Search advertising revenue grew in the most recent quarter for both Google and Microsoft. Last night, Alphabet released its Q1 2022 report, while Microsoft released its Q3 earnings report.

Strong year-on-year growth for Google. Overall, Alphabet reported revenue of $68 billion, up from $55.3 billion in Q1 2021. Zooming in on Google search, which accounted for 58% of Alphabet’s revenues, here are the key numbers for Q1 of 2022 (compared to Q1 of 2021):

• Total Google advertising revenue: $54.7 billion (up 22% from $44.7 billion)
• Google Search & other: $39.6 billion (a 24% vs. $31.9 billion)
• Google Network: $8.2 billion (up 20% vs. $6.8 billion)
• YouTube: $6.9 billion (up 14% vs. $6 billion)

Interesting stat. Google said that Maps searches for [shopping near me] were up 100% globally year-over-year. Noted Google: “People want to buy from brands that provide a seamless experience wherever and whenever they prefer to shop. For local businesses and big-box retailers alike, this remains a big opportunity.”

Strong year-on-year growth for Microsoft Bing. Overall, Microsoft reported revenue of $49.4 billion, up 18% from $41.7 billion in Q3 2021. The company combines search and news advertising together. That revenue was $2.9 billion in Q3 2022 vs. $2.4 billion in Q3 2021. 

LinkedIn revenue grew to $3.4 billion, up 34% from $2.6 billion a year ago.

Why we care. After the earnings were reported, there was some discussion that this was evidence of some sort of slowdown. But most of that conclusion seemed to be drawn from YouTube and by comparing Q1 2022 vs. Q4 2021, which is a ridiculous comparison due to the holiday season falling in Q4, when advertisers are dumping money into Google and Microsoft ads. Though a slowdown could come at any point, search advertising was strong in 2021 and brands plan to invest more in PPC this year. 

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Google’s most automated campaign type, Performance Max, is getting a new optimization feature aimed at driving new business. The addition comes in the form of a new customer acquisition goal that will allow advertisers to optimize to those who are not previous customers. Additional changes have also been announced to help advertisers identify high-level insights and make the transition to Performance Max easier.

Announced back in 2020, Google’s Performance Max campaigns (nicknamed PMax) have seen intense scrutiny over the lack of control that advertisers have. These campaigns do not contain traditional keywords, audiences, placements or other guardrails for targeting. Instead advertisers input asset groups, location/time of day targeting and audience signals to attempt to drive a qualified click. This new customer acquisition goal is another lever that advertisers can pull to try and drive quality traffic with these campaigns where options and data are at a premium.

New customer acquisition goals. The largest change to PMax campaigns is the ability to use your data to help Google identify (and serve to) new customers. Advertisers have a few options to choose from when identifying new customers including:

• Customer Match lists. These lists use first party data including email, phone, first name, last name, country and zip code. When uploaded Google will provide a match rate that shows how many of your customers have a matching Google account that can be used in targeting.

  Note: While this PII information is currently being used by Google this is to be used for first-party data only. Once support for third-party cookies are phased out, Customer Match will no longer be supported in third party contexts but Google will continue to allow Customer Match in first-party contexts, when a publisher has a direct relationship with a customer. 

• Conversion tags. Pixels are still alive and well in Google Ads and the use of conversion tags for purchases can help these new PMax goals exclude folks that are not new.
• Google’s autodetection method. This autodetection method is similar to what was used in Smart Shopping campaigns called “Google detected” but also adds some new flair. According to a Google spokesperson, the new autodetection in Performance Max includes the Google detected purchase conversion tracking previously seen in Smart Shopping, plus they “have also built new machine learning modeling to predict how likely a user is to be a new vs. existing customer for an advertiser to make up for low match rates”.

What does this mean? Google can take 1st party signals, Google Ads conversion data and their internal auto-detection to try to figure out who is not a previous customer and target them. This does not guarantee that you won’t be doing remarketing (you likely will), instead Google will just work to find users that are not customers.

