Google Ads What You Need To Know

00:00 Introduction to the Podcast
01:23 Understanding Artificial Intelligence (AI)
03:45 Ethical Considerations in AI Development
06:12 Applications of AI in Healthcare
09:30 AI in Business and Automation
12:15 The Future of AI: Opportunities and Challenges
15:40 How AI is Transforming Education
18:05 Conclusion and Closing Thoughts

[00:00:00] Hello, I'm back in an original seat and we are here for the day. Okay. For the moment, we're talking Google ads, 2024 today. So if you're joining us, pipe in, if you use Google ads with a yes, and if you don't use Google ads with a no, and this is. Phelan, I work with Pip who forgot to introduce herself and but we work together at Seymour Digital Media and we spend a lot of time thinking about Google ads.

[00:00:27] So we thought it'd be a good time to take, I [00:00:30] think after in the wake of the Google IO for this year where there was a lot of changes, I think it was good to talk about what's going on with the big. Themes and the big trends that are happening in Google ads, right? So Phelan can you share this over to the group just to make sure that it gets in there because there's no Yeah, that'll go in with it and yes, so We do get on here weekly and yes, I am Pip [00:01:00] and together Phelan and I, we run Seymour Digital Media and Know How Marketing Lab, which is our school, the digital media, which is our agency.

[00:01:09] Now Phelan we do a lot of Google ads. Yeah. Yes. A lot. And it's really changed in the last year or two, would you say? It does some big jumps every year, I would say. Yeah, I would say it's more crystallizing a lot of trends or solidifying a lot of trends that have been ongoing in Google Ads for a while.

[00:01:29] [00:01:30] Now we have a whole agenda today. So we want to go through, I'm going to list it off the headings quickly, and we'll try to get to all of these today, but we're going to talk about Google ads and how it's changed with deprecation of third party tools. Then we have first party data and we have AI integration.

[00:01:48] I know you guys are super excited about all this and we have the new Google ads design performance, max enhancements, expanded search ad experience, which is interesting. There's some video changes [00:02:00] and bidding strategy changes. So I think first and foremost, we'll do the cookie stuff cause that's hard.

[00:02:06] And then I think we should jump right into the interface and how it's changed and why we're. Doing a Google ads course coming up. Yeah. So yeah, I guess the, so cookies, it's a big one. It's already happened for Facebook. So it's the same principles. It's a, basically they want to have it they want to have it set up like a conversion API.

[00:02:27] They don't like having the third party tools because that could be a [00:02:30] privacy leak. So what do they mean by that is basically you have JavaScript that's on the page itself. And so when the page loads, Yeah. It actually reaches out to a third party with the script and then grabs the code. And so what they want is you to have it already connected on the backend.

[00:02:45] So when the page loads, the Google ads conversion tracking loads with the website itself. So it all looks like it's coming from one source, not that someone's added an extra bit of code. That's going to be doing stuff stuff. And so that's the idea behind it is [00:03:00] that it's show, it's Verifying to the browser and the user that, Hey, this actually loaded from this person's website.

[00:03:07] So it's first party. Okay. Okay. So if I have Google analytics on my website, that's first party. If you set up Google analytics in the traditional way, then no, it is not first party. It's the traditional way is to paste it into the head coat. Okay. And that's third party because it doesn't load when the webpage loads it.

[00:03:29] [00:03:30] It's a code that. Fires once the page is there so it means it puts in everything for the website And then it makes an extra call out to Google Analytics to start firing the Google Analytics Okay, so if I put it through tag manager, is it third party? That's still third party. What you would need to do is have some sort of So if you're on WordPress, there's a pixel My site is one that I've used for Facebook pixel, but it also has an analytics input [00:04:00] Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager integration.

[00:04:02] So that's how I would set that up. And so what they do is it's basically it's a simple plugin on the backend. And all you do is load in your Google Tag Manager ID or your Google Analytics ID, and then it just loads it for you as if. It was loading with the page itself. Yeah. So this is how we do it.

[00:04:21] Yeah. If you're doing something like Shopify, they have the conversion API already set up out of the box because [00:04:30] you add it to your store and then it's just a function of your store. That's actually loading this information. And yeah it's, it sounds way more complicated than it is, but basically you just want to have something that does conversion API for Facebook and see if they have a Google analytics component and then you're good.

