer but also because of various distractions, making them forget about visiting your website in the first place.

Why not sweeten the deal in your retargeting ad by proclaiming that you offer a special discount? That’s bound to get people’s attention, especially if they showed interest early on. A simple incentive can be the difference-maker you were looking for.

3. Add FOMO.

The fear of missing out urges consumers to take action. Even if somebody doesn’t really need goods or services, they might change their mind if a last-minute offer appears on their feed.

The tried and true FOMO tactic combined with buzz phrases like “the clock is ticking” or “book now and save 50% off before the offer expires” can get people’s attention.

Many brands also highlight bestsellers and show stock levels. “Only 3 left in stock” is one way to highlight scarcity. As is running a limited offer, as is shown in the example below:

For retargeting campaigns, FOMO is particularly effective. You are reaching out to a consumer who was interested before, and giving them that push is bound to improve your conversion rates.

4. Remind Buyers Why They Chose You.

Customer retention is a priority because happy shoppers are returning shoppers. If they trust the brand, persuading them to continue spending money on your business is easier than persuading new customers.

Remind the audience why they should return. For instance, if you sell MacBook accessories and help users with creating bootable USB on Mac or solving Bluetooth problems with earpods, focus on these benefits as your selling points.

Fashion brands are another example. Whenever a collection is out, notify the customers and encourage them to browse new goods.

Finally, for recurring service businesses, retargeting ads could revolve around reminders to book an appointment.

5. Polish Your Call to Action.

Your call to action entices potential customers to lose their hesitation and commit. A good CTA button is:

Previously covered discount and FOMO tactics shape the CTA copy, but one should also understand the importance of designing and presenting the offer visually.

Bright and clear colors and enough white space are the basics of designing graphics for your retargeting ads. However, if the ad has multiple elements, it is crucial to establish a clear hierarchy and push the call to action in the front. 

6. Test Different Times.

Retargeting ad engagement rate is similar to social media content engagement in the sense that the time of displaying the ad determines how much traction it gets.

It takes a while to test different time frames to gain enough data for conclusive results, but it is a necessary step to create a successful retargeting campaign.

Some marketers lose motivation when their early retargeting efforts lead nowhere. They fail to recognize that changing the ad display time is enough to boost engagement.

7. Track Your Ad Data.

Determining the best time to display your ads is just one part of the data you need to collect. Retargeting marketing is complex, and those in charge of the campaign have to go through trial and error to gain insightful details and improve the results.

Color psychology in the visuals, the copy, target demographics, locations, and everything else you can think of that goes into the retargeting market to maximize the effectiveness of the campaign.

Multiple tools exist to track different information, so you do not have to worry about keeping tabs on everything manually.

Also, expect to make adjustments to keep up with ever-changing digital landscape trends. Failing to do that means ineffective usage of available resources and falling behind competitors who are more efficient than you.

It’s easier to convert returning visitors than new visitors.

To sum it all up, retargeting ads have a fair few benefits, and they should be utilized more. At the end of the day, returning customers are easier to please than new potential leads.

That is not to say that businesses should abandon the idea of attracting fresh customers. It’s just that when done right, retargeting ads is less of a hassle.

And if you need help, Optmyzr makes it easier to showcase the value of your campaigns.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use Optmyzr to manage over $5 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

How to protect your Google Ads account from glitches?

Ad platform giants like Google Ads and Meta Ads are always testing new features and functionalities. And, these tests require real-world data, which comes from ad accounts like yours.

Sometimes the platforms inform you’re part of a test group when they run their experiments. But most of the time, you’re not given a heads-up. As a result, you may observe varying results in your campaigns—sometimes they perform better, and sometimes they don’t.

However, it’s unusual for a test to go totally wrong, so wrong that it costs your brand real money. This is precisely what happened to Melissa Mackey, Director of Paid Search at Compound Growth Marketing.

What exactly happened?

Expanded targeting is a feature that grants Google permission to reach people beyond your specified target audience if it believes there’s a high likelihood of conversion. While most platforms have this feature enabled by default nowadays, in Google Ads, you can choose to disable it.

Melissa said she contacted Google Ads support, they apologized, told her it was a bug, and they’d refund her.

But then, it happened again. Even though she’d turned it off, Google opted her clients’ ads back into expanded targeting.

She reached out to Google Ads support once again, and they told her:

Google’s Ad Liaison, Ginny Marvin, assured her that she would investigate the matter.

While it is not clear if this is a widespread issue, such glitches aren’t necessarily new. Earlier this year, Chelsea So, Founder of Leadocity, discovered that Google Ads was ignoring placement exclusions for her client.

But it happened in one specific instance: for video campaigns with Optimized Targeting enabled.

A workaround—while far from ideal—does exist. Watch the video below to listen to Chelsea’s story and how Leadocity fixed things for their client.

And recently, Odi Caspi, Founder of UK-based agency, EffectiveMarketing said this on X (formerly Twitter).

Here’s one more: this happened to us back in January of this year. Watch the video below where our CEO, Frederick Vallaeys explains what happened in detail.

Or you can read the full article of what happened here.

TL;DR, Google identified our brand term “Optmyzr” as a redundant keyword, which made no sense because it was — and still is — one of our best-converting keywords.

But we caught it in time with our PPC Investigator and Rule Engine tools in Optmyzr before it could cause too much damage (more on them below).

All these instances are a clear reminder that you can never “set it and forget it” in PPC. This is exactly the reason you need automation layering or PPC insurance to protect your accounts. And that’s what a tool like Optmyzr or a great script will do for you.

How can you protect your account from Google Ads glitches?

Our evangelist, Navah Hopkins, shares a few ways in this video about how Optmyzr can help you proactively protect your account from any accidental or automated additions to your campaign targeting.

1. Set up alerts.

One way to stay informed about such unexpected changes made to your campaigns is by setting up alerts for your budget spend.

This will help you to stay informed about the status of your campaigns and make sure you don’t waste unnecessary ad spend. This is particularly important if you have lots of automated rules and scripts running (especially budget pacing rules).

However, Optmyzr can automatically look for anomalies or deviations for you without you setting them up yourself using anomaly alerts.

You can also generate them for Microsoft Ads or Facebook Ads, not just for Google Ads.

2. Protect your account from showing your ads on low-quality placements.

Optmyzr’s Smart Placement Exclusions can proactively find bad ad placements for you. Instead of waiting for these placements to spend money on wasted clicks and then excluding them, the tool proactively excludes them.

If you want to exclude placements for your Display Campaigns, you can use the Display Placements Exclusion tool.

Or, if you want to exclude placements at the account level, you can use Optmyzr’s Rule Engine.

3. Track performance changes using the Change History widget.

The Change History widget allows you to report on status changes for the account, ads, audience, budgets, keywords, network, placements, and targeting, on an individual basis.

Here are some insights you can get from the Change History widget:

Read more*:* 5 Ways to Optimize Your Google Ads Account Using the Change History Widget

4. Get a detailed view of your account performance using the PPC Investigator.

The PPC Investigator is an insights tool that’ll help you find exactly which element in a given account caused a metric to increase or decrease, and whether it’s a keyword, placement, or an entire network that caused the changes.

It has two components:

  1. Cause Chart
  2. Root Cause Analysis

Cause Chart

The Cause Chart is based on the fact that the performance of every metric depends on the performance of other underlying metrics. It uses the relationships between different metrics to show potential causality.

Root Cause Analysis

After identifying which metric needs to be worked on, the Root Cause Analysis goes a step further and highlights the exact Campaigns/Ad groups/Product partition/Keywords, etc. that were responsible for the change in an account.

It shows top movers who are significant contributors to the change in the account when compared across the two date ranges. You can view the top three positive and negative movers for a particular account.

The video below explains how you can use this tool for PPC analysis.

Run your campaigns with confidence and peace of mind

As Navah said in her video above, we want to reiterate that we truly do not believe these glitches are intentional, rather they are accidents made by Google Ads’s automated system. This is why it’s critical that you’re always documenting what actions you take and why in account management. And if you need help, Optmyzr makes it easier to protect your account!

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use these tools to manage over $4 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Maximize Q4 Ecommerce Profits: 13 Tips for a Successful 2023 Holiday Season

Considering how important and chaotic the Q4 shopping season can be for advertisers, it’s never too late to start setting up your campaigns. Buyer behavior trends have changed over the years during Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and December holidays and now we’re seeing consumers shopping earlier than before.

One thing is for sure: billions of dollars will be up for grabs.

With all that said, let’s see how you can prepare in advance and make this 2023 shopping season a profitable one for your business.

On that note, our CEO, Frederick Vallaeys recently spoke to Marcel Smal of Roots Network on PPC Town Hall. Marcel shared how his agency is gearing up for Q4 and how he recommends you set up your Performance Max and other campaigns.

