Imagine you are a chef trying to cook a delicious meal. You have all the ingredients you need, but if you don’t follow the recipe correctly, your dish is likely to turn out subpar. The same is true with Google Ads. Even if you have a great product or service to offer, if you don’t set up your campaigns correctly, you’re not going to get the results you want.

After auditing literally 1000s of Google ad accounts at my agency Digital Street, even the top-spending ad accounts have one or more of these costly mistakes.

The numero uno on the list is:

1. Conversion Tracking Not Set-up Properly: The Blindfolded Marketer

Imagine walking into a labyrinth without a map or any sense of direction. That’s exactly what happens when you neglect to set up conversion tracking. Without conversion tracking, you’re merely guessing which campaigns, keywords, or ads are generating actual results. It’s like wandering in the dark, hoping for the best.

 Let’s say you’re running an e-commerce business, and your goal is to drive online sales. By implementing conversion tracking, you can track and attribute sales to specific ads or keywords. Without it, you’re left unaware of which campaigns contribute to your revenue, making optimization an uphill battle.

2. Irrelevant or Excessive Keywords: The Scatterbrained Advertiser

When it comes to keyword selection, quality trumps quantity. Overloading your campaigns with irrelevant or excessive keywords will not only drain your budget but also dilute your targeting efforts. Remember, relevance is the key to capturing the attention of potential customers.

Suppose you’re promoting a luxury travel agency specializing in exotic destinations. Using keywords like “cheap flights” or “budget accommodations” would attract budget-conscious travelers, not your desired high-end clientele. Instead, focus on terms like “luxury travel packages” or “exclusive resorts” to target the right audience.

 Studies indicate that narrowing down your keyword list to 10-20 highly relevant keywords can increase click-through rates by up to 200%. Quality beats quantity every time!

3. Neglecting Negative Keywords: The Wasted Impressions

Imagine if your ads were shown to people searching for something entirely different from what you offer. That’s where negative keywords come in. Failure to utilize negative keywords can result in wasted impressions, clicks, and ultimately, wasted budget.

Let’s say you’re selling premium dog food and want to target dog owners looking for healthy options. By adding “cat” as a negative keyword, you prevent your ads from showing to people searching for cat-related products. This way, you ensure your ads are displayed only to those genuinely interested in your dog food.

Including negative keywords can decrease your cost-per-click (CPC) by up to 50%, maximizing your ad spend and filtering out irrelevant clicks. Don’t let your budget go to waste!

4. Search Copy: The Bland & Boring Approach

Your ad copy is the hook that reels in potential customers. However, if it fails to engage or lacks relevance to the search query, it becomes a missed opportunity. Remember, you have a limited number of characters to captivate your audience, so make sure every word counts!

Suppose you’re running a digital marketing agency offering SEO services. Instead of a generic headline like “Best SEO Services,” try something more compelling and relevant, such as “Unlock Your Website’s Potential with Expert SEO Strategies.” This way, you immediately address the searcher’s needs and stand out from the competition.

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Ads with a high relevance score (based on click-through rate and engagement) can lead to a 50-100% increase in ad visibility and a significant decrease in cost-per-click. Engage, captivate, and conquer!

5. Ignoring Location Settings: The Disconnected Advertiser

Picture this: You’re running a local business catering to a specific geographical area, but your ads are being displayed to people thousands of miles away. Ignoring location settings is like casting a wide net without considering the waters you’re fishing in. It’s crucial to optimize your ads to reach the right audience in the right place.

 Let’s say you own a boutique coffee shop in New York City. If you neglect to set your ads to target users within a reasonable radius of your location, your ads may be shown to people in Los Angeles, London, or even Tokyo! This wasted exposure not only drains your budget but also fails to attract customers who are actually within reach of your establishment.

Studies have shown that ads with localized targeting have a 200% higher click-through rate compared to campaigns with broader targeting. By narrowing down your audience to specific locations, you ensure that your ads are seen by those who are most likely to convert into loyal customers.