Note: This will leverage the above signals but will not weed out searchers that are looking for your brand using branded terms. In order to block those searches, an advertiser will need to find a Google account rep that can manually insert negative terms into campaigns. A change may be coming soon as according as a Google Spokesperson confirmed they “are working on a tool for controlling negative keywords at the account level for brand safety purposes”.

Similar to other Performance Max campaigns, Google still recommends “waiting 4-6 weeks after activating a Performance Max campaign to evaluate results”. So it is still imperative to give these new customer acquisition campaigns the time and patience required to succeed.

Additional new Performance Max insights. Those advertisers that are looking for more intelligence on campaign performance will be pleased as Google is giving us a little more information. There will be two new additions to the insights page within a PMax campaign:

• Asset Audience insights
  These insights will help advertisers see how text, images and video assets “resonate with specific customer segments”. There is no additional information on the format of how these insights will look, but it would be safe to expect it to resemble other automated reporting such as RSA insights. Of course even with data on which assets resonate there is no way to target a specific customer segment using PMax, advertisers can only deploy audience signals.
• Diagnostic insights
  Advertisers will be able to use this to surface the setup issues that may be hindering performance. These insights will show advertisers why ads are not showing as well as suggestions on how to fix. Given the lack of information and data provided by Performance Max campaigns, the addition of diagnostic insights is welcomed warmly.

One-click upgrade tool is rolling out. Smart Shopping and Local campaigns are being sunset and replaced by Performance Max. Google announced that the much awaited one-click upgrade into Performance Max will begin rolling out “over the coming weeks”.

When this tool is available in an account a notification will show to advertisers. This can additionally be found in the recommendations page and the campaigns page. When an upgrade has happened with this tool, a new Performance Max campaign will be generated that keeps the learnings from previous campaigns. According to Google, these learnings brought over to the new PMax campaign will “maintain consistent performance”.

Why we care. Love it or hate it, Performance Max is here to stay. The ability to target new users may help cut down on errant spend, and let advertisers find a more scalable audience. While this won’t remove previous site visitors or those searching for your brand, it should be more efficient for new customer acquisition than standard PMax campaigns. The additional insights may help troubleshoot setup issues and may help guide advertisers on what creative is resonating with specific customer segments, albeit there is not a way to target that audience within a campaign. Lastly, the new one-click migration should be a big upgrade over a manual rebuild as the learnings will be brought over into the new PMax campaign.

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Google has added nine new policies to its three-strikes system that punishes advertisers who don’t follow the rules.

The three-strikes system was announced in July. Testing then began in September.

When the program was announced, Google said they planned to include more policy types to avoid. Now they have announced nine additional policies. 

When this change takes effect. It starts June 21. Google said it will then gradually ramp up over a three-month period. 

The nine new policies. Running advertisements on any of the following could earn your account a strike:

• Compensated sexual acts
• Mail-order brides
• Clickbait
• Misleading ad design
• Bail bond services
• Call Directories, forwarding services
• Credit repair services
• Binary options
• Personal loans

What else to avoid. Google Ads has three main buckets for ads that earn violations, none of which are new. If you need a refresher, you can find them all here: 

• Enabling dishonest behavior
• Healthcare and medicines
• Dangerous products or services

Strikes and punishments. If your account receives a warning or strike, you will be notified via email and in your account. As a reminder, here’s what happens if your ads get flagged. 

Warning

• Trigger: First time an ad violates one of Google’s policies. 
• Penalty: Ad is removed.

First Strike

• Trigger: Violating the same policy, for which you received a warning, within 90 days.
• Penalty: Account is placed on a three-day hold and no ads are eligible to run.

Second strike

• Trigger: Violating the same policy, for which you received a first strike, within 90 days.
• Penalty: Account is placed on a seven-day hold and no ads are eligible to run. 

If you have received a first or second strike, but don’t violate Google Ads policies for 90 days, the strikes will expire.

Third strike

• Trigger: Violating the same policy, for which you received a second strike, within 90 days.
• Penalty: Account suspension.

Why we care. Anytime Google updates its Ads policy, it’s important to know what’s changing. Knowing what the Google Ads policies should help keep your account safe and avoid earning any warnings, strikes or an account suspension.

