Google's Performance-Max campaigns heralded a new way to target audiences. Rather than direct targeting, Google introduced audience "signals" which instead use aggregate targeting to identify your ideal users. The Google Ads audience signals targeting method is akin to Facebook's Lookalikes. But instead of matching to a single list of users, "signals" incorporates virtually all possible audience targeting methods. The main benefit of audience signals is a flexible audience size that will suit any budget while also self-optimizing to ideal prospects [...]

This is the first in a series of articles I'll be writing about Google Ads strategies for specific industries. This post will be about Google Ads for medical devices and will apply to both B2B and B2C companies. This particular industry is dear to my heart. I spent most of my career working for several medical device startups here in Toronto before opening my agency. DISCLOSURE: Some of the products mentioned in this post may contain affiliate links that at [...]

Anybody that's been managing Google Ads for a while is familiar with the relentless "recommendations" tab and has had run-ins with overzealous Google reps. While the intentions are always good, the results can be disastrous. These "optimization" tools can be particularly harmful to folks that are new to PPC. So how do you decide what Google Ads Recommendations advice to take and which advice to ignore? In this article, I'm going to give you insight into my agency's internal best practices [...]

If you're a PPC manager that's feeling a time crunch this post is for you. I'm going to highlight the 10 biggest Google Ads time savers. Implementing these will free you up to spend more time working on PPC strategy, other marketing tasks, or watching more "Cheers" reruns, it's entirely up to you. 1. Automate Reporting This is a no-brainer once you have 5 or more accounts/reports to work with. Exporting campaign data into spreadsheets or even using the Google [...]

For some time now, Google has been recommending that most advertisers switch their accounts to 100% broad match keywords. In this post, I'll explore why they are doing that and whether or not you should drink this particular Kool-Aid. How did we get here? Google has a long-term plan for their Google Ads users. While I don't have inside information it's obvious to me that Google wants to exert more control over campaigns. Importantly, the reasons for this aren't entirely [...]