Watch the full episode below.

This article is a collection of tips shared by Marcel during that conversation.

5 Tips to Get Started With Setting up Your Campaigns

1. Start early.

Initiate preparations well in advance. Briefings for creatives, alignment, budgets, etc. take time. Allocate sufficient time for planning.

2. Set efficiency targets.

Set aggressive efficiency targets before promotional days. Use seasonality adjustments during promotions. Use negative seasonality adjustments afterwards, or conversion exclusion events.

Note: Seasonality adjustments don’t work for Video and App campaigns.

3. Try Discovery ads.

Use a ramp-up period before promotion. Allow time for the campaign to gain traction. It can take a few days to a week to start seeing some volume.

4. Build a pre and post-Black Friday strategy.

For instance, during pre-Black Friday, you can focus on lead generation, app downloads, and audience building. Push those goals during the promotion days.

And post-Black Friday, plan to promote follow-up products (e.g. accessories for products your audiences have bought, refills, etc.).

5. Don’t ignore ad extensions and customizers.

For retail campaigns, add promotions to your Merchant Center. Use site links and ad customizers.

Performance Max tips for 2023 Q4 Shopping

Marcel suggests the following tips for Performance Max.

1. Align your goals with your business objectives.

Make sure your measurement and reporting are aligned with your business objectives: revenue, profit, CLV, etc. If new customers are worth more to you than existing customers, then use ‘New Customer Acquisition’ as your goal.

2. Give Performance Max time to learn.

Performance Max campaigns look promising and Google is pretty active in adding more features to improve it. I suggest Pmax be included in your setup, but don’t make them your top priority over other campaign types. And don’t create too many Pmax campaigns.

Related reading*:* How to Manage and Optimize Your Performance Max Retail Campaigns

3. Keep an eye on the results.

If you see an uplift of +30%, analyze where that uplift came from. Is that traffic from existing customers? Or from branded traffic? Also, check which interactions drove the conversions.

4. Make use of Mike Rhodes’s PMax script.

It’s clear that insights and reporting in PMax campaigns are limited. So Marcel suggests taking the help of Mike Rhodes’s (of WebSavvy) PMax script which allows you to see the performance per platform.

5. Don’t create too many asset groups.

Creating too many asset groups can take quite a bit of manual work to optimize and make adjustments. Again, use the script by Mike Rhodes to find out which asset groups get the most volume.

You can use these insights to decide if it is necessary to split up your asset groups further. And, based on the volume, you can check if it is worthwhile to create or refresh new assets.

Also, add your own video assets. And check with Google if its automatically-created videos can be turned off.

6. Set up good targeting settings.

Take your time to set up targeting. Prepare an extensive list for custom intent audiences, competitor websites, competitor apps, brand websites, etc.

Bonus tips

1. Bidding

tROAS or tCPA? If your conversions have different values (retail, travel, leads with different values), then you can choose tROAS bidding. If you are a lead-gen advertiser with multiple types of leads and multiple CPA targets, then assign that CPA value to the different conversion actions.

And if you then let a tROAS bid strategy optimize towards a ROAS of 1.0, you will work towards your original CPA targets.

Related reading: 5 Ways to Manage Smart Bidding

2. Measuring conversions

Should you prioritize revenue or profit? If profit is your bottom line KPI, and this information is available, then always optimize towards profit. Implement this in your measurement if possible so that you can actively steer towards profit instead of revenue.

Make sure you measure everything that adds value to your company. If you have physical stores, measure store visits and store sales. If people can also buy via telephone, track phone calls. If you run app campaigns, track app downloads and assign a value. If account sign-ups have a value, track them too and assign a value.

Try to measure as close to the business objectives as possible.

Conversions -> Revenue -> Profit -> CLV

The Bottom Line

As we near the end of Q3, last-minute preparations for Q4 are in full swing. Search marketing has changed, and we need to be watchful of these changes as they affect data analytics and audience behaviors.

At Optmyzr, we’ve seen a massive shift across industries as more and more marketers and agencies are starting to trust machine learning, automation, and data-driven optimizations.

But in order to thrive with automation, you need to look for powerful search systems and highly effective management tools.

Not an Optmyzr customer yet? Thousands of advertisers — from small agencies to big brands — around the world use these tools to manage over $4 billion in ad spend every year.

Sign up for our 14-day free trial today to give Optmyzr a try. You will also get the resources you need to get started and more. Our team will also be on hand to answer questions and provide any support we can.

Weather-Based PPC Management: How to Optimize Campaigns Based on Weather Changes

Weather often impacts the behavior of consumers. For example, rainy weather would lead to an increase in demand for cab and shuttle services. And, a heat wave compels people to stay indoors which leads to an increase in demand for air conditioning and similar services.

Not only the buying of products, but weather can also impact the moods of consumers. They might be interested in watching romcoms or sitcoms when the weather is pleasant. On dark cold nights, some may prefer fantasy while others may love watching horror movies. Similarly, during the summer or spring break, you’d see an increased interest in social activities for both kids and adults.

Now, suppose you are someone with a business that sells services or products that can be impacted by weather changes, like, cab services, cosmetics, apparel, streaming platforms, etc. You always want to reduce wasted ad spend. In that case, you know how important it is to stay on top of these changes and target the right audience for your ads.

In this article, you’ll learn:

How does weather-based advertising work?

Let’s say you are a cafe owner and you have your specials of the day out on the display. On a rainy day, you’d put hot cocoa. And on a sunny day, you’d prefer to put peach iced tea as your special to attract customers.

Once they are in your cafe, they can order anything from the menu. The important thing here is to attract customers and make them want to enter your cafe, which you do by posting special, relevant messages on the display.

Similarly, when advertising, you can choose to manage campaigns based on weather. For example, you can have one campaign with cold beverages and another for hot beverages. And then on sunny days, you advertise the campaign with cold beverages.

The 3 levers you need to do weather-based advertising

  1. Target the right set of locations
  2. Have conditional changes in the campaign based on the weather for those locations
  3. Have a way to automate this process

3 benefits of weather-based advertising

1. Personalized campaigns

Weather-based advertising can help localize and personalize your ads according to your customer’s location and weather.

2. Relevant messaging

Weather-based campaign management can make sure that the end-user of your product or service sees a relevant ad that resonates with their mood.

3. Enhanced ad ROI

Personalized ads and relevant messaging can lead to an increase in leads, engagement, and then conversions.

Examples across industries

There are several industries that can benefit from weather-based advertising, and use this strategy to boost their campaign performance. Here are some examples.

Retail or ecommerce

Advertisers all around the world can use weather forecasting to show the right kind of ads at a particular location. 

For example: showing ads for umbrellas on the days when the forecasts say it’s going to rain in 2 days. Or, showing ads for seasonal products like sunscreen around the time summer is about to start.

Apparel

Similar to the ecommerce industry, apparel stores — online or offline — need timely advertising based on the current weather conditions. 

For example: showing ads for pullovers or sweaters for a colder week and pausing campaigns selling windcheaters for the weeks with no cold waves or rains in winter.

Cab services

In cities or places with unreliable public transport, a lot of people use third-party services to book cabs for commute. So, with the business knowledge of how the population of a certain area uses your services and the understanding of the current or future weather conditions you can manage your campaigns profitably. And you can also choose to target the right locations and set budgets for those campaigns based on demand and weather.

How to do weather-based advertising?

You can use the OpenWeather API to get weather updates for the locations of your choice and then add them to your campaigns as targets or exclusions.

However, manually doing that would be very time-consuming and also exhausting, as you’ll always need one or more team members to check the weather conditions and then make relevant changes to the campaigns.

There are some workarounds though, like using scripts. But then you need to maintain them and have your own API key for the OpenWeather API or, another very popular one from Optmyzr.

However, these are not simple and straightforward to implement. But if you’re an Optmyzr customer, we’ve made things easier for you with the ‘Optimize Campaigns by Weather’ tool.

Optmyzr Weather-based Campaigns

Optmyzr Weather-based Campaigns

But why use day-to-day weather forecasting when seasons change over months?

Weather conditions can be added to work with the change in seasons by using automation to check the weather of upcoming days and accordingly adjust the target locations, campaign status, targets, etc.

There is one other reason why you should leverage weather-based advertising. With evolving global climates, there are some locations where the traditional summers now look like pre-monsoon seasons. As climates get warmer, it would make sense to look at the day-to-day weather conditions and then plan your strategy. That’s where weather-based advertising can help you.

There are even more applications for using weather forecasting conditions in PPC campaigns. But the important thing is to understand how it can be used as leverage for your campaigns.

We hope the ‘Optimize Campaigns by Weather’ tool helps you smartly execute your campaigns. But if you’d like to know more about it, please reach out to our support team at support@optmyzr.com. Or if you’re not a customer already, and would like to try it out, sign up for a 14-day free trial today.

