We have started this series of articles on Channable by explaining all the features that the tool has to offer. That article can be found here. After that we deep dived in possible errors that can occur with your import, feeds and APIs. That one can be found here. To round out the series, this time we will look into errors that can occur with the PPC tool. For a quick recap: this tool allows you to build search advertisements based on the items in your feed. You can use dynamic fields to personalize the advertisements. As with the feed errors there is a preview step where you can see all the ads that were created for that campaign. You have the option to look at it at an ad group, ad or keyword level. Here you will have the option to filter on error which makes finding these quite easy. If you click on these red errors in the line you get a description of the error, in what line it is present and what exactly triggered the error. Important to note is that if an ad has an error it won’t be pushed to the advertising platform and thus will not be able to serve.

We will discuss 5 errors that were encountered as well as the fixes we used to solve these. 

Empty field

This is one of the easier ones to solve. This means that one of the dynamic fields that is used in the ad templates has an empty value for that product in the feed. The simplest way to solve this is to make sure all the fields that you wish to use are present in the feed. You can also always add a default value to products that have the specific field empty. If that is not an option, you might need to reconsider the use of that field in the ad templates.

Duplicate element

This one is a bit more difficult but still one of the easier ones. This means that there are the same headlines or descriptions in the ad. It is easy to spot in which headline this problem occurs if we look at the description of the error. As you can see below there is already a lot of information in the description that we can use. For this error we’ll need to look at field path and there we can see that the duplicate element in this case can be found in headline 4. When searching for the duplicate don’t forget that maybe there is a static value in a dynamic field which may cause the duplicate but that isn’t as visible in the ad builder section.

Ad limit reached

This is an error specifically for RSAs. As it is only possible to have 3 RSAs in a single ad group in Google Ads, Channable pushes only the first 3 into the live version. If the naming of your ad groups isn’t too granular, for example if you only use 1 dynamic field but more that 3 products have that field with the same value they will all be put in the same ad group and thus Channable will try to create more than 3 RSAs which will give you this error. Inherently this error isn’t necessary to be handled as you already have 3 RSAs for the ad group but if you need to have different messages there are two things you can do: make your ad group naming more granular which will split up the items in the feed even more or use a group rule. 

In this example we are grouping all items with the same value in the Brand field. You can do this for every field that is relevant. Do note that if you keep it like this it will group all the items on 1 item without changing anything about that item. This makes it so that with this particular set-up we would get rid of all the items until a single unique one is left for each brand. In this example we only use Brand as a dynamic field later on in the build step, so the loss of the other items is not a problem. So depending on the set-up this could be useful. Otherwise if you want to keep certain fields you will need to combine them. This creates a list in that field with all the values of the different items.

Illegal Characters

This error can occur on an ad or a keyword level. This mostly means that an illegal character has snuck in via the feed. Depending on the field where this happens it can be a different character. In the example below it is a ‘.’ in the path field of the advertisement. Other ones can be a variety of different symbols ranging from ° to ß. To look at the character blocking the advertisement look at the trigger part of the description to identify the culprit. If you were to find a [ ], it is a space. After identifying where the problem is, you just need to add some data cleaning rules or introduce some new fields to make sure that you can get rid of these characters in the corresponding places. This can be applied for both ads as well as keywords.

Policy errors

Policy errors are the most resilient ones and can come from a variety of reasons such as sensitive, trademark, unapproved supplement, pharmaceutical, etc. These errors can only occur on your keywords. This comes from the fact that when the keywords are pushed into Google, they are disapproved due to policy violations. Currently the only workaround is to manually add these in Google and ask for an exception or appeal the decision, as there is no way for Channable to automatically push keywords with the exemption. You can find which part of the keyword is blocking and for which reason in the description. For the example, below this would be Tab which is in violation of the pharmaceutical policy of Google.

These were some of the more occurring errors that we tackled in this article. Please do note that this list is non-exhaustive and other errors may occur. If you are stuck with a specific rule or error, never hesitate to reach out the Channable support team as they will always be able to help you further.

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Introduction

At the end of October 2021, we had the chance to be interviewed by Qualifio to discuss the future of digital advertising without third-party cookies. 

Other players (OMD, Nestlé Purina, etc) of the Belgium market also shared their thoughts about this crucial topic. 

The entire article is available on the Qualifio website. 

The way it already affected our business

The end of third-party cookies has already had an important impact on the way we interpret data, and especially on the way we attribute the performances of our acquisition channels. Indeed, with the lifetime of the cookies becoming shorter on some browsers (Safari, Firefox, etc), evaluating the impact of every one of the user’s touchpoints with our brand has become much more complicated. Once Google Chrome will also stop supporting third-party cookies, the impact will of course be even greater.

