As tracking technology and privacy evolve on the web, one major shift is causing ripples across the advertising world: Google Chrome is phasing out support for third-party cookies. This change, led by a supposed push for greater transparency and control over personal data, impacts virtually every stakeholder in the digital ecosystem.

Who Should Be Concerned About The End of Third-Party Cookies?

Certain groups stand to be affected more acutely and must pivot their strategies to navigate this change effectively. Let’s delve into who should be most concerned about the demise of third-party cookies and how they can adapt.

Digital Marketers and Advertisers

The first and most obvious group impacted, digital marketers and advertisers, have relied heavily on third-party cookies for targeting, retargeting, personalization, and tracking user behavior. Cookies have enabled precision in campaign targeting and measurement that was previously unimaginable. As these cookies crumble, so too does the foundation of their strategies.

Marketers and advertisers must explore new methods of reaching their audiences. Contextual advertising, which targets based on the website’s content or the current webpage, is coming back in force. Additionally, first-party data collection strategies—where businesses collect data directly from their interactions with customers—will become increasingly crucial.

Publishers and Content Creators

Publishers and content creators, particularly those who depend on ad revenue, are also in the crosshairs of the cookie phase-out. Third-party cookies have long enabled publishers to serve targeted ads, commanding premium rates from advertisers. Without this capability, publishers will undoubtedly see a decline in ad revenue.

To mitigate this impact, publishers turn to subscription models, gated content, and direct advertising partnerships. Additionally, leveraging first-party data to offer targeted advertising packages and investing in content personalization to increase engagement and time on site are viable strategies for maintaining and re-growing revenue streams.

E-commerce Retailers

E-commerce retailers have utilized third-party cookies to understand customer behavior, retarget potential customers, and personalized shopping experiences. The loss of these insights can lead to decreased conversion rates and lower overall sales.

Retailers should double down on building direct relationships with their customers. Encouraging account creation, implementing loyalty programs, and collecting first-party data through feedback mechanisms can provide the data needed for personalized marketing strategies with less reliance on cookies.

Data Analysts and Digital Analytics Professionals

Data analysts and digital analytics professionals must adapt their methodologies and tools to a world without third-party cookies. Removing this data source threatens the accuracy of cross-site tracking, attribution modeling, and user behavior analysis.

Professionals in this space will need to become adept at working with first-party data, integrating data from various sources, and using machine learning to fill in the gaps left by the absence of third-party data. Tools like BigQuery, for instance, offer a powerful platform for storing and analyzing large datasets from multiple sources, providing a foundation for sophisticated analysis and insight generation.

Consumers

While not “concerned” in the traditional sense, consumers stand to benefit from the phase-out of third-party cookies through increased privacy and control over their data. However, as marketers adjust to new strategies, they may also encounter more generic advertising and less personalized web experiences.

Alternatives to Third-Party Cookies

Major players in the advertising industry—namely, Google and Meta—had already begun migrating to first-party data before this announcement was made. Google Ads did this in the form of Conversion Linker and Enhanced Conversions. Meta did this in the form of Facebook Conversions API. We’ll walk through these solutions for advertisers on these platforms and discuss how to set up your first-party data signals.

Google Ads Conversion Linker

Google Ads has been proactive in offering tools and features that leverage first-party data to maintain the efficacy of digital advertising campaigns. One such feature is the Conversion Linker tag in GTM. This tag facilitates using first-party cookies to measure conversions, enabling advertisers to continue tracking user interactions with their ads across their websites with a higher degree of privacy compliance.

Google Ads Enhanced Conversions

Enhanced Conversions is a Google Ads feature designed to improve the accuracy of conversion measurement by supplementing the data collected with hashed first-party customer information that users have shared with the advertiser. This can include details such as email addresses and phone numbers, which are converted into a privacy-safe, hashed format before being sent to Google. This hashed data is then used to match conversions against users logged into Google services, enhancing the accuracy of conversion attribution without compromising user privacy.

Facebook Conversions API

Facebook’s Conversions API complements the data collected through the Facebook pixel, enabling advertisers to send web and offline events from their servers directly to Facebook. This server-to-server communication method provides a more reliable way to measure and optimize ad campaigns, reducing dependency on client-side data collection methods like cookies.

Strengthening Your First-Party Data Collection

This transition underscores the importance of developing robust first-party data collection practices. Businesses should focus on ways to encourage direct interactions with their audience, such as through account sign-ups, newsletter subscriptions, and loyalty programs. By doing so, they build a valuable first-party data repository and enhance their ability to deliver personalized experiences without infringing on user privacy.

The key to this first-party data collection is to start with an alphanumeric, non-PII identifier to stitch different data platforms together, including those that don’t allow PII collection. You can use the User Pseudo ID from Google Analytics 4 and your Customer IDs to develop a robust online-to-offline data set.