The post Money Down the Drain: 5 Google Ad Mistakes You Need to Fix appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

As I was auditing yet another Google ad account at my agency Digital Street, one of the biggest and most common mistakes that popped up once again was no negative keyword list or negative keywords added to any of the campaigns.

The ad account in question is spending $1500 a day i.e., around $45000 per month. I’ve audited 1000s of Google ad accounts and this one mistake annoys me to the hilt.

You Must Be Wondering, Why? What’s the Big Deal?

Let me explain.

First things first, let’s define what negative keywords are. Simply put, they’re words or phrases that you add to your Google Ads campaign to tell Google which search terms you don’t want your ads to appear for.

By excluding these keywords, you can save money, improve your click-through rate, and increase your conversion rate. 

For example, let’s say you own an online shoe store that sells high-end designer shoes. You might want to bid on keywords like “designer shoes,” “luxury shoes,” and “high-end shoes” to attract potential customers who are specifically looking for your products.

However, you probably don’t want your ads to show up for search terms like “cheap shoes” or “discount shoes,” since those searchers are unlikely to be interested in your expensive products. In this case, you would add “cheap” and “discount” as negative keywords to your campaign.

Now, Why Are Negative Keywords So Important?

Well, let me break it down for you.

By eliminating irrelevant clicks and focusing on high-intent searchers, you’re likely to see a higher click-through rate (CTR), a lower cost per click (CPC), and a higher conversion rate. That means you get more bang for your buck and achieve better results from your Google Ads campaigns.

And who doesn’t want that?

So, How Do You Create An Effective Negative Keyword List?

Here are some steps to follow:

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• Step 1: Start with a brainstorming session. Think about the types of search terms that would be irrelevant or low-intent for your business. There are certain words such as ‘free’, ‘reviews’, ‘cheap’ that we always exclude across all our accounts.
• Step 2: Use Google Ads’ Search Terms Report to see which search terms are triggering your ads. This report shows you the actual search terms that people are using to find your ads and can help you identify any irrelevant or low-intent search terms that you might have missed. At my agency Digital Street AU, we mine search terms every 48 hours. It’s part of our optimizing the ad campaigns process.
• Step 3: Add Negative Keywords to Your Campaign. Once you have your list of negative keywords, you can add them to your campaign by going to the “Negative keywords” tab in your Google Ads account.
• Step 4: Refine Your List Over Time. Remember, creating an effective negative keyword list is an ongoing process. Keep track of your campaign’s performance and adjust your negative keyword list accordingly.

In conclusion, negative keywords are a powerful tool that can help you save money, improve your ad performance, and achieve better results from your Google Ads campaigns. So, don’t neglect them!

Take the time to create an effective negative keyword list and watch your Return on ad spend (ROAS) soar.

Until next time, keep optimizing!

The post Don’t Waste Your Google Ad Spend: How Negative Keyword Lists Can Improve Your Google Ads Campaigns appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Ad fraud is showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, the latest data indicates that it will cost businesses a colossal €120 billion by 2023. But even more worrying is that fraudsters’ tactics are becoming so sophisticated that even big-name companies such as Uber, Procter & Gamble, and Verizon have been victims of ad fraud in recent years. 

So what does this mean for the rest of the industry? The answer is simple: every ad company, no matter their size or budget is just as at risk as the big guns – if not more. 

In this article, I summarize some of the biggest and most shocking cases of ad fraud we’ve witnessed over recent years and notably, what vital lessons marketers and advertisers can learn from them to avoid wasting their own budgets. 

The biggest ad fraud cases in recent years 

From fake clicks and click flooding to bad bots and fake ad impressions, fraudsters have and will go to any lengths to siphon critical dollars from your ad budgets.

Let’s take a look at some of the most high-profile and harmful ad fraud cases of recent years that have impacted some of the most well-known brands around the world. 

Methbot: $5 million a day lost through fake video views 

In 2016, Aleksandr Zhukov, the self-proclaimed “King of Fraud”, and his group of fraudsters were discovered to have been making between $3 and $5 million a day by executing fake clicks on video advertisements. 

