Don't trust Google Ads data — use this metric instead

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00:00and so if you're optimizing by that data you're not going to take right decisions I think because you're you're optimizing bya that looks better than what actually is all right welcome back everyone to the PPC Mastery podcast today I am joined by another special guest Caterina Mariani um she's a member of the PPC Hub and uh she's also someone who is frequently sharing a lot of golden nuggets on LinkedIn so uh it's my pleasure to to have you on Caterina and before we go into your backstory and before I let you introduce yourself um I want to ask you real quick what is something you believe about Google Ads that most people would disagree with thank you for having me here I'm so honored to be here and so thrilled I think the the thing that I disagree with most is that uh sander shopping can't be used with a pmax on the same products I think it's a great combo and uh using a standard shopping paired with a pmax feed only on the same products can be very effective in Ecom honestly and most people say most people don't use it I feel like and most people are like no you shouldn't do that but I actually disagree ah interesting okay well we can that's something that I definitely would like to dive into so let's see uh where the conversation goes U but before we do that um could you maybe in a in 60 seconds or so just introduce yourself to everyone and um yeah just let us know where how you started with Google Ads where you are now in your career what kind of clients you work for ETC so I am Italian uh but I lived in Norway for seven years I moved there

01:41when I was 18 and I worked in an agency and I learned Google Ads there and then I wanted to move back and in moving back I became a freelance and now I've been freelancing for two years and I work mostly with e-commerce clients and uh usually like around seven figure and I lately I've been really really interested in getting more into like how channels interact together and you know looking more at the overall strategy of an eCommerce ads um you know yeah strategy because as we we're going to talk about if you just look at Google Ads you're going to see a very you know narrow picture of what scaling means and what growing in commerce mean nice one yeah so let's dive into that because I I know that you um yeah from from your post and the the conversations that we've had I see that you're talking a lot a lot about looking Beyond just Google Ads of metrics and and really helping your clients um with metrics that matter to them and trying to make real business impact and not just growing the Google Ads performance and you you said that many experts focus on the wrong details so the wrong metrics um and that they should talk about the that should they should focus on different metrics like me Etc yeah can you talk about why you think that is so important and maybe yeah explain what kind of metrics there are that you look at to make a real impact for your client that are maybe different from the standard metrics that we see in Google Ads that's a very nice question and I would love to talk like

03:20for hours about this because I think that uh you know when you look at the Google interface you're going to look at conversion data that's inflated and that's because um for example I was uh doing a bit of U you know I was looking at it one of my clients and just out of curiosity I summed up the revenue that Google has showed and the revenue that meta has showed and it was higher than the actual Revenue that they got we got in backend and this doesn't take into account even SEO where we're doing an amazing job organic social Etc so the data that you see in both Google and in meta is quite higher than what the actual truth is is and so if you're optimizing by that data you're not going to take right decisions I think because you're you're optimizing by that looks better than what it actually is and why is that the reason is that platforms obviously have their own interest in making you you know in making the RAS look high making the data look high and nice because you're going to probably invest more money you know and that makes sense I mean the data is is not objective it's quite biased by the platform themselves and also they don't take into account the other touch points so in Google Ads if someone you know clicked on an ad and then maybe clicked on SEO listing organic listing or met ads afterwards Google is saying no I you know I have the credit for that conversion and meta is doing the same and so if the Google specialist just looks at Google Ads and if the meta ad specialist just looks at their account they're not they cannot possibly you know do their best to actually scale an incom and make sure that that spend is

04:59incremental so that it will bring to you know additional Revenue that would not have happened otherwise um and the metrics that I find fundamental and I look at least weekly uh on my clients are myr which is um the total of Revenue divided by out spend and aov is very important I think it's pretty like neglected in the Google Community I would say I don't want to be too harsh but I don't think we talk about it often enough and definitely also um cost per acquisition of the client that's so fundamentally in Ecom and I feel the med ads Community is better at it but I feel that the Google Ads Community is you know lagging a bit behind on it and and also fundamental to track is profit you should know how much actual profit you made for your client and not just the revenue because you know scaling knowing how much spend to put in each Channel KN knowing how much prospecting Etc it must be based on the profit margin that you actually have because otherwise it's impossible to you know grow an actual business yeah that's super interesting why do you think uh that the the Google Community the Google ad specialist might be a little bit behind on on the importance of those metrics when you compare it for example with meta Specialists I don't know that's a very good question I think meta maybe I don't know honestly maybe it's more of an incremental mindset they might have I'm not sure honestly uh but they talk more about new customer acquisition and such yeah makes sense may maybe also because for us as Google

