In this article, you will understand the importance of Google’s cross-channel Aritificial Intelligence (AI) solutions and learn how to create and optimize these campaigns to achieve business goals.

After reading this article, you will be able to:

• Describe the importance of AI throughout Google Ads campaigns.
• Prepare an AI automation strategy that aligns to your business goals.
• Identify the benefits of using cross-channel AI-powered campaigns and tools.
• Explain the importance of adopting an agile mindset, and adopt flexible budgets to respond to demand and drive real business outcomes.
• Use Google Ads reporting and insights to bring transparency to Google’s AI.

Chapter I. Win the Future with Google’s AI

Consumer behavior is changing quickly, and things will only keep moving faster. That translates to continuous opportunities for growth and innovation in advertising. Aligning on a data and measurement strategy for your business objectives and adopting automated solutions is the key to driving impact in the future.

By the end of this chapter, you will be equipped to describe the importance of Google’s AI solutions throughout Google Ads campaigns.

I.1.Google’s AI solutions for the future

The consumer journey is increasingly complex, and users’ expectations for relevant ads are rising. So how can marketers keep up?

Think Google’s AI! That’s the solution businesses and agencies are using to stay ahead of ongoing shifts in consumer demand.

I.2. Supporting your business objectives

Google’s AI and machine learning are important tools for marketers. AI continues to grow as a necessary solution because it can dynamically identify valuable conversion opportunities that lead to results against business objectives.

AI solutions are even more powerful when used together. For example, advertisers who adopt responsive Search ads in campaigns that also use broad match and Smart Bidding see an average of 20% more conversions at a similar cost per action, according to internal Google data.

Advertisers who use Google’s AI across channels with Performance Max campaigns in their account see an average increase of 13% total incremental conversions at a similar cost per action, according to an internal Google study. Remember that these benefits can only be unlocked when budgets are unconstrained, allowing machine learning to drive maximum performance.

I.3.Identify your objectives

The first step to adopting any Google AI solution is to align on the most relevant, impactful metrics for your business.

Identify your business objectives and marketing metrics:

You should have a business objective designed to drive and measure business results, such as revenue, profit, or market share.

Then your marketing metrics should closely align to those business objectives, such as total revenue return on ad spend, profitability per dollar invested, and number of quality customers acquired.

Ensure Alignment across leadership:

Your leadership team, including the CMO and CFO, should align on marketing metrics, ideally before the beginning of a new year. 

By building communication and alignment between marketing and finance stakeholders, the message becomes clear that all online marketing efforts should be designed to drive the right results for the business, instead of optimizing toward more intermediary metrics, such as clicks or cost-per-conversion. 

Work with your marketing and finance teams to showcase how modern marketing isn’t an expense on your balance sheet but an investment that directly contributes to whatever business goals your company has profit, revenue, or maybe lifetime value growth.

Later, when activating against this marketing metric, make sure your Smart Bidding strategy aligns most closely with your objective. Optimizing toward value is a powerful way to drive incremental results for advertisers. According to Google internal data, advertisers who switch from a target CPA to a target ROAS bid strategy can see an average of 14% more conversion value at a similar return on ad spend.

Create a single source of truth to measure success

Encourage your C-suite to create a set of joint KPIs between marketing and finance teams to track on a regular basis. Then build a single shared source of truth to help them measure against these to demonstrate the impact of marketing on company performance.

Most brands have a limited set of metrics typically five to 10 that inform marketing investment decisions. If your organization is more advanced, you may summarize their reporting on a strategic scorecard or dashboard.

I.4. Build a strong data strategy

Drive the right metrics 

Your data is your competitive advantage in the age of Google AI.

Google’s AI works best with strategic human input including setting the right goal and fueling it with data and insights, such as audience or seasonality insights. Data can also provide inspiration for new ideas to test, including creative messaging, website and landing page experiences, and web-to-app experiences.  

To drive the most value from marketing, Google’s AI needs advertisers to instruct it with the best data. Without the right guidance, it can’t deliver the best results. Having and using data offers a competitive advantage in the age of Google’s marketing AI.

Privacy-safe data is the key to building a more sophisticated, impactful marketing strategy.

Your data is incredibly valuable because it’s: 

• High-quality: You receives your data right from the source your customers.
• Relevant: The data relates directly to the products you sell and the customers who buy from you.
• Unique: No other company has the same customer data as you.

Anchor a data strategy

A business’s data strategy is key when fueling Google’s AI solutions. The data advertisers provide machine learning algorithms to help shape and define how Google’s AI will perform. The more accurate data an advertiser provides, the better trained the algorithm will be to deliver stronger results. When creating a robust first-party data strategy, root it in business objectives.

To make sure data links back to these goals, encourage your C-Suite to align with the relevant teams in your organization so you have the right customer experience and consent processes in place to let your teams access and use the data they need.

Here are a few examples of impactful data sources and how they can align to business objectives.

Build a robust database

Algorithms don’t need a huge amount of data they need the right data. To build a robust database and connect it to relevant platforms, let’s walk through Google’s three step approach.

Create a future-proof measurement strategy

The first step to creating a value-based strategy is making sure you have a solid foundation of online conversion measurement. Having the correct measurement in place lets you start tracking conversion actions before setting up attribution and optimization with Smart Bidding. 

As a best practice, implement the global site tag as well as Enhanced Conversions to minimize gaps when cookies aren’t available.

For Google Ads conversions, advertisers may implement at least one of the following options, based on their business objectives:

Online Sales:

If you measure online sales with transaction-specific values and use the Google tag, you can track transaction-specific conversion values. You can also use Tag Manager to deploy conversion tags with values. If you use Google Analytics to measure web or app values, you can import your conversions into Google Ads conversion tracking.