Those simple actions can mark the beginning of a data warehouse or Customer Data Platform (CDP) transition for your organization to diminish the impacts of third-party cookies sunsetting.

Here’s how Portent can help you do that!

It’s Not The End, Just Another Beginning

The demise of third-party cookies is not the end of digital marketing as we know it but just another pivot point. By embracing privacy-first strategies, focusing on first-party data, and leveraging new technologies for analysis and targeting, stakeholders across the digital marketing spectrum can navigate this transition successfully. The key will be innovation and adaptability, with a renewed focus on building genuine customer relationships and providing value in exchange for their data.

The post Should You Be Concerned About the End of Third-Party Cookies? appeared first on Portent.

There are a myriad of reasons why businesses choose to outsource their marketing efforts to agencies instead of having an in-house team lead and execute. The truth is that both can work equally well, depending on the people involved.  However, even the best practitioners can fumble a transition. 

If your business wants to bring its marketing team in-house, discover our recommended best practices and some “definitely don’t do these” practices for the transition. 

Defining In-House Marketing

Having an in-house marketing team means the business has hired its own internal staff to handle marketing efforts instead of outsourcing that work to an external agency. 

We can trace back the origins of marketing agencies all the way to the days of the ol’ town criers; businesses didn’t want to spend time shouting about their goods to passers-by on the streets, so they outsourced this work. Through the invention of the printing press, the Industrial Revolution, and the “Mad Men” of Madison Avenue, it became common for marketing to be the work of external agencies. Thanks to these agencies, we have modern advertising tactics and strategies to distribute promotional messages.

In the past twenty years, businesses have increasingly transitioned away from working with a marketing agency,   instead hiring a Marketing Team to join their ranks as full-time employees. This has largely been made possible by the Digital Revolution, technology and automation, and the surge of available educational content (a la, this blog). 

Pros and Cons of In-House Digital Marketing

If you’re thinking about bringing your digital marketing efforts in-house or simply want to re-assure yourself of the advantages of an in-house team, read on. Several pros and cons need to be considered.   

Pros of Having an In-House Digital Marketing Team

No Competing Priorities

The biggest pro to having an in-house marketing team is that, as direct employees of your business, you can be as sure as anyone can that your team is exclusively working on the right client; aka, your business and only your business. An in-house team is dedicated to your company rather than juggling other clients and businesses, meaning they can be more agile and effective. 

More Culture-Wise

In-house teams “drink the Kool-aid” in a way that external agencies simply can’t. Internal employees are hip to your company’s culture and values, as they undergo the same training and product/service education. They will be far more entrenched in your company’s culture than an agency can be. 

Lower Cost

Having an in-house digital marketing team can be significantly cheaper than hiring an external agency. Your business is still paying salaries and benefits, but you’re investing in those employees, rather than investing in another company. 

Cons of Having an In-House Digital Marketing Team

Lack of Outside Perspective

Maintaining a high-level view of your digital strategy and cohesion across channels and products is key to your desired success. But it can be difficult to have that when you’re in the weeds every day. Unless you have someone explicitly and specifically assigned to keeping the significant, no-buzzwords situation in mind, you can entirely miss the forest for the trees. 

Less Industry Knowledge

You know the saying, “A book is outdated as soon as it’s printed?” You can hire the best people for your in-house team, but the fact is their experience outside your business ends on their first day on the job. Once you bring people in-house, you massively limit their exposure to competitors, other businesses, and novel marketing tactics that aren’t widely available. If knowing the newest industry trends and staying on the cutting edge is your priority, having an in-house team can be limiting. 

Reduced Versatility

Having an in-house digital marketing team of five people is significantly less versatile than sourcing from an agency team of 40. Those five people take vacations, get sick, and have individual skill sets and interests. Agencies never take vacations; if someone gets sick, they have alternatives, and they have a wide range of skills and expertise that can be tailored to what your company needs at that point in time. 

4 Common Mistakes When Bringing Your Digital Marketing In-House

If the pros outweigh the cons, there’s a good chance you’ll choose to bring your digital marketing in-house. Use the benefit of my experience and avoid the mistakes I’ve seen businesses make when transitioning to an in-house team 

1. Assuming Your In-House Teams Know How to Collaborate

Agencies must be good at teamwork and collaboration to survive, but individual in-house employees may not be, or may not know how. A considerable advantage of having an in-house team is their access to your other departments, such as sales, product development, and customer service. Don’t assume these teams all know how to coordinate and align their efforts without assistance, whether that means setting up ongoing check-in meetings, starting a stand-up series, or training about when to pull in another team.  