The strategies that we will put in place 

With our different clients, we already discussed and elaborate a plan on how to approach this cookieless future. We will be putting different strategies and tactics in place:

• We will be relying more on first-party data
• We will be counting on technical implementation to try to diminish the impact (whilst still staying compliant)
• We will implement server-side tracking
• Google Consent Mode, Google Enhanced Conversions, etc
• We need to accept that attribution will be more complicated and that we need to go for data modelling
• We will be looking into new ways to target people (ex: using more contextual and lookalike audiences, cohort audiences, etc)

The pros and cons of this new world 

The disadvantages of the cookieless world are clear, especially in the marketing industry. The following 3 elements will be impacted:

• Measurement
• Data unification
• Audience creation

The way we look at data will change drastically, as will the level of precision this data can give us.  

The advantage of third-party cookies no longer being used for our clients is also one of our biggest challenges. We need to get closer to our clients to have more direct communication with them. Therefore, first-party data will be crucial.

The way the online ecosystem will evolve

The way marketers look at data will also face a drastic change. We won’t be able to have 100% precise information. We won’t be able to avoid conversion modelling and will need to embrace it. The same goes for attribution, we will need to accept that it will become an even more complicated topic in the future.

Advertisers will try to gather as much first-party data as possible. So we expect to see the hunt for customers’ personal data to boom in the coming years. 

We are not afraid about the audience part. All the big advertising players (Google, DSP, etc) will find solutions to still be able to make “interest or affinity” based audiences even if they’re not cookie based (cohort audiences, etc). But on the other hand, retargeting will be a challenge.

On the publisher side, it’s clear that we will be seeing more “subscription” business models emerging. Especially for websites with qualitative content. So the CPM on very qualitative websites is also likely to increase, as people will fight for those top impressions.

Conclusion: An important change with many opportunities

The digital advertising ecosystem will heavily be impacted by the disappearance of third-party cookies. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that we will be seeing a decrease in digital advertising investment or that advertiser will shift their resources to other channels. 

Every player in the market will adapt to this new challenges as it did for all the previous ones. 

The digital marketing industry still has a bright future ahead.

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Anyone who has ever worked with Display & Video 360 knows that ready-to-use algorithms are available, but these actually only offer a universal approach to buying impressions. If you as a business want to optimize towards a goal of your own, this has been impossible until now. 

For a few months now Google has been working on creating a tool that allows each business to build its own algorithm and thus have an alternative to ready-to-use algorithms. 

In this article, we will give you the keys to creating custom algorithms so that you too can create your own algorithm and achieve your goals. 

What is a custom bidding algorithm? 

The main definition of a custom bidding algorithm refers to a set of bidding rules that are designed to deliver results, aligned to your specific business’s goals. But concretely how does that work ? As a first-party algorithm, the advertiser will have to define custom impression scores in order to build a predictive model that will learn to optimize bids. 

Basically, you first need to define and identify a KPI that you want to optimize toward. You can for example optimize towards Transaction value, customer value, brand awareness or even weighted conversions. 

Once that step is done, the advertiser will have to build a “simple” script that will tell DV360 how much an impression is worth based on the KPI you just defined. “Simple” can give you a biased sensation. Yes, templates exist but some scripts as for example the one needed for weighted conversions can be rather complex to create. 

Finally, DV360 will use this script to assign a value to an ad impression in order to automatically maximize impressions depending on your objectives. 

To summarize how it works, your script will firstly tell DV360 how to score each impression. This score will represent how valuable the outcome of the impression is to you. Then the algorithm will learn which impressions are valuable and feed that back into the bidding model using the 40+ signals from the impression to understand which impressions will be valuable to you in the future. When DV360 sees a new impression it uses the data from the model to predict the value of the impression and determine what to bid.  

What do you need to start with custom bidding? 

The watchword here is DATA. You will have to keep in mind that the more data you have the better your algorithm will be able to optimize. Google states that you need at least : 

• At least 1,000 positively-scored impressions for an advertiser
• At least 50 positively-scored impressions for an individual line item
• You can find all requirements here. 

Obviously to start with custom bidding you will also need to write your script. For that Google anticipated that we aren’t all coding experts. Thus they wrote guides in order to help you create your script even without technical know-how. You can find samples of scripts and implementation instructions by following those links.   

But what can you really do with it?

At this stage, you learned all the basics of what a custom algorithm is. But you’re probably wondering what value it can bring to your company?

As already said, besides all universal algorithms, custom ones will help you optimize towards your own KPI. You will have the possibility to mainly focus on transaction value, weighted conversions, customer value, and brand. In this section, we will review each of them to better understand the ins and outs of the expected outcome. 

