Are your Mother’s Day paid search campaigns ready? If not, now is the time. Microsoft Advertising today released new data and tips that provide some useful consumer search insights.

Although search queries typically peak the week before Mother’s Day, searches start picking up five weeks before the holiday. That would mean queries already started increasing on April 3. If my math is correct, that was a week ago. So if your campaigns haven’t started yet, you’re already a week behind consumers, according to Microsoft.

Hare three trends from last year that search marketers need to know in 2022.

Trend 1: Most popular queries. For the past three years, these have been among the top “Mother’s Day” queries:

• Mother’s Day gifts
• Mother’s Day images
• Mother’s Day cards handmade
• Mother’s Day gift box
• Happy Mother’s Day gif
• Printable Mother’s Day cards
• Mother’s Day rings
• Mother’s Day shirts
• DIY Mother’s Day gift ideas

Trend 2: Gifts. As is typical, flowers, sweets, cards, and jewelry were among the most popular gifts for Mom in 2021. Here’s some data from Microsoft:

• “Flower arrangement” searches spiked 57% year-over-year (YoY).
• Greetings cards, flowers and special outings (e.g., meals or restaurant gift cards) were the top three most popular Mother’s Day gifts.
• Restaurant-related searches increased 46% YoY the week of Mother’s Day. Microsoft noted this was significantly higher compared to the three years prior to 2021.
• Jewelry searches increased 26% YoY the week of Mother’s Day. 

Trend 3: Local. The second most clicked gift last year was spas – and more than 20% of mothers surveyed said they would like a spa visit in 2022, Microsoft said.

Spas are an example of this local buying trend. More than half of those surveyed by Microsoft said they planned to shop at a local store or restaurant for Mother’s Day. But don’t worry – the same people said they still plan to search online first for information, offers and deals.

Why we care. Mother’s Day is one of the biggest retail holidays of the year. To maximize profit, it’s critical to always optimize campaigns based on what consumers are searching for, and when. Hopefully, this data will help get you started on the path to higher conversion rates and more revenue. Most important of all, don’t forget that Mother’s Day is May 8 – and quality time really is the greatest gift of all.

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Come work with us! We’re looking for an Editor to join the team as a key reporter on topics related to pay-per-click search and social media marketing as well as digital commerce advertising. Reporting to the VP, Content, the Editor will contribute to Search Engine Land’s daily production of news, features, newsletters, analysis, special projects and more.

As one of several authoritative journalists on the team, the Editor also helps to create agendas for Search Marketing Expo – SMX, our conference series. The Editor will also moderate panels and discussions at SMX, and even may lead presentations on search marketing developments.

This is a forever remote position and the salary range is between $75,000 and $85,000 annually.

Core job responsibilities

• Write daily news articles, feature articles, guides, and other forms of in-depth content on developments in PPC search marketing, social media marketing, digital commerce marketing and more.
• Speak and moderate panel discussions and support agenda development for SMX.
• Edit some staff and contributed content.
• Compile daily newsletters.

Who we are looking for

While past experience with PPC search marketing topics for a news or content marketing department is a plus, we know that any hard-charging reporter who knows the craft can learn a new beat, so it’s not a prerequisite. Instead, the perfect candidate is someone who:

• Is a hard-charging reporter with a passion for breaking news and engaging a readership
• Is endlessly curious about our subject matter.
• Knows how to cultivate a large body of reliable authoritative sources.
• Empathizes with our audience’s challenges.
• Is a strong writer who holds the clarity and impact of a piece above flowery language, Oxford commas and whether it follows AP style, etc.
• Is confident on stage or leading a video-based discussion.
• Has at least 5 years experience at a digital news outfit, newspaper, B2B media brand or in-house content marketing department.

If you are interested, please email resume and clips to Henry Powderly, VP of Content, at hpowderly(at)thirddoormedia.com. Or, if you would like, please apply at the LinkedIn job listing.

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Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) will gain the ability to leverage ad customizers in this quarter’s open beta, Microsoft Advertising announced Tuesday,. That news should be well received by those advertisers that crave customization. Ad customizers have been available for Microsoft’s Expanded Text Ads and can now be deployed across the modern RSA ad unit.

RSA customizers can help to create more dynamic ads that feature more product information in the ad copy without requiring advertisers to manually change the copy. These enhancements allow marketers to create hundreds of ad variations across what is technically a single ad. These ads can be more targeted based on unique product details fed to the ad. This customization can, in turn, lead to higher conversion rates and lower cost per acquisition.

This will be in an open beta this quarter and will allow for the customization of RSAs using custom attributes. That matches similar functionality that Google Ads offers.

