Performance Max: Google shares best practices for the 2022 holiday season

Episode DescriptionIs your PPC strategy ready for this shopping season?

We’ve seen several consumer behavior changes this year as a result of the economic downturn and other macroeconomic factors that make this shopping season unlike any other.

So we need real data from someone who actually knows and understands those changes and provides us with suggestions to better prepare for this shopping season. And who better to learn all of that from than Google?

In this episode, we spoke to Willie Booker, Product Strategy Lead at Google to learn the trends and best practices for this holiday season, and Andrew Lolk, Founder of SavvyRevenue to understand how agencies are preparing for the same.

Tune into this episode to learn:

- How consumer behavior in 2022 changed from previous years

- Performance Max best practices for ecommerce advertisers

- How to segment campaigns for better performance

and more

Episode Takeaways

Changes in Consumer Behavior 2022

• Consumers are starting their holiday shopping earlier than in previous years.
• There is a noticeable shift in brand loyalty with a focus on better deals and improved product quality.

Performance Max Best Practices for Ecommerce Advertisers

• Adjust bids and budgets to optimize for seasonal shopping trends.
• Utilize final URL expansion and segment campaigns effectively for the holiday season.

Campaign Segmentation for Better Performance

• Proper segmentation allows for targeted bidding and better allocation of budgets during peak shopping periods.
• Segmentation helps in focusing on specific product categories that align with consumer interests during different seasons.

Episode Transcript

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Hello and welcome to another episode of PPC Town Hall. My name is Fred Vallaeys. I’m your host. I’m also the co founder and CEO at Optmyzr. So we’re in late October here. Most of you have probably bought all your holiday gifts already, but that’s what we’re here to talk about. We want to find out from someone who actually knows when are people going to go shopping and when is that big Q4 seasonality going to happen this year?

Is it going to be earlier? Is it going to be later? Who better to ask than someone that has a lot of data and who better than Google. So today we’ll be joined by someone from Google to share what they’re seeing. We’re also joined by an agency expert, someone you’ve seen before, to add some color commentary and explain what they’re seeing.

We’re we’re also going to talk then about how to take what we’re forecasting and make the most of it using some of the newer campaign types. And one of the new campaign types from Google obviously is Performance Max. So we’re going to talk about how to get your Performance Max campaigns ready to capitalize on the Q4 holiday shopping, e commerce, and Black Friday season.

So welcome to another episode of PPC Town Hall. Let’s get rolling.

All right, and here are my two guests for today, Willie Booker and Andrew Lolk. Welcome, guys. So Willie, you’re the first timer on the show from Google. So People a little bit about who you are, what you do.

ANDREW LOLK: Yeah. So Willie Booker been here at Google like almost two years and I’m primarily focused on helping businesses see success on Google, especially those who are coming to us from third parties like the store builder ecosystem and the bid and optimization firms.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Nice. And what did you do before Google?

ANDREW LOLK: Prior to Google, I was working on Facebook marketing partners for commerce. And prior to that, I was a product manager at PayPal.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Nice. So you’ve seen a little bit of everything on the internet.

ANDREW LOLK: Very cool. A little bit. Yes, absolutely.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: And Andrew, you’ve been on the show a couple of times, but thanks for coming on again.

Remind everyone who you are and what you do.

WILLIE BOOKER: Yeah. So so I’m the founder of Savvy Revenue, a US and European based PPC agency. Really all we do is e commerce PPC. So what we’ve really specialized in is, is feed management, shopping, and overall the eco landscape eco, eco e commerce landscape. Eco sounds wrong.

E commerce landscape when it comes to PPC. So that’s, that’s what I’ll bring with me today.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Nice. Yeah, that’s a super relevant in Q4 when everybody goes shopping online. I always say that

WILLIE BOOKER: that’s our, that that’s our, our, what do you call it? Our Super Bowl. It’s Q4 and Q4 is huge in Europe. So,

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: yeah, well, and the nice thing about the Super Bowl is we always know When that’s going to happen.

It’s a pretty scheduled there. The one thing we don’t know though, is when is black Friday? Well, actually we do know what black Friday is going to happen, but we do don’t know when people are going to actually go shopping. And it’s funny because I think right now it’s mid October black Friday has already started at target date.

They literally use that messaging on their website. So I’m kind of curious from you, Willie, and what Google might be seeing. What’s the expectation for the seasonality for this year?