Lead generation: If you measure values from your lead generation campaigns that have been qualified or closed, you should implement enhanced conversions for leads

Offline Sales: If you measure the impact of your online ad spend with offline sales, implement store sales measurement.

Other offline conversions: If your conversion value is only available offline or in your customer relationship management (CRM) system, you can also import offline conversions from ad clicks into Google Ads.

Activate everywhere with Google’s AI solutions

Once machine learning knows what’s important to your business, it can help their brand show up at key impactful moments.

A number of powerful Google solutions can help you activate against Google’s AI within Search and across channels.

I.5. Test, learn, and scale

You might feel cautious about some new AI-powered approaches. It’s important to adopt a test-and-learn mindset and start small before going big.

Here are two ways you can begin to test, learn, and scale new AI-powered solutions.

Test with Google Ads Experiments

Drafts and experiments can help you create a small test for a location or product group before going all in on a new solution.

One-click experiments can be created directly from recommendations cards for certain types of recommendations, such as broad match adoption. Once you have identified an opportunity within the recommendations page, apply it through a one-click experiment to begin a test. If you’re satisfied with the results, activate the recommendation through automatically applied recommendations to automatically capture all future opportunities.

Make use of insights

se the Insights page within Google Ads to identify trends in your markets and understand performance.

You can also find recommendations on the Insights page, helping you improve your optimization score and campaign performance by reviewing Insights. You can review and apply keyword, budget, and bidding recommendations in just a few clicks. Setting up automatically applied recommendations can make this process even simpler.

Digital leaders have an agile mindset

For individual leaders, the agility needed to embrace automation might require a mindset change. But that shift can help marketers focus on growth, new opportunities, and innovation.

To prepare for an even more automated future, help your C-Suite understand the value they can gain from digital transformation. The results are worth the effort: A BCG study found that digital leaders achieve three times higher revenue than those who don’t adopt digital innovations.

I.6.Key takeaways

• The consumer journey is increasingly complex, and users’ expectations for relevant ads are rising. Google’s AI is the solution businesses and agencies are using to stay ahead of ongoing shifts in consumer demand.
• To maximize impact against their business objectives and use Google’s AI to develop an even more sophisticated marketing strategy, advertisers need to follow these four steps: identify the right metrics for their marketing strategy, drive the right metrics by providing the right data to Google’s systems, activate everywhere, and test, learn, and scale.

Chapter. II.Explore the Value of Human Input

This chapter describe the value of marketer influence in Google’s AI solutions, and learn how to help marketers and agencies guide AI algorithms to achieve performance goals.

To keep up with the rapidly changing pace at which people discover, research, and purchase brands and products, modern advertising is becoming increasingly driven by AI. From automated bidding, creatives and targeting on Search, and fully automated cross-channel campaign types, advertising agencies and managers need to understand and influence how Google’s AI is operating to maximize business value.

By the end of this module, you’ll be equipped to describe the value of human influence in Google’s AI solutions.

Strong performance starts with human input

With AI-powered advertising, remember that the advertiser or agency managing campaigns is in control. 

How does that work? AI-driven algorithms rely on marketers setting clear and correct goals, supplying quality data, and intervening to make adjustments when necessary. 

In fact, Google’s AI solutions perform best when influenced by human input. According to a 2019 Boston Consulting Group study, AI alone tends to improve campaign performance by over 20%, and human input can improve that performance by an additional 15% or more.

Begin with key business objectives

To build a strong foundation for automated advertising, advertising managers need to begin with the goals that align with their marketing and business objectives. This tells machine learning an advertiser’s desired outcome and allows a marketer to choose the best automated bidding strategy to maximize value for their business.

Step 1: Build a value-centric measurement strategy to guide Google’s AI

A value-centric measurement strategy helps advertising managers assign value to consumer activities, then optimize to those values. You must start by identifying the conversion activity that’s most important to your strategy, such as eCommerce sales, leads, or store sales. 

Next, you should define value for these conversions. This hinges on the ability to capture or calculate the value at the time of conversion. It can be tempting to search for the perfect measurement strategy, but remember this isn’t a one-and-done task. At the beginning, focus on creating a better measurement strategy instead of a perfect strategy. You can always improve how you define value as new solutions arise and you learn more about your consumers.

There are three common types of value definition:

• Actual: Value is realized at the time of conversion like with transaction revenue or profit.
• Proxy: A general value can be understood at time of conversion. For example, conversion type A = $20, conversion type B = $50, or lead quality scoring.
• Predictive: A predicted value is calculated at time of conversion based on signals captured, as with subscription value.

Step 2: Input key performance indicators

Value-centric measurement enables advertisers to quantify the monetary or business value associated with a conversion using first-party economic signals (such as order value, profit, or predicted lifetime value). 

Creating a value-centric measurement strategy allows you to assign value to conversions and, in turn, create digital key performance indicators (KPIs) that align to your marketing objectives. 

Step 3: Upload KPIs into Google Ads or Search Ads 360

After identifying the conversion types and assigned values to each conversion, you can upload them into a search management system. How you upload conversion data will depend on how you manage and track data.

Fuel automated solutions to achieve business objectives

Google’s AI solutions have evolved quite a bit over the past few years, and are more equipped than ever to fuel business growth for marketers. 

Power growth through human input

Marketers have the tools at their fingertips to grow a sequoia for their business. Several key AI solutions can help a business achieve its goals and growth faster, when they’re used together and guided by human input.

The marketer’s evolving value add in a world of automation

It’s understandable that some marketers can be concerned about how to shift their roles and skill sets to adapt to a more automated world. 

Your goal has always been to increase performance and speed, which is becoming harder to do. Google helps drive better performance by incorporating consumer signals and executing in real time. 

However, Google can’t automate strategy and that’s where you shine. AI allows you to adapt your workflows and provides tools to guide your cadence of decision-making. 

