Our people are a large part of what makes Centro such a great place to work. We’re excited to introduce you to some of Centro’s most interesting people in our newest blog series, as they share their ‘Centro stories’ and a variety of experiences that have impacted their work and life.

As VP of Talent Management, Centro’s Elles Skony is tasked with implementing Centro’s core ideology, which holds that a company’s investment in its team members is key to corporate success. Through its commitment to the wellbeing of its employees, Centro seeks to serve as a blueprint for an improved corporate structure and culture.

Read on to learn how this HR disruptor is transforming corporate culture one team member at a time.

Clare McKinley: What makes you excited about coming into work each day at Centro?

Elles Skony: Being part of a company whose mission is centered around investing in its people makes my job fun. Centro’s commitment to its people is right there in our mission statement:

“To create a successful corporation which contributes to the health and wellbeing of the community through continual dedication to the personal growth and self-development of every team member.”

Shawn (Riegsecker, Centro’s CEO and Founder) keeps me here by continuously reinforcing the mission I signed on for. We’ve been through a lot of ups and downs since I started here, but regardless of what stage we’re at, that mission has remained constant.

CM: Why is Centro’s investment in each team member’s personal development so important to our culture?

ES: It’s a core understanding of our leadership team—if our people are healthy and happy, that will show in quality of their work – and ultimately, result in more profitability for the company.

There are metrics that we correlate directly to the business to prove that out, but most of the time we look at engagement scores over monetary results. If we notice highly engaged workforce scores from our pulse surveys, that means the things we’re investing in are valuable for the company as a whole.

CM: How do you see yourself impacting Centro’s overall success as a company?

ES: I think my team and I create the most value for the company by constantly asking ourselves how we can improve each individual team member’s experience of working at Centro.

For example, let’s say we’re talking about a process we could implement that would benefit our business. The first question we always ask is, “How will an employee experience that process?” Will it create road blocks for them? If so, let’s figure out a different way to do it, even if it means doing more work on our end.

Essentially, my team’s work revolves around a strategic plan of employee experience that we are always looking to improve—and most importantly, that sets up the entire company for success.

CM: Part of Centro’s vision is to become a blueprint for an improved corporate structure and culture—how does your work tie into that?

ES: I’ve really taken to heart Shawn’s mission to create a model for great workplaces everywhere. That plays out in my work via my passions for networking and sharing Centro’s story. For instance, we’re constantly sharing knowledge with our competitor HR teams in order to improve things for everyone in the ad tech industry.

CM: Thanks, Elles! Anything else you’d like to add?

ES: You’re welcome, Clare!

Hmm. Here’s something I often mention to candidates who are thinking about joining our team:

If there was ever a day where I didn’t laugh at least once at work, that would probably be the day I would consider looking elsewhere. However, there hasn’t been a single day in almost 8 years when I haven’t had an authentic laugh with the people around me—that’s really important.

The word "innovation" gets thrown around a lot in advertising. Despite the desire to think outside the box, advertisers and marketers don’t always walk the walk as well as they talk the talk. How can we prioritize innovation to better serve our clients and our careers?

On this episode of AdTech Unfiltered, we talk to a seasoned marketer about how to make innovation happen. Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Growth Officer at Publicis Groupe, has been a pioneer in the digital marketing space for over 35 years. He’s developed noteworthy agency teams and nurtured tech-first ideas for brands like GM, McDonalds, Disney and United Airlines.

Listen in, as Rishad shares various execution strategies, how to stay ahead of the curve when navigating a career in advertising, and why advertisers who ignore change always lose.

Advertisers have always prioritized position bidding over targeting impression share. Recently, though, Google Ads introduced a number of new metrics to help advertisers better understand the role of impressions and position in ad performance. 

Forward-thinking advertisers can take advantage of this data to improve their bidding strategies and campaign performance. Here’s how to view and harness impression data for better search engine marketing.

How to View Impression Share Data

Adwords provides a wealth of data about impression share performance, but most advertisers don’t look at it. To see if targeting impression share is an important performance goal for your account, you’ll want to get a clear picture of how many impressions your current ads are getting. 

To view impression data in your Google Ads statistics table, you’ll need to modify columns in Adwords. Here’s how: 

1. From the main page menu of Google ads, click Campaigns, Ad groups, Product groups or Keywords.

2. Select the column icon:

3. Then click "Modify columns".

4. Expand "Competitive metrics". Then you can check the boxes next to the different metrics you want to see.

5. Click Apply. Now the impression share data will appear in your statistics table.

Google offers a number of impression share metrics that can give you a deeper understanding of how your ads are performing. Here’s an overview of the different ways you can view impression share:

Search impression share: Search Network impressions divided by the number of impressions your ads were eligible for (campaign level).

