Google AdWords Insights: June 2018
Are you out of the loop on the latest developments in the world of Google AdWords? Allow us to get you back in that loop, with our summary of new features, integrations and policy changes from the past few weeks.
Google Optimize Integration
The Google Optimize platform allows website owners to make the visitor experience more personalised. It enables a review of current on-site behaviour and provides the tools that are needed to make changes. Those changes could run from a simple messaging alteration to a transformation of your website’s homepage.
So far, so good, but why are we mentioning it in this little round-up? Well, Google have announced that there is to be an integration between Optimize and AdWords. This means that advertisers will, for example, be able to relatively easily test different landing page variants.
Google have even released a little case study to demonstrate how well this might work for advertisers. The case study reflects the experience of Spotify, the streaming music service.
When Spotify made use of Optimize, the results were dreadful. Sales plummeted, conversion rates fell through the floor and many visitors never again returned to the Spotify website.
The previous paragraph is entirely inaccurate. We just added it to make sure that you were listening!
In fact, the case study shows that a custom landing page, created using Optimize, helped to produce a 24% uplift in Spotify’s premium subscriptions. So the message from Google appears to be that this works, so you should try it too.
What do you think about bail bond services?
Well, that’s something of a loaded question really. It used to be possible to advertise bail bond services on the AdWords platform, but this is soon to end.
On 7 May, Google announced that they would stop advertisers from promoting such services via AdWords. The change will start to be enforced next month. Most of us (particularly in the UK) are unlikely to notice any difference.
Have you engaged with parallel tracking?
Let’s be honest, most advertisers haven’t yet done so. Here’s a recap on what we’re talking about:
At the moment, you’ll be tracking the impact of your ads. For sure. So what happens is that an individual clicks on your ad, the AdWords click tracker loads, the tracking URL loads, an additional tracking URL may load and then (finally) the customer sees your landing page. That all happens very quickly and pretty seamlessly in most cases.
But Google decided, a little while ago, that things could be done even more quickly. This is where parallel tracking comes to the rescue. With parallel tracking, your customer clicks on the ad and immediately gets brought to your landing page. All of the tracking activity happens in the background.
With the tracking taking place in parallel, the entire situation is speeded up. Although the time saving may be relatively small, there are numerous studies showing that even small time savings can have quite an impact on conversion rates.
At present, parallel tracking is an optional feature within AdWords. But, from 30 October 2018, it is going to be a requirement that you use parallel tracking. You’ll be prompted to do so from within your Google AdWords account.
Here concludes today’s summary of the most recent changes in AdWords world. We’ll be providing further insights in the weeks ahead.
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