Key takeaways

• A modern advertising strategy is fully powered by AI, but the human touch is necessary to maximize business value.
• An AI-driven strategy needs to begin with a business objective in mind, and a marketer identifying and performance goals that will lead to growth.
• Google’s AI solutions have evolved from the Age of Precision to the Age of Prediction.
• Advertising managers who successfully evolve their workflows and behaviors to use new tools can grow their business and prepare themselves for the future of modern advertising. 

 Chapter. III. Create a Keyword Strategy to Reach Users

dentifying the search terms that might be used to find your business can help you prepare an effective keyword strategy so relevant ads can be served on your consumers’ queries.

By the end of this module, you’ll be equipped to prepare a keyword strategy that aligns to the goals of a Search campaign.

Build an effective keyword strategy

Consumers come to Google Search every day to find products and services they’re looking for. When people search for a product or service, they’ll naturally use different combinations of words to describe what they’re looking for. These words, known as search terms, lead to different search results. Your ad may appear when someone uses a search term that matches the keyword list you’ve created in an account. 

For example, if Linda works for a company selling sneakers, she might add “running shoes” as a keyword in her Google Ads campaign. When someone enters the search term “running shoes” on Google, a number of factors lead to whether her ad may show on the search results page. Let’s take a look.

How do you use keyword match types?

As part of your keyword strategy, you have the option to use different keyword match types. As Linda prepares a new campaign for tennis shoes, let’s take a closer look at the match types she could use and some examples of how they’ll trigger ads to show for users.

1. Exact match
   [tennis shoes]

Ads may show on searches that have the same meaning or same intent as the keyword. Of the three keyword matching options, exact match gives you the most control over who sees your ad but reaches fewer searches than both phrase and broad match. 

Example: A search for “tennis shoes review,” “red tennis shoes,” or “tennis sneaker” wouldn’t show this advertiser’s ad; only a search for “tennis shoes” would show this ad. 

Benefit: It offers more control over the search terms that ads match to, although volume may be limited.

Set it up: Add brackets [ ] around the term. 

2. Phrase match
“tennis shoes”

Ads may show on searches that include the meaning of your keyword. The meaning of the keyword can be implied, and user searches can be a more specific form of the meaning. With phrase match, you can reach more searches than with exact match and fewer searches than with broad match, only showing your ads on the searches that include your product or service. 

Example: A search for “tennis kids shoes” wouldn’t show this advertiser’s ad, but “tennis shoes review” would.

Benefit: This ensures the core concept of your keyword is present in the search term while reaching more volume than what exact match keywords would provide.

Set it up: Add quotes (“ ”) around the term.

3. Broad match
tennis shoes

Ads may show on searches that are related to your keyword, which can include searches that don’t contain the keyword terms. This helps you attract more visitors to your website, spend less time building keyword lists, and focus your spending on keywords that work.

Example: Searches for “tennis shoes,” “tennis sportswear,” “used tennis shoes,” or “top-rated tennis equipment” may show this ad.

Benefit: It allows you to reach the most possible consumers searching for your product or service, while saving you time from adding a variety of keywords. Broad match works best with automated bidding strategies.

Set it up: Broad match is the default match type that all your keywords are assigned, so you don’t have to specify another match type (exact match, phrase match, or a negative match type).

The case for close variants

All positive keyword match types are eligible to match to close variants, which are variations that are similar (but not identical) to a specific keyword. All match types are now semantic, meaning keywords expand based on the meaning of a query rather than the structure of the query.

Close variants helps you connect with consumers who are looking for your business, despite slight variations in the way they search, and avoids the need to build exhaustive keyword lists. Close variants in match types may include:

• Misspellings
• Singular or plural forms
• Stemmings (for example, “floor” and “flooring”)
• Abbreviations 
• Accents

There’s no need to add the same keyword in exact, phrase and broad match to an ad group, as broad match covers search queries that exact and phrase match keywords would have matched to, plus more.

Switching to a broad match strategy

Depending on your current keyword strategy, there are a few ways to successfully help transition your keyword strategy to focus on broad match.

Optimization score tip

You can use optimization score recommendations to identify ways to improve your keyword strategy, such as adding new keywords, removing duplicate keywords, adding negative keywords, or addressing conflicting negative keywords.

Best practices

Defining the right keyword list for a campaign can help show the right ads to the right consumers. Keywords should match the terms that consumers would use to find your products or services.

Here’s a look at some best practices for building an effective keyword list.

Select the arrow to learn more.

• Think like your audience.
  
  When building a keyword list, think holistically about all the different terms a potential user could use to search for your business.

Show what you know

Answer this question correctly to mark the module complete.

You are the marketing manager for a bank and have created a Search campaign to help drive sign-ups for the bank’s new credit card. Your campaign has been running for a few weeks, and you’re looking for ways to improve performance. 

Key takeaways

• Google Ads Search campaigns use multiple types of keywords to reach both known and unknown queries.
• Keywords should be added to ad groups in themes and match types based on your business goals.
• There are many ways to optimize your keyword performance, including the use of negative keywords, the Search Terms Report, and recommendations from your account’s optimization score

Chapter. IV. Engage Users with Creative Automation

With billions of searches happening on Google each day, how can you make sure your ads are relevant for each audience? With responsive search ads, Google Ads automatically uses a combination of the headlines and descriptions you provide to show the right ad to the right person at the right time.

By the end of this module, you’ll be equipped to prepare an automated creative strategy to accurately represent your client’s business, product, or service.

Reach users with responsive search ads

Responsive search ads can provide up to 15 headline assets and four description assets. While each ad still shows up to three headlines and two descriptions, Google Ads chooses the asset combination that creates the best ad for each user to optimize performance.