ANDREW LOLK: Yeah, we’re hearing from lots of sources that folks are shopping earlier and earlier. 42 percent of people are shopping earlier in 2022 than they did in 2021.

Like, in fact, when we talked to shoppers as early as June, we’re seeing that 30 percent of consumers in the UK are already shopping for holiday, which is a little different than how I shop, but That’s what we’re hearing in the market.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Interesting. Andrew, what are you prepping for?

WILLIE BOOKER: So we’re pretty much, we’re, it looks like we’re already behind with target pushing up black Friday, but, but we, what we’re seeing across the board, we’ve never seen as many advertisers ever push a black month.

It’s, it’s become a bigger and bigger thing. And we just now it’s more than all the ones that a couple of years ago said like, Oh, we only do black Friday. We’re just. later and they’ll go black month and we’re all like, Whoa. And that’s, I think it’s a really evident thing from what we’ve seen the last couple of years.

Like personally, I like it. It, it puts less, less pressure on logistics, but less pressure on individual days. You can spread out bidding and budget a lot better. But there, it comes with some challenges if you get in behind later than everybody else.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Well, and so consumers have definitely shifted.

It sounds like and like Willie’s saying, it’s not everyone. It’s a, it’s a group of people, but besides when they go shopping, what are some of the key things nowadays that people care about? And I think for the past couple of years, it’s really been driven by The fear of missing out inventory issues supply chain issues and that’s why people started shopping earlier are we seeing other behavioral changes in terms of maybe like the types of brands people are shopping for?

ANDREW LOLK: Yeah, I think that what we’ve been seeing is that we know that like 71 percent of consumers are saying they’re they’ve switched brands in the In the past year, right? And we’re seeing that really manifests in brand agnostic searches and we see like some of the top reasons that You Consumers are switching brands are looking for better deals.

We also see product quality and customer service kind of like really coming up. Another thing that we are continuing to see is really strengthen the, in the buy online, pick up and store a curbside service as something that’s going to continue to go. We saw this really big in 2020 and we’re going to continue to see that through 2022.

But a lot of these things are like tend to be really, really specific to business needs. And this is one of the reasons that we continue to highlight the insights page, which gives you lots of information specific to your business, your needs, your demands, and expectations.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah. And the brand agnostic, I suppose that’s also a little bit driven by some of the inflation.

I know, Andrew your European base, I believe is in Denmark. My co founders are in Denmark and I’ve heard some of the prices they now pay for heating their house. And it’s just, it’s crazy. If I was paying that much, I probably would be shopping for cheaper alternatives. Maybe not the brands I usually shop for.

So you think that’s part of it there, Andrew?

WILLIE BOOKER: So it’s, it’s for Europe, we feel it’s all the data coming out is always a couple months behind. So we, we saw here in September, we saw a lot of like data coming in from the summer months being that everything was horrible. But what we’re seeing in the actual data right now is that most of our advertisers are back on track with last year’s performance.

At this point in time. So that could be an indicator that people are spreading out their holiday purchases earlier. So we shouldn’t expect as big a push in November and December as we normally do. It could also be that, that people have kind of figured out, Hey, these are our expenses and this is how we can actually just, let’s not heat up our house as much as we usually do.

It, it does get cold in the, in Europe. So you can’t just put on an extra sweater sometimes, I must admit.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Well, and I suppose you buy the extra sweater so you don’t have to heat as much. So

WILLIE BOOKER: one of our, one of our advertisers sell Christmas sweaters. So I have, I have a discount code if anybody needs one.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah, for real, if you do have one, let’s so okay. So that’s kind of the shift in brand, the buy online pickup in store. Is that kind of a global phenomena? Really? Do you know that Andrew, have you seen that as much in Europe?

WILLIE BOOKER: So it like from a europe, it’s it’s it’s less It’s not as big just because we have less of the we have less targets wall and walmart’s wall things, etc Where where are these like natural pickup spots?

So so in europe, it’s it’s less but like I was like germany is pretty big on on on picking up like you see those amazon amazon hubs All over the place have funny names, by the way. I don’t know who is allowed to name those, but some were very bad profanity. I just want to say but we see, we, we don’t see it as extensive in, in Europe.