What’s included in the beta? The custom attributes announced for this open beta reflect much of what was previously available for Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) including:

• Text – Product names, descriptions and product categories
• Number – Inventory count and colors available
• Price – Sale discounts and product costs
• Percent – Interest rates or discount rates

Microsoft did not say if the previous “date” attribute will be maintained. It is also worth noting that previously Microsoft Advertising’s ETA ad customizers were available for any field except the final URL field.

The ad customizers for RSAs can be created in two ways. The first is using Microsoft advertising online and adding in the additional customizers via the web version. The second will be to upload a customizer feed that will dynamically leverage these attributes. Feed-based customizers are the most popular in terms of implementation due to the ease of updating via export from internal platforms.

What else did Microsoft announce? Included in Microsoft’s monthly updates are:

• Soon to be released open beta for campaign level conversion goals. Not much information was released on this beta, but we’d expect that it would follow Google’s lead on Campaign specific primary and secondary goals.
• RSA info in the Microsoft Advertising app. Advertisers will not be able to see RSA data from within both the Apple and Android versions of the Microsoft Advertising app.
• Rollout of Smart Campaigns in more countries. Good news for any advertisers out there that prefer the use of Smart Campaigns over traditional campaigns. These simplified campaign types geared towards small business are following out in Canada, France and Germany.
• Microsoft Audience Ads will be available across 39 additional countries. The native ads solution will be rolling out to India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan. In Europe this includes: Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Holy See (the), Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, Poland, Portugal, Republic of North Macedonia, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, and Turkey.
  

Why we care: Advertisers that have utilized ad customizers for their ETAs can join the beta and bring that customization to RSAs. It’s clear that RSAs are here to stay, but some of the functionality to make these ads truly dynamic has been lacking. These new changes look to mimic the previous functionality from Google Ads, which should make implementation a breeze. In a world where automation is taking over, these detailed customizers give advertisers yet another welcomed input into the system.

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Google has confirmed an issue with the Google Ads console where there is “higher than normal latency” during the ad review process for Responsive search ads (RSAs). Google said this is impacting a “significant subset of users.”

If you are noticing slowness in the Google Ads console, do know Google is working on resolving it.

The notice. Google posted “we’re aware of a problem with Google Ads affecting a significant subset of users. We will provide an update by Apr 4, 2022, 7:00 AM UTC detailing when we expect to resolve the problem. Please note that this resolution time is an estimate and may change. The affected users are able to access Google Ads, but are seeing error messages, high latency, and/or other unexpected behavior. Currently, Responsive search ads (RSAs) might experience a higher than normal latency during the ad review process.”

Fix ETA. There is currently no specific estimated time when this issue will be resolved but Google is working on it and promises to give us an update by Monday on this issue. I suspect it will be resolved sooner, but we will keep you posted.

Why we care. If you are experiencing slowness, you should know it is not your fault. Google is having an issue that they are working on resolving. So check back later or put the work off until Monday.

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Google has announced that the first round of testing is here for its crucial Privacy Sandbox initiative. In this round of testing developers will gain access to Privacy Sandbox’s newest measurement proposals: Topics, FLEDGE and Attribution Reporting. These ad technologies are the replacement for the beleaguered FLoC initiative that was killed off back in January.

What are these technologies again?

• FLEDGE, or First Locally Executed Decision over Groups Experiment, calculates ad auction data in the browser itself instead of at the server to help increase privacy by limiting a user’s data flow.
• Topics is a technology that helps identify interests for advertising while retaining greater user privacy.

• Attribution reporting allows for better measurement on the conversion from ad clicks or views.

Together these technologies are aimed at helping limit the use of personal data while ensuring accuracy in reporting. 

Origin trials. Announced back in 2020, origin trials are a way that developers can test experimental features for a limited time before the public. These trials generally occur on a first-party basis only and on one “origin”. As of today, developers will be able to see and test the code for Topics, FLEDGE, and Attribution Reporting in the Canary version of Chrome. 

After this is iteration is rolled out, testing will then begin in a limited Chrome beta and then to a stable version of Chrome. The origin trials for the above-mentioned Privacy Sandbox technologies are worldwide. 

If you are interested in API access, Google has a developer guidance page here to help.

User controls. A nice new addition announced today are updated settings that allow participants to understand and manage their information usage more clearly. This will allow users to manage their interests or turn off trials altogether.

Why we care. Many of these new privacy technologies have been hypothetical until today. It’s great to see this next phase of Google’s (well needed) new ad technology begin to come to fruition. The feedback and news that will be generated in this stage of testing should help marketers prepare for the realities that we will soon face with Google’s initiative. 

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Google will be ending support for Maximize Lift bidding for YouTube, the company said, leaving a TrueView, in-stream ads option behind as YouTube continues to enhance its ad offerings.

What it did. Maximize Lift was a very specific bidding strategy that worked in conjunction with Brand Lift measurement with a goal of hitting more of the right audience that was currently in the consideration phase. If you aren’t familiar with Brand Lift, it is a tool that helps to measure recall, awareness and consideration and requires a Google Account Rep to activate on your behalf.