[00:04:47] Okay. That's something to note for. And so when you're setting up Google ads, one of the things you do, or one of the things we do is we set up conversion tracking, because if you're doing Google ads and you don't have conversion tracking, you [00:05:00] can't track the leads that are coming in, right? And this is what we see with business owners or, and businesses they'll have done or tried Google ads, but they won't have done this, the most important part.

[00:05:11] And that's because it's probably overwhelming and confusing. Has Google made that any easier with this third party cookie, first party cookie stuff? I don't think Google has made it easier. I would say that I had just hopped off a call where literally that was the case with I was asking. This contact, [00:05:30] I was asking him if he had ever run Google ads and he said he did and then just told me, Oh, they weren't very good.

[00:05:36] I don't think I got a lot of return. And then we talked about are you tracking things correctly? So you can actually show where things are coming from and how these are connecting. Google. Still leaves a little bit to be desired for business owners right out of the gate to get the most out of it for them.

[00:05:53] Not to say it, so yeah, it could be, they could do a better job on Google side of explaining what a [00:06:00] conversion is and how to set it up. Generally though It's like Shopify and WooCommerce that are generally pretty good because that's the bread and butter is to give you an ROI. And so they help you tie those things together.

[00:06:12] But generally, yeah, there's no really good out of the box solutions that I've noticed. Even ones like say a Squarespace and they do all the forms and they do all of the and you put in the Google Analytics in their system. They don't, Spit out a, an event saying Hey, contact form filled. Which is weird that doesn't they, [00:06:30] don't they?

[00:06:31] No, I haven't really yeah, they do for some, but like they do for forums being submitted. But there's there again, there's some parts of it to be desired that I feel like that websites, especially if they're hosted by someone else that they could help you with a lot more. Okay. And then let's, okay, so let's dive into the interface.

[00:06:54] Cause I think that's pretty interesting. And one of the reasons we've decided to do our Google ads course, and then we can jump back into [00:07:00] the AI integration and things like that, the new Google ads design. So Google was testing a bunch of different designs and they found a winner.

[00:07:10] I always say chicken dinner. I'm, that must be from a commercial, I'm sure, right? But they have this winning design and they've taken everything that was, you On the top of the dashboard on the right hand side to the they've made it on a horizontal dashboard on the left hand side now, instead of [00:07:30] a vertical, no, they've made it a vertical dashboard on the left hand side and it used to be a horizontal dashboard across the top.

[00:07:38] Like a menu. Yeah. I think that's how they chat. And they've added some interesting little things in there that I don't think anybody's really mentioned anywhere that I've seen so far, but they have, how we have, so in Google ads, one of the major strategies we, we do is we work with our clients to look at the search terms that come in and see if we want to negative them [00:08:00] out or add them.

[00:08:00] And we do this with the clients as often as possible. And But they have a new list. So we have a negative keyword list, which is now called I forget. It's not called it's called egg exemption list or exclusion list. Yeah. exclusion list. And that's the exclusion list.

[00:08:21] You can negative out at the campaign level, right? And you could add all your campaigns, which you would assume would be at the account level, but it is in [00:08:30] fact at, they have a negative a thousand negative keywords you can have at the account level. And so anything you never want to show up for, but you have to go to a new place, which is when you're setting up the Google ads account, or when you've set it up, you just go in there and add it.

[00:08:47] And there it's a, it looks like a regular campaign, the regular campaign settings, only it's for the account. Section it's down the admin. Which is, so that's a new feature we're [00:09:00] seeing. There's also, and the interface is a little bit different instead of just the wrench icon. It's a wrench and it's a wrench and something else pliers, scissors, something.

[00:09:09] So now you can't just say at the wrench icon. Yeah. You got the tool settings. They look like tools now. And, yeah I find the new interface to be annoying in that it's like the uncanny valley where things are just off, just enough to be annoying, where you expect, most things are where [00:09:30] you would expect them to be, but there's like some subtle differences on Oh, it's actually, you go under this folder to get this, or do they renamed like accounts, linked accounts to be data manager.

[00:09:40] Yeah. But they never like told anyone that there was no, Oh, where's that? Where you would have connected your Google analytics with your Google ads account, it's now called, it's now called data manager. Oh, interesting. Interesting. Which it's fine that they did that. It's just, I wish they had, I [00:10:00] wish they had told us more about it because like they made a big deal about how they were changing the login screen for Google and then, but they didn't even tell us like any sort of.