And I think it has to do with, there’s not as many pickup points and the way that shipping and logistics work in Europe is a little bit different. There’s a lot of these like pick up, like pick up points where we don’t have post offices and stuff like that. To the same degree anymore we have post like we have pickup points whereas like it’s a kiosk that sells Cigarettes and sodas and everything and they have a corner of the store is then also a pickup point for for packages So that is being used a ton because it’s you can get it really close to your house in your apartment at all times So so that in that sense It has already always been there, but it’s not as brand associated where it’s like, Hey, you can buy it from, from target and go pick them up at target.

It, because it’s so locally placed, all these little pickup kiosks.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah. Infrastructure is very different in Europe. For sure. Very less space. It seems in the cities and in the United States. Willie, what’s your take on Bopus. Globally.

ANDREW LOLK: So I think I think I agree with what Andrew was saying. Like, this is particularly strong in North America.

And I think this is due to some regional differences. So I think we’re seeing like something along the lines of 38 percent of folks are continuing to wanted to pick up in store curbside pickup, etc. You know, so I would say that it is pretty Probably more dominant in North America and less, less so in other regions.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: So I know really you have a slide, let’s take a look at it here, but what do consumers care about? So you talked a bit about being more brand agnostic but talk us through some of the other reasons why people might switch brand.

ANDREW LOLK: Yeah. So looking for better deals, like definitely like leads the pack, but we also see product quality.

and customer service rounding out like the top three here. All of which is kind of like going to like different customers have different needs. And like, this all goes back to like really understanding your customer and understanding your market very well.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah. So if you’re going to conquest a little bit and try to capture some of those consumers from their existing brand affiliations having a better deal.

Yeah,

ANDREW LOLK: it leads the pack, right? That’s the, that’s kind of the starting point, but I think there’s also lots of space for differentiation around like product quality. I mean, people are looking for better value overall especially in this environment and also the customer experience. People want to feel good when they’re out shopping.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah, and at 27 percent bottom of the list, there is better value alignment. I know that’s something that’s also a relatively big deal when it comes to Amazon, but they have ways of saying, okay, this is a small business. This is a black owned business. This is a you know, a nonprofit business, all these things that people might align with the values.

Are there any things that you know of like Google that sort of help align those consumer values to the brands that support those values?

ANDREW LOLK: I think this is this would be more of a like more targeted, right? So I would say that broad trends, I think, like, tend to be seasonal. They tend to be episodic, right?

And I think, like, focusing on the top three or four would be a better bet is like a generalized strategy. But understanding your customers and what motivates them would be like, The path that I would take in terms of like understanding dynamics. I don’t think that there’s any generic strategy that worked for everyone.

But it’s about understanding time of year and kind of the mindset of your customers more than anything.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah, that makes sense. And Andrew, do you have any examples perhaps as far as like how you’ve convinced a consumer to shift to one of the brands that you advertise for?

WILLIE BOOKER: I think from from a retail standpoint or what we call like retail resellers not, People who have their own brands, but like that carry a lot of brands we see, we see the availability Have really been a big part so i’m happy to see that being a being a big factor in that list because that’s what we’re seeing too is like Like just prioritizing products with better availability, especially in the holiday season Where in the past couple years there have been challenges with availability so I think that That this year that will just continue.

And it’s, it has been a pretty big differentiator when, when we’re advertising the right products, like if something we know is going to go out of stock within two weeks and we have a restocking rate, that’s four weeks from now, let’s focus on what we have available right now because it is a big factor.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Right. So you have to get a little bit smarter as an advertiser about what, how you tie your inventory to the ads that you show. And it’s not just about the inventory today, but it’s about forecasting. Yeah.

WILLIE BOOKER: All that time we save by going to performance max, we, we shouldn’t just ignore and say, Hey, now we should never.

Touch anything in terms of our feed, there’s so many things we can start spending our time on now, like, for instance, just being smarter about what products are we sending over? What limitations and what additional data should we give performance max to work with? And that’s really some of the things that, that we’ve seen work incredibly well over the last, really over the last year, as, as we’ve switched over to much more automation.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Great. Another topic here. So there’s a little bit more. social shopping behavior. That’s, you know, when we talk about Google, we traditionally talk about search quite a bit, but there’s obviously other channels, right? There’s Google Discover. There’s Google Video. Really talk maybe a little bit about how that fits into that new consumer behavior of being more social than the shop.