06:37ad Specialists we are so used to being in the bottom of the funnel and we kind of take everything for granted because getting conversions is relatively easy not saying Google Ads is easy but you know with meta you have to like fight for every conversion because you're interrupting people stop a funnel people are not looking for what you have to offer so they have to think about those things and for us it's just like oh yeah they're already searching for this product so they're going to convert anyway that might be uh might be part of it as well I think so too so you mentioned the the the M aov your your your C cost requirement customer and uh and profit margins what does that look like for you in terms of your um yeah your analysis your analysis processes um yeah how do you uh calculate those things like for example me is not available inside of Google Ads do you have access to clients dashboards or backend systems or is there anything that you create yourself what does that usually look like yeah I do have access to backend systems and so I just Su you know I just get the revenue and I for last week's say and then I divide it by Aspen on meta and Aspen on Google and adpen on other channels and so I get the me and all I do like I don't really I really I would really struggle if I would up to the account looking at Google Ads Revenue I don't really like I look into it more as a diagnostic tool uh but I I steer on mer and I calculate that way and I have a Google sheet and I also check aov weekly and aov is so important because then I can you know there's a

08:17lot of talk about um how to optimize aov in Ecom based on you know the if you can have bundles if you can have complimentary products if you can have uh you know post sale sales if you can have all of that that's you know in the interface of the website but aov is also influenced by uh the products that we pushing on Google meta like if I have a you know if I put more money on a specific item set on meta or on a specific item set on Google you know that influences aov and so there was a period uh last year when one client of mine introduced a cheaper category of products and I saw the aob went down on on um on uh on the back end I mean on my Google sheet where I check aov and and then I did the huge ass analysis like I did a big analysis on meta and on Google and I I found out that that category was being pushed a lot by both Google and meta because it was having a very nice conversion rate and very nice Ros but it was draining down our aov and so that I removed those products both from meta and from Google and I put them only on one pmax feed only campaign where we had like 16 R like an insane Ros of course without the brand um but that way our aov went up again and our whole account wasn't you know disrupted by this cheaper category of products but we still could continue to sell them and you know that's how I I optimize through you know a more holistic way of looking at an Ecommerce awesome yeah I think um more

09:56people should should have that mindset of not only like yeah okay I'm the Google ad specialist my Ras is good I'm fine no you should look start looking Beyond it to um have that conversation and include the other Specialists and uh as well with the with your talks with the client hey guys real quick if you like this episode don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss anything in the future and feel free to share with a friend colleague or family member cuz that's the only way we can grow this show all right back to the show but I I feel like a lot of clients not only Google ad specialist but a lot of clients are also just still super Ras minded have you had cases where you had to actually educate them on different metrics to look at or is it always like the clients that you were working with already knew that those things are more important no it's definitely a case of uh teaching uh I do feel though lately I don't know maybe I've been lucky but lately the client that I'm getting I'm more aware of the fact that you know they look more into their own Revenue because they've been burned often like this client uh had spent a lot of money like €40,000 on YouTube ads and then they checked their actual revenue and they saw no increase and uh there was a Google Ads rep that suggested them to do so and so then they were like wait a second you know like maybe I shouldn't trust that much and then now they're more eager to to work this way but I still have to educate them so and it's it's a lot of fun because like with one client where I worked uh for a long time now they also use the word myr which makes me very happy and they also like when they purchase products they also

