I wanted to share a new feature being rolled out in Google ad campaigns over the next few weeks, which is going to help you increase your CTR, lower your CPC, and hit your target return on ad spend or CPA easier. This feature is called Google’s Ad Strength.
BEFORE WE LEARN ABOUT WHAT AD STRENGTH, KNOW WHAT QUALITY SCORE IS
If you’re new to PPC, you need to know about Quality Score. It’s something unique Google added when it first started ad words almost two decades ago. Quality Score has a big impact in how they display their ads, and it was so effective at creating a customer focused ad environment that Facebook and Amazon also borrowed this concept.
What is Quality Score?
Quality score is a measure of how relevant, targeted, and useful Google thinks your ads are.
The theory goes like this: If you can serve an ad that Google thinks is helpful, then Google will reward you with a high Quality Score, and in turn give you cheaper clicks. What odes Google consider helpful? Well, there’s a couple different variables like landing page quality, keyword to ad relevance, but the biggest is CTR, also known as click through rate, which is the rate at which your ads get clicked on represented as a percent.
We’ve published case studies where we increased CTR which in turn increased Quality Score. This increase in Quality Score meant that we got more clicks for a lower cost per click. To understand why Google rewards advertisers who get a high CTR with a high Quality Score and gives them these lower CPCs, it’s because Google wants advertisers to battle for ad engagement. If advertisers are working tirelessly to create more engaging, clickable, low bounce rate ads, then not only does Google make more money, but it trains the searchers that clicking on ads isn’t going to lead to a seedy landing page, and they’ll never have to worry about clicking on ads and wondering if they’re going to be relevant.
PRIORITIZE QUALITY SCORE
The lesson here is simple:
If you want more traffic at lower CPCs, work on Quality Score. The biggest factor in determining quality score is Click-Through Rate. Now, once you start optimizing for CTR and Quality Score, you’ll realize immediately that this kind of optimization is tough. You need to look at ads, brainstorm, look at your competition, look at your landing page, wait for data to roll in. Then you need to rinse and repeat. Some ads that you thought would be engaging will fail, and some ads that you thought would never work end up doing great. You have to test a lot. You often have to guess with Google is thinking.
INTRODUCING GOOGLE AD STRENGTH
Well, this optimization process is getting a little easier with Google’s new ad strength feature. It’s going to be rolling out over the next few weeks. Soon, when you create ads on Google, they’ll display an ad strength rating for your ad copy. As you can see form this image, Google suggesting that I add more headlines to test, add more descriptions, and make them a little bit more unique. Getting this immediate feedback, even before you launch ads, is going to make it easier for all advertisers to find that sweet spot of Ad Relevancy and Quality Score. We’ll be able to find these suggestions in the new multi-headline and multi-description features inside the new Google ads UI.
As you can see from the image above, it’s giving me lots of room to experiment with testing different pieces of ad copy like adding multiple headlines and adding multiple description lines. I’m really excited for the team here at Search Scientists to start experimenting with this new feature, and I hope using this makes it easier for all of us to help our clients hit higher CTRs, higher Quality Scores, and cheaper CPCs.
SUBSCRIBE TO KEEP UP WITH MORE OF GOOGLE’S NEW FEATURE
Google says they’ll be releasing this feature in the coming weeks. We publish a lot of content on how to get the most from your digital advertising, so be sure to subscribe and follow us for more strategies and techniques. This is Mike from Search Scientists, and always be optimizing.