ANDREW LOLK: Yeah, I would say that. Shopping has always been a human experience. I mean, going back to the times when we went into stores and you knew the shopkeeper they would understand your needs very, very deeply. Like people want to understand like how they might experience a product and they, they want to go to trusted sources, whether it be trusted platforms, friends, like this is very much a, a, a social experience.

And we find that like in social environments, like you have the casual opportunity to learn about a product. View a video understand what people are, friends are thinking about these products. And that often, that usually informs purchase decisions.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Right. And as part of it is social, I think, and part of it is you go into the shop because you want to experience the product.

You want to touch it. And the images that you get into shopping ads can only do so much. Google has some new efforts and augmented reality, I believe. So you can, you can take three dimensional images of your products and drop them into your living room. Obviously if you are on YouTube, you can show videos of people interacting with those products and that makes it a little bit more real.

So I think that’s what we’re talking about here. And I’d love to hear from you, Andrew, is that something that you’ve kind of dabbled in?

WILLIE BOOKER: We haven’t seen anybody actually invest in it yet. I think it overall, I’m, I’m, I’m borderline aggressive when it comes to advertisers, not doing enough for the, for the buying experience, like, like they’ll, they’ll pour a hundred thousand a month or 500, 000 a month million a month in Google ads, but they won’t.

Take off 5 percent of that to spend on, on any kind of like CRO conversion rate optimization effort, whether it’s 3d images, better product pictures, better reviews, like just so many things people can advertise, you can do that will have a positive effect on what. Google social, everything else from an advertising standpoint can actually produce, we haven’t seen it yet.

We haven’t seen it be a big part outside of selling I wear then there we’ve seen it become like pretty mainstream, but again, it’s because they can tap into a, they can tap into some software that’s already there. And it’s more or less plug and play and most Shopify stores. But other than that, we really haven’t seen it With the advertisers at the level that we work with is medium to high direct consumer e commerce.

This is interesting. I don’t understand it.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Well, that’s why we’re here on PPC town hall, right? These are the things you should invest in and that makes total sense and that’s not that dissimilar from the story that we’ve Been saying for a long time is you can optimize Only so much when it comes to your bids your keyword selection the ads that you show You can optimize Right.

You’re going to gain a couple percent eventually if you’ve done this for a long time. But if you have a 20 percent potential lift by just working a little bit on your landing page, having a better product image those are the big gains, right? And those are big gains that support your large investment in online advertising.

WILLIE BOOKER: And I think Performance Max exacerbates this because it’s, it’s, it’s leveling out the playing field. Like I have, I have no quarrel with saying that, that when smart shopping first came on board, I wasn’t, I wasn’t convinced, but over time, you can’t argue with the performance that it drove for many advertisers.

And it really like where, where we used to say that the strategies we, and tactics we used to use, and then just running a standard shopping with a manual bid was like down here. The smart shopping took it like up here without having to do anything. And now we’re starting to get to that level where fairly advanced agencies, agency tactics are getting aligned with what performance max smart shopping is producing in terms of performance.

But that also means that everybody else is going to, it has, that has access to the exact same thing. You can’t, you can’t get the same like performance advantage by choosing a great agency and in longer. So the performance max that you can, well, that’s a conundrum, but it did maximum max potential you have in your for your ads for your performance max will be a lot more derived on what.

It’s happening on your website, in your feed, with your product, with the other aspects that, that was also listed in Willie’s slide before. So I think, I think it’s, I think it’s a big thing and I think it’s going to be a bigger and bigger thing and something we push as an e commerce only is something we push at on these days because we, we, oh, as we can’t we can’t beat everybody else.

If we’re just doing the same as everybody else.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Okay, so you’re really positive there on performance max and performance max for retail. So let’s go into that a little bit more, right? Really, I believe you have a slide that we can show, which is basically the Q4 holiday readiness slide for PMAX. Let’s maybe cover at a high level, what are the things we should be thinking about, and then we’ll jump into a little bit more detail.

ANDREW LOLK: Yeah, like as you like start to plan for the holidays, like we just want to share with you like a few of our best practices, which really breaks down into five general strategies, right? Adjusting bids and budgets. These are the this is the quickest way to start to see some different types of responses from your campaigns.

Thinking about season seasonality adjustments, which we’re recommending for expert advertisers. Keeping on, we have enable final URL expansion, which is by default on just making sure that’s on. And what that really allows is our optimization for the right landing pages just based on the individual customer and the behavior that we’re seeing on platform.