2. Rushing the Transition Process 

Reduced budgets are often why companies bring their digital marketing efforts in-house. For that reason, some businesses have to expedite their in-house transition. However rushing these proceedings can result in some serious long-term failures. For example, don’t bring your digital marketing in-house right before your busy season. Take the time to have transition meetings with your current team, and make room for consulting with the old team after the official transition, if needed. 

3. Failing to Verify the Expertise of the  New Team

Does anyone at your company know how to evaluate the skills of a PPC Manager? Do you know what questions to ask a Marketing Analytics Strategist to see if they really know what they’re talking about regarding GA4? It’s hard to watch, but I have personally seen businesses put their digital marketing into the hands of some supremely unqualified people because no one knew the right questions to ask in the interview. Call the references and demand up-to-date certifications. Get a Digital Marketing expert you trust to sit in on your interviews. Do your due diligence and ensure your team is prepared and experienced enough to handle the type and volume of work. 

4. Using Your Digital Marketing Agency as the Scapegoat

If you’re moving your digital marketing in-house because you’re unhappy with your agency’s performance, ensure performance data backs up the decision. Ideally, you established the main KPIs with your agency before work even began. Hopefully, you reviewperformance at least quarterly, if not monthly, and take their recommendations and feedback in stride. You don’t blame them for poor numbers due to your decisions. If you insist on using most of your budget for a campaign that doesn’t ultimately convert, try not to pull a Steve Jobs and blame your agency for not successfully talking you out of it. Firing them may save you from your boss’ ire in the short term, but you’re still on the hook for improving performance (and now you have fewer resources to help you do so). 

Tips for a Successful Transition to an In-House Digital Marketing Team

Many businesses successfully transition their strategy from an agency to an in-house digital marketing team. If you’ve decided to move your digital marketing efforts in-house, here are some tips to help.

Get All the Documentation You Can

If your agency doesn’t offer you transition or strategy documents, ask for them. It’s far, far better to have that information and not need it than to wonder four months down the road why your agency chose that tactic. Take advantage of the agency’s learnings, and don’t make the same mistakes they may have. 

Give Your Agency Advanced Notice

I know breaking up is hard to do, but having 90 days for offboarding is superior to having 14 days (for everyone involved.) It allows your agency time to wrap up tests or campaigns they may have been running, finish projects at a good spot, and write up recommended next steps. Sometimes, they can even suggest a quarterly or yearly roadmap for your in-house team to work on. It allows your team the flexibility to take over with enough time to still utilize your agency as consultants, which can help reduce stress and pressure. Remember that agencies are accustomed to churn and want to end on a good note. Don’t short-change yourself by waiting until the last minute to announce your departure simply because you feel awkward about it. 

Set Clear Objectives and Timelines

Clarity is key for your in-house team. Ensure they understand the main reasons for moving the work in-house, and what you expect of them. Clearly defining your in-house team’s top priorities and specifying explicit timelines can go a long way in helping them feel more capable of taking over. 

In a nutshell, your in-house team should know:

• What KPIs the agency was hitting
• What KPIs the agency was not hitting
• When the agency will officially stop high-touch work (like managing ad platforms)
• Which finished projects the agency recommends finishing
• When is the last day they can reach out to the agency for assistance

Have a Candid Exit Interview

Your agency has a unique perspective on your company’s marketing strategy. If you permit them, they’ll tell you exactly what they would do in your position. The agency will want to know what they could have done to keep your business.

Agencies also love referrals. If they’re worth their salt, they’ll want to help you transition correctly. Take advantage of their knowledge and perspective (and sweet referral bonus programs). 

Making the Switch to In-House Digital Marketing

In my biased opinion, working with a digital marketing agency is often the best choice (when you have the budget.) Agencies are often more expensive, but you get what you pay for. In this case, you get a larger pool of resources, more industry knowledge and versatility, and a team that never takes a day off. However, if you have decided to bring your digital marketing team in-house, take advantage of my agency experience and follow the above steps to make the transition successful.

The post What Not to Do When Bringing Your Digital Marketing In-House appeared first on Portent.

In the second quarter of 2023, there were 912 million adblock users worldwide. YouTube hasn’t given up its fight against ad blockers. What started as a beta test in June 2023 has transitioned into globally implementing slow website load times and blocking users in 2024.

Google confirmed that if they detect you are using an ad blocker, you will have very slow video load times and will be urged to try YouTube Premium for an ad-free experience.

Many Reddit users online have reported receiving the following notification indicating that an ad blocker has been detected while using YouTube

Others have also reported being blocked from YouTube. After being allowed to watch three videos that start with a countdown warning, they are blocked from using the site after watching three videos until their adblocker is disabled.

YouTube began blocking ad blockers last June to ensure they are not losing out on potential revenue from their ad services. 
According to Backlinko’s 2024 YouTube Usage Report, the platform currently has 2.49 billion users, up from 2 billion users in 2019. This accounts for eight billion dollars in quarterly revenue for Google. So YouTube has a significant incentive to eradicate the ability for viewers to use ad blockers and regain lost ad revenue. 

