Google Ads
Google Ads’ campaigns are a primary traffic and sales channel for many ecommerce businesses. Our vast library of Google Ads’ articles addresses setup, tag management, Google Shopping, structured data, automated bidding, and more.
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Google Ads
Google Ads Expands Headlines, Descriptions, Characters
September 5, 2018 • Robert Brady
For many years Google AdWords allowed 25 characters for a single headline and 35 characters per line for two lines of description text. But Google Ads (formerly AdWords) has made a couple of changes that advertisers should know about. You can now add more text to your existing text ads and utilize a new type of text ad.
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Google Ads
3 Mistakes to Avoid on the Google Display Network
August 7, 2018 • Robert Brady
The Google Display Network has the potential to generate massive traffic. It’s a powerful opportunity for any advertiser. But it can cause powerful harm when mistakes occur. Here are three dangers of advertising on the GDN and how you can avoid them.
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Google Ads
Report: Internet Trends Favor Amazon, Mobile, Social
June 5, 2018 • Robert Brady
On May 30, Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm, delivered her “Internet Trends 2018” report at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.
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Google Ads
AdWords Smart Bidding: Dos and Don’ts
May 1, 2018 • Robert Brady
"Smart Bidding" is the umbrella term in AdWords for automated bid strategies. Smart bids can vary — from targeting page placement to outranking a competitor. There are seven Smart Bidding options. In this post, I'll address each one.
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Google Ads
Step-by-step PPC Testing Strategy for Any Advertiser
February 28, 2018 • Robert Brady
Ad copy is often the first interaction a consumer has with a business. For AdWords and Bing Ads, advertisers have 30 characters in Headline 1, 30 characters in Headline 2,
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Google Ads
Creating Dynamic Ads on Facebook
February 7, 2018 • Robert Brady
In "Using AdWords’ New ‘Responsive Ads’ Format," my article from February 2017, I explained how AdWords allows advertisers to insert ad content on the fly, such as a logo, images, text, and the business name. It's a cool feature for advertisers short on time and design resources. In keeping with the theme, in this post I'll address Facebook, the other player in the online advertising duopoly
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Google Ads
Testing Pay-per-click Ad Copy Requires Human Intuition
January 12, 2018 • Robert Brady
My first step in setting up a new AdWords campaign is to test the ad copy. AdWords has long recommended running three or more ads in each ad group. It’s an industry practice to test new messaging. The most common protocol for testing ad copy in a single ad group uses the following pattern.
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Google Ads
AdWords: 3 Ways to Find Negative Keywords
December 12, 2017 • Robert Brady
Inside every AdWords account there is a report that shows the exact words (a “query”) that searchers typed into Google before clicking on a specific ad. It’s called the Search ...
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Google Ads
AdWords: Navigating the New ‘Opportunities’ Tab
November 21, 2017 • Robert Brady
If you’re an AdWords advertiser, you likely know about the new AdWords’ experience. Google sent emails to all users and has posted reminders throughout the legacy interface. Google will discontinue ...
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Google Ads
Don’t Forget Bing for 2017 Holiday Advertising
October 3, 2017 • Robert Brady
New pay-per-click advertisers invariably start with AdWords. Google holds a dominant share of search volume in the U.S. and even the name Google is synonymous with online searching. However, savvy advertisers ...
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Google Ads
AdWords Changes Coming Fall 2017
September 13, 2017 • Robert Brady
There has been a flurry of activity from AdWords during the past couple of weeks. If you’re an advertiser, you’ve likely noticed the emails from AdWords, coming fast. In this ...
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Google Ads
4 New Features for AdWords Ecommerce Advertisers
June 2, 2017 • Robert Brady
Google recently held its Marketing Next event and announced several changes to its suite of advertising-related products. In this article, I’ll address four of the changes that are important to ...
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Google Ads
AdWords Promotion Extension Coming Soon
May 10, 2017 • Robert Brady
Google continuously tinkers with the appearance of ads on its search result pages. In the past couple of years, Google removed the right-side ads and added a new fourth ad ...
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Google Ads
AdWords: Exact Match Not So Exact Anymore
April 3, 2017 • Robert Brady
You may have missed the blog post from AdWords on March 17 about the expansion of close variants. The second paragraph of that post reads, in part: … over the coming months ...