Display impression share: Display Network impressions divided by the number of impressions your ads were eligible for (campaign level).

Search Lost IS (budget): Percentage of time your ads weren't shown on the Search Network due to insufficient budget (campaign level).

Display Lost IS (budget): Percentage of time your ads weren't shown on the Display Network due to insufficient budget (campaign level).

Search Lost IS (rank): The percentage of time your ads weren't shown on the Search Network due to poor Ad Rank in the auction.

Display Lost IS (rank): The percentage of time your ads weren't shown on the Display Network due to poor Ad Rank.

Search Exact match IS: The impressions you've received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible for on the Search Network for search terms that matched your keywords exactly (or close variants of your keyword).

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In the past, advertisers would rely on average rank to understand ad position, but that metric isn’t truly meant to describe where an ad appears on a page. In 2018, Google Ads also rolled out four new metrics that can help you understand where your ads appear on the search engine results pages:

Impr. (Absolute Top) % - Percent of your ad impressions that are shown as the very first ad above the organic search results.

Impr. (Top) % - Percent of your ad impressions that are shown anywhere above the organic search results.

Search Absolute Top Impression Share - Impressions you’ve received in the absolute top location (the very first ad above organic search results) divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the top location.

Search (Top) IS - Impressions you’ve received in the top location (anywhere above organic search results) compared to the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the top location.

Google provides this illustration to distinguish between absolute top and top impression share:

Having a clear understanding of ad positioning can help you diagnose campaign performance issues and make decisions to increase your bids and quality. For example, knowing what percentage of eligible top impressions your ads capture helps you determine if you should increase your bids. Search absolute top impression share and Search top impression share are valuable indicators of available opportunity to show your ads in more prominent positions. 

Impression data can tell you why a keyword may be performing poorly. The granularity of impression share lost due to budget or rank explains exactly what changes you need to make in order to improve ad position.

Bidding too low on keywords can prevent your ads from appearing on the first page. In turn, this can lead to low impressions and conversions. Paying attention to impressions and position metrics can help you make sure your ads get enough visibility to meet your advertising goals. 

Analyzing impression metrics and average position together can also tell you a lot about campaign performance issues.

Strategies to Improve Impression Share

There can be a number of reasons behind poor impression share. Key metrics provide insights into which factors are impacting performance. Then you can make the necessary changes to combat it. Here are the main areas you can focus on to improve targeting in Adwords:

Increase your budget

Your budget controls how often an ad is shown. If your daily budget is too low, it can reach its limit early in the day. This means missed opportunities for ad impressions. Experiment with increasing your budget to see if this fixes the problem.

Decrease regional targets

If you’re targeting a large regional area, it’s difficult to get your ads shown as much as possible. But, if you restrict your location settings to a smaller area, you have more control and potential to dominate impression share. Restricting your targeting to a smaller region will, of course, lead to fewer impressions overall, but it allows you to gain the impression share you need to drive clicks and conversions for your ads. 

Improve ad quality

An important factor impacting rank and subsequent position is ad quality. If your ad is poorly optimized or irrelevant for your target keyword, this can negatively impact your Quality Score. Google details a number of strategies you can use to improve ad Quality Score.

Re-adjust your budget

If for some reason you decide to increase your regional targets, this can negatively impact impression share. To combat this issue, you can re-adjust your budget to cover the cost of targeting more potential impressions with your ads.

Increase bids 

Probably the biggest opportunity to target impression share is through strategic bidding. Raising bids can improve the chances your ad will show in an auction. Advertisers can make these changes manually by increasing bids for keywords with poor impression share. Or they can use automated bidding strategies to target impression share overall.

Automated Bidding Strategies to Target Impression Share

Today there are lots of ways to target impression share as a bidding strategy in Adwords. Each has its unique features and benefits to automate account bidding optimization.

Scripts

Google AdWords scripts are a way of controlling changes in your AdWords account using JavaScript code. They can be used to automate all sorts of tasks, including controlling your bidding strategy. 

Here’s an example of a script you can use to bid to impression share instead of ad position. It automatically finds keywords whose impression share is too low, then increases their bids. Next, it finds all keywords with a clickthrough rate better than 1% and impression share that’s too high and decreases those bids. 

Scripts are a great way to operationalize a bidding strategy to target impression share. Just make sure the script you use has all the capabilities you need to control your account in the right way. For example, a script could completely disregard the budget constraints you need.

Automated Rules

Automated rules are another easy way to target impression share as a bidding strategy. Google’s automated rules can be used to automate all sorts of processes, such as ad scheduling, pausing low-performing keywords, controlling budgets and costs. 