Direct Impacts on Advertisers

In response to the prevalence of ad blockers, YouTube’s banning of ad blockers is not only an attempt to ensure their revenue stream continues to grow but also to improve how advertisers reach their target audiences. This change will affect advertisers who run campaigns, including:

•  Video campaigns
• Demand Gen campaign
• Performance Max campaigns

All of these campaign types include ads on the YouTube homepage or at the beginning or during video content.

Increased Audience Sizes and Impressions

According to 2023 ad blocking research by Tinuiti, around 31% of U.S. adults use ad blockers.  Thus, the successful banning of ad blockers on YouTube could result in upwards of 30% impression and reach increases for US running video campaigns in Google Ads. 

While this strategy puts YouTube at risk of losing users to other platforms, Wired’s report of YouTube’s ad blocker crackdown found a record-breaking number of ad blocker uninstalls after the platform implemented its defense strategy. This suggests that despite negative feelings from some consumers, YouTube’s crackdown should result in an overall increase in audience sizes for advertisers.

Greater Investment in Video

For advertisers, the increase in audience members on YouTube means there is an opportunity to spend more on video campaigns.

As you plan your 2024 budgets, remember that the sooner you expand your video strategy to account for potentially spending 30% more, the less competition you could have initially. Your CPMs, or cost per thousand impressions, may increase as more competitors grow their video strategies and budgets.

How This Affects Consumers

While YouTube’s crackdown on ad blockers may result in increased reach and conversion rates for advertisers, consumers have not been happy with the changes.

Shift in User Behavior:

The online community has shared their disdain for the changes implemented by Google in 2023. Users on Reddit have been sharing their dissatisfaction with their inability to continue using ad blockers on the platform.

Many users don’t want to pay for Youtube Premium, which is $13.99/month, a similar cost to ad-free subscriptions for other streaming platforms.

As a result, they may move towards other apps with short-form video content, such as TikTok or Instagram. These apps, however, also have ads and do not work with most ad blockers.

Distrust in YouTube

As YouTube users are forced to see ads they may build negative opinions towards your brand and online advertising as a whole. From EMarketer, just 18% of users agreed or strongly agreed the platform protects their privacy in 2022. This is down from their results in 2020. A change like this can only continue to push these statistics downward as users are forced to view ads.

For brands targeting the new audience that disabled their ad blockers, their brand image may be negatively affected by these feelings of distrust and aggravation with YouTube.

Advertising in a Blocker-Less YouTube

YouTube’s intensified crackdown on ad blockers, marked by slow website load times and outright blocks for users detected using them, underscores Google’s commitment to growing its revenue streams and ensuring advertisers can reach their audiences. With YouTube boasting a staggering 2.49 billion users, the impact of this change could be substantial for their bottom line and subsequently boost advertisers’ success on the platform.

There is a risk of user backlash and a shift towards other platforms. For YouTube to implement this globally, their test in 2023 must have shown greater positive impacts than negative, with few users leaving YouTube altogether. However, this data was not released to the public. The ban on ad blockers may help advertisers unlock untapped audience segments and drive higher engagement. By dedicating greater investment into video ads, advertisers can see the benefits of this in 2024.

The post How YouTube’s Crack Down on Ad Blockers Impacts Advertisers appeared first on Portent.

It’s time to discuss the newest addition to Google’s Core Web Vitals metric family – Interaction to Next Paint (INP).

Google announced that starting in March 2024, First Input Delay (FID) will be replaced by INP as the standard metric for responsiveness within Core Web Vitals. Later in 2024, INP will be included in the Core Web Vitals report to help site owners and developers evaluate their pages based on the new metric.

What is Interaction to Next Paint (INP)?

Interaction to Next Paint is a new metric that helps website owners and developers understand if the webpage’s collective interactions are responsive.

INP measures the time it takes for a website to respond to all user interactions (e.g., clicks a button, taps on a link) and calculates the maximum time that all or most interactions were below.

For example, if a page had a poor INP value that was over 500ms, this would mean there is one or more interactions on the page that take longer than 500ms to respond, which is considered unresponsive. On the other hand, a good INP score of 000-200ms would demonstrate that your website is highly responsive and interactive, creating a seamless user experience.

Goals of Each Core Web Vital Metric

INP is all about user experience and responsiveness. By now, we know site speed is very important. In today’s fast-paced digital world, users expect fast and responsive websites. If your website is slow to respond to user actions, it can lead to a poor user experience, increased bounce rates, and lost revenue. INP helps lift back the curtains on finding interactivity pain points.