Set it up: Create a responsive search ad

Responsive search ads are generated by mixing and matching headline and description assets. Here’s how to set up a responsive search ad.

Step 1:

From the Overview page, select Ads & assets. Then, select Responsive search ad. 

Step 2:

Select the campaign and ad group you’d like to add the responsive search ad to.

Step 3:

Enter your text in the provided fields.

Responsive search ads best practices

Here are some tips for creating effective responsive search ads. Make sure each ad group has at least one responsive search ad.

Add image assets to improve ad quality

The Search experience continues to evolve to become more visually engaging for users. Image assets allow you to upload rich, relevant images to complement existing text ads. The use of compelling visuals of products or services enhances the message of an ad and can help drive performance. 

Additionally, you can opt-in to dynamic image assets, allowing Google to use image content on your domain to automatically complement existing text ads with a relevant image. But, ad groups with an eligible, approved marketer-provided image asset will always serve over a dynamic image asset.

Image assets best practices

Here are some tips for creating effective image assets:

Upload at least 4 relevant and unique images at the campaign or ad group level. At least three of these images should be square, and one should be landscape. Images with non-white backgrounds tend to have stronger performance.

Optimization score tip

Monitor your optimization score for recommendations about how to optimize your RSAs. Optimization opportunities highlighted by recommendations include adding responsive search ads, adding expanded text ad assets to responsive search ads, and improving ad strength. Recommendations also highlight opportunities to add image assets or opt in to dynamic image assets.

Key takeaways

• Responsive search ads adapt to show a relevant ad combination for each query based on the ad inputs you provide.
• Create a responsive search ad by providing up to 15 headlines, four descriptions, and one final URL. Include existing headlines and descriptions from any expanded text ads that performed well. Then add additional unique headlines and descriptions. Use ad strength to find areas where you can further optimize for effectiveness and performance.
• The Search experience continues to evolve to become more visually engaging for users. Image assets allow you to upload rich, relevant images to complement existing text ads.

Chapter. IV. Boost Performance with a Value-Based Strategy

For many businesses, their objectives may be to grow revenue and purchase volume, generate leads, or drive more foot traffic into stores. But businesses also want to maximize their profits, and optimizing towards value is a way to make sure that their marketing is always driving the highest possible ROAS.

By the end of this module, you’ll be equipped to explain the importance of optimizing for value and how it affects marketing objectives.

Defining a consumer’s value

Value-based bidding helps you prioritize the auctions that matter most and generate most conversion value for your business. Value is the monetary or business value a customer brings to a business and can be measured by a number of metrics, such as cart size, average order value, lead value, and lifetime value.

Adding value to your advertising strategy lets you to go beyond customer (or lead) acquisition costs, focusing on growing monetary return (value) in your account. Value-based bidding helps you capture the consumers that matter most and generate most monetary value for your business.

Google Ads solutions help businesses import their first-party data indicating the value of each conversion. Value-based bidding is able to use the signals passed to Google Ads to identify and bid on auctions that are likely to generate the most business value. Measurement and AI work together to drive traffic to marketers’ most profitable categories and channels.

Value-based bidding strategies (Target ROAS, Maximize conversion value) help you report on and optimize toward the business objectives that matter — like revenue, profit, or even lifetime value.

If every conversion and consumer aren’t equally valuable to a business, your marketing strategy should reflect that.

Value-based bidding in action

What does value-based bidding look like in different settings? Different businesses have different goals, and their value-based bidding strategy must align with those goals.

Value-based bidding allows for manipulating conversion values with any available business data. For example, you may know that there’s a difference in lifetime value when consumers purchase on a computer vs. mobile device, and adjust reported values. The two devices should be targeted in the same campaign, and a Smart Bidding strategy would bid differently to hit ROAS targets. If you cannot wait for ~2 conversion cycles to evaluate performance, you might consider a shallower conversion action or different strategy.

An online retail or lead generation business

• Rather than driving volume only, focus on bidding higher for users who make higher-value purchases.
• Bidding toward cart size or predicted value can be the first step in effectively segmenting consumers.
• Value-based bidding will maximize the value from online sales or leads within an advertiser’s budget or ROAS target.
• More advanced businesses can also bid to profit, margin, or consumer lifetime value.

Highly seasonal businesses

• Smart Bidding is built for volatility and dynamic periods, as it considers shifts in search trends and historical demand and can handle frequent or sudden changes in demand.
• Advertisers can also adjust Smart Bidding levers, like targets or budgets, based on their changing business goals.
• In cases where an advertiser expects short-term spikes in conversion rate ahead of time (e.g., a planned flash sale), they can inform Smart Bidding by using seasonality adjustments.

Subscription-based businesses

• If your advertiser is only tracking a single conversion event, such as a subscription sign-up, consider how different consumers are bringing value to their business.
• For example, an advertiser may try differentiating consumers by a subscription model selected by the consumer or other variables available to the business. They can then assign values to those conversions and use value-based bid strategies to optimize accordingly.

Start with a strong measurement strategy

The first step to creating a value-based strategy is making sure you have a solid foundation of online conversion measurement. Having the correct measurement in place lets you start tracking conversion actions before setting up attribution and optimization with Smart Bidding. As a best practice, implement the global site tag as well as Enhanced Conversions to minimize gaps when cookies aren’t available.

Third-party tracking and privacy

• Do you use another platform as your source of truth for conversion tracking? If so, consider tracking those conversions in Google Ads so the data used for optimization is aligned with your source of truth.
• As you improve your value data, you should also build a solid privacy-centric measurement foundation. This makes sure your reported business goals and optimization strategies remain privacy-safe and durable while prioritizing user privacy.

