Hello! My name is Yana Lyashenko, Google Logistician. In today’s video, we will analyze some of the factors that affect the reduction in the percentage of lost impressions due to rankings. This question rarely slips among the questions that business professionals ask. I’ll post a screenshot of the request. We will analyze specifically why it has a high percentage of lost impressions.
An important nuance. This is the rating of the ad that we are losing. It is calculated for the search network in shopping advertisements. We know that shopping ads can be shown on the Display Network, in search partners. We can show it in a video on YouTube if we are talking about Smart shopping, and other different places, views, layouts.
Factors affecting ad rank
It’s important to understand that ad rank is calculated for search only. If we take the classic understanding of the ad rating, now Google rewrites the help regularly, now there are six basic factors that affect this story. Two of them still remain the most basic, which you can directly influence very actively. One of them is the cost per click, which you set manually or the system, when using automation. The second is a quality indicator.
Quality Score
Let’s start with Quality Score. The most difficult story, then to move on to the easier ones, to the cost per click. Because you will not always be able to interrupt ratings by cost per click. There are more nuances. With the quality indicator, let’s close this block and nuance now.
Quality Score, which consists of three important nuances – expected CTR, ad relevancy and landing page quality, is hard to influence at the level of shopping advertising campaigns. It is calculated during each auction at the level of each type of search queries.
For those who don’t know, now the system has cut off most of the low-frequency search queries and does not show them in reports. Therefore, it is almost impossible to clearly define the weighted average quality score in shopping advertising campaigns.
What can you do? To improve the quality score at the level of each of the search queries, you need to work on optimizing the feed in the Merchant Center. Didn’t make it easier?
Is it important? See, the expected CTR is calculated based on the historical CTR. The higher the click-through rate of ads, the higher this indicator. What to work on? So that the pictures stand out from the background of all the others in the issuance of competitors. These guys who take all the same pictures from suppliers and shoot them. What do you expect from a client if they are the same, Natasha, as young people say now.
They are all the same. So you need to stand out with something, change the background, add some drawings, diagrams, if some auto topics, spare parts, etc., then what is allowed by the system. Qualitatively stand out, just right.
Second, optimize the title. Make it as readable as possible for the end user. The title should not be a set of numbers, letters, dimensional parameters. Should reflect the essence of what the person wants to look for. Few people usually have problems with the price. Basic things to do.
Plus, add possible attributes that are required and optional, but appropriate for this specific niche. Due to additional attributes – sizes, colors, grids, product categories, product types, etc. The system will begin to understand more clearly who to show products to. If it begins to show the maximum target audience by specifying what the essence of the product is, the higher the likelihood that there will be higher clicks. All this affects CTR.
Landing page quality
Landing page quality. We won’t touch anything here. Let’s independently consider that a priori, a specific trading position, where we see a product card – it will be average in quality. That’s enough.
There are nuances. With a rather slow site – it starts very slowly, loading in 5, 8, 10 seconds in various browsers – you can check it at the Google Analytics level, then of course you need to work on speed. Believe me, the cost per click decreases by 50 percent, 2, 3 times, after optimizing the site speed according to Google requirements. Check the adaptability of the mobile version. Just recently, I was contacted by a client who asked whether it was worth running ads in this niche or not. By clicking on his link, I saw an absolutely non-adaptive version on Prom. You just need to set the settings. Check adaptability to mobile devices. Without this, you should not run any ad in 2021.
Ad Relevance
There is also ad relevance. Ad relevancy, in simple terms, is how the ad matches the search query of the client. The more adequately the title is spelled out, the description under what the user is looking for, the better.
If this is some kind of jewelry story, then write gold, silver, hallmark, pendant, cross, etc. To read not only in the picture, but also in the text. Plus, the system will more clearly understand to whom to show ads and in what cases to show ads.
In short, a classic job, as with a regular keyword-level Quality Score. It’s just that it’s easier to do it there when we set keywords, but at the level of search queries that the system itself selects from the site, it’s harder. This is the basic thing to do when just reworking titles, optimizing, trying out different variations of the transcription. You will not just write some water: “These are wonderful shoes that we have been selling for 150 years.” No – write the size, what they consist of, composition, etc. This affects the user’s decision.
Pictures are unique content, something that is mandatory in 2021. Get confused, cut out the pictures, put them on some completely different background. To stand out against the background of identical sentences.
Indicate cost per click
Now let’s move on to the next main block that affects ad rankings.
She said that this is the maximum cost per click, set directly manually or by the system. If it is set by the system, then, in principle, we do not particularly touch it. The system understands, if, of course, you use reasonable strategies, intelligent, such as Target ROAS or target cost per conversion, then it independently decides whether there is a chance of conversions or not, according to machine learning calculations. If you manually set the CPC, it is important to set it so that the price is sufficient to enter the maximum possible number of auctions in a particular product range. In the product group – important.
