🔍 Product ad spend on search & social keeps rising

Oct 25, 2019

Good morning search marketers, happy Friday.

With November right around the corner, we are officially entering the holiday push. Shopping campaigns continue to account for bigger shares of merchants' search budgets. That shows no sign of stopping in the fourth quarter.

We're now seeing the same thing happen in social — at an even more accelerated pace — according to third-quarter data from Kenshoo. Advertisers spent 17% more on search Shopping campaigns year-over-year in Q3. Whereas on social, product ad spend jumped by 42% compared to a year ago. With product feed-driven ad options on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat, advertisers have many social channels available to drive holiday sales in addition to search campaigns.

This will also be the first holiday test for the new Google Shopping experience in the U.S. where retailers participating in Google Shopping Actions are much more visible.

Read on for a Pro Tip from Fred Vallaeys on why we brilliant marketers still matter.

Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief

Soapbox

Automated tools don't guarantee success – you do

We should monitor and manage target CPA and target ROAS rather than leave them alone because there are factors in everyone's business that affect conversion rates that Google's prediction systems may not be picking up on. The automation only detects a change in metrics and in its narrow scope of what it can do, may very well use this data to do entirely the wrong thing for the business.

Here's an example: Automated bidding one day noticed that conversion rates dropped significantly so bids were reduced to maintain the target CPA. As a result of the much lower bids, the advertiser's conversion volume went off a cliff and never automatically recovered.

Here's what happened: As a dumb automation, it never asked why the conversion rate dropped. The humans knew it was because a new landing page launched. Humans would have known the correct response to this event was to revert back to the previous landing page rather than decrease bids.

One of the roles humans need to play is that of PPC pilot, someone who monitors the automations and can make course corrections if bad data is causing bad actions to be taken.

– Fred Vallaeys is CEO of Optmyzr

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Search Shorts

Google algorithm update again...

Another Google update. Google may be doing another search ranking update, starting sometime on Wednesday. It is not confirmed and the chatter is somewhat limited.

Beginner Google video series. Google posted an introduction to the new animated beginners SEO YouTube video series.

Change of address tool. Google's John Mueller said the change of address tool is not for merging sites together.

See The BIG SMX East Preview!

SMX East kicks off November 13-14 in NYC — and it's our biggest agenda ever. Join us for over 100 search marketing presentations from industry experts and market-defining solutions providers, including two new tracks on agency operations and local search marketing for multi-location brands. Click the link below to access your exclusive preview of everything in store!

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