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With more people working from home, the lines between work and personal time are more blurred than ever. As such, a new report by Forrester, done on behalf of Microsoft, says there is a new persona that brands and marketers need to be aware of: the “workday consumer.”

What is a workday consumer? They are online more often than before the pandemic. They switch between work and personal to-do lists throughout the day. And they use work devices, tools and software for personal purposes. 

Why we care. Consumer habits and preferences have shifted. Brands already recognize this and are planning to invest more in search and other types of advertising, according to the report. Search continues to be an important touchpoint during multiple phases of the buying journey – from initial research, to produce exploration, to purchase (and everything in between).

Key search stats. 

• 75%: The number of respondents who said search has become more important to their brand’s online advertising strategies.
• 70%: The amount of budget going to digital channels within the next 12 months, including search, social, online video and display advertising. (Before the pandemic, 58% of paid media went to digital).
• 60%: The percentage of companies planning to increase advertising budget for search, online video and display advertising in the next 12 months.
• 16%: The percentage of brand respondents who said their brand plans to increase its paid search advertising budget by more than 10% over the next 12 months.
• 88%: The percentage of respondents who said their brand plans to advertise on three or more search engines over the next 12 months. Currently, 92% of brand respondents said their company advertises on two or more search engines.

Key recommendation for search marketers. Workday consumers research products and services in between work tasks. So if you want to attract, convert and retain these people, make sure your messaging, content and ads go beyond simple demographics and past behavior.

What Forrester recommends. “Brands must consider more nuanced cues such as working mode (e.g., desk-based or frontline, office-based or remote), mindset, activity, and emotion to understand and target workday consumers.” Also:

• “Use existing demographic and digital-behavior analytics to deduce these cues and employ methods such as self-reported studies, observational studies, location tracking, and time-of-day data.”
• “Beyond planning for the workday consumer, develop other nuanced target personas by infusing emotion data into personas. Understand the facets of emotions including feelings, neurophysiology, social-expression, and behaviors along with the observable traits for each and the software that can help measure them.”

It has to be said. This report was shared by an ad network – Microsoft – and says you should spend more on advertising. All ad networks always want you to spend more on their platform. That said, paid search is a proven marketing channel. As with everything: test, analyze, optimize, repeat.

The report. The Workday Consumer Has Logged In. 

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Conversions are the key KPI when defining the success of direct response campaigns for both B2B and B2C.

These days, conversions are so top priority that many companies don’t even spend money on brand awareness campaigns in their paid social strategies. 

When marketers get way into the weeds with conversions, they often forget about the benefits, and long-term impact, of micro-conversions.

What are micro-conversions?

Micro-conversions signal high intent and a strong likelihood that someone will convert on our primary conversion goal, resulting in a significant improvement in conversion metrics when put to use.

Think of a micro-conversion as one small task completion, or a secondary action a website visitor takes, that indicates they will convert.

For paid social, we consider any incremental step a user takes when showing initial interest in a brand as a micro-conversion. That could be:

• Engagement with ads.
• Opening lead gen forms.
• Watching videos XX% of the time.
• Liking/following your brand pages.

A significant benefit of micro-conversions on social platforms: many are automatically tracked within platforms. All marketers have to do is leverage them.

What can you do with micro-conversions?

I’ve observed the following results using several micro-conversion strategies across social platforms:

• 60% decrease in cost-per-landing page view 
• 71% decrease in cost-per-lead
• 65% increase in conversion rate

If you have the potential to significantly decrease costs and improve conversion rates with these micro-conversion strategies, why wouldn’t you test them?

Ready to learn how quick and easy micro-conversion strategies can drive results?

Here are three micro-conversion strategies to consider to drive impact on your next campaign:

1. Optimize top-of-funnel campaigns for website engagements rather than clicks

Decrease your cost-per-landing page view by optimizing for website engagements. Website engagements signal higher intent compared to link clicks. Optimizing toward users who are likely to take action on your website ultimately brings in better quality users with a higher chance of converting than those who just click. To illustrate this strategy, let’s focus on Facebook.