Oft-cited as the biggest digital ad fraud operation ever uncovered, “Methbot” was a sophisticated botnet scheme that involved defrauding brands by enabling countless bots to watch 300 million video ads per day on over 6000 spoofed websites. 

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Due to the relatively high cost-per-mille (CPM) for video ads, Aleksandr and his group were able to steal millions of dollars a day by targeting high-value marketplaces. Some of the victims of the Methbot fraud ring include The New York Times, The New York Post, Comcast, and Nestle.

In late 2021, Aleksandr Zhukov was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay over $3.8 million in restitution. 

Uber: $100 million wasted in ad spend 

In another high-profile case, transportation giant Uber filed a lawsuit against five ad networks in 2019 – Fetch, BidMotion, Taptica, YouAppi, and AdAction Interactive – and won. 

Uber claimed that its ads were not converting, and ultimately discovered that roughly two-thirds of its ad budget ($100 million) wasn’t needed. This was on account of ad retargeting companies that were abusing the system by creating fraudulent traffic. 

The extent of the ad fraud was discovered when the company cut $100 million in ad spend and saw no change in the number of rider app installs. 

In 2020, Uber also won another lawsuit against Phunware Inc. when they discovered that the majority of Uber app installations that the company claimed to have delivered were produced by the act of click flooding. 

Criteo: Claims sues competitor for allegedly running a damaging counterfeit click fraud scheme 

In 2016, Criteo, a retargeting and display advertising network, claimed that competitor Steelhouse (now known as MNTM) ran a click fraud scheme against Criteo in a bid to damage the company’s reputation and to fraudulently take credit for user visits to retailers’ web pages. 

Criteo filed a lawsuit claiming that due to Steelhouse’s alleged actions — the use of bots and other automated methods to generate fake clicks on shoe retailer TOMS’ ads — Criteo ultimately lost TOMS as a client. Criteo has accused Steelhouse of carrying out this type of ad fraud in a bid to prove that Steelhouse provided a more effective service than its own. 

Twitter: Elon Musk claims that the platform hosts a high number of inauthentic accounts 

In one of the biggest and most tangled tech deals in recent history, the Elon Musk and Twitter saga doesn’t end with Twitter taking Musk to court for backing out of an agreement to buy the social media giant for $44 billion.

In yet another twist, Musk has also claimed that Twitter hid the real number of bots and fake accounts on its platform. He has also accused the company of fraud by alleging that these accounts make up around 10% of Twitter’s daily active users who see ads, essentially meaning that 65 million of Twitter’s 229 million daily active users are not seeing them at all. 

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6 Lessons marketers can learn from these high-profile ad fraud cases 

All of these cases demonstrate that ad fraud is a pervasive and ubiquitous practice that has incredibly damaging and long-lasting effects on even the most well-known brands around the world. 

The bottom line is this: Marketers and advertisers can no longer afford to ignore ad fraud if they’re serious about reaching their goals and objectives. Here are some of the most important lessons and takeaways from these high-profile cases. 

1. No one is safe from ad fraud 

Everyone — from small businesses to large corporations like Uber — is affected by ad fraud. Plus, fraudsters have no qualms over location: no matter where in the world you operate, you are susceptible to the consequences of ad fraud. 

2. Ad fraud is incredibly hard to detect using manual methods

Fraudsters use a huge variety of sneaky techniques and channels to scam and defraud advertisers, which means ad fraud is incredibly difficult to detect manually. This is especially true if organizations don’t have the right suggestions and individuals dedicated to tracking and monitoring the presence of ad fraud. 

Even worse, when organizations do have teams in place monitoring ad fraud, they are rarely experts, and cannot properly pore through the sheer amount of data that each campaign produces to accurately pinpoint it.

3. Ad fraud wastes your budget, distorts your data, and prevents you from reaching your goals

Ad fraud drains your budget significantly, which is a huge burden for any company. However, there are also other ways it impacts your ability to deliver results. 

