PPCsurvey.com has just released a new State of PPC Global Report for 2022. It includes input from more than 500 PPC specialists from around the globe.

The findings cover search marketers’ largest concerns, top priorities, spend data, automation insight and a wealth of information about the most pressing trends in paid search.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the largest findings.

High adoption rate of automations in Google Ads. Two eye-opening metrics in the survey:

• 97% of respondents use Responsive Search Ads.
• 95% have implemented Smart Bidding (tCPA).

Most surprisingly a whopping 78% of respondents have used Auto-applied Recommendations.

The time has passed when advertisers could compete without adopting automation.

Adoption of automation is high, but marketer satisfaction is mixed. The least satisfying automation, according to respondents, was Auto-applied Recommendations.

• 83% of respondents reported that they were dissatisfied with the Auto-applied Recommendations feature.

Another surprise came from one of Google’s biggest pushes as of late: The Recommendations Tab. The feelings on Recommendations were 63% negative, according to PPCsurvey.com.

Why so negative? Top complaints about the feature include “the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach and the obvious push for smart bidding, broad match, and budget increases.”

Respondents were more satisfied with other automation.

• 51% of search marketers reported being satisfied with scripts.
• 48% said they were satisfied about tROAS Smart Bidding.
• 47% of respondents were satisfied about tCPA Smart Bidding.

The most pressing priorities for PPC Specialists. What are their clients’ top priorities? Some new concerns appeared this year.

• Priority #1: improve goal-setting beyond traditional metrics (e.g., conversions, revenue). This includes the consideration of margin, including new versus traditional customers and Lifetime Value (LTV), with 62% of respondents stating that these were a top priority.
• Priority #2: Tracking improvements including cookieless concerns, GA4 and server-side tagging came in second with 56%.

Unsatisfactory scores for Optiscore. Google now requires Google Partners to maintain a 70% Optiscore, PPCsurvey.com took a look at the satisfaction levels for the metric. Respondents could rate from 1-10 and the results were turned into a Net promoter score (NPS) to gauge how many participants would recommend.

Only 15% of respondents value a high Optiscore with 41% of respondents considering a high Optiscore a detractor in an account.

Using NPS methodology, this would give a high Optiscore an overall negative NPS of -26, which is a very undesirable score.

• You can download the full report (PDF) here. It includes more information including global yearly ad spends, ad platform adoption, time-consuming activities, the top challenges for agencies and much more.

Why we care. While the adoption of automation is considerable, the satisfaction is a mixed bag. Some standouts include Smart Bidding and scripts, but recommendations racked up high dissatisfaction numbers.

Additionally, practitioners aren’t fans of having a high Optiscore, with more considering it a detractor than a positive. If you rely on these scores and use these metrics as a barometer for account health, you are going against the collective thought of the PPC experts who participated in this survey.

Lastly, advertisers are looking for better performance tracking. Folks are looking outside simple conversions and to more meaningful performance data while also figuring out better tracking options as ad platforms and analytics platforms are changing.

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Customer Match lists will be leveraged more within Google Ads, according to an email sent to advertisers this week.

These lists will soon be eligible to be used within an account to help aid Smart Bidding and/or Optimized Targeting.

This is a shift from how Customer Match lists are applied today. Advertisers currently need to manually apply these to a campaign.

Customer Match lists won’t be used with manual bidding strategies. However, advertisers may still use bid modifiers manually to adjust bids.

When this is happening. Starting in Q2. The tentative timelines for the rollout of Customer Match lists in smart bidding are:

Advertisers can opt out. If you don’t want Customer Match lists to be applied to Smart Bidding or Optimized Targeting, you’ll have the ability to opt out at the ad account level. To opt out, go to Account settings then choose Customer Match and uncheck the Use all Customer Match lists in Smart Bidding or Optimized Targeting box.

You may also remove lists that you don’t want to include in this targeting.

Note: Google Ads Managers can’t opt out of all campaigns. This must be done at the individual account level.

Why we care. More signals for automation is a good thing. The ability to curate what lists are or aren’t utilized should be a boon for advertisers. Because you will need to opt out, make sure to take time for each account to ensure that the proper Customer Match lists are in play.