This new metric differs from other Core Web Vital metrics, specifically focusing on user interaction. The other metrics round out a balanced profile for page speed.

INP is particularly important for websites that heavily rely on user interaction, such as e-commerce websites, social media platforms, and gaming websites. A low INP score indicates that the website is responsive and provides a great user experience.

And, of course, improving your website’s INP score can also positively impact your search engine rankings. As of May 2021, Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking signal for search results. We also found in a recent study that Core Web Vitals can have a direct impact on website traffic and conversions.

Shortcomings of FID and How INP Improves Upon Them

After a year of testing and getting feedback, Google has announced that INP will officially be replacing FID as the new Core Web Vitals metric for responsiveness in March 2024.

Interaction to Next Paint (INP) and First Input Delay (FID) are both performance metrics used to measure different aspects of a website’s interactivity and responsiveness. Though they might seem similar at first glance, they have distinct characteristics and applications. INP is focused on measurements after the page loads and once the user starts interacting with the page. FID is more geared around the initial page load.

Key differences between INP and FID

Pitfalls of FID

• Limited Scope: FID only captures the delay for the first interaction, which may not reflect the site’s performance throughout the entire user session.
• Initial Load Bias: FID’s focus on the initial load means it doesn’t account for interactions that occur after the page has become interactive, potentially overlooking issues that affect user experience later on.
• Does Not Reflect Visual Feedback: FID does not measure the time it takes for visual updates to occur on the page after an interaction, which is a critical aspect of perceived responsiveness.

INP addresses these limitations by considering the responsiveness of the entire browsing session and including the visual update of the page, which provides a more accurate and holistic measure of a website’s interactive performance.

How Does Interaction to Next Paint (INP) Work?

Simply, INP gauges the time it takes for the browser to process and display the results of a user’s interaction with a webpage element. To better understand INP, let’s break down its core components and how they’re measured.

Components of INP

INP comprises two main events:

1. The interaction: This refers to the user’s engagement with a webpage element. Some examples of user interactions measured by INP are:
   • Clicking buttons or links
   • Selecting items from a dropdown menu
   • Submitting a form
   • Scrolling through content
   • Hovering over elements that trigger an action
2. The subsequent paint event: This is the browser’s response to the interaction, which typically involves updating the page’s content, layout, or appearance.

Events not measured by INP:

1. Passive Events: Interactions that do not trigger changes on the page, such as moving the mouse without clicking or scrolling when it does not trigger a response from the website.
2. Zooming: Pinch-to-zoom or other zoom gestures that are handled by the browser natively and do not require a repaint by the webpage itself.
3. Browser User Interface Interactions: Actions like resizing the browser window, interacting with browser extensions, or using browser controls (e.g., forward, back, refresh buttons).
4. Hover States: Hovering over elements that do not trigger a JavaScript event or a repaint (e.g., CSS-only hover effects).
5. Non-Interactive Media Playback: Starting or stopping a video or audio element through native controls that do not require a repaint or are not tied to JavaScript event handlers.
6. File Downloads: Initiating a file download that does not trigger a visual change on the page.
7. Autofill Events: Browser autofill actions that populate form fields without triggering JavaScript events.
8. Keyboard Shortcuts: Browser or system-level keyboard shortcuts that do not interact with the webpage directly.
9. Interaction with Iframes: Interactions within iframes that do not trigger a repaint or event in the parent document.
10. Touch Gestures: Gestures that are handled by the device’s operating system and do not result in a page repaint or event, such as swiping to navigate back or forward in the browser history.

It’s important to note that INP focuses on capturing interactions that require the browser to process an event and render a visual response. Interactions that do not lead to such processing or rendering are generally not measured by INP.

How to Measure INP

To measure INP, we first need to record the precise moment when a user interacts with a webpage element. This timestamp serves as the starting point for the INP calculation.

Next, we monitor the browser’s interaction processing and identify the subsequent paint event. The time difference between the initial interaction and the next paint event represents the INP value. A shorter INP indicates a more responsive and interactive webpage, enhancing user experience.

INP helps us understand the user interactions that are causing the most friction.

Tools to Measure INP

There are several tools to measure Interaction to Next Paint. The most common tools give a high-level score, but we have the ability to dig in deeper with these recommendations.

Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX)

CrUX is a Google-powered, public dataset that aggregates user experience metrics, including INP, for millions of websites. By using BigQuery or PageSpeed Insights, you can access CrUX data to analyze your website’s INP performance and identify areas for improvement.

WebPageTest

This popular online tool offers a thorough performance analysis of your website, with INP being one of the many metrics it evaluates. To measure INP using WebPageTest, simply enter your website’s URL, choose your desired test settings, and let the tool do the rest.