Here’s how to do it:

Identify landing page actions you want to track

A few actions to consider are social icon button clicks, CTA button clicks and clicks to watch videos on your website. You can also consider visits to resource pages, blog posts and case studies.

Use Facebook’s Event Setup Tool for the easiest and quickest way to set up engagement events

If you’re interested in tracking these events for other social platforms, such as LinkedIn or Twitter, place tracking tags on each action within your tag manager or directly within your website’s developer code.

You can find Facebook’s Event Setup Tool under the Events Manager in the All Tools menu. From here, you will select Add Events and then click From the Pixel.

Note: To use Facebook’s Event Setup Tool, you must have the pixel already placed across your website.

Click Open Event Setup Tool, type your website address in and click Open Website. Once you’ve done this, your landing page will open, and there will be a box to the left of your page that shows the options for using the tool.

Select Track New Button, which will allow you to start tracking those specific actions. In this example, we have selected the Contact Us button and instructed Facebook to track that under an event called “Contact.” You can continue with these steps to track and sort conversions you want to track and optimize.

Once you’ve finished tracking all the actions, just wait for the data to populate within Facebook’s Event Manager, and you’re all set to start optimizing for these events!

2. Build High-Intent Retargeting Audiences

Decrease your cost-per-lead by building high-intent retargeting audiences. You can create audiences based on specific micro-conversion actions to improve bottom-funnel conversion metrics. Instead of retargeting based on just website traffic, try retargeting based on a user’s time on specific landing pages.

Here’s how to do it:

Select Audiences under All Tools in Facebook’s Ad Manager

Create a website audience based on Time Spent

Select Custom Audience under the Create Audience drop-down menu. Next, you will select Website as your source.

Note: Take time exploring the other Customer Audience Sources. This section has tons of hidden gems useful for building high-intent audience segments based on micro-conversion actions. For example, you can implement retargeting based on users who have viewed or added specific products from your product catalog.

Under the Events drop-down menu, select Visitors by Time Spent

This option will give you a secondary choice to pick a select group of users based on the percentile of the average time spent on site. I recommend starting with 25% since that will give you the most sizable audience. If 25% works well, you may consider testing the other options.

Test and optimize your audience

Once your audience has populated, add it to an Ad Set to begin testing against conversion tactics. Test against a lookalike or an interest-based prospecting segment to compare performance.

3. Capture missed leads

Increase conversion rates by capturing missed leads. Using micro-conversions, you can track users who opened a lead gen form ad or began to fill out a form on your website. We can then take them back a step and offer more resources and brand education to help them convert at the bottom of the funnel.

To illustrate this strategy, we’ll focus on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Here’s how to do it:

Find your lead gen micro-conversions within the ad account.

LinkedIn and Facebook both have Lead Gen ad formats that automatically track users who open or submit forms, making it easier to track and retarget them. Navigate to the Audience section within the Ad Manager accounts on both platforms.

On Facebook, you will select Custom Audience and use the Meta Source Lead Form. You will choose Lead Gen Form on LinkedIn under the Create Audience dropdown menu.

Note: You can also use the same method in strategy #2 above to track form actions on your website via Facebook’s Event Setup Tool or by placing tags directly on your website’s forms.

Build your micro-conversion audience segments.

You can choose to create your audience based on users who opened or users who submitted the form. We want to focus on users who opened a form but didn’t submit for this micro-conversion.

On Facebook, we can only target form opens; however, on LinkedIn, you will have to create an audience specific to people who submitted the form and exclude that from your audience of form opens.

Test and learn from your segments

Once you’ve created your form open segments, just wait for them to populate in each platform, and then you can begin testing.

Try serving these segments with educational content, such as case studies, blog posts and other resources from your website that will push them closer to converting.

While they seem like minuscule actions, micro-conversions give us meaningful data to drive better results. Implementing these long-term enables micro-conversions to become more powerful and valuable in your optimization efforts.

Test micro-conversions for yourself

With social advertising becoming increasingly competitive, it’s so important to take advantage of available capabilities and data to maximize performance. Micro-conversions are a small but powerful piece of solving those efficiency gaps.

But don’t take my word for it. Test. Big wins await!

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