The sun is setting in the sky, average position say goodbye…

Points yet also minus points to you if you picked up the Teletubby reference there, it’s a Millennial thing, take it as you will. Now to my actual point – You may know already that Google is always bringing out updates on it’s Google Ads platform, so I thought I’d give you a rundown of what’s new/what will be new!

Okay so as I put the biggest spoiler in the title, that is where I will start. Google is phasing out the use of average position. (This was announced in February but it’s human nature to not think about it until it’s happening so here’s a reminder.) What does this mean though? Should we be panicked? The answer is no! Google is always 7 steps in front so have obviously thought this through and have rolled out new metrics that give you a much clearer view of your prominence on the page than average position has done. These are “Impression (Absolute Top)%” and “Impression (Top)%”  and they can tell you the actual location of your ads on the SERPs (search engine results pages) and how often they’re there, as opposed to the order of the ads. Much better right? See Google’s nice example below! Top notch. 

Next? Okay. Search and Shopping campaigns will now use an improved standard delivery. What does that even mean? The ad delivery method used in your campaign determines how long the daily budget is going to last in a day. Currently, we have Accelerated delivery which spends your budget more rapidly and is recommended to be used if it’s important to have your ads showing more in the early hours, not helpful for everyone of course. Then there’s Standard delivery which spreads the budget across the day to avoid early budget exhaustion – The default option. As of September 17th, you will no longer have the option of accelerated delivery for Search and Shopping campaigns, also including campaigns with a shared budget, however, the option will still be available for Display and Video campaigns. Automatic switch over will happen by October 1st, if you haven’t got round to it already. Google has admitted that Accelerated delivery is an inefficient option, especially if you are limited by budget as your ads won’t be able to see the day through. There have been some tweaks made to Standard delivery to allow it to be more predictive, becoming better at maximising on performance whilst remaining in the daily budget. You go Google! 

A new method of Smart Bidding? Oh Google, you shouldn’t have! Welcome, Maximise Conversion Value, the bidding strategy that will help to maximise conversion value on your Search campaigns. Conversion Values allow you to be able to see the total value from your advertising across different conversions, rather than just an amount of conversions that have happened, as some conversions are worth more to your business than others! Essentially, this strategy helps you to get the most conversion value for your budget. Nice. 

Last (for now), but by no means least we have a slight change on the filters available on the Overview page. This is the main dashboard page where you can view an account summary and Google have simply made it more user-relevant! You can now filter the Overview page by device, campaign, campaign type, campaign status, ad group and ad group status. This will mean you can see the colourful line graph we all know and love in relation to these filters! Grawsome. 

That’s my rundown for now, but because Google is Google there are always announcements going on so keep your eyes peeled! If you’d like to discuss any of these further then please feel free to give Team Embryo a call on 0161 327 2635 and we can talk through how these updates could help your PPC campaigns!