11:35take into account okay but this is like you know how would this influence aov and all the you know they also think this way which is much easier for me to work with yeah yeah that's that's um you you mentioned that I don't know the clients that I work with are um usually pretty open-minded to towards those metrics but I think that's probably also because you are the expert who is talking about those things so you attract those clients to you as well maybe because I think the I think the clients that you attract with your LinkedIn content are usually pretty sophisticated with that stuff because they either think that oh yeah we need to do more with those types of metrics those are those really matter or they already have that and think we need an expert who can help us execute on that so that's probably why um and also I think in the industry more and more people are starting to wake up to this because of there's more much more third party attribution tools now than there were let's say three four years ago when I uh when I worked with one of my bigger clients a couple years ago they uh also had the same issue as you described they looked at um only the data from from Facebook ads at the time and Google Ads and they thought they were super profitable because the numbers were just so good and then they uh yeah got the the real numbers in at the end of the month and they were super they lost a lot of money so they had to use third party attribution tool but there weren't that many at the time I feel like there's more and more tools popping up now which is which is awesome I agree and you yeah and you U you recently posted something uh on LinkedIn where you said that you wish everyone

13:13focus more on incrementality in 2025 and less on unimportant fluff um yeah can you just break that down for me like what ises what does unimportant fluff mean to you and how do you actually get incremental gains for your clients I get so shy when I get like uh I don't know reference to my LinkedIn uh content but uh no it's it's true like I think if I have to be honest like if you look at the Google post or like what people talk about it's not that much about um say also prospecting or you know looking at at the backend data or talking about customer acquisition cost or aov or lifetime value or the things that I'm talking about which I think are the most important one even in doing a Google job even in being a specialist and I think people talk often about like I don't know Minor Details for example for example if you like on a YouTube campaign the the most important thing is the creatives and I think the googlee are not talking about that often enough and I love getting to learn meta more and that you know world because they talk about creatives much more than we do and we talk about you know all a and you know other small which of course influence things but or like a minor change in CPC or I mean they help of course but if you don't have the right picture in mind and if you don't have the right creatives then you're not you you're not having the biggest impact that you could have that's what I meant yeah yeah it makes sense and I

14:51think it also goes back to how we as Google ad especially just grew up as you said like again meta they are so used to they always say the creative is is everything especially with the since a couple of years I I know just about 10% of of meta ads but I know enough from people who have uh from from experts who said that they just put everything on basically open targeting or abroad or whatever it's called I don't know the exact terminology there um and then let the creatives do the heavy lifting but for us asist as you said yeah we are so used to tweaking the campaign structures and negatives and excluding placements Etc that we completely lose the point which is better hooks better offers better storytelling in the creatives ETC so uh yeah that's it's not only in this case I guess for you uh it's not only the me and and different data points but you you also have this mindset of looking um Beyond everything that is in Google Ads like for example the creatives or landing pages Etc so are there are there any other things that you do that you believe is just like really core to driving results that a lot of people don't really focus on now like for example when they focus too much on the unimportant fluff uh yeah like I would say a couple of things and the first one is the looking at what other channels do that's also very important like um meta influences Google so much and the other way around too they do I mean when people buy a product they often get more touch points that's obvious but we don't work in a way that an knowledges that and so for example I made the

16:29compaign in meta where I made ads just for one brand and so there were catalog ads just about one brand and I didn't touch anything about the brand on Google and then I went on Google and checked after a couple of weeks and the sales for that brand skyrocketed and I didn't touch Google at all and so I I made I changed Google performance just by changing something in meta and and so especially when you scale an Ecom you really should make sure that you have enough cold traffic in both channels and prospecting and I think that's something that people don't really do like people talk about retargeting in glads and prospecting Etc but then I wonder do you know what meta is doing you know if you make a pmax for example pmax are so dependent on meta traffic they're so influenced because they try to go at the warmest clients and if you if you don't make sure that meta is targeting I would say Nom mature ecome mostly new customers and you don't have enough prospec in prospecting in Google Ads that then and if you don't do this across channels then you're going to struggle a little bit and also the creative part like I'm making I'm editing a little bit some ugc's in Canva or dubbing ugc's in 11 Labs like I think that's much more important than you know um looking at the most Minor Details In Google Ads which I still obsess about sometimes but not as much as before and so if you if you look at all the channels together you're also going to see what work the best in meta and when you produce content you can use it across you know YouTube and meta Pinterest even I'm testing Pinterest