Browser Developer Tools

Modern browsers, such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, have built-in developer tools that can measure INP. In Chrome, drill into the “Performance” panel to record and analyze user interactions. For a more in-depth look, Google gives a detailed example of how to surface slow interactions through the performance profiler.

Custom JavaScript

If you’re proficient in JavaScript, you can create custom code snippets to measure INP for specific interactions on your website. This method allows for a more tailored approach to measuring, focusing on the elements most crucial to your site’s user experience.

What Is a Good Interaction to Next Paint Score?

Striving for an INP score of 200ms or less is ideal for providing an enjoyable user experience, which should increase user engagement and, ultimately, boost the success of your online presence. Here are the scoring guidelines set by Google:

Good: 000-200ms
Needs improvement: 201-500ms
Poor: Over 500ms

Here is an example of an interaction with little to no delay that will contribute to a good INP score. The user clicks the image, and it immediately opens a lightweight modal displaying the image in a larger size.

And here is an example of the same interaction, except there is a significant delay between when the user clicks and when the subsequent action triggers.

How Site Owners Can Prepare for the INP Transition

Once we have identified the areas that are hurting our INP score, we need to work on improvement. Improving Interaction to Next Paint will come from three main areas: long input delay, event callback optimization, and presentation delay.

While there are other factors, like 3rd party scripts, these main three will be what we can diagnose and find solutions for on the assets under our control.

1. Fix Long Input Delay

Fixing long input delays is essential for ensuring a smooth and enjoyable user experience on your website. When it comes to addressing this issue, there are several strategies you can employ:

• Optimize JavaScript: One of the primary causes of input delays is heavy JavaScript execution. To combat this, consider breaking up long tasks into smaller, more manageable ones using techniques like requestAnimationFrame or requestIdleCallback. Additionally, be sure to defer non-critical JavaScript execution until the main content has loaded.
• Prioritize Event Handling: To improve input responsiveness, prioritize event handling by using passive event listeners. These allow the browser to continue with other tasks while simultaneously processing user interactions, resulting in a more fluid experience.
• Minimize Main Thread Activity: Keep the main thread as light as possible by eliminating unnecessary tasks and optimizing your code. The less work the main thread has to do, the quicker it can respond to user inputs. Consider the use of isInputPending and yielding to the main thread.

2. Optimize Event Callback

To optimize event callbacks, focus on executing only the essential logic required for visual updates in the next frame, deferring other tasks. When we defer non-critical task updates until after the next frame, it reduces processing time and delays in painting that next frame. Once the next frame has been painted, we can execute the rest of our non-critical tasks.

An example of this is when the user interface gets updated while the user is typing in something. Perhaps an auto-complete search field, a rich text editor, or the like. For a more in-depth look at an example like this and how to address event callback optimization, check out this web.dev article.

3. Reduce Presentation Delay

Our last INP optimization topic is presentation delay. Presentation delay starts when event callbacks finish and ends when the browser presents the next frame. While you have limited control over presentation delays, here are some tips to avoid frame delays:

1. Don’t misuse requestAnimationFrame() for non-rendering tasks, as it might delay the next frame.
2. Be cautious with async, await, and Promises; they can still block rendering, so keep tasks short.
3. Carefully use ResizeObserver callbacks; expensive work in them might delay the next frame. Defer non-essential logic.

4. Utilize Web Workers

Web workers are a feature of the Web API that allows for background scripts to run in parallel to the main execution thread of a web application. They can be utilized to improve INP by offloading expensive tasks from the main thread, which is responsible for handling user interactions and updating the UI. Here’s how web workers can be leveraged to enhance INP:

• Background Processing: Web workers can handle time-consuming calculations, data processing, or complex algorithms in the background without blocking the main thread. This ensures that the main thread remains responsive to user interactions.
• Asynchronous Operations: By performing operations like fetching data from a server or indexing a database in a web worker, the main thread can continue to process user inputs and render updates quickly, improving the INP score.
• Decoupling Heavy Tasks: Tasks that don’t require immediate Document Object Model (DOM) updates can be moved to a web worker. For example, processing large datasets or performing heavy cryptographic operations can be done in the background.
• Minimizing Jank: By offloading tasks to web workers, the risk of causing “jank” (visually noticeable delays or stuttering in the UI) is reduced, leading to smoother animations and transitions, contributing to a better INP.
• Event Debouncing: Web workers can be used to debounce events that may cause frequent updates, such as window resizing or scrolling. The worker can batch these events and send a single update to the main thread, reducing unnecessary paints.
• Image and Asset Manipulation: Tasks like image processing or asset manipulation that are not directly tied to a user interaction can be handled in a web worker, ensuring that these operations don’t interfere with the page’s responsiveness.
• State Management: Complex state management operations, especially in single-page applications (SPAs), can be offloaded to web workers to maintain a responsive UI while managing the application state in the background.