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Google Ads
‘Engagement on Facebook’ a New Custom Audience to Target
March 15, 2017 • Robert Brady
Facebook continues to develop and grow its online advertising platform. It has recently released a new way to define audiences that is based on interaction inside of Facebook. In this ...
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Google Ads
Using AdWords’ New ‘Responsive Ads’ Format
February 1, 2017 • Robert Brady
As of yesterday, January 31, Google AdWords no longer allows advertisers to create or edit standard text ads. This should not come as a surprise. In September, Google announced the January ...
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Google Ads
Using Demographic Targeting in AdWords
January 9, 2017 • Robert Brady
Online advertising is all about getting your offer in front of the right person at the right time. Keyword-based search ads have long been the gold standard for timing, as ...
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Google Ads
3 AdWords Reports to Run before the New Year
December 6, 2016 • Robert Brady
Pay-per-click advertising provides advertisers with much data about what potential customers are searching for, what messaging resonates with them, and how campaigns are performing. There is so much data, in ...
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Google Ads
How to Identify a Competitor’s IP Address
November 7, 2016 • Robert Brady
In “How to Spy on Your PPC Competitors,” my post in August, I addressed going to “stealth mode” by excluding your competitors’ IP addresses in Google AdWords and other pay-per-click ...
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Google Ads
Writing Irresistible PPC Ads
October 4, 2016 • Robert Brady
The battle for attention and clicks on the search engine results pages is heating up. For desktop users on Google, the battle is more acute with the removal of right-side ads,
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Google Ads
How to Spy on Your PPC Competitors
August 25, 2016 • Robert Brady
The ecommerce industry is highly competitive. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the area of pay-per-click advertising. With heavyweights like Amazon and Ebay spending millions of dollars on PPC,
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Google Ads
Are AdWords Default Settings Hurting Your Campaigns?
August 1, 2016 • Robert Brady
I recently read Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, a book by behavioral economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein. It’s an intriguing read for anyone desiring ...
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Google Ads
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Merchant Voice
Our experiment in eliminating AdWords
July 29, 2016 • Peter Keller
Back in the day, I managed a $500,000 annual pay-per-click advertising budget for CompactAppliance.com, a retailer of small-space appliances. That business was built on the pillars of PPC ads and ...
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Google Ads
Google Shopping Ads Getting Even Better; 2 Examples
July 6, 2016 • Robert Brady
Back in December 2002, Google launched a small feature called Froogle. It wasn’t a revolutionary idea by any means. There were already numerous sites at the time that allowed consumers ...
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Google Ads
Google, for Mobile-first, Changes AdWords
June 2, 2016 • Robert Brady
At its recent 2016 Performance Summit, Google’s senior vice president of ads and commerce, Sridhar Ramaswamy, stated, in the keynote address, “the shift to mobile is not something that is ...
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Google Ads
Using (Big) Data to Boost PPC Advertising
May 3, 2016 • Robert Brady
The term “big data” can be confusing. For some people, it conjures up thoughts of someone spying on their activity and then selling that information. For others, it represents a ...
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Google Ads
Leveraging Bid Modifiers for PPC Success
April 8, 2016 • Robert Brady
Setting up a pay-per-click ad account on a search engine requires a lot of work. Consider this simplified checklist, which would be typical of a new campaign launch. Campaign name. Needs ...
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Google Ads
SEO: How to Combat Google’s Ad Increase
April 1, 2016 • Jill Kocher Brown
In the wake of Google’s move to increase ads at the top of the search results pages while removing side-rail ads, many are focusing on the impact on paid advertising ...
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Google Ads
Using Pinterest Ads to Drive Ecommerce Sales, Reach Mobile Consumers
March 2, 2016 • Robert Brady
The amount of time people spend on their smartphones is amazing. Americans reportedly spend 4.7 hours each day on their smartphones and they check social media accounts 17 times daily. That’s a ...
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Google Ads
Using Facebook’s New Dynamic Product Ads
February 3, 2016 • Robert Brady
As ecommerce has become mainstream, the number of products available to buy online has increased. For goods like shoes, which typically are tried on for size, sites like Zappos came ...