TPE #138: the latest PPC news you might’ve missed

Read time: 3 minutes

GM, Miles here with The PPC Edge.

The PPC world is changing fast — as you know.

This newsletter’s purpose is to keep you informed on what works now (and what doesn’t), so you can get results faster.

From now on, next to my weekly deep-dives, I will also report more frequently on the latest PPC news updates (the most important ones, anyway).

That way, you’ll never miss anything, and you’re always up to date.

I just came back from an awesome vacation in France, and I missed a lot of big news updates.

So I caught up — and I’ll share the most important ones with you today.

Let’s dive right in!

1: RSAs now show full data instead of the useless performance labels.

This might be the biggest update of recent years: we finally have conversion & click data for each headline and description.

This makes ad testing so much better. Say goodbye to the stupid “good, best, learning” asset ratings — and say hello to granular, data-driven ad copy testing like back in the day.

This opens up many new possibilities.

Here’s how to access the data: go to campaigns > assets > add the right columns so you can see real data for your RSA assets.

Source: Bob

2: Google is rolling out negative keyword lists to Performance Max campaigns (among other updates).

A very welcome update: Google will roll out campaign-level negative keyword lists. This is officially the end of the support workaround, because we’ll finally be able to directly add negative keywords, and negative keyword lists to our pMax campaigns.

But that’s not all — Google is rolling out more Performance Max updates:

• Increased Search Theme limits (use carefully).
• More demographic targeting (and gender exclusions).
• New reporting for new customer acquisition performance.
• More data for your pMax assets (conversions, clicks, costs & more).
• More Final URL Expansion assets reporting (see what Google created with “text customization” and “Final URL Expansion” — and remove anything that’s irrelevant or underperforming).

Source: Google (first seen by Duane Brown)

3: New Branded Searches conversion metric lets you track brand lift for upper funnel campaigns.

According to Google, “Branded Searches” are a new conversion type that shows the number of searches users made for your brand on Google and YouTube after viewing your ads.

This can help you measure brand lift and the wider impact of your upper funnel campaigns.

Super interesting!

This is available for Video, Performance Max, and Demand Gen campaigns on YouTube, Discover, and Gmail inventory.

Source: Search Engine Land

4: Google has secretly “upgraded” Brand Exclusions into AI Max for Search.

I didn’t know this, but apparently Google has started to “upgrade” Brand Exclusions into AI Max.

This is relevant for Search campaigns, and doesn’t affect Brand Exclusions in pMax.

Source: Duane Brown (he made a good remark on why a small change like this can have a big impact for unknowing advertisers: keep an eye on your spend if you’re unwillingly “upgrading” to AI Max in the near future.

5: Google is rolling out gender exclusions for Performance Max.

You can now exclude certain genders from your pMax campaigns (female, male, unknown). This is a great layer of control if you’re operating in market that’s heavily focused on one demographic/gender.

I would not use it if there’s not clear focus on one specific gender — and always base your exclusions on data (I had a client once that was 100% focused on men, but 30% of the conversions still came from females — turned out lots of women bought the products as gifts).

Source: Thomas Eccel

6: Google is improving the pMax channel reporting with a share of cost slider.

With Google’s new pMax channel reporting, you can now also select a slider that calculates the share of cost for each channel.

This is another great update by Google, giving us more insights into pMax data.

Source: Thomas Eccel

7: You can now run 50/50 experiments for AI Max for Search campaigns.

Google wants to make it easy for advertisers to start using AI Max for Search. That’s why they just released a way to A/B test AI Max vs your existing Search setup, directly in the Experiments tab.

To me, this signals how important AI Max is for Google — and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s gonna be the future of Search campaigns.

Source: Search Engine Land

Quick recap.

And there you have it: 7 of the biggest news updates of the last month or so:

1. RSAs now show full data instead of the useless performance labels.
2. Google is rolling out negative keyword lists to Performance Max campaigns (among other updates).
3. New Branded Searches conversion metric lets you track brand lift for upper funnel campaigns.
4. Google has secretly “upgraded” Brand Exclusions into AI Max for Search.
5. Google is rolling out gender exclusions for Performance Max.
6. Google is improving the pMax channel reporting with a share of cost slider.
7. You can now run 50/50 experiments for AI Max for Search campaigns.

Never a dull moment in PPC :).

By the way, if you’re serious about taking your Google Ads results and career to the next level, consider joining The PPC Hub.

Inside, you’ll get access to high-level courses, resources, and a thriving community of 2.000+ experienced Google Ads Specialists who all learn and grow together.

Feel free to check it out here, we’d love to have you!

That’s all for today — thanks for reading.

See you next week!

Cheers,

Miles (& Bob)