How to Use Audience Segmentation to Improve Ad Relevance and ROI

In this article, you’ll learn how to use audience segmentation to improve the relevance and return on investment (ROI) of your advertisements. This strategy grants your marketing team the creative direction they need to develop high performing and profitable ads that appeal to their target audiences.

Read on to understand audience segmentation and how best to use it to your advantage.

What is Audience Segmentation?

Audience segmentation is the process of breaking up your target audience into smaller groups that share certain metrics. With this data in hand, your marketing team can develop buyer personas that represent these groups and tailor ads to each of them, with the goal of increasing engagement, clicks, and ultimately purchases.

Types of Audience Segmentation

You can segment your target audience using metrics that range from geographical location to behavioral traits and beyond.

Below is a brief overview of each of the most popular and important types of audience segmentation you can apply.

Geographic segmentation

Geographic segmentation involves grouping your target audience based on their location in the world. For example, you may group your customers who live outside of the United States separately from those who live in the US.

Demographic segmentation

Demographic segmentation includes metrics such as ethnicity, gender, occupation, age, and income.

Psychographic segmentation

Psychographic refers to the psychological characteristics (i.e., beliefs, values, likes, dislikes) of each member of your target audience.

Behavioral segmentation

When you group your target audience using behavioral segmentation, look at the way that they behave on their purchasing journey. Where is their starting point? How long do they stay on your website before clicking away?

Identifying patterns in this segment can be extremely insightful, as those patterns can help you improve not just ad relevance but also technical issues with your site which could be deterring potential customers from fulfilling your desired outcome.

Technographic segmentation

Technographic segmentation allows you to map out how your customers view and interact with technology. For example, some of your customers may embrace technological advances, whereas others may dislike having to learn new things.

Needs-based segmentation

Different customers have different needs. With needs-based segmentation, focus on grouping your target audience according to their unique problems and the solutions your company offers.

Value-based segmentation

Value-based segmentation views your target audience according to the value they bring to your company in terms of revenue and ROI.

Source: The Communication Initiative Network

Source: The Communication Initiative Network

How to Choose The Right Segmentation Method?

Choosing the right segmentation method starts with using an audience segmentation tool to gather and interpret data about your target audience.

What are audience segmentation tools, and how to use them?

Audience segmentation tools like Google Ad Manager and Google Analytics analyze the visitors to your website. To see a segment in Google Analytics, open your Analytics account and the View you wish to see. 

If you open the Audience Overview, you will see the All Users segment. You can click on Add Segment. This action will open a list of pre-created segments. You can use these, or custom create your own.

After you pull up the segments list, browse the segments of your audience who visited your website.

Pay close attention to groupings that are large and overlap. These are your biggest segments, and they will give you the greatest insight into your most valuable customers.

How to Gather and Analyze Data for Audience Segmentation?

Gathering and analyzing data is the bedrock of audience segmentation. Let’s explain how it works.

What are the data sources for audience segmentation?

The biggest source of data for audience segmentation is your customers themselves. But there are numerous ways to reach out to them. You can, for example, use Google Analytics to gather data about the people clicking on your ads and visiting your website. 

Here are some other ways to collect data from your target audience:

Use these methods to ask customers questions that will help you group them in ways that an audience segmentation tool can’t quantify based on analytics alone. Their answers will enable you to narrow those initial broad segments into even smaller groups, which will help you hone your targeted advertising even further. 

Specifically, look for information about your audience that is needs-based, psychographic, and behavioral, which will tell you more about their personality and potential purchasing decisions than demographic data alone will. 

How to analyze and interpret the data?

Once you’ve obtained data about your target audience, group the results using your chosen segmentation methods. 

Next, look at the number of people in each segment to find the largest groups, as well as discover how the different groups overlap. Think about their answers to your questions and the gaps that they identify in your marketing. Finally, use those gaps to come up with creative targeted ad solutions.

Common challenges in data analysis and how to overcome them

The most common challenge in data analysis is incentivizing your target audience to participate in data collection. 

To overcome this obstacle, consider rewarding customers who participate with discount codes for your online store, an entry in a prize drawing, or a free digital product. 

Buyer Personas - What Role Do They Play in Audience Segmentation?

Once you’ve segmented your audience, the next step to improving ad relevance and return on investment (ROI) is creating buyer personas.

What are buyer personas?

A buyer persona is a fictional stand-in for your typical customer. The persona’s description is specific and includes all types of segmented data you obtained about your audience from demographics, psychographics, needs, wants, and more.

Why are buyer personas important?

Buyer personas describe your typical buyers. These are the individuals you’ve identified as making up the largest, most valuable groups in your target audience. For example, your highest revenue earning customer may be a top-earning Black woman in her twenties who prefers shopping for high quality clothes through an app because it’s quick and convenient for her busy lifestyle.

How to create buyer personas?

Once you’ve segmented your audience, create buyer personas by identifying similarities between different groups. For example, if a large portion of your customers are in their thirties, you could start a buyer persona based on that demographic data and build from there.

How to Target Specific Audience Segments?

With your buyer personas prepared, use them to target specific audience segments.

Here are a couple of strategies for accomplishing that goal.

Identify high-priority audience segments

First, identify which audience segments are the highest priority. These are the groups you should appeal to if you want to generate the most engagement and revenue. 

A great place to start is by looking at which groupings contain the most customers, as well as which groups have the potential to generate high revenue once their needs and values are targeted.

Create tailored messaging for different segments

Tailor your ad messaging for your high priority segments. This way, you can appeal directly to your most valuable customers in a way that makes them feel seen. 

Ultimately, this is how you will improve ad relevance and your ROI and conversion rate on advertising spend.  You’re spending less money on general messaging that can’t possibly appeal to everyone in your audience, and more time speaking directly to your most frequent and highest spending clients.

Retargeting Strategies - What They Are and Why You Need Them?

While we’re on the subject of audience segmentation, we want to address its role in retargeting, which can also improve ad relevance and ROI.

What is retargeting?

Retargeting is a tool which shows targeted ads to visitors to your website who didn’t make a purchase (or complete whatever action you want them to do when they go to your site).

The success of this strategy rests on using audience segmentation to analyze what might not have worked for a potential customer, and then sending them an ad targeted to their unique needs and preferences. 

All of this effort is in hopes of funneling them further along the buyer’s journey.

How retargeting works?

Retargeting requires obtaining first-party data, such as contact information (email addresses, phone numbers, etc.). You must then add this data to secure lists on a CRM, a third-party application like Optmyzr, or advertising platforms like Google Ads. You attach a specific ad to that list, so that anyone with that email address on that platform will see that ad.

How retargeting improves ad relevance and ROI?

Retargeting grants you multiple chances to entice buyers who previously visited your site or clicked on your ad, but didn’t complete their journey to a purchase (or your desired outcome). 

By pairing this strategy with audience segmentation, you can define what types of potential customers aren’t completing their buyer’s journeys, and then develop ads designed specifically to appeal to their behavioral, demographic, psychographic, and needs-based data. This tailored approach not only bolsters the relevance of your ads but also contributes to a higher ROAS, as you allocate resources more effectively towards engaging and converting specific audience segments. In this way, retargeting fulfills the twin goals of improving the relevance of your ads and your ROI.

Conclusion

Audience segmentation helps you understand your target audience more intimately. With this knowledge, you can focus on persuading your highest value and highest priority customers, both current and potential, to slide to the end of the sales funnel. That will naturally lead you to produce more relevant, more effective ads out of the gate, which will in turn lead to a greater ROI on ad spend. 

Pair audience segmentation with retargeting, and you have a powerful marketing strategy that will get you far!

Boost Conversions: 7 Microsoft Ads Optimization Tips

Microsoft Advertising recently announced they’re launching a new ChatGPT-based, AI-powered Bing, to deliver a “better search experience” — in their own words.

As of the day (February 28) of writing this blog post, they released this feature as a limited preview on desktop only.

But, still, this is big news for Microsoft advertisers as it will soon draw huge attention to Bing. And hence, now is the time to consider extending your reach to Microsoft if you haven’t done it already.

In this article, you’ll learn how to get started with Microsoft Advertising if you’re running Google Ads, what to keep an eye out for if you’re already running ads there, and how to get the most out of them.

Psst! If you’re an Optmyzr user, you already have access to our PPC toolkit that’ll make advertising on Microsoft hassle-free. Read on and you’ll come across tools and prebuilt solutions that’ll help you get started immediately.

If you’re not an Optmyzr user, our free 14-day trial will give you access to the complete set of solutions (no credit card needed). Sign up here

To find out more about alerts, audits, target optimization, and budget management, watch this Learn with Optmyzr.

How to get started easily with Microsoft Ads if you’re a Google Ads advertiser?

