CCC Expert Chats: Meet Yasmin — Our Google PPC & Analytics Specialist

Who is Yasmin?

Yasmin is a PPC expert who began her career working for Google. After spending many years at the tech giant, she decided to start her own PPC-focused agency. Over the past 17 years, Yasmin has seen Google and its PPC program go from infancy to the behemoth ad service it is today.

What does a long-time expert have to say about the current state of PPC? 

Yasmin thinks things have significantly progressed, and there’s a lot to like, but she also believes some great things were phased out. For example, Google always focuses on User Experience (UX), but they tend to miss the mark by limiting the tools and control they give advertisers.

Take this example: Keyword Planner has significantly gone downhill since the early days. The tool once gave advertisers way more flexibility and control over ad campaigns. In addition, bidding strategies have become hard to control manually, as it’s challenging to build a manual bid strategy. However, manual strategies can be essential for some businesses, especially those with competitive keywords.

Current PPC Trends & Challenges

On top of managing campaigns, Yasmin spends time daily staying up to date on news, trends, and changes to PPC and analytics tracking. Here’s what she had to say about the biggest trends shaping the future of PPC.

Big Push for Automation

It’s no secret that automation is the focus today — and Google’s Performance Max is only the latest example of this. However, advertisers are hesitant and afraid to give complete control to Google’s automation tools.

Yasmin thinks this hesitation is justified. It’s not uncommon for automation to get it wrong, whether it deletes full keyword sets for and related data for a campaign or overbids on target keywords. 

These tools often make their own assumptions and decisions that might not be in an advertiser's best interest. For example, Yasmin experimented with automated keywords. The system automatically deleted a ton of top-performing keywords and data for a smaller campaign. 

Install Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Now

Google’s Universal Analytics platform has been the gold standard for analytics for years, but it’s now being replaced by Google Analytics 4.

GA4 aims to better cater to the modern tech landscape in which mobile traffic exceeds desktop traffic. Additionally, GA4 will give better insights into conversion metrics for app downloads, app purchases, and users who change devices throughout the customer journey.

Fortunately, before Universal Analytics is officially sunset, you can use both. That means it’s well worth setting up GA4 as soon as possible so you can start collecting the data and insights to power future marketing campaigns.

PPC Costs Rising

PPC is all about bidding wars. This bidding war system is how PPC has always worked, but recently, costs have been driven up due to increased competition. 

For example, global cost-per-click was $0.52 in the first quarter of 2021 but rose to $0.62 in Q1 2022. The rising costs are partially a result of more online advertisements resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, but decisions made by Google are also a factor.

Additionally, Google phased out Smart Shopping and similar popular features, launched Performance Max, and forced advertisers to switch. Performance Max initially seemed better than Smart Shopping, but as everyone switched, cost and performance became worse than its predecessor. 

These types of developments are all too common in the world of PPC. As a business, it’s essential you understand how to get the most value out of your advertising budgets.

How CCC Tackles Current PPC Challenges

How are Yasmin and the CCC team meeting each of these trends and challenges? Let’s break them down one by one:

Closely Monitoring Automation 

We can’t avoid the switch to automation, but we can adjust our practices to optimize it. 

Automation will soon become the best way to actually get your ads served. Yasmin is keeping a close eye on automated systems to ensure campaigns are performing effectively within a client’s budget. We also recommend supplementing PPC with SEO to help build authority and improve your organic ranking.

Getting Tactical to Address Rising PPC Costs 

We can counter rising PPC costs by tactfully scheduling when your ads run. For example, we often run ads at peak times for a client’s business to ensure maximum exposure and impact. 

We’re also letting the data do the talking, which means paying attention to what devices bring in the most conversions so we can further optimize for those devices. It’s important to avoid the catch-all strategy if it’s clear your audience engages with your business in a specific way. 

Making the Switch to Google Analytics 4 

Universal Analytics will stop collecting data on July 1st, 2023. It’s well worth setting up GA4 to work in tandem with UA before then so you don’t have any gaps in data collection. 

Additionally, metrics from UA will vary from GA4, so having an entire year of GA4 analytics will become crucial for analysis at the end of the year. We’ve started proactively rolling out GA4 for many of our clients to ensure they have the data needed to support future marketing initiatives.