This week in DPM's weekly news update, Harry Brooks covers some important updates from Google, including changes to smart bidding and exciting new insights to be featured within the platform.
It's been a pretty big week for Google. With all the updates within Google Ads, this week's DPM newsletter is all geared up to inform you of what's changing in Paid Search's biggest tool.
On Wednesday, Google announced the official launch of auto-applied Google Ads recommendations. The company is “rolling out the option to apply recommendations automatically.” To use the feature, users must opt in and can then choose from over 17 recommendations to apply automatically within your Google Ads accounts.
These data-driven recommendations will be an easy way to get insight into what you can do to improve your performance and will be perfect for smaller paid search teams who have less resource to evaluate accounts at this level.
Some of our more minor news from Google this week relates to their smart bidding processes. Their plans to phase out their Target CPA (tCPA) and Target ROAS (tROAS) smart bidding strategies will start this month, with their functionality now rolling into other bid strategies.
In most cases, accounts shouldn't be affected. The most you will need to do is update your bidding strategy to one of the new versions: for tCPA you'll need to select 'Maximise Conversions' with the new tCPA setting selected, while fore tROAS you'll need to select 'Maximise Conversion Value' with tROAS selected. If you use these settings already and don't want tCPA or rROAS included, ensure these settings are firmly off.
It's fair to say that this past year has been a year of anomalies. In these unprecedent times (can we still use this phrase??) it's hard for marketers to stay on top of rapidly emerging trends. To combat this, Google is adding a new feature to Google Ads in the form of new emerging trend insights.
These insights will be based on Google search activity, which will alert marketers to any relevant shopping and discovery changes that emerge within their industry. This added insight will empower marketers to update their ad strategy in line with demand in the face of a changing search landscape.
From May onwards, Google Ads will be setting a first-party cookie through the Global site tag, in addition to Google Tag Manager. As a first-party cookie, it will be unique and only exist for users of a specific site. We've been talking about the Cookieless Future pretty consistently for the past 6 months, and this move from Google will combat any concerns users of the platform had about recording their ad data.
Our fun fact of the week is that the first person to be convicted of speeding was going a speedy 8mph! 🐢
Join us next week when we'll be back with more insights from the world of DPM. Can't wait till then? Get in touch to talk to our experts.