Microsoft has made it extremely easy to start advertising on its platform. You can simply take your best performers in Google Ads and import them into Microsoft Ads.

The two platforms resemble each other in many ways which make both navigating the UI and managing campaigns feel pretty familiar if you’re already comfortable with Google Ads.

How to import Google Ads into Microsoft Ads?

There are two ways to import Google Ads into Microsoft Ads:

  1. One-time imports: You can do a simple, one-time import that will allow you to bring in campaigns, keywords, ad copies, budgets, bid adjustments, etc. from Google Ads. Once that’s done, you’ll need to go to each interface to optimize the campaigns.
  2. Scheduled imports: If you set up an import schedule, any (compatible) changes you make in Google Ads will eventually be copied over to your Microsoft Ads campaigns.

Our recommendation: Opt for one-time imports. While the two platforms may look and feel pretty similar, the audiences they reach are different.

If you or your client don’t have a Microsoft Advertising account yet and you’re interested in giving it a shot, reach out to us at support@optmyzr.com and we should be able to help out with an initial advertisement credit.

7 tips while migrating from Google Ads to Microsoft Ads

1. Turn off Google Ads auto-import.

Consider switching off the auto-import function if you have it on. It is better to optimize Microsoft campaigns separately, instead of expecting the behavior to be the same as on the Google side.

You can manage the import schedules under Import > Import Schedules & History (read more).

2. Run a health check to flag issues.

Make sure conversions are not being over or undercounted, all ad groups have negative keywords, ads are driving traffic to the right landing pages, etc.

For Optmyzr users: The PPC Policy and Audits report can do this for you: it breaks down your Microsoft account into individual scopes, runs an analysis, and highlights any elements that may need your attention.

Read more about the PPC Policy and Audits tool here.

3. Sync your Merchant feed with your Shopping campaigns (for ecommerce advertisers).

To get the best performance out of the shopping campaigns you’ve created, do a hygiene check to see if all the products in your inventory feed are actually part of the campaign.

If there are products in your feed that don’t have a product group or an ad group yet, you can edit the shopping campaign and add them. On the other hand, if some products have left the feed, delete the empty product groups.

For Optmyzr users: Instead of doing this manually, use the Shopping Campaign Refresher to automate the whole process.

For more granular reporting and targeting, you can set up campaigns with multiple levels of product partition.

For Optmyzr users: Split your shopping campaigns into multiple product groups at different levels in a matter of minutes and avoid human errors in the process with Campaign Builder.

Read more about Optmyzr’s shopping tools here.

4. Monitor performance regularly.

Traditionally, less competition has meant lower CPCs and CPAs compared to Google.

Keep an eye on your average CPCs and CPAs, especially mid and short-term performance to detect gradually increasing costs or declining performance.

For Optmyzr users: Set up alerts and get notified by email, Slack, or MS Teams if CPCs trend up or any anomalies happen.

Track impressions and CTR -as more buzz around Bing potentially translates to more searches.

For Optmyzr users: Set up custom alerts using if-then-else statements to get notified when impressions have increased significantly from the previous period. Visualize performance over time on the Account Dashboard to detect any trends.

Be aware of budget pacing: This new, increased interest might result in unexpected spikes in ad spend, budgets being exhausted earlier than usual, and overspending.

For Optmyzr users: Set up a monthly target for the account on the main dashboard, view your pacing status, and get alerted if overpacing starts happening.

Read more about tracking and reporting in Optmyzr here

5. Analyze traffic performance.

Understand the underlying factors behind the changes in performance.

If performance is changing, pull reports to see if there’s a particular audience, ad group, device, etc., or a combination of several factors that are driving new traffic, higher CPCs, or increased CPAs.

For Optmyzr users: Run the PPC Investigator to do the analysis without downloading multiple reports. View the cause chart to analyze which elements of an account are affecting performance.

The root cause analysis helps you go a step further to find the potential causality at the demographics/audience/keyword/ad group or campaign level.

Read more about PPC Investigator here.

Identify the landing pages you should improve.

Check if there are any ads with a high CTR but low-conversion landing pages and see if there’s anything you can improve, e.g. in the CTA or page layout, to get visitors to take the desired action.

For Optmyzr users: Use the Landing Page Performance analysis to pinpoint landing pages that need your attention: from expensive landing pages to potential ones as well as top performers.

Analyze geo performance

In which countries, regions, and cities are your ads shown? Which location has the best conversion rate? Which locations are costing you money? Are there any that should be excluded from your campaigns?

Run an analysis to make sure budgets are spent in the best possible locations.

For Optmyzr users: Geo HeatMap helps you figure all of this out.

Know which networks work the best.

If you’re running campaigns on multiple networks, like Audience and Search, breaking down the performance by networks will help you find out if the approach is bringing you the right results.

This way, you make the most informed decisions regarding where you want your ads to be shown.

For Optmyzr users: Do this and many other similar comparisons in Performance Comparison.

Read more here.

6. Start optimizing for high-converting search terms.

Monitor your search terms.

Are there any new queries that didn’t drive traffic to your ads in the past but now do? Make sure you keep track of the search terms that trigger your ads and, if they’re highly relevant, consider adding them as keywords and including them in some of your ad texts.

For Optmyzr users: The Search Term N-Grams break down search queries into individual words, visualizing which search queries drive traffic to your account. To get a list of queries that are trending up, run the New and Declining Search Queries report in Rule Engine.

Are there any search terms you’re not targeting yet but are bringing in conversions or have a relatively high CTR? In addition to expanding your keyword list, building landing pages around the newly added keywords may help you improve your quality score and overall performance.

For Optmyzr users: Let the Keyword Lasso analyze all your campaigns and ad groups in one go. Add relevant search terms as keywords to drive more good traffic to your site.

Pro Tip: Automate the process using Rule Engine.

Increased traffic due to broad match keywords can lead to irrelevant traffic, so make sure to keep adding negative keywords regularly.

Some search terms might be irrelevant to the entire business, while others should drive traffic to the most relevant ad groups only. Compare the query cost to the typical ad group CPA and make sure high-CTR queries aren’t excluded.

For Optmyzr users: Add account-level negative keywords to reduce wasted spend using the Negative Keyword Finder.

Identify search queries that drive traffic to your ads but don’t convert and quickly add them as negative keywords to the ad groups.

Pro Tip: The fastest way to get notifications for negative keyword ideas is by scheduling the Non-Converting Search Queries in Rule Engine.

Read more about automating search query management here.

Optimize keywords.

Reduce cost per acquisition by pausing underperforming keywords that drive clicks but no conversions.

For Optmyzr users: The Non-Converting Keywords tool shows you keywords that have never converted, as well as those that used to convert but no longer do. You can pause them with a single click. Read more here.

If you’re running manual bidding campaigns, look for expensive keywords and reduce max. CPC to focus on less expensive clicks

For Optmyzr users: Head over to Rule Engine to run the Find Expensive Keywords instant strategy. Reduce bids for keywords that have a higher CPA than the typical keyword in the campaign, or for non-converting keywords with a good number of clicks.

Pro-Tip: Set up an automation schedule without auto-apply but email notifications enabled to save time.

Find the low-hanging fruit and focus on where easy wins are available. If you notice good keywords that are not shown on the first page of search results, consider working on those.

For Optmyzr users: The First Page Bridger does the work for you. Read more here.

Pro Tip: Save more time by getting a notification when opportunities are detected.

Go through your ad copies.

Expanded text ads are now deprecated in Microsoft Advertising. You can still run existing ETAs but editing and creating them isn’t possible anymore.

We know RSAs outperform ETAs in Google Ads so it’s safe to assume the same trend will be seen on Microsoft.

Go through your ad groups to find those that don’t have an RSA yet but don’t abandon your ETAs fully yet: you can analyze which headlines and descriptions have performed the best and use them in your new RSAs.

For Optmyzr users: Create new RSAswith a few clicks, get a list of all ad groups without an enabled Responsive Search Ad, and create ad copies using best-performing ETAs’ components.

Analyze the performance grouping of existing assets and create new ones in Ad Text Optimization for RSAs.

Pause underperforming ads and create new ones in A/B Testing for Ads.

Pro-Tip: Check out the AI-generated suggestions for new assets.

Read more about the ad optimization tools here.

Keep budgets under control.

Microsoft can spend up to 200% of your daily budget so make sure a sudden increase in interest doesn’t come as a surprise.

For Optmyzr users: Project future spend based on recent and historical spend patterns to see how close to your target budget you’re likely to get.

On the other hand, if you have flexibility and performance is good, take advantage of the momentum and allocate more budgets to those campaigns that have the best chance of increasing sales, leads, or value.

If a campaign that tends to perform well is losing impression share due to budget but you’re not able to increase the account’s monthly budget, check if any other campaign tends to underspend and shift budgets from one campaign to another.