Build on the right attribution model

Attribution helps you understand the value of each touchpoint along a consumer’s path so you can determine the interactions that matter the most. When implementing a value-based bidding strategy, make sure conversions are accurately attributed by using a non-last-click attribution model.

• Always choose data-driven attribution (DDA) when available. DDA identifies the most influential touchpoints along a consumer’s journey and assigns fractional credit to each keyword in the purchase path. This attribution model learns and adjusts over time to accurately give credit for conversions across multiple ad interactions. 
• If you doesn’t qualify for or can’t use DDA, use a non-last-click attribution model. Examples of a non-last-click attribution model include time decay, linear, and position-based models.

Key takeaways

• By focusing your strategy on growing value, you can go beyond acquiring consumers to capturing the sales that bring the most value to your business.
• Measuring conversions correctly and assigning value to sales are foundational in creating a value-based bidding strategy.

Chapter. v. Learn the Benefits of Performance Max

There are more moments to connect with consumers today than there have ever been before. As people explore their options – even for products or services that seem simple – they’re moving seamlessly between search, video, websites, and more. At the same time, that purchase journey is getting more complicated. The channels to discover, research, purchase, and pick up products keep growing. Even the best marketers will struggle to anticipate and keep up with these constant fluctuations in consumer interests and needs.

Amid these changes and challenges, how can you get better performance through Google? Performance Max campaigns might be the answer.

Performance Max uses the best of Google’s automation capabilities to help you drive better performance, respond to dynamic shifts in consumer demand in real time, and find more converting consumers across Google channels YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, and more.

For advertisers using Shopping Ads, as well as advertisers with store goals, Performance Max is now the recommended way to find the most valuable conversions. For other advertisers, Performance Max can compliment existing strategies and find incremental conversions.

In this module, you’ll learn how to identify the benefits of using a Performance Max campaign.

Google Ads campaign for a shifting landscape

Amid these changes and challenges, how can you get better performance through Google? Performance Max campaigns might be the answer.

Performance Max campaigns are a new way to buy Google ads from a single campaign across YouTube, Display, Search, Google Discover, Gmail, and Maps. This helps you reach valuable consumers while maximizing performance with Google Ads. Performance Max also uses the power of automation and machine learning to help you respond to dynamic shifts in consumer demands in real time. You can then invest where new conversion opportunities are no matter which channel they’re on. This new automated campaign complements core Search campaigns and helps you grow your business across Google’s full range of channels.

For advertisers using Shopping Ads and for those with store goals, Performance Max is now the recommended way to find the most valuable conversions. For other advertisers, Performance Max can complement existing strategies and find incremental conversions.

Performance Max lets you promote your business across nearly all Google Ads inventory. That means you can show up for more customers and drive more conversions based on your goals. In fact, according to internal Google data, advertisers who use Performance Max campaigns in their account see an average increase of 13% total incremental conversions at a similar cost-per-action. 

Key takeaways

• Consumer journeys are increasingly complex. Performance Max helps marketers respond in real-time by serving ads across all Google channels from a single campaign type.
• Using automation and machine learning, Performance Max can help marketers easily reach consumers and drive more conversions across Google channels and ad inventory.
• Performance Max delivers the added value of helping marketers find more converting customers, optimize budgets across channels, and gain deeper insight on how to improve performance.

Chapter. v. Create a Value-Based Smart Bidding Strategy

Value-based bidding unlocks value for your business. For example, if you switch your bid strategy from having a target CPA to a target ROAS, you can see 14% more conversion value at a similar return on ad spend. Making the switch successfully depends on a number of factors, including your current Smart Bidding setup. Managing the transition also means measuring success after changing strategies and making adjustments as necessary.

By the end of this module, you’ll be equipped to create and optimize a Smart Bidding strategy to maximize conversion value.

Understand the organization’s goals

Jason, a marketing manager at a digital marketing agency, is working with Ada, his client,  to build a strategy for her organization. He wants to start by asking what Ada’s organization’s goals are so he can recommend the best strategy.

Navigate common transition scenarios

The process of transitioning to a value-based bidding strategy varies depending on your current starting point. You may face a few common scenarios. Use this decision tree to help identify the best practices. 

No matter where you fall in these scenarios, remember to set clear expectations that some volatility is unavoidable. The following best practices are designed to minimize volatility but won’t completely eliminate it.

Analyze performance of a new value-based bidding strategy

Now that you have successfully transitioned to a value-based bidding strategy, it’s time to evaluate performance. 

Some marketers or agencies may monitor multiple metrics, but it is important to set a clear success metric upfront and agree on a KPI that’s closely related to a true business objective, instead of upstream metrics like CPCs, conversion volumes, or CPA.

Maximize conversion value key metric: Total conversion value

Success looks like:  An increase in the total conversion value while spending the campaign’s budget. 

Spend and value volumes are determined by the campaign’s budget. This strategy will spend that daily budget. To increase value volume, increase the daily budget.

Target ROAS key metric: Total conversion value and Average ROAS (Conv value/cost)

Success looks like:  An increase in the total conversion value while achieving the set target ROAS value.

Spend and value volumes are determined by the set ROAS target. If conversion values have a history in the conversion value column, use the recommended ROAS suggested by Google Ads. To increase value volume, decrease your ROAS target.

Budgets should be uncapped, but if budget is a concern, either adjust budgets or move to Maximize conversion value. The volume of conversions a campaign gets is key. To evaluate performance accurately, measure performance over longer time periods that have 50 conversions, such as a month or longer.

Optimize targets and budgets to improve performance

Now that you have set up your campaigns and can measure performance, you can take further steps to optimize targets and budgets.

Targets (if using Target ROAS) and budgets (if using Maximize conversion value) are the primary available levers to optimize bids and spend.