It’s also possible to use automated rules to target an average position with your bidding. But since Average Position doesn’t really reflect ad position on a page, you could instead target other impression share metrics, such as Search Absolute Top impression share or Search (Top) IS.

Here’s how to create automated rules targeting impression share metrics:

1. Click Keywords

2. Click the three-dot icon and select Create an automated rule

3. Under "Type of rule", select Change keyword bids

4. In the "Apply to keywords" section, choose All enabled keywords.

5. Under “Action”, select Increase bids.

6. In the "Condition" section, set an appropriate impression share metric.

7. Set a target percentage for your condition.

Here’s an example of what automated rules settings look like for Search lost abs. top IS:

Automated Bidding

Google Ads automated bidding offers a number of strategies to optimize toward specific business goals, such as maximize clicks, target ROAS, target CPA, and maximize conversions. In 2018 they introduced a new strategy: target impression share. 

You can use Target Impression Share to automatically set bids to reach a specific visibility goal:

• Absolute Top of Page 
• Top of Page
• Anywhere on the page 

For example, if you set an Impression Share target of 70% on top of page, Google’s automated bidding technology will set CPC bids to ensure your ads appear on top of page 70% of the total possible amount of times they could show. You can use this automated bidding strategy at the campaign level, or apply it as a portfolio strategy across multiple campaigns. 

Wrapping Up 

Over the past year or so, Google has been making changes to depreciate the value of ad position metrics and encourage advertisers to focus on targeting impression share. Now that there’s a wealth of granular impression share metrics available, it’s easy for advertisers to use them to drive campaign goals. 

At the very least, PPC managers should start paying attention to these metrics and how they’re impacted by campaign changes. Targeting impression share as an automated bidding strategy is the best way to maximize the value of this metric for PPC performance.

Before the days of digital everything, it was impossible to time advertisements in a way that targeted audiences at the moment that would make the most impact on their buying decisions. Today, it’s virtually impossible to realize success from campaigns that aren’t built to touch consumers at just the right time and place.

Get a leg-up on your competitors!  Take a look at the reasons the clock should be an essential part of your campaigns, below.

The Importance of Timing in Effective Advertising Campaigns

Consumers are more inclined to make purchasing decisions on certain days of the week and during certain times of the day. Sending your messages into cyberspace without adhering to your audience's particular habits is a sure way to miss out on ample opportunities to be seen. On the other hand, utilizing tools that will talk to consumers when they’re most likely to pay attention, will allow you to optimize ROI and drive brand awareness.

Data analytics provide the insights needed, to ensure you're speaking to consumers when they’ll actually be listening. It’s all about understanding consumer behaviors and adjusting your outreach in a way that resonates with them. Pay attention to daily, weekly, and seasonal trends that affect your own unique business, as well as general best practices that will help bolster campaigns overall.

For example:

• Mondays are when people make big decisions. If you’re trying to get people to buy big, make sure you're touching base with them in the beginning of the week.
• Social media is less active on the weekends, however, users usually have more time to read longer articles, watch videos, and engage in meaningful conversations.
• Thursdays and Fridays are ideal days to hit budget-conscious shoppers.
• You’ll find DIYers online on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
• Late December and the whole month of January offer optimal advertising landscapes for companies to focus on health, wellness, and fitness.
• Mobile text messaging needs to be sent when it’s not too early and not too late in the day.
• Push messages are particularly well-received in the afternoons, Tuesdays through Fridays.
• Email marketing does its best job during bankers’ hours (9-5).

By understanding how consumers interact with your advertising, you’re optimizing marketing efforts without wasting interactions or compromising your bottom line.

Risks Associated with Mistiming Your Marketing Efforts

No matter what your company does—business has certain ebbs and flows. Acknowledging these trends allows you to capitalize on consumers’ attention. Ignoring them means potentially leaving money on the table, regardless of the elements incorporated into your campaign.

Improperly timed messages put your brand at risk by:

• Minimizing outreach while requiring extra effort.
• Missing out on consumers who are prone to make impulse purchases or those who have already done their research and just need some gentle assistance to make it further down the sales funnel.
• Putting off potential consumers by way of spammy advertising.
• Harming your reputation in a way that will create resentment from your audience, because your messaging doesn't relate to their needs.

Learn more about timing in relation to your campaigns, and more! Request a demo to see how you can automate and optimize your digital media with Basis! We're excited to show you all that Basis can do.

