Businesses utilising advertising platforms like Google AdWords always have a goal or two in mind. These goals could comprise driving brand awareness, engagement with a website’s content, app download, ecommerce purchase or a phone call. A successful search or display campaign on Google AdWords will be determined by how these goals are achieved within reasonable Ad spend.
The top and bottom features can be accessed from the segment drop-down icon, on the campaign panel. Segmenting your campaign performance is very important in any PPC campaign as it helps you understand if you are generating more conversions from Google search or Search partners.
About a week ago, I read a blog from PPC Hero, where Diane Aselmo, shared how the segmentation feature on AdWords, helped her improve the quality of leads generated for a client. The segmentation feature helped her discover that majority of the low-quality leads generated by the campaign are from Google search partners. Deselecting the search partners feature helped to improve the overall quality of the leads.
The ‘Top Vs Other’ feature is also important in the segmentation of campaign. I carried out a research on an AdWords campaign to ascertain if more conversions were derived from Ads placed above, beside or below search results. In the bid management practices of some advertisers, there is this belief that Ads that appear above search results, similar to the image below (a search for yoga mat), have a better chance for gaining more conversions.
This notion could hold true to some accounts but is likely to lead to a higher spend and fewer conversions for others. In PPC, the metric determines what bid management and account optimisation effort are required to be taken.
I utilised the ‘Top and Bottom’ feature to evaluate if an account receives more conversions when Ads appear above search results or when they are beside or below search results. To make things clearer, the position an Ad attains, is dependent on your bid and quality score. Your quality score is a rank utilised by Google to rate how closely matched your keywords, Ads (+ ad extensions) and landing page are to a user.
The image above indicates that Ads that appear on the side or below search results (Google search other) gain more conversions than those above search results (Google search top). This is quite helpful in bid management, as it helps a PPC account optimiser pay a close attention to the average positioning of the Ads. This is not a one-size-fits-all scenario, as some accounts may perform better when the average positioning of the Ads are above the search result than beside or below.
Utilising this feature will help your bid management efforts, in ensuring that your Ads are best placed for conversion. Google also advocates for the segmentation of data to capture how Ads appear on the top, on the side or the bottom of the page.
In my research on the account above, it was clear that Ads with an average positioning of 1-2 (top of search results) had a lower conversion, whilst those on an average position of 3-5 (besides search results) had a lower cost per click and higher conversion rate.
If you would like more information on how we could optimise your AdWords account and ensure you receive quality leads, you can call us on 01992 582824 or pop in for a slice of cake and cuppa.