Key takeaways

• Based on your target return and budget goals, use either Maximize conversion value or Target ROAS as your value-based bidding strategy.
• Each marketer’s transition to a value-based bidding strategy varies based on their goals and current strategy.
• After transitioning to Target ROAS or Maximize conversion value, analyze results and optimize targets and budgets to improve performance and maximize results.

VI. Understanding the benefits of Performance Max

There are more moments to connect with consumers today than there have ever been before. As people explore their options – even for products or services that seem simple – they’re moving seamlessly between search, video, websites, and more. At the same time, that purchase journey is getting more complicated. The channels to discover, research, purchase, and pick up products keep growing. Even the best marketers will struggle to anticipate and keep up with these constant fluctuations in consumer interests and needs.

Amid these changes and challenges, how can you get better performance through Google? Performance Max campaigns might be the answer.

Performance Max uses the best of Google’s automation capabilities to help you drive better performance, respond to dynamic shifts in consumer demand in real time, and find more converting consumers across Google channels, YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, and more.

For advertisers using Shopping Ads, as well as advertisers with store goals, Performance Max is now the recommended way to find the most valuable conversions. For other advertisers, Performance Max can compliment existing strategies and find incremental conversions.

In this module, you’ll learn how to identify the benefits of using a Performance Max campaign.

A new Google Ads campaign for a shifting landscape

Amid these changes and challenges, how can you get better performance through Google? Performance Max campaigns might be the answer.

Performance Max campaigns are a new way to buy Google ads from a single campaign across YouTube, Display, Search, Google Discover, Gmail, and Maps. This helps you reach valuable consumers while maximizing performance with Google Ads. Performance Max also uses the power of automation and machine learning to help you respond to dynamic shifts in consumer demands in real time. You can then invest where new conversion opportunities are no matter which channel they’re on. This new automated campaign complements core Search campaigns and helps you grow your business across Google’s full range of channels.

For advertisers using Shopping Ads and for those with store goals, Performance Max is now the recommended way to find the most valuable conversions. For other advertisers, Performance Max can complement existing strategies and find incremental conversions.

Performance Max lets you promote your business across nearly all Google Ads inventory. That means you can show up for more customers and drive more conversions based on your goals. In fact, according to internal Google data, advertisers who use Performance Max campaigns in their account see an average increase of 13% total incremental conversions at a similar cost-per-action. 

Grow Online Sales with Performance Max

Performance Max campaigns let you easily target multiple goals from a single campaign to help boost business outcomes. Some online sellers may focus on online purchases. Others may value “Add to cart” and “Begin checkout” features to understand what their users are looking for. Select the goal, specify what different types of conversions are worth to your business using conversion value rules, and then let Performance Max do the rest.

In this module, you’ll learn how to leverage Performance Max to achieve your online sales marketing objectives.

Introducing Performance Max for Online Sales

Select your objective. Using conversion value rules, specify what different types of conversions are worth to your business. Then let Performance Max do the rest.

Let’s look at how Domino’s used Performance Max to grow online sales.

Domino’s has been driving orders with strong ROAS, mostly from Search and App campaigns. They aimed to generate additional revenue and increase ROAS on YouTube, Display, and other Google channels. At the same time, the pizza chain needed to eliminate the guesswork of allocating and optimizing budgets across multiple channels.

Domino’s and their agency SEM used Performance Max campaigns with a Maximize Conversion Bidding strategy to increase order revenue across more of Google’s channels. They used a consistent and compelling “Get 3, Pay for 1” offer and also excluded brand keywords to better evaluate performance compared to other campaigns.

It was one of the strongest revenue-driving campaigns among all Google campaigns, including brand and non-brand Search campaigns.

During the test period, Performance Max delivered a 5% increase in revenue at a ROAS that was 173% above benchmarks. The campaign improved account-level CTR by 18% and increased conversion rate by 11%.

Generate Leads with Performance Max

Lead generation marketers face unique challenges, and marketers often value different types of leads based on their goals. For some advertisers, lead quantity is a priority. For many, it’s important to optimize for lead quantity.

At the same time, consumer journeys are increasingly complex; it takes multiple steps to find the company they’re looking for. Then, customers often need to provide their information in order for marketers to follow up. That can make it difficult to identify quality leads. With Performance Max, you can focus on the types of leads that drive the highest ROI.

In this module, you’ll learn how to leverage Performance Max to focus your efforts on generating high-quality leads.

Introducing Lead Generation with Performance Max

Let’s look at how Regus, a global provider of flexible workspace solutions, leveraged Performance Max to drive growth with Lead Generation.

Partnering with their agency Croud, the Regus team aimed to grow their inquiry volume and revenue while meeting cost-per-inquiry profitability targets. To accelerate growth, they were open to diversifying their channel mix. 

Prior to adopting Performance Max, they didn’t have any presence on YouTube or Discover, and wanted to find an effective way to expand across the funnel while maintaining strong lead quality as they grew across more channels.

Initial results with Performance Max were positive, especially in the Regus UK campaign. But since the campaign was using Target CPA bidding, it was driving more phone calls than website inquiries, as phone calls come at a lower CPA. To properly value phone calls vs. website inquiries, Regus had to adopt Value Bidding and assign relative values to each of the different conversion actions. They worked with Croud to assign static conversions values and changed to a target ROAS bid strategize across all Performance Max campaigns. This let them focus optimizations to win more inquiries via website-form submissions to request a quote, which tend to have better conversion rate to paid memberships compared to phone calls.

After the shift to value-based bidding, Regus saw a 40% growth in qualified inquiries and a 45% decrease in cost-per-inquiry compared to Search campaigns. They ran 10 tests in different markets and all achieved incremental inquiry growth. Regus and Croud found that Performance Max helps drive growth by finding pockets of incrementality, while Value Bidding is needed to focus media spend on the most valuable conversion types.