Sources:

https://www.discoverydesign.co.uk/blog/post/the-importance-of-timing-in-your-digital-marketing-strategy/
http://experience.stratusinteractive.com/blog/bid/377650/Strategic-Marketing-The-Importance-of-Timing-in-Your-Campaign
https://blog.spiralytics.com/reaching-your-audience-mobile-marketing
https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/consumer-insights/mobile-search-consumer-behavior-data/
https://www.mobilemarketer.com/ex/mobilemarketer/cms/opinion/columns/14882.html
https://marketingland.com/study-send-push-messages-afternoons-tuesday-friday-107634
https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2019/01/best-time-to-send-email-campaigns-by-device/

‘Ask the Expert’ is a series that breaks down the tools, tech, and trends you’ve been hearing about in the trade pubs and around the office. We ask our in-house experts the tough questions and write up the answers in bite-sized pieces for your reading pleasure.

This month’s topic? Amazon search. We brought in Centro’s national director of paid search, Lindsay Martin, to give us the breakdown.

How does Amazon search advertising work? 

Amazon search advertising provides paid opportunities within the results that show up when a user searches a keyword on Amazon. Ads can be served on desktop and mobile browsers as well as on the Amazon mobile app. Unlike Amazon’s programmatic ad offerings, advertisers must sell products directly on Amazon if they want to use Amazon search ads. It is like paid search on Google, where campaigns are targeted through a combination of keywords and bids.

What ad formats are included as part of Amazon search? 

Amazon search is inclusive of three different ad formats.

1. Sponsored Brands are the largest placement option at the top of the search results page. Sponsored Brands feature three ASINs (product skews or products), a headline, logo, and short description. The ad destination can either be an Amazon store or the specific product detail pages.
2. Sponsored Products are paid ads that appear as product thumbnails within the search results on Amazon to promote individual ASINs (products). Sponsored products are also seen as a carousel of options on the product detail pages once a user clicks through to learn more.
3. Product Display Ads are product- or interest-targeted. Creative is generated in the native UI. They are great as an upper funnel tactic and best for competitive conquesting. They “remind” users of your product before that user puts another (competitive) product in his/her cart.

Should a brand create an Amazon store? 

An Amazon store provides a more immersive experience for consumers to interact with your brand. Creating one is free and can be done based on templates within the Amazon search console. It’s like going to Target and looking at an entire display for a makeup brand.

What is ACOS? 

ACOS is the advertising cost of sale. The goal of Amazon search campaigns is typically to drive the lowest ACOS. This is the inverse of return on ad spend (ROAS) and can be calculated as a percentage. ACOS = total ad spend / total ad sales x 100.

How much do Amazon search campaigns cost?

Ads are priced based on cost-per-click (CPC). Amazon search is a real-time bidding atmosphere. Demand is created by a combination of user interest (search volume) as well as the competitive auction. Sponsored product ads must also win the buy-box to be shown within the search results.

What’s imperative to success on Amazon search?

Advertisers need a strong handle on inventory to see success with Amazon search. If inventory is a challenge, it is easy to lose your spot in the buy box to a third-party seller. Ratings, reviews, and content are also important factors to consider. It is recommended that all advertisers have at least 3.5 stars and a minimum of 15 reviews before choosing to advertise an individual ASIN (product). High quality content integrates product descriptions, images, comparative charts, and copy to help customers make informed decisions. All of these impact ad campaign effectiveness on Amazon.

How would Amazon search ads synchronize with other advertising a marketer uses outside of the Amazon ecosystem? 

Amazon search complements a full funnel digital strategy. Amazon campaigns focus on “in aisle” purchases. Users can filter for product features such as reviews, pricing, etc. Google is focused on exploration, where to buy, and perhaps pricing. There’s a strong case to be made that these platforms should complement each other, rather than be viewed as either/or.

While you can’t pixel an Amazon page, you can understand attribution of your other digital media by:

1. Driving traffic to an Amazon Store, which has reporting functionality (similar to a UTM code) where brands can understand Amazon sales metrics as a result of the traffic driven.
2. Utilizing Amazon attribution. This product (currently in beta), allows for measurement of Amazon sales based on ad exposure within a 14-day cookie window.

I’m sold. How does Centro help with Amazon search advertising? 

Centro offers full-service management of Amazon search. This is inclusive of keyword research, copywriting, bid strategy, and campaign optimization, as well as reporting and insights around campaign performance.

Dynamic search ads, commonly referred to as DSAs, have been around for quite a while now, but they’re still not widely used by the majority of advertisers. Both Google and Bing offer DSAs as an option to automatically generate PPC ads for search campaigns, but contrary to popular belief, the feature offers many additional benefits beyond just automated ad creation. In this article, we provide a comprehensive guide to DSAs and insight into their value for performance marketers.

