Conversion Logix is excited to announce we’ve achieved the highest level of the Google Partners program, 2023 Premier Partner status. 

This month, Google recognized the achievements of top-performing digital marketing partners across the globe. Conversion Logix was one of a select group of companies to be designated as Premier Partners in the Google Partners program. This program is designed for advertising agencies and third parties that manage Google Ads accounts on behalf of other brands or businesses. Its mission is to empower companies by providing them with innovative tools, resources, and support to help their clients succeed and grow online.

“We are thrilled to be recognized for the tenth consecutive year as a Google Premier Partner,” said Andrew Cederlind, President and COO of Conversion Logix. “We’re honored to be in the top 3% of performing companies delivering cutting-edge digital marketing solutions. Our team of digital marketing experts is dedicated to providing clients with exceptional service and strategic campaign management to produce results that achieve their business goals.”

The Google Partners program underwent significant changes in 2022, including redefining what it means to be a Premier Partner, through advanced program requirements and offering Premier Partner benefits to promote growth and success with Google Ads. In 2023, the program continues to support its Premier Partners and their clients.

To achieve Premier Partner status, agencies must meet a set of requirements, including demonstrating proficiency in Google Ads, meeting Google Ads spend requirements, and delivering outstanding client performance. Conversion Logix has met these rigorous standards set by Google and has demonstrated exceptional performance in managing Google Ads campaigns.

“Congratulations to our Premier Partners for 2023. These companies are among the top 3% of Google Partners in their respective countries. It’s a true accomplishment, one that signals their leading expertise in Google Ads, in forging new client relationships, and in helping clients grow. We look forward to supporting them as they help their customers build smart online strategies and drive long-term success,” said Marcin Karnowski, Senior Director of Ads Marketing at Google.

This achievement means that Conversion Logix has access to exclusive Google resources, training, and support, which will enable us to further enhance our expertise and better serve you. We will continue to leverage our expertise and access to exclusive Google resources to deliver innovative and effective solutions for our clients that push the boundaries of digital marketing.

Conversion Logix is excited about the opportunities that lie ahead as we remain committed to staying at the forefront of the rapidly evolving digital marketing industry. Our Google Premier Partner status serves as a badge of honor that highlights their commitment to excellence and their dedication to delivering exceptional results for their clients.

The post Conversion Logix® Is Named a 2023 Google Premier Partner appeared first on Conversion Logix.

Each quarter we interview Conversion Logix’s Director of Operations, Mark Skalla, to learn about new marketing technologies the Conversion Logix team is working on to drive better ad performance. If you missed our last interview, read it here.

Mark, we’re about three months into 2022. What ad trends have stood out so far this year?

One trend that is top-of-mind for our team is the renewed emphasis Google is placing on AI and automation in the Google Ads platform. Another buzzworthy trend is the expansion of video advertising. As video consumption continues to rise across all platforms, we’re seeing advertisers expand into platforms they haven’t tried before.

Tell us more about Google’s focus on AI and automation.

We’ve seen Google go in this direction before. They’ve released solutions to help advertisers automate ad delivery and bids towards specific ad objectives, introduced responsive ads to optimize copy combinations, and included time-saving automation like de-duplicating keywords in your keyword list. Now Google is expanding its ability to automate the implementation of these AI features through automated workflows. This has the potential to provide a couple of benefits to advertisers: 

• Eliminates the tasks getting in the way of high-value activities. Ad managers will be able to prioritize additional testing, and new campaign builds with the time-savings workflows provide. With more attention given to high-value activities, campaigns will see more significant performance gains.
• Ad managers can apply optimizations faster, maximizing the length of time campaigns run on peak performance. Similar to getting an oil change in your car. The more regularly you maintain your car, the more efficiently it runs. Workflows enable us to instantly apply optimizations at scale, increasing the period of time campaigns run with the optimizations in place, ultimately maximizing ad investment.

While automation and AI can be powerful tools, most of Google’s optimizations are single-minded in the way they optimize a campaign. For example, one feature may deliver more ad clicks for your campaigns, but this may come at the expense of conversions and vice versa.

Think of it like this. You want a clean house. A Roomba is great at vacuuming your floor. But a Roomba isn’t going to clean your counters or put away your laundry for you. 

Google’s AI workflows automate the implementation of specific tasks in the platform (like a Roomba), but you still need to monitor the combination of workflows in place and how they work together to attain optimal end results.

What do you recommend to advertisers looking to increase their investment in video?