Build a strong foundation for measuring success

As you begin to develop a strategy for your campaign, use Enhanced Conversions and Offline Conversion Import (OCI) to define what you’ll measure.

Enhanced Conversions for Leads

The easiest way to upload your offline conversions is Enhanced Conversions for Leads. It simplifies the process of importing offline conversions for advertisers, and you can set up Enhanced Conversions for Leads entirely in your Google Ads Account. But if you’re already set up with Offline Conversion Import, you can continue leveraging that process.

Offline Conversion Import

With Performance Max, you can drive higher-quality leads using the offline conversion import feature, connecting offline user data back to your campaigns. Offline conversion imports tells Google which leads were highest quality and most valuable. Performance Max will then be able to grow high quality leads.

With Offline Conversion Import, you can:

• Measure offline or otherwise non-trackable conversion events up to 90 days after the click 
• Import these events directly into Google Ads and/or Google Marketing Platform
• Gain a deeper and more granular understanding of how each online click drives offline actions through better reporting
• Distinguish between clicks and queries that lead to high- vs. low-quality leads
• Use this intelligence to unlock better bid optimization

Grow Offline Sales with Performance Max

Looking to increase store visits or in-store sales? Performance Max for store goals could be the ideal solution. This campaign captures the online consumer’s attention and encourages them to visit a store, driving performance and revenue.

In this module, you’ll learn how to:

• Identify which types of verticals and businesses most benefit from Performance Max for store goals
• List all the formats across Google properties
• Use Max conversion bidding 
• Follow Performance Max for store goals best practices to advertise products

Introducing Performance Max for store goals

Performance Max for store goals is the next generation of Local campaigns focused on simplicity and exclusively driving store goals. You can reach consumers across Google platforms who are most likely to visit your business, driving ROI for different locations. In this section, discover the key features of Performance Max for store goals. 

How is Performance Max for store goals different from local campaigns?

Performance Max for store goals delivers the same performance as Local campaigns while benefiting from the upgrades in machine learning and additional inventory sources offered by Performance Max. 

Now that we know what Performance Max for store goals is and the industries that would benefit from this campaign type, let’s learn how it works!

How is Performance Max for store goals different from local campaigns?

Performance Max for store goals delivers the same performance as Local campaigns while benefiting from the upgrades in machine learning and additional inventory sources offered by Performance Max. 

Now that we know what Performance Max for store goals is and the industries that would benefit from this campaign type, let’s learn how it works!

If you decide to use Maximize conversion value bidding, make sure you apply conversion values to each conversion goal associated with the campaign to help the campaign understand your ROAS and optimize accordingly. For example: A phone call click is worth $10 each, a get directions click is worth $15 each, and a store visit is worth $25 each to your business.

Campaign setup

• Performance Max for store goals is machine learning-powered. Give the machine as much data as you can that meets your business needs. Recommended: Promote a minimum of 10 locations per account.
• To control your budgets per location, set one campaign per location (although more is recommended whenever possible), while meeting the recommendations at the account level.
• Run for at least 30 days with $500 per day (store visits bidding). If you’re in Mexico, India, or Turkey, the minimum recommended daily budget is $450.

Creative

• Refresh your creative. Creative is your most powerful tool to drive performance and lets you customize the campaign to promote new products, menu items or, sales.
• For weekend sales, start the campaign 2-3 weeks in advance, then refresh your creative frequently to move from more generic store creative to sales-focused creative. This allows you to do time-based promotions without disrupting performance.

Reporting

• Store visits and local actions will be reported by individual store location; review store performance data to get the most insights.
• If available, compare performance to other offline media with similar offline objectives (print, radio, flyers, TV, etc).

Create a Performance Max Campaign

The increasingly complex consumer journey needs automation to effectively engage people at scale. Designed to complement other Google Ads campaigns, Performance Max uses the best of Google’s automation capabilities to help you drive better performance. Performance Max can also help you find more converting consumers across all Google channels — YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, and more.

In this module, you’ll learn how to create Performance Max campaigns to help you drive more conversions and achieve your marketing objectives. 

Set up a Performance Max campaign

Learn how to start a Performance Max campaign. Or check out these instructions in the Google Ads Help Center.

Evaluate Performance Max Results

With Performance Max, you have tools to see how well your campaign is functioning. The Insights page helps you understand your campaign’s performance and find new opportunities for your business and ads. Marketers can also run experiments that reveal the changes that happen after adding a Performance Max campaign to their account.

In this module, you’ll learn how to 

• Navigate the Insights page
• Evaluate campaign performance to inform business decisions

Get to know your Insights page

The Insights page curates both the data in your account and broader Google data, like trends across Google, to help you streamline your daily performance monitoring workflows. It does this by:

• Identifying drivers of your campaign’s week-on-week and month-on-month performance
• Identifying and helping you proactively resolve performance issues
• Sharing marketing intelligence from Google to help you adapt and grow your business and ads

Let’s look at what Insights include.

Note: Screenshots use sample data intended for illustrative purposes.

Select the arrow to learn more.

Top performance drivers: 

See which asset groups and, if relevant, product, product groups, and product types are driving performance changes.

Use these Insights to understand performance. If something looks out of the ordinary, dive in to see if you need to troubleshoot asset groups or product feeds. 

At least six weeks after launch, evaluate your Performance Max campaign to see how many conversions or how much revenue it’s driving at your target CPA or ROAS.

Review these methods and best practices for measuring your results.

Pre-post testing

Pre-post testing measures the uplift in conversions coming from a Performance Max campaign. By comparing pre-post metrics at an account level for your marketing goal and for campaigns that have comparable conversion goals, you can evaluate whether a Performance Max campaign delivered better performance or increased conversions at your target CPA or ROAS.