What are Dynamic Search Ads?

Dynamic search ads are ads automatically created by Google based on a user’s search query and the content on your website. Creating targeted ads is time-consuming, especially for businesses with a large inventory. DSAs can help you find customers on Google and present them with the most relevant offer for their needs.

When you opt-in for dynamic ad targeting, Google bots crawl your website, match search terms to your site content, and then create a dynamic ad. This ad type is ideal for advertisers with a well-developed website or a sizeable portfolio of goods or services. When someone searches on Google for terms related to your landing page titles and content, Google Ads selects the most relevant landing page and generates a related headline for your ad.

For example, say an advertiser owns a hotel chain and someone searches for “luxury hotel New York.” Google then creates a relevant ad with the headline “Luxury hotel - NYC” and links to the appropriate landing page. There’s no way to tell the difference between dynamic search ads and regular PPC ads in Google. They look exactly the same in search results: 

DSAs, though, have the potential to deliver more relevant messaging based on search queries and your landing page content.

And Google isn’t the only search engine offering DSAs as a campaign option: Bing does the same with a few additional features to maximize ad targeting relevance.

The Benefits of Using Dynamic Search Ads

All sorts of marketing initiatives are automated. This leaves some advertisers wondering if ad copy creation should be one of them. But using DSAs has many benefits beyond automating a time-consuming task: 

Fill Gaps in Keyword-Based Campaigns 

Accurate keyword targeting is a powerful way to reach audiences through paid search, but even accounts with the most comprehensive keyword lists are bound to miss some relevant search queries. Since DSAs involve independently scanning your landing pages for suitable terms to target, they can fill in any gaps that come up in your keyword-based targeting campaigns.

More Relevant Ad Copy 

With traditional ad targeting, there’s no way to create a headline that’s optimally relevant for every target keyword in an ad group. DSAs offer a unique opportunity to create the most relevant headlines every time, based on both your landing page copy and the exact search term people used to find your ad.

Automatic Updates 

A major challenge for advertisers who sell many products is keeping their ads updated when inventory changes. DSAs address this issue by regularly crawling your website and adjusting your ads accordingly. As a result, Google will never show ads for products that are temporarily or permanently out-of-stock. Clicking through on ads for out-of-stock products is frustrating for users and results in wasted budget spend for advertisers. Using DSAs helps you automatically minimize campaign performance issues from inventory changes.

In the same vein, if you make changes to your landing page copy or product descriptions, DSAs will consider this in the new ad copy it creates. This ensures your headlines are always maximally relevant to your landing page content.

Control Campaign Targeting 

While DSAs are automatically generated, you still have complete control over who you target and with what content. Google’s DSAs offer several options for targeting: 

• Landing pages: targets all web pages you’re currently using for search ads across your accounts. This option is preferable if your goal is to increase traffic to target landing pages from your current ad groups and campaigns.

• Categories: allows you to select certain landing pages and group them into categories based on a theme.

• Page feed: involves using a spreadsheet of URLs to indicate which parts of your feed to target. You can then create labels for different landing page URLs for more focused targeting. For example, you can create labels based on title type, keywords on a page, text within the URL, etc.

Capture More Quality Traffic 

Dynamic search ad targeting helps advertisers create more relevant ads that reach a larger audience of people beyond traditional keyword targeting. Automatically creating ad copy that optimally matches user search queries increases clickthrough rates on ads and ensures they’re directed to the most relevant landing pages, encouraging more people to convert on-site as well. 

Keywords don’t always match search intent in the way advertisers expect, leading them to unintentionally target low-quality leads that aren’t interested in their products or services. By considering both your landing page content and search query relevance, Google Ads can help improve the quality and quantity of leads you attract from PPC ads.

Save Time 

Lastly, like with most marketing automation technologies, DSAs save significant time. Creating comprehensive keyword lists and matching them to relevant landing pages is a major undertaking for even the smallest Google Ads accounts. The same goes for creating relevant headlines that best match your keyword categories.

DSAs take on both of these tasks, freeing up account managers to focus on campaign optimization or pursuing growth initiatives. Automating tedious tasks empowers advertisers to spend more time improving budget spend, campaign targeting and performance, driving important business goals in the process.

How to Create Dynamic Search Ads

Interested in trying out DSAs for yourself? Here’s how to create dynamic search ads in Google Ads. (For Bing dynamic search ad instructions, read this article.)