And also holiday segmentation, meaning that getting your feed ready and getting your creative ready to properly highlight things that are going to be featured for holiday and then, you know, following through and featuring holiday products and making sure that a holiday plan is in place and you have the right bids and budgets.

Products, et cetera. I’m ready to roll when when the time comes. One of the things I just really want to stress is like timing is is very important here. So in terms of like holiday setups, we’re recommending that you start planning 4 to 6 weeks away from your peak period and making adjustments with at least 2 weeks of ramp up time for each new campaign that you set up.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah, so basically you should have already been doing this. But if you haven’t. Like, today is probably the day you should be getting on that bandwagon. So this is all great advice from Google but I’d like to take it to the agency and someone who’s, like, actually been doing this. Andrew, you get to pick of these five things that really showed on the list.

Which one would you start with?

WILLIE BOOKER: So the holiday campaign segmentation is, is key, like, because it enables everything else. So you need to, you need to make sure that you understand what products are being pushed and what products do you want to push for the holidays. And that’s something where, for instance, seasonal bid adjustment is where we go in and we tell It’s the smart bidding algorithm.

Hey, we believe that over the next seven to 14 days, we’re going to see an uplift in conversion rates. But if we’re ha if we have a site where half of what we sell is cables, the, and the other half is like sec boards and other gifting products that we know these are the ones that will actually perform better than.

Pulling out those holiday products where we know these are the ones that will increase in conversion rates, and it’s not the entire site that will increase in conversion rates is something where we’ve seen an incredible ability to increase the bids by simply just using seasonal bid adjustments more specifically for the products that.

Actually have an uplift rather than going on the entire campaign. So, so it all starts with being, it was starting with, with, with the holiday segmentation, because you also don’t want to create holiday like notes and, and, and add assets for, for cables and other things that, that aren’t holiday related, then you’re just going to put in bigger selection of gifts for mom, when it’s a USB C cable.

Doesn’t make any sense. And that’s where we can go wrong with things like performance max. If we’re not, if we’re not using the tools that’s actually been provided by Google, like being able to split them up, being able to split up asset groups and other things that’s something that, that we’ve seen great, seen great success within the past and can only see that that’s going to be a big thing this year as well.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Right. And so the funny thing here is we’re talking about holiday assets and creatives, but really what it comes down to is you need to have some structure, some segmentation that enables you to take advantage of this. And so this is also not very particular to Q4. This is any time of the year when you have a seasonal product, whether it be mother’s day, father’s day back to school season, you need that structure.

And, and so this is actually one big thing. You know, Google sometimes says, Hey, go ahead and simplify your structure. We’ll handle it from here. And that advice is fine. If we’re not the person who is watching this PPC town hall, right. But if you’re here because you want to get the absolute best results, then absolutely that campaign structure is so critical and that structure step one, and then step two.

I think you were talking even a little bit more about bids. Once you have the structure, now you can bid and you can budget in the right places. And then actually putting in the creative components might be a tertiary sort of thing.

WILLIE BOOKER: Yeah. And I think like, I want to, I want to reiterate the point about simplicity, simplicity.

I do think it’s key. Like, like I had a call with a client’s investor the other day and he started talking like big pharmaceutical company that’s all like over the counter. Drugs online and stuff like that. And he was like, Hey, we need to create this hugely complicated strategy or structure. And I was like, who’s going to manage that?

Who’s going to manage that? Who’s going to run that? Not going to pay us enough to run that. And we’ll, we’ll make mistakes along the way. So I think that it’s, it’s, it’s about starting off simple and then figuring out, okay, we have two big groups. We have outerwear and we have swimwear. Let’s split them up.

Don’t, we don’t have to go into shorts and, and, and bikinis and stuff like that. Outerwear and swimwear. That’s a great start to start splitting it up and just having some ability to also just use that data to start saying, Hey, this Now it’s swimwear season has to start picking up. Let’s start pushing it.

Let’s start with a lower ROAS for these products so you can start picking up, getting more traffic. And like, so we, we used to, again, we use the tools and the levers that are able that are available to us. It doesn’t have to all be in one big box.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Hey, a quick word from our sponsor. Hey, it’s me. It’s Fred.