By strategically using web workers to perform non-UI tasks, developers can keep the main thread more focused on responding to user interactions and rendering the UI. This can lead to a more responsive web application and an improved INP score. However, it’s important to note that web workers do not have direct access to the DOM, so any changes that need to be reflected in the UI must be communicated back to the main thread using a messaging system.

Wrap-Up

Interaction to Next Paint (INP) is a valuable new Core Web Vitals metric. By addressing issues with INP, we can pinpoint areas for improvement, working towards a smoother user experience. This is particularly crucial for websites that are heavily reliant on user interactions, such as e-commerce sites, social media platforms, and gaming websites.

A low INP score signifies a responsive website, leading to better user experience, increased user engagement, and higher conversion rates. As Google now includes Core Web Vitals as ranking signals for search results, improving INP scores could also enhance search engine rankings, further contributing to a site’s overall online success.

For more information on how to improve your site’s other Core Web Vital metrics, check out our resources on improving LCP and improving FID and FCP.

The post Interaction to Next Paint (INP) – New Core Web Vitals Metric appeared first on Portent.

Within content marketing, we’ve often used several engagement metrics to understand content engagement: time on page, scroll depth, link or button clicks, and so on. With GA4, there’s a new metric called engagement rate, giving us one holistic metric to summarize user engagement on a page or site.

What Is Engagement Rate in GA4 & Why Is It Important?

Engagement rate in GA4 is the percentage of engaged sessions on your website or mobile app. Google defines an engaged session as “a session that lasts longer than 10 seconds, has a conversion event, or has at least 2 pageviews or screenviews.” To calculate it, divide the number of engaged sessions by the total number of sessions. 

Engagement rates help us understand how effectively a page or website captures and retains user interest, which is crucial for measuring content effectiveness and refining content strategy and user experience. Engagement rate is also an early indicator of conversions and revenue—the more people engage with your page or website, the more likely they are to convert.

How to Find Engagement Rate in GA4

You can find engagement rate data using the Acquisition or Engagement reports in GA4. If you don’t see the engagement rate metric within the data table, you will need to customize the report to add it.

Engagement Rate vs. Bounce Rate

The engagement rate is calculated by taking the number of engaged sessions and dividing that by the total number of sessions. The bounce rate is the inverse—it’s calculated by taking the number of unengaged sessions and dividing that by the total number of sessions. 

While engagement rate measures the quality of user interactions, bounce rate tracks sessions where the user leaves without interacting. A high engagement rate is a positive sign of compelling content, whereas a high bounce rate can indicate issues with content relevance or site usability.

Since the two GA4 metrics are opposites of each other, you can rely on one metric while still understanding the other. However, if you have a pointed question to answer, it may be more suitable to use one metric over the other. For example, “Which content formats or topics drive more engagement?” is better answered using engagement rate. On the other hand, “Are certain pages less effective in capturing user interest?” is better answered using bounce rate.

When to Use Engagement Rate vs. Other Types of Engagement Metrics

Use engagement rate for a holistic view of the quality of user interactions with a page or website—it’s most effective when assessing the overall quality of content and user experience. In contrast, other metrics like session duration, time on page, or page views are more suitable for specific insights, such as level of user interest and content depth.

What Is a Good Engagement Rate in GA4?

A “good” engagement rate in GA4 varies by industry and content type. Benchmarking against industry standards is important to set realistic goals and measure performance effectively.

To provide benchmarks, we studied the GA4 engagement rates across 65 websites in 2023.

Average Engagement Rate

The average engagement rate across industries and company types is 62%.

Engagement Rates by Industry

Engagement Rates by Company Type

Engagement Rates by Page Depth

How to Increase Your Engagement Rate

Given the definition of an engaged session, you’ll want to focus on increasing time on a page or site, the conversion rate on a page or site, and pages per session. There are various aspects to optimize, and the priority of each will depend on the purpose of your page or website, your target audience’s preferences, results of historical efforts, and implementation resources, to name a few.

Create Relevant & Engaging Content

Create content that’s relevant and worthy of engagement; that means developing informative and helpful content for your target audience’s interests and needs.

• Start your content creation efforts by identifying your target audience and the questions they have at various stages of their buyer’s journey.
  • Ensure your content has sufficient depth by addressing your target audience’s goals or questions and with the right level of information.
• Create content in various formats, such as images, videos, infographics, and polls, and incorporate them throughout a page to encourage users to stay on the page for longer.
• Create various content types such as guides, blogs, reports, webinars, case studies, etc.
  • Link to this relevant content throughout other pages on the site and within a “Related Resources” section to view additional content.
• Where appropriate, utilize CTA buttons to emphasize the desired action you want your users to take.

Optimize Readability & Scannability of Content

Readability and scannability of content can keep your users focused on the content in front of them so they stay on the page longer.