For example, fake clicks and click bots lead to skewed analytics, which means that when you assess advertising channels and campaigns based on the traffic and engagement they receive, you’re actually relying on flawed data to make future strategic decisions. 

Finally – and as a result of stolen budgets and a reliance on flawed data – your ability to reach your goals is highly compromised. 

4. You’re likely being affected by ad fraud already, even if you don’t know it yet

As seen in many of these cases, massive amounts of damage were caused because the brands weren’t aware that they were being targeted by fraudsters. Plus, due to the lack of awareness surrounding ad fraud in general, it’s highly likely that you’re being affected by ad fraud already. 

5. You have options to fight the effects of ad fraud  

Luckily, as demonstrated by these cases, there are some options available to counteract the impact and losses caused by ad fraud, such as requesting a refund or even making a case to sue. In such cases, ad fraud detection solutions are extremely useful to uncover ad fraud and gather evidence. 

6. But the best option is to prevent ad fraud from the get-go

The best ad fraud protection is ad fraud prevention. The only surefire way to stop fraudsters from employing sophisticated fraud schemes and attacking your campaigns is by implementing equally sophisticated solutions. Anti-ad fraud software solutions that use machine learning and artificial intelligence help you keep fraud at bay, enabling you to focus on what matters: optimizing your campaigns and hitting your goals. 

The post The Biggest Ad Fraud Cases and What We Can Learn From Them appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Essentially an empathy map is a process where you’re going to actually work, talk about, or discuss and document someone else’s point of view.

It’s their perspective, it’s their belief system, it’s their emotions, it’s their worldview.

We are trying to dial all of these components to build a foundation for everything we’re going to be doing on the advertising side.

Advertising Costs Money, Right?

Since advertising costs money (lots of money in some cases), you want to be able to try and do your utmost to hit the mark as quickly as you can out of the gate. This is where a lot of the greatest click-through rates will come when you understand what the process is.

It allows you to go beyond superficial stuff, and really try and get an understanding of what your client’s environment is like at the moment.

For example, I was talking to a client in the divorce space, a highly emotional area, but in this case, it was from the woman’s perspective.

What is actually going on within this particular circumstance that a woman could be in? It was particularly insightful to understand what their daily worldview looked like so we could get inside what’s really going on.

What Does “Getting Inside” a Worldview Mean?

It focuses on six main questions:

• What does she see here?
• What does she think?
• What does she say?
• What does she do?
• What is her pain?
• What is the gain she’s looking for?

Again, it’s all about going through this in an interactive process, which we’re going to do today to understand what it is.

For example, what does she see? What does it look like? What does this problem look like? What is it? What surrounds her from day to day? What kind of office is she seeing? What kind of research? What kind of things is she looking at on YouTube? What problems does she actually encounter with what she sees? Where’s the conflict going on inside her mind? What does she hear? This is what her family says. This is what her friends say. Who is really influencing her, in her day to day? Is it the internal chatterbox? If so, what is that internal chatterbox telling her?

We’re all trying to figure out as much as possible because you can’t possibly interview a 100 or 400 people unless you have an epic market research budget. But you don’t need to!

You can find a lot of these answers just by doing some online research.

Where to Conduct Market Research

For example, YouTube. YouTube is a fantastic resource. Other resources where you can find this kind of information are Facebook Groups. If you just plug yourself into the right Facebook groups, you’ll find out information about what’s really going on.

You would be shocked at how many people have their own Facebook Groups for their business and don’t actually read the conversations that are going on them, even though they could tell you exactly what the pain points are of the people in their business.

If you don’t have a Facebook Group going, no problem.

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All you have to do is put any keyword into the search bar in Facebook, no matter what industry you’re in, and add yourself to the group and just go look for an hour at the things that people say and the questions that they ask. It will write your copy for you.

Again, you’re doing your utmost to try and figure out what’s really going on in your ideal customer’s mind, right? What’s, what’s really going on? What’s important to her? Try to imagine her motions, this is the important one. What moves her? What moves him forward?

What is happening at the emotional, core, gut, and amygdala types of emotion? What does she think? What is she looking for? What’s really driving? What’s in their dreams and aspirations?