I’m at Optmyzr. So yes, this is a shameless plug, but when you’re saying that when you go into these advanced structures, it’s tricky because you’re going to make mistakes. Who’s going to maintain it? That is actually one of the things where Optmyzr can come in. And sort of take what is the structure that you want to maintain and that’s it.

That’s worked for shopping campaigns We also do that now for performance max campaigns so you can get as detailed as complicated as you want. We’ll handle those details but of course there is a happy medium, right? You don’t want to go too excessive But really I want to Get your perspective on this.

Google also has a vision here of what campaign segmentation should look like. So take us through that for a minute.

ANDREW LOLK: Yeah, I think the goal here is to get to like your ultimate goals, right? So it’s like. And holiday, there’s specific merchandise. There’s certain margins. Some, maybe there’s some there’s some inventory things that you’re looking to, to clear up.

So like being really clear about what you’re willing to pay and what the returns on ad spend would be here is something that we always continue to stress is focusing on outcomes and also experimenting to look for results. Right. So, you know, This is where number one, your business strategy comes into place.

And then also looking at insights to continue to optimize as you kind of like test and learn for the outcomes that are most important to your business.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah. And there’s a couple of interesting points. So some people are listening to the podcaster and are not seeing the slide, but one interesting point on this slide is.

In the beginning of the holiday season You may have an expectation that there’s a lot of browsing activity and not purchasing activity So be a little bit less aggressive with your return on ad spend targets so that you can build up that volume early on and i see you nodding your head you agree on that one.

WILLIE BOOKER: I’ve never agreed with a google slide more in my entire life

No, but but it’s it’s just like like it’s so key like like Again, we go back to this whole thing where let’s just let, let’s not just push everything into a single ROAS strategy and think that we will magically hit this ROAS target. Like, like just the, just the business insights, the marketing insights, the consumer insights, obviously you’re going to have a lower ROAS running into a peak season or holiday season than during the holiday season.

You should set your targets to accommodate for that. Like we all sometimes get, get stuck in this mode where we, where we look at what is the ROAS for November? Well, what about the first two weeks of December? What about like, there’s so many things that come into play. So we have to look at a little bit.

Longer timeframe and see how can we actually feed the system better. Because the ramp up period really also helps with allowing the smart bidding, the algorithm to bid on products that haven’t been bid that high so far, maybe because it couldn’t hit your ROAS targets and thereby when it starts gaining some more data up to the holiday season, then it will start saying, Hey, we’ll start picking up conversions and then we’ll say, Hey, this can actually convert.

Now, but it couldn’t do it two months from two months ago. And thereby it will expand your your exposure and get you more revenue. That’s something that’s a strategy. That’s a tactic we didn’t see five years ago, three years ago. It wasn’t something that was, we needed to do because we had so much manual bidding running, but, but today it’s somewhat some of those things that let’s, let’s tell smart bidding to do this.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: So I think you’ve led us a little bit into maybe attributions, right? So you can’t expect that. The click today is going to lead to the purchase today. And that’s the only thing that happens. We’ve obviously seen the consumer journey can get quite extensive. What do you recommend in terms of attribution models?

WILLIE BOOKER: So I have, I have a, I have a long, one of the first, the first thing we wanted to solve when we started savvy was we wanted to solve campaign and like campaign creation and campaign updates. Again, we run large e commerce sites. We don’t want to keep updating campaigns when new inventory comes in. That’s where we actually use Optmyzr for that for a long, for a lot of advertisers, it works really, really well.

The second thing we wanted to fix was attribution. We want to go to advertise and say, Hey, this is how much you spend on Google. This is how much you spend on Facebook email generation, SEO, et cetera, et cetera. Through five years of this many thousands of dollars of trials and come advertise tests, et cetera.

I have given up. There is not a good way to actually do this. The best way that we’ve found is feeding each advertising channel with, or each platform with. As much data as possible. So for Google perspective, it’s the conversion tracking code, enhanced conversion, server side tracking, as much data as we humanly possibly can send send the machine.

And then in the backend, we’ll use like a blended ROAS metric where we can look at the overall. What is our overall marketing spend with our overall revenue? And that should be the, that should be the North star KPI that we look at when it comes to, is this working out or not? Because the consumer, consumer journey has gotten so messy and it’s probably always been that.