For Optmyzr users: Run the Budget optimization suggestions to see different reallocation scenarios and project the impact the reallocation suggestions will have on KPIs like overall ad spend and conversions. Read more here.

Pause campaigns if you can’t overspend. This is a bit of a no-brainer, but the easiest way to make sure you don’t go over budget is to pause the campaigns when your monthly budget is exhausted. Remember to re-enable the campaigns at the beginning of the new budget cycle.

Pro Tip: If you/your client has an overall paid ad budget for multiple platforms like Microsoft, Google, and Meta that you can reallocate as you see fit to maximize performance, use the Optimize Budgets Across Platforms - also to pause and re-enable campaigns. Read more here.

Set ad schedules.

Automated bidding campaigns should have an idea of which are the best times of the day/week to show your ads.

However, the machine isn’t perfect so if you’re certain your ads should only be shown at a certain time of the day or e.g. paused during the weekends, you should create ad schedules.

This applies also if you’re running manual bidding campaigns. Look at performance metrics like impression share, conversions, cost/conversion, and conversion rate when and compare the performance of different time slots throughout the day and the week.

This way, the budget is geared towards the best-performing times of the day and the week.

For Optmyzr users: You can do this with a couple of clicks in Hour of the Week Bid Adjustment and Hour of the Week Analysis tools. Read more here.

Set your auto-bidding campaign targets at the right level.

If you’re running campaigns with a target CPA, keep an eye on the impression share metrics especially for converting campaigns. Are there potential conversions lost because the ad rank is too low?

Consider paying a slightly higher price in exchange for more conversions. If you’re already paying less than your target is, you might have the opportunity to keep capturing cheaper and cheaper leads/sales and bring down the CPA gradually.

The same goes for Target ROAS - keep tweaking the targets based on performance.

For Optmyzr users: using the prebuilt strategies in Rule Engine, optimize all campaigns that have potential to convert more but are limited by ad rank, and those that could lead to permanently lower CPAs or higher ROAS. Read more here.

7. Report on the results.

Whether it’s for yourself only or any of your stakeholders, you should make sure adequate performance reporting takes place. Optimizing is important but understanding the results is critical when determining the success of any campaign.

Know which ad copies were the most popular, which search queries lead to clicks, which percentage of all the impressions lead to clicks and conversions, what year-over-year performance looks like, and which of all your campaigns turned out to be the most valuable for your business.

For Optmyzr users: instead of creating reports from scratch every week or month, use Optmyzr’s template-based reporting and schedule them to be sent to your email. The dynamic date ranges and scalable approach make sure the templates are always populated with the right data from the right account.

Pro tip: Combine all your platforms’ performance reports into one executive report. Read more here.

And there you have it!

With the investment in OpenAI, Microsoft has made a substantial leap in the search engine space potentially driving a massive user base to Bing.

This is a big opportunity for you to find new avenues to grow your business. We hope the tips mentioned above will help you with the same.

If you need additional help, you can always take a 14-day free trial of Optmyzr to get the most out of your Microsoft Ads.

How B2B marketers can improve PPC targeting by segmenting CRM data

“Do you remember the good old days when all you had to do to build, target, or remarket an audience was to drop a cookie in someone’s browser?

Now, I love cookies, just not in my browser.” - Jessica Tozer, associate director of paid media at Powered By Search.

As marketers, cookies are mission-critical elements for PPC success, but as users, we can relate with Jessica.

Last year, at Unlevel 2022, she presented on automated segmentation using CRM data. She brought up some brilliant points on using cookies and data while keeping privacy regulations in mind.

Read on for a quick recap of Jessica’s presentation at Unlevel 2022.

If you’d like to watch her presentation instead, click here.

Since the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the ePrivacy Directive, consumers are becoming more conscious of their online privacy. So you can’t just drop a cookie in their browser without them knowing.

Then how do you go about it?

You’ve to get first-party data of course.

Jessica lists 3 ways to obtain first-party data based on the audience’s stage in the funnel.

This is specific to B2B SaaS, but it can also be applied to other industries.

Once we have that first-party data, the next step is getting it back into our ad platforms. But it’s a daunting task to collect and import data manually.

So, what’s the solution? Automation, of course.

How to effectively segment CRM data using automation?

Segmenting CRM data through automation is a game-changer for PPC advertisers. Imagine having a goldmine of data in your CRM, but manually uploading it is clunky and time-consuming.

Not only that, but manual uploading can cause delays when changes occur between life cycles. This can mean missing out on key lifecycle stages and even losing prospects.

Here’s where automation comes in.

This example uses HubSpot, but the same principles can be applied using other CRMs or third-party applications like Optmyzr.

In a CRM tool like HubSpot, you can create a contact list that automatically updates as leads move through different lifecycle stages. Creating an active list automatically pushes this data back to the advertising platform, making targeting much more efficient.

This is especially helpful for remarketing campaigns that aim to push people further down the funnel.

Once the contact list is created, an audience group can be created and selected from that contact list. From there, lookalike lists can also be made, which is helpful for cold prospecting and top-of-funnel campaigns.

By automatically exporting contact lists by lifecycle stage into platforms like Google Ads, Meta, and LinkedIn, you can target people depending on where they are in the funnel without the extra effort and uncertainty that comes with manual uploading.

This means more accurate data, closed gaps in the funnel, and, ultimately, a higher chance of winning over prospects.

Final words

The point is to use automation to send prospect and customer lifecycle stages into the ad platform instead of manual uploads. This ensures that your client is in the right place at the right time with the right message, giving them a competitive edge in their industry.

10 Expert Tips to Create a High-Converting Video Landing Page for Your PPC Campaign

When creating a PPC campaign, there are a lot of factors that you need to consider to be successful. While crafting compelling ad copy and setting up an effective bid strategy are a few critical parts of the process, converting paid site traffic into paying customers is what it’s all about.

Landing pages are one of the most essential elements of a successful PPC campaign, as they are the first thing potential customers see after clicking on your ad. A well-designed landing page can be the difference between a conversion and a bounce, so it’s important to consider yours.

In this article, I’ll discuss how you can use video on your landing pages to improve the conversion rate of your PPC campaigns significantly.

But first, let’s quickly go over what a video landing page is and why you should create one.

What is a video landing page?

A video landing page is a type of landing page that uses video to promote a product, service, or brand. Usually, the video is the page’s primary focus, with other elements such as text and images playing a supporting role.

**Source**: [Wistia](https://wistia.com/)

Video landing pages are very effective because they can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time. They are also engaging and visually appealing, which helps capture visitors’ attention.

What are the benefits of a video on a landing page?

When constructing landing pages for your PPC campaigns, there are several factors to consider. However, adding a video should be at the top of your list, as it can provide many benefits. Here are some of them:

1. Improves Engagement

The first and most obvious benefit of using video on your landing pages is that it can improve engagement. Video is an incredibly engaging medium, and including one on your page can help to keep visitors interested.

A recent study by Myzowl polled over 582 marketing professionals to get their take on the benefit and impact of using videos to improve engagement. 87% of those polled said that video has helped them increase traffic to their sites and landing pages while over 60% said that number of views a video receives directly coincides with the success of the advertising campaign.

By using video, you can tell your story in a more engaging and interesting way than with text and images alone. You can also include calls to action within the video, prompting visitors to take the desired action.

2. Is Useful and Informative

Another benefit of video landing pages is that they can be useful and informative when marketed to the right audience. Unlike text, which can often be dense and hard to read, videos are easy to consume and hold people’s attention.

At the same time, a well-made video can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time. This is perfect for dynamic landing pages where you need to get your message across quickly.

And since several studies have proven that people are more likely to remember information they see in a video, they’re more likely to convert after watching one.

3. Simplifies Complex Concepts

If you’re selling a complex product or service, a video can be an invaluable tool for simplifying complex concepts. By breaking down your offer into bite-sized pieces and explaining it in an easy-to-understand way, you can help to increase conversions.

When you can define the value of your products or services simply and concisely, people are more likely to take the next step.

4. Builds a Positive Brand Image

In addition to being informative and entertaining, videos can also be used to build a positive brand image. When done correctly, they can humanize your brand and make it more relatable. This is important, especially if you want to build long-term relationships with your customers.

By featuring real people in your videos and telling your brand’s story, you can connect with viewers on a more personal level. This will make them more likely to do business with you.

5. Creates an Emotional Connection

Finally, videos can also create an emotional connection with viewers. This is because they allow you to communicate more personally than text or images alone.

While the features of your product or service are indeed an essential component of your campaigns, it’s also important to focus on the emotional aspects.

These are just a few benefits of using video on your landing pages and prove that this type of video content can be incredibly effective.