[00:10:09] Advanced knowledge about Hey, we're going to rename all these features to these things. Big, have a blog post written up about this is now this, or if you want to find this, it's out here which would have been very helpful. And I think was a missed opportunity for Google to make it easier if they wanted people to get used to this new interface.

[00:10:25] Yeah, it does. I, we'll get used to it. So when change is hard to accept. So [00:10:30] do you think that possibly you don't like it because change is hard, right? I'm used to one pattern of doing things and they've decided to change that pattern, but not really tell us that they had changed the pattern.

[00:10:42] That's what I find annoying. Is that I'm okay if you say, Hey, we're moving these things to here. You can, it used to be called this, now it's called that. At least if they told me, then I could go, okay, update, like how I go through the system, but if you just don't tell me, and it's just there, it's just Oh, guessing game, guess where it goes.

[00:10:58] And you feel dumb, right? You go [00:11:00] in there with a client. You're like, Oh used to be there and now it's got a different name, which is, normal and. We've learned there's always things to learn in Google ads. You're always going to be learning if you're in Google ads, because they'll add new things or because you work with a certain type of clients, you're not going to use some elements and vice versa.

[00:11:18] You learn. What you're allowed to do, what you're not allowed to do as you go through it, even if you take the Google ads test, which is interesting. So the interface is changed. And with the interface, we've also seen [00:11:30] lots of changes. Like we don't have the expanded. Search ads anymore.

[00:11:35] We don't have now it's just the responsive search ads. Yeah. And so I find that interesting. It's a whole new build and where we've changed how we Build campaigns because of all these changes. But I think how we build campaigns is basically also based on the broad match integration and the smart fitting.

[00:11:56] And the expanded search ad experience. Oh, [00:12:00] do you remember that when they were like. The Google ads was showing up on search partners and people had unchecked the box saying, I don't want to show up on search partners. And then they were like we'll just take away the box. So you don't get the choice.

[00:12:20] Yeah, that was a, it was really nice. One of them that yeah yeah, it's one of those ones where Google is definitely push forcing the hand a little bit on like [00:12:30] limitations that they're obviously pushing for more of the automations, more of it which I had with the client where they had blown the entire campaign budget within a couple hours.

[00:12:38] And No one can tell me why that had happened. And they, cause they're basically the poor staff guys are just saying it's the automations. they blamed you. They blamed you. So we have learned, like when you launch a campaign, you've got to watch it like a hawk for the first few days. Like you're, you literally leave the tab open and just keep looking.

[00:12:58] And keep seeing, [00:13:00] because we literally had a campaign that if you change, so bidding strategy is huge and this is bidding strategy has changed and there's even bidding strategies. Like I haven't really used much of there's a shared portfolio bidding strategy we haven't dived into.

[00:13:16] I've just started really diving into ROAS and what is the other one? Where where you. Give it like there's the way you do this strategy around bidding is huge, right? Cause you either start off [00:13:30] with maximize clicks or manual bidding. You don't start off with maximize conversion, although that would seem like a natural thing to do, but you want a certain number of conversions before you change to that.

[00:13:43] And then before you change to row as you want a certain number of it's a progression. of how well the account's doing over time. Yeah, it's definitely one that you don't, you're definitely going to pick different bidding strategies for different stages of the campaign. It's, so [00:14:00] as a a mature campaign you want to have with a target CPA or a max conversion.

[00:14:04] Or a ROAS, so if it's an e commerce. Or if you do actually do know your numbers. That's another one. And that's also sorry. That just reminds me to go with the bidding strategy. One other big one. That's goes with the privacy component and the changing of bidding strategies is a lot more customer match lists and a lot more offline conversions.

[00:14:22] If you can suck them up So additional signals. Yeah, additional signals that you could send to Google that, [00:14:30] Hey, find me more people like this list of emails, right? If you already have your customer list, that's a customer match list. Or if you have like your CRM. And because Google is now, they have a little window that I'm interested to see what it's going to look like in the future.

[00:14:43] But it says, you, visitors, To raw leads and then they have qualified leads. So my guess is that's what was built for the sales force and HubSpot people that as you get people Not not only are you collecting leads, but like you can then [00:15:00] of those leads how many actually became customers and you can signal that Yeah, go on.