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Google blocked or removed 3.4 billion ads in 2021, according to its annual Ads Safety Report, which was released today. Google also tripled the number of account-level suspensions for advertisers in the last year.

3.4 billion ads blocked or removed. The top three categories of bad ads were abusing the ad network (652 million); adult content (287 million); and trademark (137 million). Here’s the full chart from Google:

How does 2021 compare to prior years?

• In 2020, 3.1 billion ads were blocked or removed.
• In 2019, that number was 2.7 billion.

Earlier this year, Microsoft reported it had removed more than 3 billion ads in 2021. That means Google and Microsoft combined to remove nearly 6.5 billion ads last year. 

5.7 billion ads restricted. Certain ads can’t be shown to every searcher in every location. These ads all fell into the category of either legally or culturally sensitive. By the numbers:

• Trademarks: 1.4 billion
• Other restricted businesses: 511.4 million
• Financial services: 223 million
• Healthcare and medicines: 219.3 million
• Alcohol: 128.5 million
• Adult content: 126.1 million
• Gambling and games: 108.1 million
• Legal requirements: 105.7 million
• Copyrights: 68.6 million

5.6 million advertiser accounts suspended. Google reported that bad actors operated “with more sophistication and at a greater scale, using a variety of tactics to evade our detection.”

One challenging example: bad actors created thousands of accounts simultaneously and used techniques like cloaking and text manipulation to show Google’s reviewers and systems different ad content than what a user would see. 

Publisher enforcement. Google also blocked or restricted ads from serving on 1.7 billion publisher pages, and took broader site-level enforcement action on about 63,000 publisher sites in 2021. 

The top three categories Google took action: sexual content, dangerous or derogatory, and weapons promotion and sales. Here’s a chart:

Ongoing fight against COVID misinformation and abuse. Google blocked ads from running on more than 500,000 pages for violating its policies against harmful health claims related to COVID-19.

• This included claims related to vaccines and testing, as well as price-gouging on critical supplies (e.g., masks).
• Google has blocked more than 106 million COVID-related ads since the pandemic began.

2022 Ukraine ad removals. Although this report covered 2021, Google provided an update on how many ads related to the war in Ukraine have been blocked so far in 2022: 8 million.

• Earlier this year, Google paused ads from showing in Russia and ads from Russian-based advertisers.
• The company added that it has removed ads from more than 60 state-funded media sites from its platforms.

Why we care. These “bad actors” are bad for searchers, advertisers and publishers. This big picture view is a great (and also somewhat shocking) reminder of how many threats there are for legitimate advertisers who want to reach their target audience. This also provides more context to why Google is pushing hard for advertiser verification and instituting things like its three-strikes policy. 

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Spring has been quite the busy season for Microsoft Advertising. First we heard about the news on RSA extensions adding an extra 60 days, then the search behemoth announced innovate new cash-back incentives ads. A handful of additions and upgrades have been announced in May, led by Auto-generated remarketing lists.

New auto-generated remarketing lists

You may see a new notification about audiences when logging into your Microsoft Advertising account. These new audiences are for those looking to “get started with remarketing, or you’re already using remarketing and want to optimize performance.”

Advertisers will have the ability to choose from the following preset audiences:

All Visitors. People who have visited your website in the past 30 days.

All Converters. People who have converted in the past 180 days.

Smart Remarketing. According to Microsoft these are “People who are likely to convert”. These audiences are powered by Microsoft Advertising’s audience intelligence with a goal of providing high conversion rates.

These breakouts make sense as they give advertisers flexibility to target (or remove) those commonly used audiences without requiring advanced technical knowhow. The smart remarketing sounds promising and may be worth a test by all advertisers if in fact the intelligence works as advertised.

Dynamic Search Ad rollout, subdomain support & exact domains

In other news, Microsoft’s Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) are rolling out to Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela.

Advertisers will also be rejoicing as they’ll now have the ability to use DSAs on subdomains. The changes don’t stop there as Exact auto-target URLs are coming for more fine tuned “URL equals” targeting than the “URL contains” operator. This should make specific targeting much easier for advertisers.

