Attacat PPC
Glossary 2.0
AS:R
ad spend: revenue ratio
As PPC continues to evolve, so does the terminology that is used around it. A few years ago Michelle compiled a PPC glossary which we now feel that we have reason to update. A couple of years in the PPC world means a lot of changes and a lot of new terms to cover, in this post we aim to cover the biggest additions (plus a couple of useful PPC basics that were not covered in the previous post).
Ad group
Ad scheduling
Ad groups come right below campaigns in the organisational structure of AdWords. These allow for an even further distinction between your products and, as the name suggests, these are where the ads you write are stored! You only need one ad per ad group, but good practice suggests having at least two so you can compare the performance of different types of ad copy.
For a lot of PPC accounts, depending on the nature of the business that they are promoting, there are peak times during each day when clicks are more likely to result in a valuable action. Instead of having to manually increase bids every day this can be automated by creating an ad schedule (this is done on campaign level). A lot of businesses like to have their ads appearing 24 hours of the day, but it is likely that a click during business hours is more valuable than one at 3 am.
Ad spend revenue
Avg. position
The ratio between advertising spend and the revenue generated. It measures the same ratio as a Return on Investment (ROI) but displays it as a margin rather than an integer.
There are many places your ad can appear after someone has searched for your keyword. Google typically reserves the top three ads for the very top of the page, just below the search bar. For positions any lower than that your ad will most likely appear down the right-hand side of the screen or even on the second or third pages of the search results.
Assisted conversions Part of an attribution model where value is assigned to campaigns/keywords that were used in the lead-up to a tracked action (for example this could be keywords used during the research stage before completing the purchase of a product). Assisted conversions were introduced to provide a more accurate picture of what campaigns/keywords that are contributing positively to the overall performance of the account, and to make optimisation work more effective for PPC managers.
Audience targeting The Google display network offers even more sophisticated audience targeting opportunities. “In-market” audiences can be used to target people that have shown a purchase intent (you can choose among different verticals). “Affinity audiences” let you target people based on lifestyle and interests. Affinity lists are predefined, although there is also an option to create “custom affinity” audiences, letting you build your own audience by combining affinity audience categories.
Call-only campaigns A campaign type specifically aimed towards driving phone calls and the only type of campaign where ads are only eligible to appear on mobile devices. The headline of the ad simply contains “Call [number]”, and a click will automatically initiate a phone call. This means that the ad text can be tailored specifically to drive phone calls.
Callout extensions Recently added non-clickable extensions that lets businesses highlight unique selling points beneath the standard search ads. As with standard sitelinks these extensions are eligible to appear when ads are showing in top positions, and they are said to improve an ads CTR.
Campaign An AdWords account is broken down into multiple subsections. An account generally encompasses an entire company and all the products they offer, and campaigns are the organisational tier just below the account level. You can use campaigns to separate the types of products you offer by type, function or brand, or use it to target different kinds of people in different locations. You can even have campaigns that do all of these things at once.
Clicks The actual number of times your ad has been clicked. It doesn’t count as a click if someone looks at your ad and then types your URL directly into the address bar, or if someone sees your PPC ad displayed but then clicks your organic search listing instead. It DOES count if you type in your own keyword and click your own ads. Don’t do this.
Conversion This is where it gets a bit tricky, because actions go by many names. You may see them in AdWords as conversions, while Google Analytics goes a bit rogue and calls them goals. You’re also likely to hear actions called sales, leads, and, if you’re advertising on Facebook, likes. Essentially this figure is anything you want to achieve from a customer, be it collecting their email address or selling them a chocolate bar (I may or may not be eating a chocolate bar right now).
Cost Also known as your spend. This figure is a multiplication of your CPC and Clicks.
CPC Cost per click. A great bidding war is waged each time a Google user enters a search query; after the battle is won (it takes less than a second) and a searcher then clicks an ad, Google charges the competitors accordingly. You’ll only actually pay the minimum amount needed to win the bidding war no matter how high your bid, and because you don’t always pay the same each time your ad is clicked the cost per click AdWords displays is usually an average for whatever keyword, ad group, or campaign you happen to be analysing.
CTR Click-through rate. This shows you the percentage of people who view your ad then click on it, or (total clicks)/(total impressions). AdWords already displays the clicks and impressions in separate columns, but does the math for you anyways. How nice of them.
Device targeting
Impressions
The ability to target specific devices. AdWords actually discontinued the option to target mobile phones with specific campaigns a few years ago. What is left is a bid adjustment (you choose a % of your standard cost per click bidding) that you set on campaign level. You can then track how your campaigns are performing on mobile devices in the AdWords interface (by clicking on the “segment” button).
The number of times your ad has been displayed either through a display ad or after someone has searched your keyword. It doesn’t matter whether or not someone actually noticed the ad unfortunately: if the ad is shown somewhere on the page it counts as an impression, regardless of the searcher’s interaction with it.
Dynamic search ads (DSA)
A PPC metric that is used to highlight how often your ads are eligible to appear for available searches. It is calculated by dividing the impressions that you get by all the impressions that you are eligible to receive. A high impression share is often an indication that you have done your keyword research work well and that you have most of the keywords around a specific theme covered. If your impression share is low further actions are recommended, as you might be missing out on valuable clicks.
A campaign type that uses Googles organic web crawling technology instead of keywords as a targeting method. You can choose to target specific sub-URLs on a domain (that you need to specify when setting the campaign up), page content or parts of an URL. Targeting rules can be combined and very specific targeting segments can be created. The headline of the ads will be dynamically inserted when the set targeting criteria are fulfilled. This campaign type tends to work well on highly structured, easily “crawlable” websites.
impressions eligible impressions
Impression share
= impression share
Negative keywords Keywords that are added to prevent unwanted search terms to be triggered by (mostly) broad or phrase match keywords. This tends to improve traffic quality and keeps click costs down. Negative keywords uses the same match types as standard keywords (exact, phrase, broad) depending on how broadly that you want to block certain traffic.
Remarketing Bidding specifically on custom audience lists (that can be created in AdWords/ Analytics) . This will allow you to bid higher on people that for example visited your website, but that did not complete an action. Remarketing can be done both on the search and display networks. Setting up remarketing in AdWords is now very much standard for almost any type of PPC account, as you are able to target an already engaged audience (often resulting in better click through and conversion rates).
Revenue The total amount of revenue tracked that’s been attributed back to the PPC activity. It doesn’t include revenue attributed to other mediums or sources such as Google organic traffic or direct traffic.
Shopping campaigns Product based ads displayed with a picture at the top of the Google search page (or if you click on “Shopping” after conducting a Google search). When you click on these listings you will be redirected to the retailers own page (although this might be about to change). As an advertiser you need to upload a product feed to be able to run these ads, you still pay per click as with standard PPC ads.
Sitelinks These are additional links that are eligible to appear beneath your standard ad, when your ad is shown in the top 3 positions. You can use these links to promote other pages on your website. Google highly recommends the use of sitelinks, because it also will generate you a higher quality score (as a ground rule in AdWords, the more functions that you opt into, the more you will be rewarded). Quality score, together with your cost per click bid, decides how high you rank on the Google search page.