Automation Options in Google Ads
Advancements in machine learning (“ML”) have allowed Google to bring more automation that makes PPC specialists’ lives a little easier. Efficiency through automation is awesome but not everything in the PPC world can be done by machines only. Humans and machines combined efforts work best, at least for now.
What are the five things Google Ads can do automatically?
Smart campaigns for small business
The new automated campaigns for small businesses, referred to as “Smart Campaigns”, were recently launched in the US, as the default campaign type. Automatic targeting and automated goal-based bidding are followed by automating ad and landing page generation based on Google My Business data, as well as some user-selected imaging. But still manual remain: budgets, language and target location, for instance.
Universal app campaigns
These are pretty easy to manage, as automated campaign types in Google Ads that drive installs and in-app conversions, without requiring much of optimization. Basically, the bidding is managed by Google. Targeting and creatives, too. All centered around a budget and a target goal. The automation uses structured data from the app listing to automate creative.
Goal-optimized shopping campaigns
This is a campaign type that can truly benefit from automation due its huge number of products and the complexity of setup and management. Using conversion data within the prior 45 days to predict bids, shopping campaigns can be setup on automatic ROAS target. Optimization is performed by the software, including structured data (shopping feed) optimization.
Automated bidding
Some are based on smart-bidding to predict the top converting clicks and those that bring the most conversion value. Strategies like Target CPA, Target ROAS and Enhanced CPC are examples. But note that some of what we consider “automated bidding” is not fully automated and it’s best to adjust the targets that the automation disregards. Some unique factors may affect performance that are not considered by the automated system and you should adjust for those manually.
Dynamic search ads (DSAs)
DSAs are the automated solution for large websites with a ton of products in different categories that are hard to manage. The dynamic search ads option matches ads to search queries, per relevancy of the ads and landing pages, using Google’s organic index. You can pick to include all pages of a site or just pages in a feed. Then, Google automatically targets the ads and uses headlines to people’s actual searches. However, bids can also be managed manually.
Along with the above-mentioned automations, there are other automated features in Google Ads i.e. automatic extensions, optimized ad rotation and automation of broad match to show ads on similar queries. These and future automations and that boost efficiency will certainly be appreciated by PPC professionals, both on the client and consultancy/agency side.