[00:15:04] Sorry yeah, so that way you could signal say it's offline meaning that it's like not On a website someone just showing up and converting it's offline in the sense that you're in a crm that has its own little ecosystem, they make it through your funnel and then they become a customer, then you could send that signal that, Oh, actually that person did integrate.

[00:15:24] And more I'm talking about this, the more I realized. So yeah, it is Salesforce and [00:15:30] HubSpot purpose. Yeah. So does that. And those are the only two CRMs that connect. The API, is that correct? Out of the box. Oh. You could set up your own integration. If you have a developer and say you have we could connect a Google Sheet.

[00:15:47] And then it just has as a row, it has a customer and say we change their status. You could set up your own, it's just you have to be technically proficient to go connect to it. Out of the gate HubSpot. Okay. So if you're choosing a new [00:16:00] CRM, those might, and you're planning on doing Google ads, that might be something to consider because things do all integrate, right?

[00:16:08] You see this with real estate agents too, right? We all want to see that person coming from our website. Say they came from Google ads, they go to our website and they end up in our customer management system. And then your customer management system and your content management system could work together and you know what your customers want.

[00:16:28] So then you write content. [00:16:30] Anyway, that's, so that's where marketing and sales combine. And instead of the funnel being a V it's now that hourglass, with the sale being in the middle. And yeah, anyway, it's all integrated now, people all integrated. So let's get back to Google. I was just gonna, I was just gonna say, just to put a bow on it is that the more data the more data we can feed Google that's Especially of conversions, anything like that, the better Google's going to perform, especially in an age where it's [00:17:00] just trying to automate everything.

[00:17:01] And everything's going to be that they want to supercharge that component. So yeah, more data, you can give it the clean data of these are people I want more of the better it's going to do. Yeah. And you can't just go buy in lists, right? That's not legal. But so with all of these changes, so it used to be, you had to spend a certain amount of money to use the customer match list.

[00:17:21] So that's an add on. That people can really get behind right the AI what I think Google's trying to do is to let [00:17:30] people use AI, but also help people realize that it's pretty intensive Google ads. Now we were going to think that they were going to AI us out of there or try to, and the reality is that they've made so many bells and whistles and bobbins and knobbins that you need an expert to know where to go or else you just blindly spend money. Yeah, or you open yourself up like we had a client that Google had turned on generate assets for you and it was [00:18:00] listing them with Disney and the title, which I'm like, I couldn't write that into the ad copy if I wanted to, because that's copywritten term and they were advertising with Disney.

[00:18:09] They had no association with them whatsoever. So it was like. Totally misguided. I turned on the automation to try it with our own account. And then we were listed like one of our images was furniture. It was like, yeah, but that's because we work with a furniture store. So I thought that was very strange.

[00:18:25] But there are new enhancements coming. There's a new place you [00:18:30] can in the assets section, right? Where you can see the combinations of your images with your text. Because Google wants to. Be more like Facebook and give you not just words to use, but actual media, right? More media type of files. So images, your logo, you can put in there, you have to verify your ad account so you can start an ad account, but then you have to verify your ad account.

[00:18:56] And we've had some definite struggles [00:19:00] with the verification of as a business owner, I have my own personal credit card. And I had, and I might use it for my business once in a while. And two, if I'm doing that with Google ads, I want to use my business name, but it might not let me for the verification because.

[00:19:20] Maybe some of my documents say my name. It's a whole thing. So and They're also getting rid of credit card payments. No, I don't know if this is for the smaller fry [00:19:30] business owner, but I know for Google 360 clients they are phasing out the payment by credit card in favor of what nothing Like it's, they're taking it out of the bank account now.

[00:19:44] They don't want to pay the 2%. So will they lose business? Is this a good time to leave Google ads because of this? Is this going to affect all business owners? And we have, I was going to say we're out of time, but we have a few more minutes to [00:20:00] talk about how strategies are different as well.

[00:20:04] Yeah, I definitely wanted to. So one other thing just. To quickly note they're also putting a mandatory end date by the end of the year. Every campaign will have to so you can't just leave your campaigns running indefinitely. You have to set it, even if it's for a year, you have to set it. Yeah, so I dig that though because when I go in and pause things if people don't want to run I pause the Keywords, I pause the ad groups.