Other Microsoft Advertising additions

A few other helpful enhancements releasing in May include:

• Manage images in Microsoft Advertising Editor
  You can now create new ads, upload images as well as delete/replace previous images.
• Microsoft Audience Network enhancements
  New bidding is coming including CPM pricing and smart bidding.

Why We Care. While most folks reading this now already have remarketing lists created, the ‘smart remarketing’ lists are a new tool to test. While the previous visitors and previous purchasers aren’t revolutionary, they may help new advertisers perform better on the platform.

Lastly, the ability to be able to use DSAs on subdomains is a much welcomed addition and the

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June 30 is almost here. That’s when Google will sunset expanded text ads (ETAs).

Google has given us a lot of time, advice and resources to prepare for the successor to ETAs – Responsive Search Ads (RSAs).

Are you ready? Read this guide for useful information and to understand how this transition may affect your paid search campaigns.

Details on the transition

Starting June 30, advertisers will no longer be able to create or edit ETAs in Google Ads.

However, existing ETAs will still be able to run alongside RSAs moving forward.

Advertisers will still have the ability to pause and resume these ads based on guidance from the reporting that Google Ads will continue to provide.

What are RSAs?

RSAs are responsive search ads. Advertisers upload multiple headlines and descriptions, then let Google’s machine learning optimize the ad versions in real-time. The goal is to increase engagement (click-through rate).

Google allows up to 15 different headlines and up to four different descriptions to be considered when creating the ad combinations shown in the search results.

Think of all the possibilities for Google’s machine learning to optimize ad messages. There are more than 43,000 different variations available to keep your messages fresh and keep the ad engagement on an uphill trajectory.

Over time, the system will customize the ad versions based on the user’s search behavior, device preferences and other signals to serve the right version at the right time. The result looks exactly like the ETAs and includes up to three headlines, two descriptions and a display URL.

Google initially introduced RSAs in beta in 2018 and continued to expose advertisers to the change.

Alerts throughout the Google Ads platform have appeared over the past several months. These alerts are typically shown while creating new or editing existing ads.

RSAs became the default ad type in Google Ads on Feb. 18, 2021.

Benefits of RSAs

Yes, there are some drawbacks to this transition. For example, advertisers have less control over the ad combinations and low visibility into which combinations performed the best.

However, there are also reasons to get excited. Here are three big benefits:

• You will save time. After the initial planning of the RSA, you will save the many hours of creation, testing and analysis that previously went into new versions of ETAs.
• Performance will improve. Advertisers are already seeing improved click-through rates associated with RSAs. As the system optimizes and learns, click-through rates will increase, and the best-performing versions will be prioritized.
• Optimization will happen in real-time. As the learning progresses, the system gets smarter at delivering top performers. This ensures ads will be more engaging to consumers and become more optimized as time goes on.

How does the transition affect search ad strategy?

Use the knowledge about what worked best from your ETAs and carry it over to RSAs.

All the work and testing you have done will pay off with this update.

You may believe that your best-performing ETAs will stop performing and you should pause them immediately. Not true.

Instead, you should continue running the best ETAs. Analyze their performance against RSAs in each ad group.

Now is the time to start thinking about all the headlines and descriptions you want to use in your RSAs. With Google doing the heavy lifting when it comes to combination optimization and testing, we need to give Google our most effective marketing messages.

Lack of control of the combinations requires some strategic planning and attention to what is possible.

How to write effective RSAs

Google gives some helpful advice on how to create effective search ads. All these suggestions should be considered when writing your RSAs.

Here’s what is most important when writing effective RSAs.

Headlines are your bread and butter

Headlines make your ads stand out and entice potential customers to click through on your ad versus your competitor’s ad. They also have a significant impact on how Google ranks the quality of the ad.

• Keep your headline unique. Google will not display headlines that are too similar. Redundant headlines will limit the number of combinations that Google can serve.
• Include keywords in at least five headlines. To maximize your ad quality score, Google offers dynamic keyword insertion to insert your keywords directly into your headlines.
• Include three headlines that do not have campaign keywords. These headlines can include specific calls to action exclusive discount offers when available.
• Have a combination of short and long headlines. Headlines can have up to 30 characters.
• Aim to deliver at least 10 headlines for Google to optimize.