Maximize Lift used details input by advertisers about their brands and products to generate content to be used in Brand Lift surveys. The survey responses were then used by Maximize Lift to focus on those consumers that may be the best fit for your products. Unlike other bidding types Maximize Lift didn’t optimize towards views, rather would optimize towards lift.

“We launched Maximize Lift as a beta in 2018 to optimize TrueView in-stream campaigns,” a Google spokesperson said. “While we did see some success, we are sunsetting the bidding tool to focus on scalable solutions like skippable in-stream ads that are more in line with how advertisers want to buy.”

Maximize Lift was launched in 2018 with the allure of driving meaningful B2C results. Upon release, Google touted a 2x return on ad spend for COVERGIRL’s Lashblast Mascara product. However, it seems that there has been less and less focus lately on Brand Lift within YouTube.

Why we care. If you are an advertiser that uses Maximize Lift bidding, you’ll need to look for other solutions come April 1. Additionally, this change may alter the results that you see in Brand Lift if you have been leveraging Maximize Lift at the same time.

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Many brands want to see their ads rank at the top of Google and have a great conversion rate. But this can be a challenge for brands.

Understanding the impact of these two metrics, and how to think about these metrics when optimizing, can improve the overall health of your paid search campaigns.

Vanity vs. performance: I want it all

Are you someone who likes to run search queries periodically to see if your brand or clients’ ads are at the top? It feels good to know that you are number one. I get it. There is no denying the feeling that all is right with the world when your brand’s ad takes pole position.

However, being number one may come with a higher cost per conversion. There is that ongoing struggle to deliver both efficiency and volume. This case study looks at this specific problem. 

I pulled in various account data for this article and looked at the relationship of cost-per-conversion between different metrics like absolute top impression share and click-through rate (CTR). The findings probably won’t surprise you, but seeing the data often forces you to think about your account differently.

At the very least, I hope to arm you with some data to finally discuss with the brand manager who insists on seeing their brand be number one. 

Cost per conversion vs. absolute top impression share

When Google decided to remove the average position in 2019, it was a solid move toward focusing on results versus vanity. The metric they provided to take its place was absolute top impression share and top impression share. Giving advertisers what they needed to answer, “Are we number one?” and “Are we above organic rankings?” 

The data in the chart below compares the cost per conversion across our accounts (I normalized/indexed them so they could be viewed on a similar scale) versus absolute top impression share over the past year.

The hypothesis was the more frequently brands were in the true number one position, the more expensive those conversions would cost them. Effectively a tradeoff between efficiency and volume.

The data shows a 60% increase in cost per conversion from ads that were <10% absolute top impression share to those that were >80%. There are certainly outliers. But the trendline tells the story. 

Cost per conversion vs. click-through rate

I took the same data and wanted to compare CTR vs. cost-per-conversion. This is a little starker of a story.

The cost per conversion is down as the CTR increases by a larger margin (I removed the CTR data scale from high to low, left to right). So having a better CTR provides a better cost per conversion. 

Why?

• Keywords that have a higher CTR are most likely resonating better with consumers and therefore flow through to having a higher conversion rate/lower cost per conversion.
• Branded terms typically have the highest conversion rates and CTRs. This is a debate for another time and article.

The key to this data set is to focus on relevance. If you focus on relevance, branded or otherwise, you will see better conversion rates.  

3 ways to use this data to improve your paid search campaigns

Focus on relevance

Google rewards relevance. This comes in the form of higher quality scores by keywords matching ad copy, which also matches landing pages. The more you can create tighter keywords groups based on themes, the better.

The best lens to view this through is the customer experience. Think about what the customer is searching for. What would they expect to experience when reading that ad copy or clicking through to the site? The answer to this question is your true north. It will lead you to a relevant experience and reward you with better performance.

Understand efficiency and volume

This is a constant tradeoff that is made in business all the time. Brands do it with the pricing of products, but we often don’t see it as frequently in marketing.

Take a group of keywords that are performing well and see how far you can push them. Run a test to increase bids by 25-50%, raise the budgets and see what happens.

• Do you get any incremental lift?
• What was the cost per incremental conversion?
• Is that tradeoff better than any other opportunity you to spend on either other keywords or marketing tactics?

The best part about paid search is the real-time feedback you get with data to help make informed decisions. Use that to your advantage.

ABT: Always be testing

This is a combination of the two prior recommendations but keep testing. The algorithms, your competitors, your customers – they are constantly changing.

Ongoing ad copy testing is just one element, but that shouldn’t get you off the hook more broadly.

Create a test and learn strategy. Work through it methodically. Have a hypothesis and prove or disprove it through your testing. Rinse, repeat.

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