So we’ve just. Gotten to understand it much better now, but it’s directly, it’s directly opposed with, we don’t get as much data as we used to for the engines. And the engines need more data because we run on algorithms more. So we can’t run, we can’t play this game of trying to say, okay. What data should we send to the different platforms?

We need to send as much data to every single platform as we can because they all run on algorithms we’ve all seen what happened to facebook when when when the When they stopped getting as much data as they used to have. So google needs to get as much data as possible, too

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: And now you’ve led us into another big topic, which is like the deprecation of third party cookies people clearing their cookies privacy So really, Google is certainly a big player in solving some of those issues.

One of the things they’ve come out with in the past I think year or so here is really enhanced conversions. So can you take us through a little bit of what that means? Because this is really one of the ways to address What Andrew is describing as the problem of a lack of data leads to worse bidding, and this is trying to bring data back.

So how does that work?

ANDREW LOLK: Yeah, exactly. So enhanced conversions is all about improving accuracy, right? We want to, like, make sure that the conversion is, like, affirmatively tied to someone who has been targeted, and we have some accurate data with respect to that, which, you know, over time improves the model and helps you to become more accurate and gets you the outcomes that you’re seeking.

In early test, we saw a 5 percent median increase in reported conversion rates for those on YouTube. Those on YouTube saw an average increase of 17. 1%. So the early results in enhanced conversions are very promising, and this is something that we’re recommending to advertisers for whom this works.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Yeah, that sounds like everybody should be using enhanced conversions then get more data, right?

So how do you get that installed, Andrew? I’m sure you’ve done that before. So where do people go?

WILLIE BOOKER: So, yeah, it’s, it’s our biggest recommendation. I also use it on, on our blog and everybody we talk to us is get more data. And so it’s really, really simple. So enhanced conversions, if you’re already using Google ads tracking, which I recommend everybody should be using then it’s just.

Going in and finding that conversion action in your, in your conversions overview in there, you can click enable and enhance conversions and it’ll give you a little snippet. You, you need to add to your conversion tracking code in usually in a Google tag manager, or if you’re using Shopify, it will just really, really simple to add and it’s and then it’s done.

It’s, it’s really, So it’s really been a simple process we’ve seen.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Cool. Here’s another one that’s simple if you want to set it up, but I want to get your take on it. Seasonality bid adjustments. Is that something you should be using in this scenario or is Google just going to be good enough to know when that seasonality is going to happen?

So

WILLIE BOOKER: from our point of view, it’s seasonal bid adjustments has been our best friend outside of data exclusion to actually make sure we can use smart bidding for every single advertiser. A couple of years ago, we, we shifted from manual bidding default to smart bidding default. And we’ve, we’ve never looked back and seasonal, seasonality bid adjustments where you tell Google or tell smart bidding, Hey, for this period of time, bid X percent higher, or for this period of time, bid X percent lower.

It’s, it’s key during a holiday season because there can be a couple of days with really high conversion rates. And then, you know, you’re going to, let’s say, you know, you’re running out of stock or your Black Friday sale is, is out, you, you want to tell the algorithms, just relax, like just. Calm down in the days after that, and then you can quickly figure out whether or not you’ve set the right bit adjustment and adjust it.

It’s really like, it’s one of the fastest changes you can make, and you can see the impact almost immediately in your CPCs.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: So it does kind of two things, right? It changes the bit target, but it also prevents the system from learning on that period because it knows it’s an unusual period that shouldn’t be carried forward after it ends.

Thanks for watching!

WILLIE BOOKER: Yeah. So the official the official guidelines from Google is that you don’t have to set a negative bid adjustment after you’ve set a positive bid adjustment. And that’s partially true. We we’ve seen from really big sales or, or sales out of the ordinary. We we’ve seen that there can still be Be an be an impact, a positive impact by setting these negative good adjustments after a big sale.

But it’s really like, sometimes it’s useful. Sometimes it’s not. So we always wait until seeing the day after big sales stops and say, okay, do the CPC level fall back down to pre. Promotion period, or does it continue at the same level as the promotion period? And if it does, we’ll, we’ll apply the negative afterwards.

It’s 50 50 and based on what we’ve seen.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: It’s a really good tip. Thanks for sharing that. Really back to you, Doug, the last thing I want to talk about here, which is kind of unique to performance max is it’s built in audience capabilities. So what should advertisers think about taking advantage of when it comes to audiences this season?