Most of our clients are already advertising on social networks like Facebook and Instagram, and more and more are leveraging video on these platforms. Outside of Facebook Ads, we recommend our clients leverage platforms like YouTube and Connected TV. 

Something many marketers don’t realize is that on a monthly basis, more people watched video on YouTube than used Facebook. Even with the rapid rise of Tik Tok, recent eMarketer reports show that YouTube is still the most-watched video platform. ⅔ of the U.S. population and ¾ of internet users visited YouTube monthly in 2021.

In addition to advertising on YouTube and Connected TV,  we’re running tests to determine the viability of Tik Tok’s ad platform. So far, we are seeing positive results from our initial tests and we will have more to say about it in the coming months.

What strategies would you recommend for clients getting started with YouTube Ads?

We’ve uncovered new findings from an internal study about the relationship between ad spend and ad performance. It turns out there is a threshold of ad spend that yields a greater increase in performance. It shows us that the relationship between spend and performance is not linear on YouTube and that if you spend past a certain amount, you can achieve a greater boost in results.

Outside of this finding, we are seeing a combination of audience build type, bidding strategy, and ad type that has consistently performed better on the platform. We’ve seen the best results from in-stream video ads targeting a custom audience with a max conversion bidding strategy. This takes advantage of the skippable ad format, the platform’s Google keyword targeting abilities, and the power of Google’s AI to optimize bids and ad delivery.

You mentioned Connected TV as a recommended video advertising channel. Why should advertisers consider adding this to their portfolio?

Video consumption on Connected TV devices has grown dramatically in recent years. Nielsen reported that video streaming accounted for 25% of total TV time in the U.S. in 2021, and eMarketer forecasts that US CTV ad spending will increase from $3B in 2019 to $19B in 2023.

TV viewers have changed how they purchase TV services from monthly cable packages to a customized mix of individual subscription services. 

Connected TV advertising offers the best of both worlds for advertisers. You get the reach and opportunity to expand your ad placements to TV viewers combined with the attribution of digital channels. Now we can answer questions like, “Did they watch the ad?” “How long did they watch it? Did the viewer click the ad or search for it later? Answering these kinds of questions is impossible with traditional TV. Connected TV gives us important data to optimize our clients’ messaging and campaigns.

How to Stay Ahead of the Curve

Ahead of the Curve is a series Conversion Logix started to keep marketers updated on trends and technology impacting the marketing industry today. Don’t miss your chance to learn from Conversion Logix’s digital marketing experts, schedule a call to learn more.

The post Ahead of the Curve – Hot Trends & Timely Topics appeared first on Conversion Logix.

Google is removing average position as a performance metric in Google Ads at the end of September. What does this mean for advertisers?

Not as much as you might think.

For years people have used average position to evaluate whether their paid ad campaigns are effective at ranking at the top of the search engine. So why did Google do away with this key performance indicator?

Why Google is Sunsetting Average Position

Average position became a crutch that businesses relied on to measure performance, but as a KPI, it has its faults. Average position looks at how ads rank across your entire campaign for a given period of time and presents you with an average number. 

By basing your position indicator as an average, advertisers aren’t able to effectively pinpoint how often your ads are showing up at the top of the search engine. If 80% of the time, your ads ranked in the number one spot, but 20% of the time they ranked in the 4th spot, your average position would be skewed to reflect a higher number, giving the impression that most of your ads ranked worse than they actually did. What advertisers really want to know is how often their ads are showing up at the very top of the search engine. Google’s new metrics give advertisers a better way to evaluate this.

What is replacing Average Position?

Last year, Google provided advertisers with new ways to measure how their ads rank in the search engine. Savvy advertisers are now using metrics like top impression rate and absolute top impression rate to determine if campaigns are getting the visibility they need. New and improved metrics like absolute top impression rate get at what advertisers really wanted to know from average position, “How often are we showing up first and how often are we showing up in the top three spots?”.

Here’s how Google defines these new metrics.

Top Impression Rate:

“Search top impression rate ‘Impr. (Top) %’ is the percent of your ad impressions that are shown anywhere above the organic search results.”

Absolute Top Impression Rate:

“Search absolute top impression rate ‘Impr. (Abs.Top) %’ is the percent of your ad impressions that are shown as the very first ad above the organic search results.”

If one of your ad campaigns has an absolute top impression rate of 75% you can be confident that the ads in your campaign ranked number one in the search engine most of the time, which is what you really wanted to know all along. Between these two new metrics, advertisers can get a more precise idea of how well they’re performing in terms of ad rank.