How to understand whether a CPC is sufficient or not sufficient? There are two important concepts. The first is understanding the break-even CPC. If the cost per click is below the average forecast, and used by other advertisers, in principle, you should not bother with its increase. Percentage of lost impressions due to rankings. We’ll have to put up with him.
The next moment. With a gap – it is not lower. You can use two bidding options. The first, based on the conversion of the site, so that the target cost per conversion is approximately within reasonable limits.
Second option, go to the product group level, add a Comparative Max CPC column. See, look, focus on it. It can be pulled up with a delay of up to 48 hours. If you launched today, you will see it after one or two days. If you see that the actual average CPC is lower than the comparative maximum, you can increase your bid. The price is higher than that, then, on the contrary, it is necessary to reduce it. You won’t lose anything.
Budget size
One important point, which in the chain formula one hundred percent will affect the reduction in the rate of lost ratings. Adequately assigned budget size at the level of an advertising campaign. It is important that if you set large enough budgets at the level of advertising campaigns, these same balances must be on your account balance. The system won’t work otherwise. If you set a budget of 1,000 hryvnias, and the remaining 200 hryvnias, this will not bring results. The balances must be adequate.
What happens when an adequate budget is set? What happens is that the system opens up more opportunities to bring to auction as often as possible. Why is it important? Now in any search advertising campaign, including Google shopping, there is only a uniform display of ads.
Equal display of ads means that the system, for a given budget, together with the remaining balance on the balance sheet, tries to stretch impressions in order to display an even number of times in the auction. It does not take into account any bursts. It roughly predicts the average number of impressions. With a quarantine history, yesterday, a year ago, there was no demand for goods, but today there is already a demand.
Uniform display may not take into account intraweek fluctuations, not intraday fluctuations. At 12 days there is a surge. For all systems, in the planner, in Google Trends, you see a surge in demand. She, in fact, in the reports on the display time, you do not see that the system brought to the auction more times. The system tries to evenly distribute throughout the day. The system will display the maximum number of times at 12 noon, and then at 10 pm on what budget it should display. The system often does not even call out to the budget. She overdoes it with the budget constraint. She needs to take with a margin, in case something happens. She needs to display evenly.
I know it sounds a bit too simple from my lips, but in fact it is something that directly directly affects your efficiency. If the cost per click is already equal to the average maximum or you cannot increase it because you have reached the break-even point, reconsider the size of the budget. Now, without changing the cost per click, you can increase your advertising budgets by 2 or 3 times. You will see within 2-3 days how the percentage began to decrease.
The same was done in the marathon, on smartshopping. In the Google shopping marathon, one of the videos talked about the fact that the percentage of lost impressions is quite high and increased the budgets proportionally. And the percentage has gone down. Of course, it is quite difficult to reduce it to 10, 20 percent if there is a lot of product range in one advertising campaign. The system tries to allocate all impressions, clicks, etc. to different product ranges. This is logical.
The more pragmatic approach to the segmentation of shopping advertising campaigns. At least roughly distribute them by type of product groups, into different advertising campaigns, and assign more adequate budgets, sizes for advertising campaigns, bids, you will see how the overall average percentage of lost impressions will be lower than when everyone was kept in one advertising campaign with a good budget.
Why is the budget one of the fundamental things, in percentage gained, lost showing? Google search generates many different search terms. We do not set them manually. Traffic is completely different. It happens that traffic is not targeted, targeted, but, from the highest stages of the sales funnel, having a conversion to a sale is lower. There may be keywords from the lower stages of the sales funnel that convert higher. Plus – add products with different frequencies.
Gold chains have one frequency, power supplies for charging completely different, laptops completely third. Figuratively mixed everything in one basket, made it like borscht. This retains the principle. More often you place goods of different frequency in one trade advertising campaign, groups of goods, non-products, if you place charges in one – they are, in principle, the same.
If you place different product groups – they are different in frequency, then the budget is not enough to display the entire product range in impressions. The average percentage of impressions lost due to ranking is the average calculated from all product positions. The system managed to bring someone actively to the auction on a small budget, with your bid, but someone did not succeed. There is simply not enough capacity in the form of a given advertising budget.
Remember about balances. The larger, larger budgets, the more balances should remain on the balance sheet. Don’t worry about balance. If there are no advertising campaigns that drain the budget, I hope you have already learned how to turn it off, then if you stop working, or something happens, you can always return the money. Do not worry. It is better to have a margin on the leftovers. The system will be more generous to display in the auction. More impressions – more traffic to the site. More traffic to the site – proportionately more sales. Of course, don’t forget about traffic cost regulation.
I still have questions about the indicator in the rating – I can expand the moment if additionally needed. Waiting for feedback in the comments. See you in the next issue.