Key takeaways

• Performance Max for store goals is a next generation of local campaigns that uses machine learning to reach the right consumers with the right ad.
• You can reach consumers across Google platforms, such as Search, Gmail, Google Display Network, Maps, the Business Profile, and YouTube. 
• There are two bidding options to choose from: maximize conversion value bidding or maximize conversion bidding. 
• When setting up your campaign, provide enough data that meets your business need, set up 10 locations minimum, and allow at least 30 days with $500 daily budget for optimal performance.
• Refresh your creatives often and for time based promotions, such as weekend sales, start the campaign 2-3 weeks in advance.
• For insights into performance, look at store performance data and compare performance against other offline media, such as print and radio.

Chapter.VII. Discover the Value of Optimization Score

Ready to take your campaigns to the next level? With optimization score, you can easily uncover potential for Search, Shopping, Video Action, Display, Discovery, and Performance Max, and App campaigns..

By the end of this module, you’ll be equipped to use optimization score to improve campaign performance.

What’s optimization score?

Optimization score is an estimate of how well your Google Ads account is set to perform. An optimization score is a value between 0 and 100, and higher scores indicate a campaign or account is better optimized and has fewer available actionable opportunities. 

Optimization score uses a combination of statistical models, simulations, and machine learning to identify the optimization uplift potential of each recommendation. If a recommendation is more closely tied to performance, it’s given more weight for the overall score. Recommendations with a higher uplift percentage have a larger impact on advertiser performance.

Along with the score, you’ll see a list of recommendations that can help optimize each campaign. Each recommendation shows how much your optimization score will be impacted, in percentages, when a recommendation is applied. 

Optimization score is shown for active Search, Display, Discovery, Video Action, Shopping, Apps and Performance Max campaigns.

Optimize accounts

An accounts optimization score is a great place to start when looking for recommendations to improve performance. What’s more, this feature speeds up the implementation process for optimizations — saving you time.

Prioritize campaigns

By tracking your account’s optimization score metrics, you can determine which campaigns have the most potential for improvement and prioritize them for optimization.

Dive into optimization score 

To take a look at your optimization core, open up your Recommendations page at the manager (MCC) or single account level. Once there, you can explore all the features of your optimization score.

You can dismiss recommendations that aren’t in line with your goals. But what if you dismiss a recommendation and then change your mind? No problem! You can view the recommendation again by selecting the Dismissed filter and choosing the option to un-dismiss. Additionally, if the recommendation is found to be relevant again in the future, it may resurface.

Key takeaways

• Optimization score can help you uncover optimization and growth opportunities for your campaigns.
• This dynamic, adaptive, and real-time tool can help ensure that your accounts are fully optimized to meet your desired objectives. Click here to learn more about optimization score.

Chapter. VIII. Apply Recommendations Automatically

Unlocking the full potential of your Google Ads account is essential to meeting your goals. By applying recommendations automatically, you can help boost the efficiency and performance of your account while saving valuable time.

In this module, you’ll learn how to:

• Explain how applying recommendations automatically can improve account performance
• Identify the types of available recommendations to apply automatically 
• Implement a strategy to automatically apply recommendations

Apply recommendations automatically

Optimization score is an estimate of how well your Google Ads accounts are set to perform across Search, Display, Shopping, Discovery, and Video Action campaigns. Your recommendations are based on your account’s performance history, your campaign settings, and trends across Google. Together, these factors determine which updates should be applied to improve the performance and efficiency of your account.

How does it work?

When you opt-in to automatically apply recommendations, you are configuring your Google Ads accounts to apply best practices, allowing you to focus your attention on strategic initiatives. You still maintain the ability to apply select recommendations automatically without increasing your budget.

Key benefits

Applying recommendations automatically has five key benefits:

Scale best practices: This feature applies tailored recommendations based on your settings and goals, meaning you’ll have far more opportunities miss to connect with potential customers. Get more out of your campaigns by ensuring your account is always running with the right features based on your settings and goals.

Improve Perfomance: Optimization score takes into consideration performance history, campaign settings, and trends across Google to ensure the most relevant recommendations are applied to help improve results.

Boost Efficiency: Spend less time on manual tasks and more time on business strategy. Customized recommendations are informed by your account’s performance history, your campaign settings, and trends across Google.

Visibility and Control: You can choose not to apply select recommendations automatically. This includes the ability to disable the automatic application of individual or bulk recommendations. You can track your progress and see your latest applied recommendations in your weekly performance report, your account’s Change History page, and the History tab of the Recommendations page.

No increase to budget: Applying recommendations automatically will not increase your account-level budget or reallocate budget between your existing campaigns. To review growth or budget-related recommendations, remember to visit the Recommendations page.

Who is a good fit to automatically apply recommendations?

Agencies, marketers, and advertisers are looking to Google to help them understand key industry trends, including those related to privacy, so that they can effectively grow and serve their customers. As you pivot towards more advanced tactics, you may find yourself with less time to take care of ongoing optimizations. With the option to “opt-in” to automatically apply certain recommendations, you can dedicate your time key strategic initiatives.

Manage and review recommendations applied automatically

Once you’ve opted in to automatically applying a recommendation, you can track which recommendations are enabled in the History tab of the Recommendations page and you can opt out of them at any time. You can review automatically applied recommendations to see how frequently a recommendation has been applied in the past week, when it was last applied, and when you first opted-in.

Applying recommendations automatically will not increase your budget, so continue to review the Recommendations page to ensure your budget isn’t limiting your performance. 

Key takeaways

• By opting-in to automatically apply recommendations, you are regularly implementing best practices to your Google Ads accounts.
• There are three categories of recommendations: ads and extensions, keywords and targeting, and bids and budgets.
• You can manage and review what recommendations are enabled in the History tab of the Recommendations page.