[00:20:26] I pause the ads I pause the campaigns [00:20:30] I'd pause like my left finger if I could because I feel like Google the machine might turn it on One day and I don't want our class to be charged if they're not running yeah, absolutely. I agree with you on that. It's nice, but it also makes me suspicious of Google, because I'm like, why are you doing this?

[00:20:46] You're leaving money on the table. Maybe they've been sued. Possible, but that's what I mean. It's there's gotta be some sort of weird reason that they did it. They're not just doing it to save time. Advertisers. Yeah. That's [00:21:00] true. It's you usually see big changes with Google ads and their money in conjunction with one another, right?

[00:21:09] They make more money if they do certain things. And that brings us to the bidding and the match types, which leads us right into campaign strategies, right? Yeah, if anybody's wondering, that's our rooster in the background. I can't hear him. I know I can hear him, but I don't think that's getting picked up on the mic.

[00:21:28] But yeah, [00:21:30] campaign strategy. So a big launch at IO was the change of the meta on how you set up your campaigns. It's basically that Google is pushing for two types of campaigns. Obviously the classic search we all know and love. And then as well, the secondary one is performance max, they're pushing for it.

[00:21:48] They are trying to get it because it covers all of your top of funnel and retargeting at the same time. And so having like asset groups that are focused around different [00:22:00] services. So your asset group is like an ad group. It's got your ads, it's got your videos, it's got your images all put together.

[00:22:06] All grouped together. Yeah. And so you would have it around like a theme or like a service. So like we might have one that's Google ads and it's all about how we can help you optimize your Google ads. And then another one's SEO and all the copy and all the images and all the videos are all about SEO.

[00:22:23] When you get Google ads, and it's the right business. Where people are searching on Google, it can like, it [00:22:30] can have big effects. We have clients that they, one of their own, like one of their only strategies where they might have other strategies, but the main. The main one is Google ads and that's what brings them a lot of business, right?

[00:22:45] Yeah, and so we're seeing they've changed that they've changed So there are still the three match types. We got rid of the fourth which was broad match modified which marketers we Google ads people we just bloody loved and so that's gone And [00:23:00] so I mean i've heard of other ads people just getting rid of phrase match, because phrase and exact are very much more similar now.

[00:23:09] And so that type of thing does affect strategy. So we have gone are the days, I don't even need to say this, but gone are the days of skags and that's single keyword ad groups. And so now you're are we putting more keywords in an ad group? Yes. Are they more themed together?

[00:23:25] Yes. AI can tell, words that should like, or [00:23:30] themes that should go together like professional and service. Might be like, somebody might be like professional dishwasher or higher dishwasher service, like it's really the same. So do you need the word higher in there?

[00:23:42] For best in there. We used to have to put the word best or maybe structures of campaigns should be now more top of funnel, middle of funnel bottom of funnel. In Google ads, you could do that. But Google ads is essentially. The very bottom of the funnel [00:24:00] like it. That's what we want.

[00:24:01] We want people that are going to click and go to buy, right? That's what you want. Yeah and that's why it's getting paired with the performance max, right? It's going to be showing some YouTube and display ads to people that aren't even aware of you. I heard that you should use You should segment, inside the Google ads account.

[00:24:18] Now at the campaign level, you can, there's a section for new versus returning users. And there's a strategy where if you're using P max, PMAX [00:24:30] should be for the new users, like how we use shopping. There's shopping in PMAX and you create shopping campaigns first. But then what do you do with the PMAX, Phelan?

[00:24:41] Is it for your best products or is it just for introductory of products like a top of funnel PMAX? Yeah the PMAX, I would look at it more like it is its own funnel one asset group. So if I, if I'm doing e commerce, that's an easy one you put all your shirt products [00:25:00] together.

[00:25:00] And so all your ad copies about the shirts, all your images are about the shirts and then you have another asset group that's about pants. Okay. Now, if you had shopping ads at a performance max. How would you separate the two audiences or the two people searching? Would it be like, I have a shopping campaign for all my products and then for my best products, I use a P max or is it opposite? Sorry. I'm a little confused. Could you reword? [00:25:30] When I'm creating a Google ads account, I, as a search specialist, I'll do it with text, like search text ads as a comparison. Okay. So if I am creating a campaign for search, yeah, I have search ads and I want to do a P max, but I don't want the crossover of audiences. So I only want, do I want my performance max for top of the funnel people, or do I want my search campaign for top of the funnel [00:26:00] people? So one thing to keep in mind is that they're not competing because you can't, you use search themes in performance max that doesn't use specific keywords. So it's going to be there.