Transaction value 

Optimizing towards transaction value will enable you to score impressions based on the actual value of a purchase. This means that an impression that leads to a purchase of 100€ will be scored 100 whereas an impression that leads to a purchase worth 10€ will be scored 10. As simple as this concept is, results have been striking for companies that already test this custom algorithm compared to classical ones. On average those have recorded a 73% increase in online sales and a 1.7x uplift in return on ad spend. 

Weighted conversions

The goal here is to optimize towards your most valuable conversions. Taking the concept that all conversions are not equal, using custom bidding will enable you to optimize towards your most valuable conversions without missing out on other useful ones. 

That means that instead of only counting the final conversions as Auto bidding does. You’re weighing different steps of your funnel to give more signals and feed the machine learning algorithm. Your custom algorithm will thus have more data in order to better perform. 

Customer Value: u-variables  

In contrast to auto-bidding which is only optimizing on purchase and thus considers all purchases as the same, custom bidding allows you to optimize on several sub conversions i.e purchase value, number of items, reward tier, product category,... This will help you optimize towards a higher LTV and increase your revenue. To enrich your custom algorithm you can even use Google Analytics goals to feed the system with more crucial info such as destination (landing page), duration of the session, Pages/screens per session or even based on events. 

Brand

This one based itself on signals correlated with your brand in order to get the most of your campaigns. That means that you can either use viewability or video complete or even time on screen in order to make sure that people integrate the message you want to communicate to them. 

What’s next? 

Google is currently improving its tools in order to facilitate the creation of such custom bidding algorithms. The goal will be to create a fully integrated solution where you will only plug requested information into. 

This is already kind of implemented into DV360. If you connect to your DV360 account and then navigate to “Resources” => “Custom bidding” you will find there the tool that Google already created in order for you to create your custom bidding and then share it with a specific advertiser.  

A more technical article on how to create a custom script will follow as well as one of our business cases so stay tuned for further information!

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Performance Max campaigns from Google

Performance Max is the newest smart bidding campaign type released by Google that has left its beta stages and is now usable by everybody since the 2nd of November. But what can we expect from it and what are some best practices? That will be discussed in the following article

Performance Max in a nutshell is focused on maximizing your marketing goals by using machine learning and an asset group that can serve on all Google placements (see image 1)

This gives your campaign enormous flexibility in range & placements where this campaign can reach out to potential customers. This should in turn result in better performance for your campaign as it can touch customers at the right time and place to have them convert. 

To start setting up this campaign, you’ll have to give the following information to the algorithm:

• A goal
• (a product feed)
• Daily budget
• Bidding strategy (Max conversion or Max conversion value with possible CPA or ROAS target)
• Location
• Languages
• (Final URL expansion: this is like a DSA and will allow your campaign to alter its Final URL to one that is more relevant to the customer)
• Assets
• (Audience signal: This is not a targeting option but allows you to give the campaign an idea on what type of customer you would like to target)

To have access to all these placements, you’ll need the correct assets. Below you can find the minimum & maximum assets that you can use for your campaign (image 2). Some things to keep in mind is that to get an ad strength of good or higher, you’ll need more and different types of assets to give the algorithm as much room as possible.

Best Practices

So now you know what you need to set-up the Performance Max campaign but how can you make sure that your set-up is the best possible? Look no further as we’ll be discussing some best practices & important things to keep in mind when trying out this new campaign type.

First off, it is highly recommended to have this campaign type run on top of existing campaigns. While it can serve all placements, Google recommends to see this as an on-top campaign type to run alongside your search & display campaigns. An important side note has to be made here. If you are to run a Performance Max campaign in the same account as Smart Shopping and you target the same location, the Performance Max will cannibalize your Smart Shopping as the algorithm will give priority to the highest ad rank which in this case will be the Performance Max campaign.

It is also important to give the algorithm enough time to learn to optimize. It is therefore recommended to have the campaign run at least 4-6 weeks before making changes & analyzing the performance. If needed you can swap out “low” performing assets after a minimum of 2 weeks. It is also recommended to mainly look at the most important KPI such as conversions & CPA or conversion value & ROAS when evaluating the campaign.

Best practices regarding automation are the following:

• Use goals that are similar to your other performance campaigns
• Have at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days
• Use Data-Driven attribution
• Avoid low budgets. If the campaign is constrained by budget, raise it until it is no more
• Set ROI goal to the past-30 historical account average
• Turn on Final URL expansion

All in all, we are very excited about what Performance Max will bring to us in the future and how it will change marketing campaigns into even more machine learning-driven campaigns that rely on data and AI to get the best results possible. Our first test was quite promising but we hope to see even better results once the algorithm can capture more data and learning. Especially now that Google has announced that Performance Max will become the next generation of Local & Smart Shopping campaigns in 2022, confirms according to us how much Google believes in their new campaign type.

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