1. Create a new campaign.
   1. From your Google Ads account dashboard, click Campaigns from the page menu on the left.
   2. Select New Campaign, then Search Network.
   3. Next, you’ll be prompted to select one or more goals for your campaign.
   4. Lastly, enter the domain name you want your ads to target then click Continue.
2. Choose your target locations and languages.
   1. Continue normal setup by naming your campaign.
   2. Select locations to target your ads
   3. Select languages.
3. Set your bid strategy.
   You can choose manual bidding or opt for an automated bid strategy where Google optimizes bids for you. For dynamic search ad campaigns, target CPA or enhanced CPC automated bidding options are recommended. Enter your bid limit (optional) and budget.
4. Enable DSA.
   1. Expand Additional settings and click on DSAs.
   2. Check the Enable DSAs for this campaign checkbox.
   3. Then click Save and Continue to move on to creating a dynamic ad group.
5. Create a dynamic ad group.
   1. On the next page, you’ll see options for ad group type. Dynamic is the default option, so don’t change anything here.
   2. Next, you’ll name your ad group and set your default bid. This is also where you select your targeting strategy: landing pages, categories, or page feed. If you’re not using automated bidding, you can also adjust your bids manually here.
   3. When you’re finished, click Save then move on to creating your ads.
6. Create ads.
   It’s possible to create more than one DSA, so you can test performance and see which ones are most effective.
   1. You can add more ads to an ad group in the campaign you already created by clicking New ad;
   2. Enter your description text
   3. Click Done and then click Save and Continue.

That’s all you have to do to create a DSA campaign and start seeing the benefits for yourself!

Targeting and Performance Tips 

Dynamic Search Ads are automated, but there are still many campaign optimizations you can make to improve performance. Here’s how to create DSAs that maximize campaign performance from the beginning:

Expand Your Dynamic Search Ads 

Google Ads offers expanded text ads as an option to add more descriptive text to ads on Search and Display. At first, this feature was only available to traditional ad types, but in 2017, they rolled it out for DSAs as well. Using the expanded description field gives you an opportunity to deliver a more relevant and meaningful message to your audience. It’s also the only part of your ad that isn’t dynamically created.

Expanded text ads is an important feature for advertisers who want more control over their ad messaging than what basic DSAs have to offer.

Create Experiments 

DSAs aren’t for every kind of business, but many can see positive results using this ad type to better target their audiences. To get an idea of how DSAs might perform, try targeting a specific audience to experiment. For example, you can use dynamic search ads to target Re-marketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSAs). If the campaign improves ad visibility and clicks, then you can expand to target more of your audience.

You can also experiment with different ad targeting strategies, such as landing pages, categories, or page feeds. Create exclusions for pages that might not perform well, and see how it impacts performance. 

Lastly, you can also set bid adjustments to increase or decrease your ad target bids. This gives you more control over when you use dynamic ads to target your audiences.

Create Negative Keyword Lists

One issue some advertisers have with DSAs is a lack of control over what search queries their ads are shown for. They have to depend on Google’s interpretation of their site content for keyword matches. There’s always the possibility Google will misinterpret meaning, showing ads for irrelevant search queries in the process. 

One way to prevent this problem and improve DSA performance is by creating negative keyword lists. If you’ve run traditional ad campaigns in the past, you’ve probably already built a list of negative keywords that are equally relevant for DSA campaigns. Otherwise, you should take the time to consider how Google might misinterpret your landing page content to create negative keyword lists. If that’s too challenging, then the best option is to launch your DSA campaigns then closely monitor your Search Terms Report to see what kind of queries your ads are showing for. Then you can add negative keywords to your list when necessary.

Use Automated Bidding

You can use manual bidding with DSA campaigns, however, automated bidding and automated ad creation work quite well together. When both processes are automated, Google Ads can use auction-time signals to set bids and improve performance. For instance, it’s possible to set bids based on the exact wording of a user’s query to better match your bid strategy to what people are actually searching for. Target CPA, Target ROAS, or Enhanced CPC are good automated bidding strategies to use with DSA campaigns. 

Apprehensive advertisers might think this is too much automation to really drive meaningful results from your ad campaigns, but automated bidding combined with DSAs allows Google to make more optimizations than even the largest PPC management team could manage.

Google conducted a case study illustrating the impact of combining DSAs with automated bidding. Trivago, one of the world’s largest hotel search engines, adopted this strategy with conversion-based automated bidding. The results were: 

• Up to 140% higher CTR on search terms for DSAs vs original ads 
• Significantly lower CPAs for established markets
• Significant conversion gains in newer markets 

Of course, if you’re still not sure if combining DSA with automated bidding is the right choice for your business, you can always test it out with a new campaign experiment. Use automated bidding and DSAs to target a small portion of your audience, monitor performance, then see the results for yourself.