Pay particular attention to any conflict that might be going on. Again, conflict is giving a sign that there’s a sort of yin and yang situation, where the perfect avatar is being pulled in one direction or the other.

Often, for example, in an agency, one of the things you would say is they are frightened of looking like an idiot in terms of making a mistake in the decision. If that’s what they’re feeling, that could be the environment that they’re working in, particularly in a larger company.

Again, the big obvious ones in there are:

• What is their pain?
• What are their biggest frustrations?
• What are the things that are stopping them from moving forward?

That’s going to give you examples of tripwires that you can use in your marketing, particularly on your funnel side.

What Risks is Your Target Customer Facing?

What are the risks your client is facing? What’s the number one risk that they might fear taking on?

That may be just one hook or one angle that you can use within an ad that will make the difference between a 0.5% click-through rate and a 2% click-through rate.

When we have people who come in and focus on weight loss, for example, the average weight loss ad that we see is something along the lines of:

“Hey, do you wanna lose five to 10 pounds in the next 90 days with having to change your diet?”

That’s a standard sort of lead-in on a weight loss ad.

When we actually go through an exercise like this and we say, “Are you sick and tired of walking into your closet and having that little black dress that you haven’t put on in 2 and 1/2 years, staring you in the face saying, “I miss you. When are we gonna get back together? When are you gonna be able to wear me again?”

I want to be the person that I was three years ago. I wanna look and feel like the best of my abilities, but gosh, that little black dress just stays on that closet shelf year after year after year, reminding me of what I used to be.

All of a sudden, you have a completely different conversation. That’s a completely different conversation in their mind around the frustration of that little black dress mocking them every single day they walked in their closet. One of those is facts and figures.

One of them is a punch right in the solar plexus, and when you can write with a punch right to the solar plexus and get inside the conversation that’s happening in their mind, that’s the difference.

The post How to Use Empathy Mapping for Epically Effective Ads appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Google just rolled out Google Performance Max, and Uzair is here to tell you all about it! What Google has done is put everything in one part, one campaign manager, so it is super simple for you to maintain, manage, and optimize your campaigns.

Uzair runs SF Digital Studios alongwith his wife Farzana. He is one of the very few professionals who is both a Google Partner & YouTube Certified. His YouTube channel has over 20,000+ subscribers and is one of the best channels to learn Google Ads. He has been video marketing for the last 4 years and has uploaded more than 1,200 videos on YouTube.

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The post Using Google Performance Max with Uzair Kharawala [VIDEO] appeared first on DigitalMarketer.

Next month (October 2022), Google is updating the Destination requirements policy requiring that ad experiences on destinations (i.e. blogs and landing pages) follow the Coalition for Better Ads Standards. The impact on publishers and advertisers could be significant, as they’re used to having more control over their ad placements.

To help you get ready for the new advertising policy requirements, we’ve put together a list of resources that includes information on what to expect and how best practices can be used.

What are the updated requirements?

The updated requirements are that ad experiences on landing pages must conform to the Coalition for Better Ads Standards. This means that ads must be less intrusive and more user-friendly. Google will consider a number of factors when determining whether an ad experience is annoying. These include the number of ads on the page, their layout, and placement, as well as how intrusive they are. 

According to Google, ads that do not comply with the better ads standards are as follows:

On Desktop

• Pop-up Ads
• Auto-Playing Video Ads with Sound
• Prestitial Ads with Countdown
• Large Sticky Ads

On Mobile

• Pop-up Ads
• Prestitial Ads (Ads that show on a mobile page before the content has loaded)
• Ad Density Higher Than 30%
• Flashing Animated Ads
• Auto-playing Video Ads with Sound
• Prestitial Ads with Countdown 
• Full-screen Scrollover Ads
• Large Sticky Ads

Google will let you know if your landing pages aren’t up to standards through the Ad Experience Report and any ads that lead to a violating destination will be disapproved immediately.

Why is Google doing this?

Our answer: ad blockers. 