Create attention-grabbing descriptions

Use your descriptions to let potential customers know why you are the best option. Don’t make them guess. Get your marketing message across by thinking about the following:

• Highlight something unique in each description. Think about the different combinations that may be put together and if they make sense in any order. This is important. One description should not be dependent on another.
• Tell the audience what you want them to do. Whether it be “Download a Newsletter” or “Purchase Today,” strong, clear calls to action are a must.

Use pinning to control combinations only when necessary

Google allows you to pin headlines and descriptions, so they show up in a specific position. This is an excellent feature that can help you regain a bit of the control you may feel you have lost.

Use pinning only when necessary. Google is a learning machine. Pinning one headline reduces the testing and learning Google can do by over 75%. The percentage increases as the number of pins go up.

Take advantage of Google’s ad strength score

We love the fact Google gives us a peek into how our ads can be improved. Take this seriously.

Many times, we feel our ads encompass all needed elements, but Google may not agree. The ad strength meter measures quantity, relevance and diversity in the provided headlines and descriptions.

Use this information to improve the ads until Google sees them as “Good” or even “Excellent.” Google provides an option to view ideas that may help expand your ads and make them more relevant.

Google Ads RSA preparation checklist

• Continue learning: Take advantage of the next two months. Keep testing new versions of your ETAs to identify what works and move those messages over to your RSAs.
• Create one RSA per ad group: Make sure each ad group has one active RSA. Use the recommendations above and from Google to write effective RSAs.
• Use ad extensions: Implement at least four ad extensions for each group. Ad extensions can be applied at multiple levels, including account, campaign and ad group. Apply extensions at the ad group level so the extensions are relevant. A higher number of extensions increases the amount of information the searcher must evaluate before clicking on your ad.

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Microsoft Advertising has released new advertiser certification, new exams, new badges and a new learning center for advertisers today. Microsoft said they have “reimagined and relaunched”  Learning LabOpens in new window and Microsoft Advertising Certified ProfessionalOpens in new window (MACP) learning solutions making “them both more valuable and easier to use.”

New Microsoft Advertising Certification

New exams. Microsoft has moved from having one exam to three new exams, which focus on different offerings within Microsoft Advertising. These are “50-question certification exams that explore different areas within Microsoft Advertising,” the company said.

New badges. When you pass these exams, you qualify for four different certification badges.

These include:

• Microsoft Advertising Search Certification
• Microsoft Advertising Native & Display Certification
• Microsoft Advertising Shopping Certification
• Microsoft Advertising Certified Professional

The first three are specific to verticals within Microsoft Advertising, but if you pass all three exams in all areas, you then qualify for the Microsoft Advertising Certified Professional badge.

What they look like. Here are screenshots of those badges:

If you were MACP certified as of April 2022, read Microsoft’s FAQs to learn more about how to access your legacy PDF certificate and claim your new Microsoft Advertising Search Certification digital badge.

New Microsoft Advertising Learning Lab

Microsoft said they have redesigned the Microsoft Advertising Learning Lab to “make it modern and simple.” Here is what is new in the Learning Lab:

1. Learning Paths: These bring together key concepts you need to develop your skills as a digital marketer with Microsoft Advertising for each topic in one place. This includes learning courses, a preparation course for each exam, and the exam.
2. Events: Attend live virtual eventsOpens in new window led by Microsoft Advertising experts or watch the recent ones on-demand.
3. Your Dashboard and Trophy Case: You can see the badges you’ve earned and the courses you’ve taken all in one place.

Why we care. Those of you who run Microsoft Advertising campaigns will want to review this new learning center and see how they can obtain these new certifications. If you have had certification in the past, you may need to revise those with these new criteria.

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Any agency or company knows hiring top talent and good people is tough right now. The ad industry has its highest employment rate ever in a time when people are fleeing the industry due to burnout.