The Bottom Line

You can automate all sorts of marketing processes nowadays. But many advertisers agree that creating relevant ad copy is one thing that will always require human insight to optimize. It’s true that advertisers have a keen understanding of what kind of marketing message drives clicks and conversions. DSAs, though, offer a powerful option to combine great ad copy with ultra-relevant headlines tailored to the search queries of individual users.

Create a compelling message for your expanded search ad description and allow Google bots to create the right headlines for your landing pages. Make efforts to maximize the benefits of DSAs for your business to realize the value of automated ad creation for yourself.

Whenever Google rolls out a new feature to the search space, Bing is not far behind with almost identical functionality. This case is true with Bing Shopping Ads. When you’re seeing great results from your Shopping Ads in Google, why test out Bing and look to “fix something that isn’t broken?” In this article, we offer an answer and explore the main benefits of utilizing Bing Shopping.

We’re all familiar with the pros and cons of Bing Search that make opting in an easy choice. A couple of the most notable perks are lower CPCs and more affluent and typically higher education users, while some aspects that could be viewed as negative include an older demographic and only about 30% reach in the search space. Bing Shopping features all the same pros of PPC advertising, however, some of the Bing attributes seen as potential cons could actually be considered benefits. Let’s dive in to why.

Demographic Skews

One aspect that typically concerns those using Bing Ads is the user demographic skews older. Bing users have proven to be in an older demographic likely due to the default Bing settings on Microsoft devices. It is assumed that older users are unable to change the default web browser setting from Microsoft to Chrome as an example, or simply do not care which search browser they use, so long as the information is valid.

So how can an older demographic be considered a pro? Due to the simplicity of shopping ads showing actual product images, versus text descriptions, the decision to convert is easier, which is why shopping ads have proven to yield higher click-through rates and conversion rates than text ads. Skipping out on Bing Shopping ads because of the age demographic can be a costly mistake when considering the performance benefit of an older user base.

30% of the Search Market

A common reason to pass on Bing for both traditional paid search and shopping is that Bing only accounts for roughly 30% of the search market. This percentage may seem insignificant in comparison to Google, but since the competition is much lower in Bing compared to Google, the average cost per click is also much lower. If budget is limited, Bing is a low-risk option for many advertisers. Lower reach is often a big disadvantage for brands and can be hard to sell as a positive, especially for those with a niche offering. It can be argued that even though the traffic is lower with Bing, it is still worth testing out because in most cases the overall spend is less on Bing. A huge selling point for Bing shopping is the lower cost per click, with on average, better conversions. Lower levels of competition will also allow you to stay online longer throughout the day. Higher impression share, or share of voice as it is called on Bing, is also something to consider as a benefit of Bing Shopping.   

Referring back to demographics, another positive characteristic of the audience base in Bing is that the users are higher educated and more affluent than with Google. One new feature for dynamic search ads, text ads, and shopping ads through Bing is LinkedIn Profile Targeting. Utilizing LinkedIn Profile Targeting will give you higher control over your audience as you’re able to filter by company, job title, and job function. This feature builds upon the higher educated demographic. The tradeoff with Bing versus Google is that Bing has less traffic, but the traffic is of higher quality - given the more affluent audience, higher dollar conversions are typical of Bing, and yield a higher return on investment. If you are looking for quality over quantity, Bing is your best bet.

A New Name and New Products

Bing Ads is now Microsoft Advertising. More than just a new name, Microsoft Advertising also comes with new advertising products and features as well! One new product worth mentioning is the Microsoft Audience Network, which uses AI and machine learning to better match customer intent and target a more relevant audience to improve performance. Microsoft also rolled out Sponsored Products to help advertisers boost traffic to their top products in shopping campaigns. Sponsored Products include new consumer experiences that help shoppers filter, suggest, and visually search and find relevant products, giving you more control over your bids and campaign structure.

With all of Bing’s new features and products, deciding to work with Bing Shopping has become a strategic necessity rather than an afterthought. Utilizing Bing Shopping is easier than ever, especially since Google shopping campaigns can be imported directly into Bing. With Basis, strategies and reporting across the two publishers sit directly in one single source of truth, allowing for a more holistic overview of performance.

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If you’d like to learn more about how we can improve your performance on Bing and indeed drive better outcomes across your entire digital media program, get in touch with us today.

Can you believe the year is half over? Our team has accomplished a lot in the past six months to grow Basis into an even more comprehensive, automated, and intelligent solution for our clients.

Read on to learn how these accomplishments will serve Basis users—And stay tuned for all that’s coming in the second half of the year!

Native and Audio Ads

Early in 2019, our team announced enhanced programmatic advertising capabilities for native and digital audio that push marketers toward complete automation for all media buying and execution.