10 Tips for High-Conversion Video Landing Pages for PPC Campaigns

Now let’s learn how to create high-converting pages. While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, these tips can help you get started:

1. Use a Script

Making a script is one of the most critical steps in creating a video. Without one, staying on track and including all necessary information will be challenging.

When writing your script, think about what you want to say and how you want to say it. Don’t worry if it’s not perfect, as you can always make changes along the way. Just make sure that you have a clear idea of what you want to say before you start filming. Doing so will save you a lot of time and frustration.

2. Keep the Video Above the Fold

When creating a video landing page, it’s important to keep the video “above the fold.” This means that viewers should be able to see the video without scrolling down.

**Source**: Wistia

If your video is buried below other content, there’s a good chance that people will never even see it.

3. Showcase the Product in Action

Videos are an excellent opportunity to showcase your product in action. This is especially true if you offer a physical product that can be demonstrated.

**Source**: Wistia

If possible, include a demonstration of your product in the video. This will give viewers a better idea of what it is and how it works. Seeing the product in action will also help to increase confidence and encourage people to make a purchase.

Just like with any other type of content, optimizing your videos for search engines is important. This will help ensure as many people see them as possible. When optimizing your video, there are some core elements that you’ll need to focus on:

5. Keep It Short and Simple

When it comes to videos, less is often more. People generally are not interested in watching long, drawn-out videos.

Instead of trying to include everything in one video, break it up into multiple shorter videos. This will make it easier for viewers to digest the information and keep them engaged.

6. Use Custom Thumbnails

People scrolling through their feeds are likely to stop and watch a video if it has an attractive thumbnail. This is why it’s important to take the time to create custom thumbnails for your videos.

Think about what will grab attention and make people want to watch the video. A well-designed thumbnail can distinguish between someone watching your video and moving on.

7. Avoid Autoplay

While autoplay can be a great way to ensure that people see your video, it’s not always the best option. Sometimes, it can be annoying and lead to people leaving your page.

If you do choose to use autoplay, make sure that it’s not set to too high of a volume. You don’t want to startle or annoy people as soon as they land on your page.

8. Make It Informative

Your video should be informative and provide value to the viewer. If it’s nothing more than a commercial, people are not going to want to watch it.

Think about what you can include in your video that will be helpful or interesting to people. The more value you can provide, the more likely people will watch it all through.

9. Capture Attention in the First Few Seconds

It’s important to capture people’s attention in the first few seconds of your video. If you don’t, there’s a good chance that they’ll move on before it’s even over. The first five seconds should be the most engaging part of your video.

Think about what you can do to hook viewers in and make them want to keep watching. This may mean starting with a question, shocking statistic, or attention-grabbing visual.

Regardless of your choice, make sure it will grab people’s attention and get the point across within 5-10 seconds.

10. Focus on the unique value proposition

Your video should be focused on your unique value proposition (UVP). This is what sets you apart from your competitors and is why people should do business with you.

Make sure that your UVP is clear and concise. It should be evident in the video so that viewers know exactly what you’re offering and why they should choose you over someone else.

Level up your landing pages today

Video is a critical element of a landing page. I’m positive that if you follow and execute these 10 tips, it can greatly help you increase your PPC campaign conversion rates and drive more sales.

Google’s ‘Remove Redundant Keywords’ Recommendation: Here’s How You Can Manage Automatic Keyword Deduplication

On January 4th, 2023, Google sent an email to advertisers who run Google ads regarding a new change they made to the “remove redundant keywords recommendations”.

What was Google’s announcement on the “Remove Redundant Keywords Recommendation”?

Google announced that they are changing how automatically applied recommendations will work for deduping keywords.

Here’s why this is important.

If you’re an advertiser who previously accepted Google deduping your keywords automatically on your behalf, Google is now changing the rules for how they will define what a duplicate keyword is.

In the past, a duplicate keyword had to be the same match type. But, going forward, Google will also consider the same keyword text in different match types to be an equivalent keyword.

In other words, this recommendation now applies across match types.

Instead of keeping the more precise match type — so if you had an exact match and a phrase match — Google will decide to keep the broad match keyword.

The PPC community was clearly not a fan of this move

Greg Finn, Director of Marketing at Cypress North, was the first to report on this after he got a notification from Google that something was changing.

Several advertisers were upset and it showed on Twitter.

Specifically, what’s going to be different, as highlighted in yellow in the screenshot above, is the definition of what constitutes a duplicate keyword. Google will no longer look at the match type of the keyword.

In response, Google Ads Liaison, Ginny Marvin took to Twitter to clear the confusion.

What should you do about redundant keywords?

First of all, go and take a look at your account. If you’re already accepting the automatic deduplication of keywords in your account, consider whether you want that to continue to happen or whether you want to pause it and start deduping your account on your own.

Let me show you how you do this in Google Ads.

Navigate to the Recommendations section and look at the History section. If you’ve already accepted the automatic deduping, it will show up here as a historical event.

Now, from here, it’s very easy to change the status from green to red and disable this automatic optimization simply by clicking on ‘Disable’.

If this is not an optimization you were previously doing, you can go to the Manage section, then under Maintain your ads, and you will find the deduplication right here under Remove redundant Keywords.

You can check that to turn it on for an account where you want to use this.

How you can take back control?

If you’d prefer manual control and stay in charge of your account, you can use Optmyzr to find duplicate keywords and remove them on your own terms.

For that, as an Optmyzr user, you can go to Optimizations -> For Keywords -> Keyword De-duper.

The Keyword De-duper works in several ways. It can either check across campaigns or within the same campaign for duplicate keywords.

Whenever it finds duplicates, it will present them to you with an automatic recommendation of which ones to remove based on performance data.

But you can always go ahead and change those selections if you prefer to remove other keywords that are also considered to be duplicates.

This, of course, all falls under the realm of Google’s continued push towards more broad keywords.

It makes sense if you think about it from the perspective that AI and machine learning are getting progressively better at matching a user’s intent when they do a search for a company that can provide and service that intent.

But as you continue to use more broad match keywords in your account, we recommend you keep a close eye on what exactly your ads are showing for.

That’s another thing Optmyzr can help you with, using the Rule Engine. With the Rule Engine, you can automatically process search terms based on criteria that you set.

You could take one of Optmyzr’s pre-built strategies or create your own.

In the video above, I’ve explained how you can create your own strategy based on search terms.

You’ll have a lot of flexibility in how you use the Rule Engine to automatically manage and monitor your search terms as Google continues to push towards more broad match.

How to find keywords removed by Google?

If you’re already an Optmyzr user, you can create a Rule Engine strategy to generate a report on the recently removed keywords.

We recommend this if you’re running the auto-apply recommendation and would like to see the list of keywords Google has removed.

You can get started with it using this ready-to-use strategy.

A big thanks again to Greg Finn from Search Engine Land for first reporting this and making advertisers aware that this is something to pay attention to.

I also had a chance to speak to Greg about this announcement recently. You can watch our full conversation here.

We’re here to help

This change by Google is one more clear indication that they’re moving toward broad match. But, it’s you, and not a machine who will know what’s best for your account.

Taking back control with even the smallest of changes, like the one above that takes just a few minutes goes a long way in protecting your PPC accounts.

So, if you like what you’ve seen, go ahead and try it in your Optmyzr account. But if you don’t have one yet, consider starting a 14-day free trial. You can use all of our tools with no limitations to manage your PPC more efficiently.

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The Top 12 Tools 10,000+ Advertisers Used in 2022 to Maximize Their PPC ROI

With the beginning of a new and exciting year, our Customer Success team, with the help of our analysts, identified the most used and talked about features from our suite of tools during 2022.

Though it’s tough to pick just a few from so many excellent features, we wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the Optmyzr tools our user base made a staple in their PPC management and optimization workflows last year.

The Best Optimization Tools

1. Get high-performing keyword suggestions with Keyword Lasso.

Since its launch, Keyword Lasso has been one of our customers’ favorite tools for search term management.

In addition to offering you a clean list of great keywords that do not yet exist in your account yet, we now let you get suggestions from the Google Ads Keyword Planner as well! This means you can now see how some search terms you don’t yet have as keywords have performed compared to the competition and the average monthly searches they receive.

⚡️ Pro-tip: Use turbo mode in tandem with custom filters to identify new themes and even get negative keyword ideas.

Read the user guide

Visit the tool

2. Identify non-performing keywords easily with Negative Keyword Finder.

This tool has helped some of our customers save thousands of dollars every month! It helps you quickly find negative keywords out of search terms that have not been performing well for the entire account over the past few days and are inefficiently spending your budget.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

3. Allocate campaign budgets effectively with the Optimize Budgets tool.

The popularity of this tool has increased in recent months because it doesn’t only help users plan their budgets smartly, but some also use it as a conversation starter with their customers or stakeholders!