18:05it's very cool cpms are very low cpts are lower you know like just having a very very cross Channel mindset and also another thing is uh Logistics uh because I mean for example now on a client of mine we have uh mer of 10 and we have uh we have increased in Revenue compared to last year in January so things are going amazingly well and I could push more adpen I could you know push more in adpen and getting more Revenue back if you have a m of 10 that's usually the wise thing to do because otherwise you're missing out on incremental revenue and profit right um but the logistics part of things is a bit you also have to look into that because we had so many orders from uh November which was fantastic for this client and so logistic is lagging a bit behind so I cannot press more you know I cannot push more and if you have a Synergy with Logistics too you really grow the business instead of just you know looking at your own screen and the R Us and the metrics that you see how do you do that then do you talk directly to Logistics or you ask your clients like oh how's it going with Logistics I usually get updates from the client uh but I also have a direct line with Logistics and I send sometimes on product analysis and I send the search term trending search term report often and and so they were looking to you know some more info from Asset Marketing to inform their purchases which new product should we purchas which categories and so I I send the you know trending Search terms oh nice yeah I guess also to make

19:43sure that you have enough stock of the products that actually sell the most exactly yeah yeah Ecom is such a it's a this is what what I always loved about the the Ecom game is that you have to you you have to think about these things which is uh can be challenging as well but I think it's the the people like you who think about these things are are always like two three four five steps ahead from the rest um because you you know you have different conversations with your clients it's not like oh we increased the CTR this month by 11% and we had so much impression shares um no you're actually talking to them on a business level like okay make sure you have enough stock of this product because the uh sorry my Spotify started so I got scared sorry no worries no worries um and then you you have different conversations with your clients which we're also um uh pushing now more in the PPC Hub with uh unit economics you know the importance of that the profit margins Etc because with e-commerce um it's just impossible to skill a product or a client with with bad margins so I think the the more you can talk to your clients about these things the the better you will be able to serve them but they will also be impressed because you talk about way different things than the regular Google ad specialist who's only talking about impression shares Etc um exactly so speaking of the speaking of reporting how does that look like for you um what what type of metrics do you report on um I know I know you mentioned the things here but um the traditional way of reporting is kind of like okay every month we send out this huge Report with

21:20Google Ads data on how Google Ads perform this month um what does that look like for you I mostly send so I have the main dashboard I still send a monthly reporting um dashboard and the main metrics are the ones that I mentioned before uh so it's uh Revenue outspend uh new customer acquisition and um and I also put a couple of you know like traffic and Impressions just so they like to see that um and then I I show how much we spent on each Channel and then I show stuff that I think is more important so for example um which products we push the most on Google Ads which project had the most uh Ras which is still a useful magic I'm not saying Ros is not useful in diagnosis or knowing a little bit of what's going on you know and so I show yeah which products have the most Ross and which landing pages are um the most um had the most clicks and something about the the Search terms both from SEO and Google Ads and also like um from meta which ads are the most the most uh the highest performing ones yeah yeah awesome um all right so what I take from this is that you have a really like cross Channel mindset um you look at different metrics than other um than just the the things that we see inside of Google Ads um there's a lot of integration between meta and Google Ads uh SEO you look at metrics like me aov cost acquire

22:57customer profit data um is there anything else outside of these things that you think are really important to have conversations about with your clients yeah I mean with my clients it's most the thing that we talked about the most are about the creatives and the positioning and and that's very very very important because I mean I don't directly go to I don't ugc creators and ask them for ugc's but I helped them to have you know the right content and there's like that was such a mind-blowing thing for me to you know go into because uh with I mean there's so many opportunities right now with I mean I mentioned it before if you add it on c for example which is very easy easy tool or if you if you for example test a little bit with AI and try to brainstorm about which other angles you could use because often you know we do have a very much bottom of funel approach of things we try to sell more and we try to get more to the last bottom of the funnel but often it's much smarter to try to get people more you know early in the funnel because then you have that first click and then you're more likely to get your ads showned whereas everyone else is trying is fighting here but if you start here you know that's that's much more of a smart strategy to me at least and so testing more we test more creatives definitely and I try to push for getting more creatives and for test testing more you know creative angles