The Downsides of Focusing Too Much on Ad Rank

It’s important to note that while ranking at the top of the search engine gives you better visibility with searchers, it isn’t the most important aspect of a good search campaign. At the end of the day, you want your search ad to result in the prospect taking action. Whether you want them to click into your website and convert into a lead or call your location straight from the ad, you want the searcher to take the next step in the customer journey. Bidding strategies like max click bidding or maximize conversions help advertisers optimize for those things that matter most, generating leads and sales.

In an effort to allocate more of your budget towards reaching those prospects who are the most likely to convert, your absolute top impression rate could fall as a result. This is because Google is more focused on getting your ad out to a more targeted list then it is at making sure you show up as the number one listing for everyone who searches for your list of keywords. Strategies like this can often lead to better click-through rates and more leads, which to most brands, is well worth the trade-off for ranking first for every search.

Conclusion 

Google is always releasing new tools to help advertisers track campaign performance and optimize for lead generation. Replacing average position with new ad rank metrics is just one of the many changes the Google team made to the platform this past year. If you’re curious about some of the other changes Google announced this year, check out our last Google update from Google’s Marketing Live Event. 

The post Google is Sunsetting Average Position appeared first on Conversion Logix.

If you own or operate a location-based business, you’ve likely dreamed of the day you can attribute marketing dollars to real-life foot traffic. Google started working on making this dream a reality in 2014, but the feature only rolled out to a limited group of high traffic companies. Over the last few months, Google started making a larger feature roll out to small businesses and enterprises. Advertisers can now track the campaigns, keywords, and devices that lead to store visits in Google’s ad platform. Up until this point, advertisers have been able to attribute ad campaign success in Google Ads through website traffic, website events, online purchases, and phone calls. While these metrics do a great job of measuring the intent of searchers to visit a location, store visits allow businesses to see how this online intent actually translates to foot traffic.

Who can take advantage of Google’s store visits?

• Companies that have nonsensitive location-based businesses (Ex: Apartments, Car Dealerships, Hotels)
• Companies that have a Google Business Profile set up for each location and 90% of their location links verified
• Companies using location extensions in Google Ads
• Companies that received thousands of ad clicks and impressions
• Companies that have enough foot traffic and pass user privacy thresholds

How does Google track store visits?

Google uses a variety of signals to arrive at the store visits data they report in your Google ads account. Google maps data, store locations, wi-fi signal strength in stores, GPS location signals, Google queries, visit behavior, and a sample of 1 million users who opted into allowing Google to track their location history are all used to determine and validate this metric. Google surveyed over 5 million people to confirm they actually visited a store and used this feedback to update their algorithms. Google is very confident about this metric, they’ve claimed that this data point is “99 percent accurate”. (Wordstream)

How should companies interpret this data?

Advertisers can segment store visit data in Google ads by new and returning visitors. If your company is focused on generating new customers, you can analyze your search campaign data to get a better idea of how new store visitors are finding your business and which ad copy they engage with. Companies looking to generate more repeat business from existing customers are able to evaluate which campaigns lead to returning customer visits and optimize for this customer segment.

Marketers can also use store visit data to build better customer journey models. Advertisers can segment store visits by the number of days that elapsed between a prospect clicking on an ad and visiting the company’s location using the “days to conversion” metric. This data becomes even more interesting when you break it down at the campaign level. Consider comparing days to conversion by brand and non-brand campaigns to get an idea of how long it takes customers who uncovered your business through a non-brand search to visit you as opposed to someone who knew to search your company by brand.

While we know more searching than ever is happening on mobile phones, some high-value purchases or searches that take place in an office setting (B2B), may be more likely to take place on a desktop as opposed to a mobile device. Using store visit device breakdowns, companies can find out which devices high converting prospects use to search for their product or service.

How can companies use this data to generate more store traffic?

This new metric opens the doors for location-based businesses to better attribute and optimize their Google ads campaigns. Everything from ad copy, keyword targeting, location targeting, and device targeting can be evaluated using this metric. Once advertisers use this information to gain a better understanding of what drives store visits they can reallocate budgets and bidding to hone in on the campaigns that generate the most traffic.

Interested in seeing how this metric has impacted other businesses? Check out these case studies from Google.

AdWords Store Visits Data Proves Search Marketing Investment Drives In-Store Visits

AdWords Store Visits Helps PetSmart Measure How Google Search Advertising Affects In-Store Traffic

Office Depot Attracts On-the-Go Shoppers With Local Inventory Ads

The post Google Ads Now Tracks Store Visits appeared first on Conversion Logix.