Optimize Budgets will help you reallocate budgets based on goals, and when there’s enough data, it can even project how your performance will change if you’re planning to increase or decrease your campaigns’ budgets.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

4. Build your own automation with the Rule Engine.

Many of our users have turned to the Rule Engine because it gives them much more room to play when compared to other automation techniques like Google Ads’ automated rules. With the Rule Engine we give you the tools to build your own optimizations and automations using your preferred logic.

What are our customers automating with Rule Engine?

The possibilities are endless, but to give you some ideas, this is what most of our users are currently using the Rule Engine for:

Read the user guide | Watch a demo | Visit the tool

The Best Insight Tools

1. Audit your accounts with the PPC Policy Audits.

Imagine being able to get every opportunity for improvement and information about your account and campaigns in a single report. This is precisely what this tool offers, and most of our users use it to do scheduled reviews for their clients or to prepare an evaluation of their prospect’s accounts to get them onboard.

To keep up with all of the changes in the industry this year. we launched new audits for Responsive Search Ads, Performance Max as well as support for Microsoft Ads accounts.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

2. Check why your PPC performance changed with the PPC Investigator.

This is another tool that year after year appears on the list of most used tools, and we don’t doubt why. With PPC Investigator, you can ask Optmyzr to prepare a full cause chart and root cause analysis to understand performance changes in just minutes. All of this without the need to download or visit multiple reports in Google Ads or Microsoft Ads.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

3. Monitor daily spend and predict future spend with the Spend Projection tool.

One of our favorite things to hear our customers say when we show them this tool is “I’m glad I no longer need to do this manually on a spreadsheet”.

And this is because Spend Projection helps them easily calculate how much their campaigns are likely to spend on a cumulative or daily basis at the end of the month, quarter, year, or any other time range they desire while considering important aspects such as past performance data and seasonality.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

4. Check quality score at the keyword, ad group, campaign, and account level with the Quality Score Tracker.

In recent years, the relevance of Quality Score has been the subject of many debates. If we were to answer that question based on the popularity of our Quality Score Tracker, we can tell you that it all indicates that for our core users, it’s still an important metric!

The reason why our customers like it is so simple: It gives you the Quality Score calculation not only at the keyword level but also at the ad group, campaign, and account level, with each of its components. So after just spending a couple of minutes in the tool, you’ll know exactly what’s left to improve in the account.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

What about eCommerce?

1. Create shopping campaigns faster and keep them in sync with your merchant feed with the Shopping Campaign Builder & Shopping Campaign Refresher.

If you ask our eCommerce customers about their favorite Optmyzr tools, they will surely mention these two. It’s the perfect combo for creating and updating new shopping campaigns quickly and efficiently.

By using both you can build multiple Shopping or Performance Max campaigns with consistent and advanced structures in just seconds, while also automatically keeping them up to date by adding new ad groups, product groups, and even campaigns based on your inventory content.

Shopping Campaign Builder: Read the user guide | Visit the tool

Shopping Campaign Refresher: Read the user guide | Visit the tool

Bonus Tools

1. Check for broken landing pages with the URL Checker.

Imagine having to explain that a quarter of your budget ended up on clicks to a 404 page or an out-of-stock product listing. That’s where the URL Checker comes to the rescue.

With this Optmyzr automation, we not only offer the possibility to monitor ads, keywords, and site links to detect if they’re driving traffic to broken landing pages, but we can also automatically pause them if we find any problems in their respective landing pages, and reactivate them once they are fixed.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

2. Monitor campaign budgets with the Flexible Budgets script.

Having an account overspend is always a big concern for advertisers. This is why from our list of Enhanced Scripts, Flexible Budgets is the most popular one.

The Flexible Budgets script has helped thousands of users monitor and pause campaigns, ad groups, keywords, or ads before they overspend.

⚡️ Pro-tip: Use the spreadsheet integration feature to manage the script settings for multiple accounts and campaigns from one place.

Read the user guide | Visit the scripts page

3. Build detailed, white-label reports with the Reports tool.

Our clients are increasingly opting to design templates and automated reports directly in Optmyzr, and with the new re-vamped interface and features, this process is even easier than before.

The Report Designer lets you build reports with fresh data to download them in different formats or automatically send them to your teammates or clients.

Read the user guide | Visit the tool

More to come in 2023

With 2022 being a year of changes and innovation in the industry we were happy to see how many of our core users continue to see Optmyzr as a helpful and complete toolkit to cover all possible areas when managing PPC accounts.

We aim to continue to help advertisers and account managers save time by automating and streamlining repetitive tasks so they can focus on what matters most: strategizing and helping their clients generate more revenue.

We are excited about 2023, and we invite you to stay tuned for updates as our roadmap comes with many surprises.

Performance Max for Ecommerce: Evaluate Your Campaign Performance With This 44-Point Checklist

It’s no secret that Performance Max campaigns present limitations in terms of data and insights we can pull from them. As a result, understanding the causes of their performance fluctuations can be difficult.

I’ve created an in-depth 44-point checklist for ecommerce businesses in this article to make accomplishing that task easier for you.

Of course, you don’t need to go through every single one of these points. Just go over the ones that are relevant to your business.

I also discussed some of these points on PPC Town Hall with Frederick Vallaeys and Mike Rhodes. You can watch the full video here:

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Performance Max 44-point evaluation checklist for ecommerce businesses

Investigate…

  1. Estimated conversion reporting delay.
  2. Average days to conversion from first ad interaction (account-wide and campaign-specific).
  3. Conversion tracking and recent changes to conversion actions.
  4. What “normal” PMax performance fluctuation looks like for the account (if appl.)
  5. Recent changes to budget, bid strategy type, Asset Groups, and Listing Groups
  6. Google Merchant Center product disapprovals and warnings, account issues, and feed issues.
  7. Changes to the site (e.g. navigation/checkout, plugins, hosting, page designs)
  8. Changes to in-stock products, especially best sellers.
  9. Changes to pricing, customer shipping costs, and promotions listed or previously listed on the site.
  10. Extremely negative reviews on and off the site
  11. Google Search Console for “Failing” URLs
  12. Changes in relevant search and buying behavior via the Insights section of your PMax campaign and your account as a whole, Google’s Keyword Planner, Google Trends, your site’s search feature (if appl.), Best Sellers section of Google Merchant Center (if appl.), and Microsoft Ads (if appl.).
  13. New competitors in the market or competitors who are changing their level of competitiveness within ad auctions you compete in.
  14. Major changes in other marketing and site traffic channels outside of Google and Microsoft Ads (e.g. Facebook Ads, email automation, affiliates, third-party remarketing channels)
  15. Major changes in on-site shopping behavior (e.g. cart abandonment, check-out abandonment, sessions with transactions)
  16. Shifts in Shopping network-specific performance for PMax.
  17. Top Bidding Signals report for optimization changes recently made by automated bidding.
  18. Performance shifts of landing pages PMax ad clicks are being sent to.
  19. Major changes made to non-PMax campaigns that may have impacted the performance of PMax.
  20. Major shifts in the performance of high-volume or high-performing search terms, geographies, devices, days, days of the week, hours, audiences, match types, or campaign types in non-PMax campaigns.
  21. Performance metric outliers for the campaign pre and post-major increases or decreases in performance.
  22. Performance metric outliers for the products advertised in the campaign - at the campaign-level and Asset Group-level.
  23. Performance metric outliers for the Listing Groups in the campaign.
  24. Asset Group assets or Ad Extensions with Eligible (Limited) or Disapproved status.
  25. Seasonality Adjustments not being added for major promotions, or for other major expected spikes or dips in conversion rates.
  26. Improperly added Data Exclusions, or for instances where Data Exclusions should have been added but were not.
  27. Scripts or Automated Rules that made changes to the account that may have had an impact on Performance Max.
  28. Account changes by other users who are not the primary account manager.
  29. Auto-applied recommendation changes made by Google.
  30. Customer match list additions, removals, or edits.
  31. Custom Experiments recently ended in the account.
  32. Value rules or conversion value adjustments were added, edited, or removed.
  33. “Best” rated assets inside top performing Asset Groups had a recent change in rating.
  34. High-performing or high-volume search categories or terms shifted away from a high-performing or high-volume Asset Group.
  35. Edits made to a Business Feed or Custom Variable that affected any non-PMax campaigns.
  36. CRM integration issues.
  37. Negative Keyword List was added to the PMax campaign being evaluated per the request of another user.
  38. Negative keywords were improperly added to a Negative Keyword List that is applied to the PMax campaign being evaluated.
  39. YouTube ads were opted out of by another user.
  40. Mobile app placements not owned and operated by Google had major increases or decreases in impressions.
  41. Mobile app category exclusions were applied at the account or campaign level.
  42. Location or Ad Schedule exclusions were added or removed for the PMax campaign being evaluated.
  43. Improperly setup Performance Max URL Exclusions.
  44. Auto-generated YouTube videos were added by Google to the PMax campaign being evaluated.

