Portent PPC Google+ Hangouts

This will serve as the pilot for Portent’s ongoing hangout series where we talk about paid search current events and give you our analysis and commentary.

Today’s hangout topic: AdWords Enhanced Campaigns

A new feature announced just recently by Google. It’s caused quite a hullabaloo in the industry, to say the least.

On today’s hangout panel:

• Michael Wiegand – Senior PPC & Analytics Strategist (Moderator)
• Chad Kearns – PPC Strategist
• Kiko Correa – PPC Strategist
• Tim Johnson – PPC Strategist

Articles discussed in today’s hangout:

• Google’s Enhanced Campaigns Announcement
• Google’s Mobile Revenue Projections
• Google’s Q4 2012 Earnings Report
• Larry Kim’s Pros of Enhanced Campaigns
• Neil Sorenson’s Cons of Enhanced Campaigns

Notes from today’s hangout:

Why is Google making these changes? On a surface level, mobile advertising adoption rates are poor.

Also, they’re simply hedging their bets based on projected mobile industry growth.

What’s their underlying motivation for it? Google’s Q4 2012 earnings report showed their CPCs from AdWords were actually down 6% year-over-year!

By taking away some control from the advertisers, they’re hoping to bring that CPC number up for their investors by Q3 & Q4 2013.

Enhanced Campaign pros

Larry Kim, founder of WordStream, made a few great points.

First, it’ll be a lot easier for small businesses to run on mobile platforms and to maintain accounts themselves. Namely, Enhanced Campaigns allow you to tailor device-specific ad copy within a single campaign. It’ll also allow you to adjust default bids by location and time within the same campaign.

Ad scheduling options are being extended to ad extensions as well. Stats by individual sitelinks instead of group sitelinks will now be accessible.

And lastly, advanced reporting! In-store conversions, digital downloads and cross-device conversions will soon be unveiled.

Enhanced Campaign Cons

Neil Sorenson, Head of PPC at ZAGG.com, outlined some of the main gripes we have in the industry about it.

Tablet bids are now joined at the hip to Desktop bids, when those two segments of traffic can still behave drastically differently.

Additionally, Smartphone bids are now lumped into the same budgets as Tablets and Desktops. Businesses often have dedicated budgets for mobile advertising that are now really difficult to assign.

Stay tuned to the Portent blog for more PPC hangout announcements!