[00:26:10] There won't be as much crossover. The only time you'll, you might see a bit of crossover is they it does performance X does include search. So if you see your cost per click, jump up like to 5 or something like that would normally like a search. Sure. That's when you would see the, that it would, might be competing with it.

[00:26:28] But generally because it's using every [00:26:30] other asset that Google has. So your YouTube, your display, your shopping, it's going to be spending most of its time on those ad placements because Google. That's why they're doing performance max is they have a bunch of inventory and all these different platforms that's not being used correct or it's not being filled out.

[00:26:48] And so they just have an automated system to fill those out. That's its goal. So what I'm trying to get at, it's the, and I'll bring back the comparison of the performance max and the shopping campaign. [00:27:00] So whether or not they're really converting, if I want it, and I got to separate out between new customers and existing customers, yeah.

[00:27:10] Say I have a shopping campaign for all my products and then I have a performance max campaign. Do I keep my best products just for shopping, or do I take my best products and put them in performance bags for returning users? Yeah. We are running up against time. I know. [00:27:30] But I will answer this because it's a good question.

[00:27:32] Your question is multivariant on what you're trying to get at. So you have, yes, you can have new performance max campaigns bid solely on new customers, so really good for e commerce, right? I got people that are buying, but I need to get new people. You can totally pull those out. And then you can also make a product group.

[00:27:52] And so the product group can be all your best performing. So you can, you have a lot of like metrics there, so I could do it by product category. I could do it by [00:28:00] product. So Oh, this one's getting me really good return on ad spend. Let's carve them out into a new product group and then put that with our new Kim, our new customers.

[00:28:11] So you can look at it in a multifaceted way. And so that's one to keep in mind when you're looking at how to do that. Generally though, what I would say is start simple. Don't overcomplicate it for yourself. These features, yeah, these features that we just talked about, those are when you've, [00:28:30] your funnels going, your ad copies working, your landing pages are converting, like all these things and then you, yeah.

[00:28:35] And then you're looking at it's costing me a lot. Like maybe I want to carve out and just have a campaign that's only going after new customers to get them in. But generally don't overburden yourself with these ones. Google is. It's both trying to take away features and then give you features that will overcomplicate it for you.

[00:28:53] Try not to overdo it. Try to keep it as simple as possible because you're gonna have a lot of [00:29:00] these features out of the gate. One other thing I don't think, I think we've implied it, but I want to make it explicit. Right now, generating assets in Google is just, do not do that. It is okay.

[00:29:12] And no, and we should preface, don't click on the just automated assets, automated keywords, automated anything. Just be slow and steady, because they're working there with the kinks still. We are out of time not out of touch. Just at a time might start singing songs [00:29:30] today. I thought that was quite funny.

[00:29:31] I did sure Okay. We're out of here, but we are here next Thursday Same bad time same that place is places. Yeah if you miss this, you can catch it on the replay on YouTube or Facebook or our podcast. And if you are interested in Google ads, we do have a training coming up. That might be helpful for you or your team.

[00:29:55] If you want to do ads yourself, if you don't want to do ads, cause this sounds well too [00:30:00] complicated. Just get in touch and we'll help direct. Yeah. Phelan, do you know what's happening next week? Yes, you and Greg are going to be talking about mobile matters. Your customer is on their phone. Mobile does matter.

[00:30:14] It's insane how much it matters. So here's a quick sneak peek. When you get your website done or updated, do you check your phone to make sure it looks good on your phone or your friend's phone? So that's what we'll be talking about next week. Join us then, Greg and I, and if [00:30:30] you have any questions, concerns, needs, or wants to Join us in the Facebook group or on one of our social marketing channels.

[00:30:35] Seymour Digital Media and Cyberpunk Geeks Marketing Mixer is the Facebook group where we go live every week and we help other marketers do their marketing because marketing is a group effort. So join us there. Okay. Bye. All right. Bye.