24:35and different pain points and try to make more of educational content Which is higher in the funnel than just like buy now we you know there's discount Etc awesome so um yeah Caterina I think those was super valuable and I think this is going to be um yeah opening a lot of eyes for people so what I want to do now is transition into a few rapid fire questions I'm just going to fire a few questions your way feel free to just answer with one word or give more context and um first question is shopping standard shopping or performance Max combo both yeah I know you mentioned that in the beginning as well so can you just yeah maybe talk a little bit about how you how you com combine those two yeah uh so what I do is a strategy that I really like is using a labelizer there are many many in the markets and uh I'm using one from Valeria shti actually who is a specialist that I work with and um when you get legalizer you get different I mean I think most know this but different you know like categories of performance of your products and then I put a standard shopping for each category and a pmax feed only for each category I don't do this for all the Comm merces that I have but the ones that are spending enough you know the quite mature ones I think it's necessary because then you get the standard shopping to get more towards callar traffic and the pmax feed only to kind of retarget the traffic and it's also like you know a different tactic than what most do which I also think is important in Google ad because it's also I mean what you do is influenced by your

26:13competitors too yeah interesting um I think I know the answer to this but Legion or e-commerce Ecom yeah to be easy easy pick um do you think Google is going to remove keyword match types in 2025 or 2026 oh that's a good question uh I'm not sure I think it's such a huge change for us that they're trying to be a bit careful and you know trying to beat the bush so I would say maybe 2026 honestly yeah yeah and I I I I um notice how I by Framing the question I said 2025 or 2026 but I mean if you think that it's going to that they're never going to remove it then that can also be an answer so let me actually rephrase do you think Google is going to remove keyword match types ever they might but it's going to take quite some time because we're quite used to it and they try to make us decently happy I would say like they try not to get too much hassle from us so I yeah I say in some years maybe have to massage it in first but hey maybe maybe search Max is the new uh it's the first step um okay do you think Google is going to lose more search market share in the upcoming months or years good question yeah I think so I don't know how much I don't I'm not as catastrophic as people saying oh goog is dying because the data is not saying that uh but I do think that they're going to search is different I mean just I look at like my friends search for I don't know

27:50restaurants or info about products on Tik Tok you know Tik Tok is kind of you know and so I do think they're GNA use their market share we're going to change how we search but I don't think I'm not as catastrophic as other people for now it's an interesting point because I think um from the reports that they bring out uh on the search engine uh search engine share or search market share I'm not sure if they actually Factor factored in social media um because I assume that if they did I I have to double check but I don't think I remember seeing Tik Tok in the the top 10 but that is huge here with my girlfriend as well if if we go somewhere and we're looking for restaurants or or hiking trails in in Cape Town then it's just oh looking on Tik Tok and then boom you know uh you see it immediately exactly I'm not sure if they actually factor that in and if they haven't then the res market share should probably be a lot lower um okay what's your favorite PPC tool at the moment labelizer goodness um and the last one here is what is the best Google Ads advice you've ever gotten the best Prospect more don't obsess over remarketing make sure you Prospect solid all right that's it for the rapid fire questions I have one final question for you Caterina and that is if you had to give experienced or or beginner PPC experts one tip that could really improve their careers what would that be I mean I would like to say join the H but

29:28that's maybe too let me let me say another one um yeah don't fully trust the platform remember that the data using in Google Ads is from Google and it's not you know it's a little bit biased and try to look more at backend data you're going to make a better job honestly solid well I think in this episode people have learned exactly that so thank you so much Caterina for coming on um where can people follow you or connect with you on LinkedIn LinkedIn okay everybody follow Caterina Mariani on LinkedIn and um yeah thank you for listening watching viewing all that stuff thank you Caterina this was awesome thank you so much miles catch you all on the next episode don't forget to like subscribe peace ciao all right that's the end of this episode of the BBC Mastery podcast I hope you enjoyed it and if you don't want to miss any future episodes we're going to be back next week then don't forget to subscribe and share with the friend family member or a colleague uh cuz that's the only way we can grow this show now there's two more things I want to share with you if you want to take your Google Ads game to the next level the first one is if you want to get advanced Google Ads tips delivered straight into your inbox on Mondays and Fridays head over to PBC mastery.com newletter to subscribe to our newsletter called the PBC Edge and next to that if you want to really really really take your skills to the next level and become the best Google ad specialist you can possibly be then consider are joining the PPC Hub which is our coaching and Community platform for experienced Google Ads Specialists you can find everything about it on PBC mastery.com

31:07Hub and with that said I'll catch you in next week's episode Peace