ANDREW LOLK: Yeah. So I. One of the keys here is this is like the first time that we’re allowing like a, a suggestion, right? So a, a big part of Performance Max is built on automation and with audience insights able to upload a, a custom audience that would let us know like who, who it is you’re trying to reach which could help to help to inform like who to initially target.

It’s kind of a suggestion of sorts. And on the back end of that we give audience insights of who we think you should be reaching. Right. So this is a way to continue to optimize a campaign with some with some manual inputs that also aid automation and give you some feedback in terms of like how you could be improving with audiences over time

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: and negative audiences as well.

So if you have a list of your existing customers and you want to exclude those from your campaigns obviously in e commerce, your. Existing customers, maybe go to repeat customers. So you may not want to exclude them, but if you sell a subscription, you know, a holiday box of or a gift box of holiday cookies, people might only buy that one.

So then exclude those existing customers. Andrew, any thoughts on audiences?

WILLIE BOOKER: The biggest thing we’ve seen is, is just like, so I really liked the, the new customer acquisition goals you can set and started in smart shopping and been carried over to performance max. I think for, for many advertised, especially the very large ones this is super underutilized and it’s, it’s something that they’re not tracking enough of because again, the danger when you become big enough is that you have such a big existing customer pool that you will, The algorithm will skew towards those, the higher you set your ROAS target.

And that’s really where setting a new customer acquisition goal, where you ensure that new customers is in the algorithm’s eyes viewed as, as more valuable than existing customers. So, so you ensure you push it a little bit back on that. That’s something that we’ve seen has been like, has been really, really great.

Because sometimes we get KPIs and in house teams work with KPIs that they have a new customer acquisition ratio that they’re trying to target. And if they don’t have any levers to pull, when it comes to one of the biggest marketing challenge, which is Google shopping, then Yeah, they will come and ask, what should we do with the new new customer acquisition target, and then it will start skewing towards it.

The only thing I want to say there is really, really make sure that, that the audiences you have uploaded are constantly updated. Clayview has done some great great integrations lately. But there are integrations across the board where you can make sure you get these customer customer lists updated and other audiences we see way too often, then.

Something was uploaded like once a year and then it doesn’t work. So make sure you update it if you use these these tools.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Nice. And so for all the promise of performance max being like so automated and doing all the work for us. I think we spent a good 40, 45 minutes here talking about some things you can do to make it work better.

Some levers that Andrew and his team pull. Some of the things that Willie talked about how you can still control performance max. So encourage all of you to you know, take some of these things. Test them out, experiment with them, and use it to get the most out of this Q4 holiday season. So thank you both for being on the show.

If you’ve enjoyed watching, please subscribe to the channel. We have these episodes roughly every two weeks. Willie, parting thoughts, anything else people should know, or where can they go and learn more about Google’s advice?

ANDREW LOLK: As always, lots of resources on the Google Ads Help Center. For lots of you, but also like you should be talking with your Google rep about how to prepare for holiday and see yourself through the rest of your business cycle as like a ready resource for you.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Great. Thank you for being on Willie. Andrew, final thoughts from you.

WILLIE BOOKER: I think the final thought I just want to, I want to share is like, if, if you’re not Max, this this holiday season there’s one of the new things that have just come out from Google is, is discovery campaigns with Google merchant center feed so that you can actually like push a lot of some of the inventory that you have access to in performance max, like Gmail and discovery, which isn’t really, that hasn’t been that accessible for retail advertisers so far.

That looks like a really interesting campaign type for, for retail. That, that we’ve been pushing a lot. And so I think that’s, that’s something where most people should invest in. And even if you’re using performance max today, it’s, it’s a campaign format. I really do think there’s a lot of potential in if used correctly.

FREDERICK VALLAEYS: Great. And of course, find Andrew and his team at Savvy Revenue. Andrew sends out like an email with like his latest thoughts, I think roughly once a month, I always enjoy it. It’s well written, easy, easy to understand good advice. So I sign up for that and stay in touch with Andrew. Appreciate it.

Well, good. Thank you so much. You can also do a two week free trial of Optmyzr. That is a great tool. We do a lot of shopping optimizations for you shopping optimization, automation. Make this a season a little bit easier. And then like Andrew was also saying all at that time that you gained back, you can use it to test out some new strategies and get ahead of your competitors.

Willie, Andrew, thanks for having been great guests and we’ll see everyone on the next episode.