Want to safeguard your Performance Max campaigns? Click here to learn how.

This is a guest post by Cory Lindholm, Founder of Ads By Cory.

About the author: Cory is a paid search expert in Google and Microsoft Ads. He has helped countless brands grow their businesses with advanced paid search strategies for nearly a decade.

Connect with Cory on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Performance Max Holiday Season Playbook: 6 Tips to Help You Prepare for Q4 2022

The busiest shopping period of the year is just around the corner. And we’ve seen several consumer behavior changes this year as a result of the economic downturn and other macroeconomic factors which make this shopping season unlike any other.

So we need real data from someone who actually knows and understands what’s happening and provides us with suggestions to better prepare for this shopping season. And who better to learn all of that from than Google?

We’ve spoken to Willie Booker, Product Strategy Lead at Google on our latest PPC Town Hall to learn the trends and tips to set up our Performance Max campaigns for this holiday season. In the episode, we also spoke to Andrew Lolk, Founder of SavvyRevenue to get his perspective on that and also understand how agencies are preparing for the same.

Watch the full episode below.

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How consumer behavior has changed in 2022?

Consumers are shopping earlier than usual

Willie Booker says that 42% of consumers are shopping earlier in 2022 than they did in 2021. And in the U.K., 30% of consumers have already started their holiday shopping in June.

In fact, we’re only at the end of October and Target has already started its Black Friday sale.

**Source**: Target

Andrew Lolk, founder of SavvyRevenue has also seen a shift in consumer behavior. He says ->

“We’ve seen Black Friday become a big thing the last few years, and now it’s even bigger. A couple of years ago we only did Black Friday, and now two or three years later we’re doing “black months”. I personally like it. I think it puts less pressure on logistics this way. You can spread out bidding and budget a lot better, but it comes with some challenges if you get in behind later than everybody else.”

This shift in consumer behavior is not new. In the last two years, we’ve seen consumers shopping earlier than usual due to inventory and supply chain issues.

Most consumers are now brand-agnostic

Willie says that over 71% of consumers switched brands in the past year for reasons like better deals, better product quality, better customer service, etc.


Google’s also predicting an uptick in BOPIS (Buy Online, Pick-Up in Store) this year, as we saw in 2020 and 2021.

Embrace experimentation to take advantage of social commerce

Shopping has always been a social experience. That’s why before making a purchase, consumers look for trusted sources.

And it’s very clear from Google’s survey chart above. Consumers look for social proof like product videos and reviews which influence their purchase decisions.

Google’s Performance Max tips for the 2022 holiday season

As you start to plan for the peak holiday season, have a look at these 6 tips that Google shared with us.

We’ve listed them down here on a high level. For more details on these tips, please watch the PPC Town Hall episode above.

1. Adjust bids and budgets

Google says this is the quickest way to start to see results from your campaigns.

2. Use seasonality adjustments

According to Google, seasonality adjustments are used to inform Smart Bidding of expected changes in conversion rates for future events like promotions or sales. Google recommends this for expert advertisers.

3. Enable final URL expansion

Final URL expansion is turned on by default in your campaign. Making sure that it’s on allows Google to replace your final URL with a more relevant landing page for the user based on their behavior.

4. Segment your holiday campaigns and optimize creatives accordingly

Google suggests you get your feed and creatives ready to clearly highlight products that are going to be featured for the relevant holiday.

5. Feature holiday products

Make sure that a holiday plan is in place and that you have the right bids, budgets, and products to be featured in your campaigns.

And if you want to prioritize certain types of products, create a separate Performance Max campaign for them.

6. Enable Enhanced conversions for more accurate conversion measurement

Google suggests using enhanced conversions to improve the accuracy of your conversion measurement and unlock more powerful bidding.

Timing is important

In terms of your holiday setup, Google recommends planning four to six weeks ahead of your peak period and making adjustments with at least two weeks of ramp-up time for each new campaign that you set up.

The ramp-up period also helps with allowing the smart bidding algorithm to bid on products that haven’t been bid high so far in your campaign.

Make sure to use this playbook this holiday season. However, you also need to provide your Performance Max campaign with good data and value-focused optimization so that Google clearly understands what it is that your business really wants and what a ’conversion’ means to you.

Learn how you can take back control of your Performance Max campaign here.

Images courtesy of Google’s presentation on our latest PPC Town Hall.

4 Easy Steps to Add Your Universal Analytics Conversions to Google Analytics 4

In less than a year, starting July 2023, Universal Analytics (UA) from Google will stop recording new data. So if you haven’t already done so, you should immediately use the upgrade assistant from Google to create a new Google Analytics 4 (GA4) property.

Even if you do nothing else, this ensures that you start collecting data now, which will help you with those year-over-year reports that someone in your team will invariably ask for next year.

If you’re a PPC marketer and would like to learn how to migrate to Google Analytics 4 and what changed in GA4 compared to UA for PPC, watch the video below where I spoke to two of the top Google Analytics experts, Janet Driscoll Miller and Charles Farina on PPC Town Hall:

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But after setting up GA4 and exploring the reports, one of the first things many advertisers will notice is that the automatic migration tool hasn’t brought along their goals which makes the data much less helpful in optimizing online ads.

Adding conversions or goals back into GA4 should be one of the first steps after migrating, but because GA4 works very differently from UA, it can seem tricky and get skipped over.

So in this post, we’ll explain first why Google has made it more complicated and then show you how to get things back the way you want them with minimal effort and without needing an engineer’s help.

Why did pageview conversions go missing in Google Analytics 4?

The reason the pageview conversions from a migrated UA property didn’t cleanly make it over to GA4 stems from the fact that GA4 works differently from UA. GA4 is an event-centric rather than a pageview-centric measurement tool.

In UA, every page load was considered a visit and got counted in all the standard reports. In GA4, page loads are still tracked but they’ve been relegated to a supporting role in favor of events.

Tracking events rather than pageviews makes sense on the modern web because many web pages are interactive and don’t reload when the user interacts with them.

Think of Gmail, for example… you can click around the interface to see different emails and reply to them without causing a single page to reload. GA4 can measure all this engagement through events rather than relying on page loads.

But what if your conversions are based on pageviews, like when a user gets to a ‘thank you’ page after submitting a lead form or an order confirmation page after their purchase? Does that mean you can no longer track these pageview-based events as conversions in GA4?

Luckily, you still can, and it’s relatively easy, so let’s look at the steps to add pageview-driven conversions in a GA4 property.

Step 1: Enable Enhanced Measurement

While you could get overly technical and ask the webmaster or person who manages Google Tag Manager to create a special event when a user comes to the page associated with a conversion, you can also do it much more simply.

GA4 already tracks certain events out of the box, and pageviews are one of these automatically tracked events that users get when they enable enhanced measurement by turning it on with a single switch in the admin settings.

Go to the ‘Data Streams’ section of the admin settings in GA4:

Then toggle the switch to enable enhanced measurement:

Step 2: Create an event for a view of a specific page

Of course, we don’t want to measure every page view as a conversion so we need to narrow it down and create an event for the page we want to track as a goal or conversion.

Go to the ‘Events’ page and click the button to create a new event:

For the new event, set the event_name equal to‘ page_view’ and for the page_location parameter, enter the condition that will match it to the desired conversion page. In our example, we’re matching URLs that end with a particular text:

If you can’t remember what pageview should be tracked as a goal, simply head back to your old UA profile (which you should not have deleted when you migrated to GA4) and look at the details for the goals you’d like to bring into GA4:

In the old UA account, we tracked a conversion whenever the destination URL equaled a particular text. We’re taking that string of text and using it to create an equivalent event-based conversion in GA4.

Notice the string we’re pointing to in UA below is the same text we entered for our custom event in the GA4 screenshots above in step 2:

Step 3: Turn the new event into a Conversion

The final step is to toggle your new event to be counted as a conversion. This toggle is available on the configuration page for events, where you’ll end up right after creating the new event in step 2, detailed above.

Step 4: Wait for data

Note that data for the new event will only start to collect after you create it. GA4 will not go back and retroactively find instances of that event. And similarly, GA4 will only count an event as a conversion from the moment you toggle it to be counted as a conversion.

So after a few hours, assuming you’ve had conversions happening on your site, return to GA4 and you should see some numbers for your new event and pageview-based conversion.

Conclusion

That’s it… relatively straightforward once you know how GA4 differs from UA. Of course, we wish we didn’t have to learn a whole new way of working with Google Analytics but that’s outside Optmyzr’s control.

We hope our guide helped make it easier to get your goals back into your GA data so you can start getting some real value out of GA4.

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