During the month of February, we saw fewer clicks and impressions on our Google Web Ads campaign than we saw during the month of January. Mostly this downturn is a continuation of a trend that occurred through January and only began correcting itself in the middle of February.
As you may know, there are several different flavors of Google Ads campaign types, including search, display, video, shopping, apps, etc. Wonderful Machine does not use video, shopping, or app ads because none of these seem appropriate to our goals.
Only search and display ads fit our goals. Display ads appear on different websites among the content on that site. Display ads, according to Google, are useful for establishing name recognition or awareness (the top of the marketing or “purchase funnel“). These are the somewhat annoying advertisements that appear in the margins on the page you are viewing.
The most basic type of ad is a search campaign, and this is what most people think of when they think of Google Ads. These are the advertisements that appear at the top of search results.
During that period we have maintained a constant budget, but we have changed certain keywords, fiddled with the ad copy, and even employed images. These are the kinds of basic maintenance that are required when you have a Google Ads campaign.
Our campaign has two different ad groups: a “standard ad group” and a dynamic ad group. Below are the results for each.
At Wonderful Machine, our standard ad group is called “Specialties” and includes 26 of the 41 keywords that we use to identify the different specialties in which our photographers specialize: i.e., food photography, lifestyle photography, adventure photography, etc.
During February our standard ad group received 18,737 impressions, exactly 6,000 fewer than the previous month, for a loss of -33.2%. We also received only 929 clicks on our advertisements, -41.6% fewer than in January. However, like in January, our bounce rate decreased and our conversion rate (in this case when users searched for photographers) increased.
I should also say that our standard ad group was behaving poorly in part because we had a number of keywords that were no longer effective. Those were made into negative keywords, and it was at this point that the ad group’s improvement began.
We also run a dynamic ad group. A dynamic ad group creates advertisements based on pages from your website. So instead of making your advertisement based on keywords, you provide Google with a series of pages that you want to draw traffic.
During February our dynamic ad campaign had 2,947 impressions, which is -40% fewer than January. It received 117 clicks, which is -19.9% fewer than January. For this ad group, the improvement in the bounce rate was more considerable. It dropped from 56.8 to 50.4, which is an improvement of -11.3%. Kudos! Also, the Find Photographers conversion increased by +14%.
Interested in starting a campaign for your own site? Reach out and let us help.