The last thing an agency leader wants to deal with is seeing their strongest employees go elsewhere. 

So, how do you retain skilled employees during The Great Resignation? The solution is grounded in building a culture of trust. 

How to build a culture of trust

You’ve invested countless hours interviewing, onboarding and training your employees.

On the job, they’ve proven themselves to be strong performers.

You’ve also provided them with the tools and resources to succeed. 

And yet, countless agencies are run by leaders that micromanage their employees.

It’s time to trust them to do their job and get out of their way. 

Here’s how:

• Get everyone on the same page: Be open about what you’re trying to accomplish, your vision and how employees play a part in that vision. The idea here is to get everyone rowing in the same direction.
• Encourage transparency: Building a culture of trust cannot happen without openness. We encourage our employees to be open and transparent about their feelings, and our managers to do the same. Leadership is transparent about company performance and plans for the organization. This transparency infuses a sense of ownership and respect throughout the organization.

Appreciate and recognize your employees

Nothing will burn out a good employee faster than feeling underappreciated.

Appreciation can come in many forms, including a quick thank you, promotion or salary increase.

Recognition can be public or private, and it should come from any level within the organization. 

Here’s how my agency approaches appreciation and recognition:

Peer recognition program

Bonus.ly has been a great addition to our company’s culture.

Each month, employees have a specific number of points that can be used to recognize peers.

Points are accumulated and redeemed through gift cards to restaurants, shops, entertainment, charity donations or cold hard cash.

The Slack integration makes it easy to see who is recognizing who.

Leadership recognition

Peer recognition is wonderful, but employees also need to know that they’re making a real impact on the company. This is where leadership recognition comes in.

Publically, we recognize employees who contribute to the bottom line through company meetings or internal case studies.

This public recognition serves to show appreciation to the employee but also helps to encourage others to achieve similar feats. 

How to build connections between employees

The Institute of Leadership and Management found that 77% of respondents say that building close relationships with colleagues was the most important factor in determining job satisfaction.

Connection is critical in building a culture of trust and ultimately retaining great employees. In a remote workplace, this is especially important.

We’ve found three ways to help build connections between employees:

• Make time for connection: Take the time to connect with employees on a personal level. Building rapport is essential when things are busy. This signals to your employees that even amidst the chaos, they’re still important to you. So, make time during 1:1s to learn about employees and tell them about yourself.
• Enjoy your colleagues: As a primarily remote company, this takes some effort. We regularly use apps like Kahoot for fun quizzes, ice breaker challenges and Polly for polls on Slack.
• Encourage sharing of expertise: Embedded within our culture is both a strong motivation to get better and to support one another. We foster both by sharing our expertise. Employees will create brown bag training sessions taught by various team members. Managers will also often encourage team members to ask questions broadly on Slack. As a result, questions have quick answers and employees are reminded that team support is valued.

Also, make sure to post pictures of team members meeting each other and having a good time. 

Offer flexibility and grace

Always remember that you’ve hired people, not just “workers.”

Work is just one facet of their lives. Burnout in our industry is very real.

Take care to ensure your best employees flourish. To retain great employees, offer flexibility and grace. 

Here’s how we do that: 

• Daily flexibility: Allow some flexibility within the workday for employees to take care of what they need. We regularly have employees that need to pick up their kids, take the dog to the vet or even go for a jog. We’ve found that providing this flexibility enables employees to perform at their best and be more productive. 
• Encourage time off: We saw many of our employees not taking time off during the pandemic. They felt like there was no point because they couldn’t go anywhere. What resulted was decreased productivity and overall gloom within the organization. To turn things around, we encouraged employees to take time off. We implemented an unlimited vacation policy so people didn’t feel like they were “wasting” vacation days. And managers noted when an employee hadn’t taken time off.
• Create backups: One of the concerns in taking time off is the fear that the work will pile up. That’s why we created a system for employees to partner with other employees to act as backups while they’re out. With the backup plans in place, employees are truly “off” when on vacation.
• Allow for grace: Throughout the pandemic, we’ve had to allow some grace for employees dealing with circumstances in their lives that impact work. Everyone goes through stressful events, and its not reasonable to think it won’t affect work. We allow some grace for productivity to decline, work hours to be shortened or additional time off for employees dealing with “life.” 