Audio ads are a powerful addition to any advertising strategy, allowing brands to reach consumers while they’re walking to work, sitting at their desks, or working out at the gym.

Native ads align themselves with the look and structure of the site or content in which they are displayed. They create a less disruptive advertising experience, making native ads a useful layer in any campaign strategy.

Basis’ ability to serve native and audio ads directly from the platform also unifies performance reporting for comprehensive campaign management and optimization.

Privacy and Security

Privacy and security have been a focus at Centro this year. Our biggest accomplishment in this arena is Basis’ newads.txt publisher verification on both web and mobile.

With these upgrades, Basis filters all unauthorized and undetermined inventory identified by published ads.txt/app-ads.txt files. In other words, Centro only bids on authorized and unavailable traffic for open market bidding.

If you’re interested in learning more about ads.txt, check out this article in Ad Age, written by Centro’s own Director of RTB Platform Operations, Ian Trider.

Universal Pixel

With universal pixel, one pixel—or string of code—captures all actions! A single pixel is scattered throughout a site with predetermined parameters, which means that media buyers no longer need to create individual pixels for each tracked action, or manually place every pixel on multiple pages.

Universal pixels facilitate the overall management of first-party audiences, allowing advertisers to track multiple independent or correlated events.

LinkedIn Integration

Basis users are now able to pull all their LinkedIn campaign data directly into Basis, enabling them to analyze and manage their digital media campaigns comprehensively. By planning and analyzing all social buys in conjunction with direct and DSP buys, users can plan a more holistic, optimized campaign.

Reporting

We've also improved Basis’ reporting capabilities to ensure that scheduled reports are sent directly to whoever needs them. This means that recipients are now armed with up-to-date information on their:

• Business health
• Revenue projections
• Client trends, and
• Yield.

Looking Ahead

We've got big plans for the second half of the year! New forecasting and pacing capabilities, additions to our suite of artificial intelligence solutions, and more are on the horizon for Basis.

If you don’t have a digital media management platform that enables and informs your entire business, it’s time to meet Basis.

As business leaders, you face an array of challenges every day. How can you put marketing at the forefront of other responsibilities, let alone make time to manage multiple digital platforms simultaneously? We’re here to tell you that—it is possible! The biggest challenge is to start now, and not let it fall to the wayside.

Multi-channel marketing might seem overwhelming at first, but when it’s set-up correctly from the beginning, each channel will feed into one another—which automates the process and effectively, does most of the heavy lifting for you. Getting started is the hardest part.

What is a Cross-Platform Marketing Strategy?

In short, multi-platform marketing creates several touch points between the brand and consumers, optimizing engagement along the way. It allows you to meet your audience(s) where they “live” online and tap into the communication channels and social media platforms that facilitate that conversation most effectively.

How Does a Cross-Platform Marketing Strategy Work?

Many consumers engage with multiple social media platforms in one sitting—meaning, copying and pasting the same message across several sites doesn’t work. It's not only boring, but it can also decrease credibility. Instead, home in on the specific posting specs (i.e., optimal number of characters and/or hashtags) in each platform to deliver visually appealing and engaging content that meets audience expectations.

It’s important to note that not all platforms will generate engagement for your business/brand, which means you should only focus on the ones that really matter. Once you figure out where your customers are “living,” (i.e., the platform(s) with the most engagement) refine your focus to those few platforms. This will enable your voice to be heard and allow you to create the most impact.

For example, a cross-platform marketing strategy may include the following:

• Email Blasts
• Newsletters
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Google ads
• Print mailers

It’s important to understand each of these platforms in order to build on strengths and opportunities—and avoid weaknesses and cutting into valuable time.

How Do You Create a Cross-Platform Campaign Strategy?

Create Metrics

Set goals in order to measure progress. Know exactly what you’re trying to achieve before you begin the multi-platform journey. For example, some goals may involve:

• Generating new leads
• Improving conversion rates
• Increasing shares
• Enhancing brand awareness

Start with a baseline. From there, set metrics and analyze how well campaigns are performing.

Test and Adjust as Needed

A campaign isn’t a ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ marketing tool. They require constant attention and analyses to ensure the audience reach is in the right place. If the idea of testing and adjusting makes you nervous, consider hiring a team of digital marketing professionals to do this work for you. Once you find the sweet spot, you'll be able to converse with consumers on the platforms that make the most sense for your unique business.

Basis is your go-to place for all things that make digital marketing less confusing. From programmatic ad buying to solutions that enhance consumer engagement, we’re excited to show you all that our automated and comprehensive digital media platform can do. Don't hesitate to reach out today!