Google’s answer: To improve user experience. A bad ad experience can ruin the whole online experience for a user, and Google wants to avoid that. After all, happy users are good for business.

Google has decided on these changes with help from the Coalition For Better Ads. As stated on their site, “The Coalition’s Better Ads Standards identify the ad experiences that fall beneath a threshold of consumer acceptability and are most likely to drive consumers to install ad blockers. More than 150,000 consumers have participated to date in the Coalition’s research to develop its set of Better Ads Standards.”¹

According to the Coalition For Better Ads:

• Advertisers can use the Better Ads Standards to inform campaign development and execution
• Publishers and app developers can use the Better Ads Standards to develop improved experiences for their audiences
• Ad technology platforms can use the Better Ads Standards in the development process for new ad experiences
• Providers of measurement technologies can use the Better Ads Standards to develop new ways to assess marketplace prevalence of the ad experiences preferred by consumers

What does this mean for you?

This new policy put into place by Google will result in a better user experience for internet users, and also help to increase revenue for website owners who are displaying ads. In order to comply with the updated requirements, website owners should avoid using any of the above-listed ad types on their pages. 

By doing so, they can ensure that their ads will not be considered annoying or intrusive, and will therefore not be penalized by Google. Additionally, they can also take steps to improve the overall layout and design of their ads, in order to make them more user-friendly.

If you’re a website owner, it’s important to take the necessary steps to prepare for Google’s updated destination requirements policy. By doing so, you can avoid any potential penalties, and ensure that your ads are compliant with the new standards. Additionally, you can also help to improve the overall user experience on your site by creating better ad experiences for your visitors.

How can you prepare?

Here are some steps on how to prepare for Google’s updated destination requirements policy:

• Review the updated Destination requirements policy: Familiarize yourself with the updated policy requirements so that you can ensure your ad experiences will be compliant. You can find more information on the Coalition for Better Ads Standards website.
• Create better ad experiences: Take steps to improve the overall user experience on your website by creating better ad experiences. This includes avoiding intrusive ad formats and placing ads in strategic locations.
• Monitor your site’s performance: Keep an eye on your website’s performance to ensure that it is meeting Google’s standards. You can use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to help you identify potential issues.
• Monitor your ad’s performance: Keep an eye on your ad account to make sure that all of your ad experiences are compliant with the new policy requirements. You can use Google’s Ad Experience Report to help you identify any potential issues.

By following these steps, you can help to ensure that your site is compliant with Google’s updated destination requirements policy, and that your users have a positive experience on your site.

Tips for creating better ad experiences

Keep these tips in mind to create better ad experiences for your users and avoid getting slapped by Google’s updated destination requirements policy.

1. Make sure that the ads on your site are relevant to the content on your site. Irrelevant ads can be intrusive and annoying to users.

2. Keep ad placements consistent throughout your site. Ads that are placed in unexpected places can be disruptive to users.

3. Pay attention to the placement of your ads, and make sure that they are not in locations where they will interrupt or interfere with the user’s experience on your site.

4. Make sure that the ads on your site are not excessive in number. Too many ads can be overwhelming and intrusive for users.

Or follow our general guideline: If an ad experience annoys you on other websites (we’re looking at you clickbait spammers), it will annoy your users on your website. 

What happens if you violate the policies?

If you violate the updated Destination Requirements policy, your ads may be disapproved and your account may be at risk of suspension. So it’s important to make sure that your ads are in compliance with the new policy before it goes into effect.

Conclusion

Google’s updated Destination requirements policy is just another example of how the company is cracking down on bad ads. While this may be frustrating for publishers & advertisers who are used to having more control over their ad placements, it’s important to remember that these changes are meant to improve the user experience. 

By following the tips in this article, you can make sure that your ad experiences conform to the new standards and avoid any penalties from Google.

TL;DR – Ads that interrupt a user’s browsing experience are not in line with the better ads standards and will be disapproved by Google. 

The post The Next Google Slap? How to Prepare for Google’s Updated Destination Requirements Policy appeared first on DigitalMarketer.