Build the workplace where you’d like to work

This is how you retain great employees. Trust, appreciation, connection and flexibility are the tenets of a strong culture. But they also happen to be the key to retaining great employees. 

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Google is giving users the option to see three more types of ads less often:

• Pregnancy and parenting.
• Dating.
• Weight loss.

The company today announced a global expansion of user controls that were introduced in 2020, which limited alcohol and gambling ads.

YouTube and Google Display ads. Initially, users could only limit alcohol and gambling ads on YouTube. With today’s announcement, users can now also limit these ads on Display. Users can also choose to limit the three new ad categories on both YouTube and Display.

Fewer, not zero. There’s an important distinction here: Google only limits these types of ads. That doesn’t mean a user will never, at some point, see a weight loss or gambling ad. It simply means they will see “fewer” of them.

As we noted in 2020, short of an ad ban, it’s nearly impossible to guarantee that a user who opts out will never see an ad in one of these categories. 

Given the sensitive nature of these categories, there may be additional restrictions, depending on your country.

How users opt-out. This feature can be found in users’ Ad Settings, under the Google Account dashboard. Here’s what it looks like:

More to come? Google seems to be considering expanding this feature further. According to Karin Hennessy, Group Product Manager for Ads Privacy:

“People want more control over their ads experience, including blocking ads or categories they prefer not to see. Providing transparency and control has always been a priority for us so we’re expanding our tools, enabling the choice to see fewer pregnancy & parenting, dating, and weight loss ads. We’ll continue to listen to user feedback and study which categories to expand this feature to in the future.” 

Why we care. This is a good move on Google’s part to allow users to limit the types of ads they see in sensitive categories. Because it’s opt-in, people need to know about the option and take the time to do it. I’ve asked Google how many people use the ad limitation feature and will update the article if/when I hear back.

The impact on marketers should be minimal. At worst, these controls may actually result in better ad targeting, as it should prevent people who are highly unlikely to convert from seeing your ads. 

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CodeFuel was among Microsoft Advertising’s distinguished regional winners in EMEA before being selected as their 2021 global partner. This prestigious award and recognition is based on excellence in partnership with Microsoft Advertising across the board, including key partnership results such as engagement and revenue growth. CodeFuel is one of only five companies to achieve the status of a global partner. The announcement was made during Microsoft Advertising Elevate on April 27, 2022, the annual global partner summit exclusively for elite and select partners.

The collaboration with Microsoft Advertising

“We’ve had a partnership with Microsoft that extends more than ten years, and this recognition as Microsoft’s Advertising Partner of the Year is a moment of great pride in a long history of successes. Yet it is only the start,” said Doron Gerstel, Perion’s CEO.

“As consumers globally relied on e-commerce to an unprecedented degree – advertisers responded by investing more into search – which is the category where consumers demonstrate the highest degree of intent. Capitalizing on this generational shift required close collaboration between the CodeFuel team and the Microsoft team, and the results speak for themselves. Going forward, we will continue to build our network of publishers while maintaining the impeccable quality standards which matter so much to both of us.” Gerstel added.

Tal Jacobson, CodeFuel’s general manager, and his team worked to strengthen the collaboration with Microsoft Advertising through investments in technology and a focus on quality to maximize user engagement and growth. Working closely with Microsoft Advertising allowed the company to introduce new features while receiving the business and back-end support.

“The growth we have achieved in the last couple of years reflects the close collaboration and the teams’ dedication to our mutual success, year after year,” said Jacobson. “We look forward to further driving success for publishers and advertisers.”

“We are thrilled that CodeFuel, a Perion Company, has been named our Global Supply Partner of the year. This is an award that reflects the growth of the underlying business, which is the result of true partnership, close collaboration, and technology innovation. CodeFuel’s commitment to its clients has been noteworthy during a time of disruption and uncertainty. We look forward to our continued partnership and continued healthy growth of all aspects of the business,” said Sean O’Connor, International Marketing Director at Microsoft Advertising.

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