• Use clear and concise language.
• Structure your content with distinct headings, bullet points, and white space for easy browsing.
• Incorporate visuals like images or videos to break up text and highlight key information using bold or italics to draw attention.

Enhance User Experience

A good and frictionless user experience allows users to browse content, find information, visit other parts of your website, and easily complete their intended tasks. Optimizing user experience on your website can translate to a meaningful increase in time on page/site, pages per session, and conversion rates.

• Use clear, descriptive labels for navigation and organize content logically.
• Ensure your website is responsive and offers a smooth experience across all devices. 
• If your page includes a form, keep your forms as simple as possible.
  • Provide clear field labels and error messages to help users correct mistakes. 
  • Remove any unnecessary form fields to simplify the form completion process.
• Use action-oriented and descriptive CTAs and link anchor text that describes what happens after a user clicks it.
  • Also, use CTA and link colors that stand out while still being easy on the eyes. Test your colors using WebAIM’s contrast checker. 

Optimize Site Speed

Slow loading times can lead to frustration and cause users to leave your site, which will impact your engagement rates, bounce rates, conversion rates (check out our study on how site speed impacts conversion rates), and other digital marketing metrics (check out our blog post on why page speed matters). 

On the other hand, adequate loading times will allow users to browse and interact with your website easily.

• Optimize image file sizes by compressing images.
• Reduce the number of plugins and third-party scripts.
• Minimize the number of redirects for a page.

For more ideas, check out the web development checklist for maintaining page speed.

Wrap Up

I hope this was a valuable resource for learning more about GA4’s engagement rate metric and a benchmark for what a good engagement rate is. Understanding and improving these rates are crucial steps towards boosting conversions, revenue, and overall business success.

But remember—measuring engagement is just one part of measuring content success. Check out our blog post on “Best Content Marketing KPIs and Metrics” to see what other KPIs and metrics you should track.

For those looking for additional training, evaluation of GA4 engagement metrics, or optimization of engagement, our team of Analytics and Content Strategy experts can help.

The post Study: Average GA4 Engagement Rates by Industry appeared first on Portent.

As a marketing consultant, one of my absolute favorite things is sharing valuable industry insight with a client contact. This could be part of an audit presentation, competitive analysis, workshop, training, or strategic business review. It brings me joy to help clients connect the dots with opportunities that will create growth and innovation for their brand.

At Portent, we’re marketing nerds to the core. We help our clients cut through the “best practices” noise to implement solutions in 2024 that will move the needle toward achieving their goals within their industry. We also take pride in building visibility, connection, and rapport between brands and their potential and current customers.

We’ve worked with brands in the Moving and Logistics industry for many years. Despite growth in 2020 and 2021, there has been a plateau for many companies while interest rates and competition increase. We’ve provided creative solutions to the moving brands we work with to build efficiency, awareness, and lead volume to stay ahead of the competition.

Here are some of the digital marketing recommendations we’ve provided to moving company leaders who want to grow their revenue and innovate their strategy in 2024:

Think Local

Regardless of your interstate or local market focus, your potential customers are starting their research with local search queries.

• Since most of your prospects are searching for moving services in their area, focusing on localized search queries, often including the city or “near me” phrases, is crucial.
• Create a landing page that targets the Seattle area and an individual page for each area you service. You don’t have to create each page manually; instead, build a template that can be used across these pages and customize the content for each target area.
• If you want to maximize your local approach, invest in Google Local Services. Local Services Ads help you connect with people who search on Google for moving companies, and you are only charged for quality leads rather than per click.

Create Interactive Content

You can capture attention and strengthen engagement with potential customers by using videos and personalization. These leading interactive engagement methods are more accessible and cost-effective than you think.

• Explore generative AI tools like Synthesia.io to make engaging video content for different channels and purposes. 
• Once you have videos and new content produced, use AI personalization tools to give new and existing customers a truly 1:1 experience. 
• Create relevant content for each user segment, ensuring the information directly answers their questions and authentically solves their problems.
• Pick one channel to personalize with AI, track it, and expand.

Bid on specific, non-brand keywords for qualified leads

Moving businesses with slim margins continue to be more cost-conscious and want data to back up their marketing investments. We recommend focusing on paid search keywords to drive more qualified leads at a lower cost.

• Keywords such as “local residential movers” or “long-distance relocation specialists” can help attract more qualified leads and a lower Cost Per Click with less competition.
• We still recommend targeting “moving company” or “[city] movers” due to their high search volume, but they come at a higher price and with greater competition.
• Make sure your landing page copy aligns with any non-brand keywords and comparison or competitive ad copy updates you make.

Optimize and Iterate

Review your performance and lead quality not only by channel but also by considering how multiple channels might be supporting a user journey in your lead funnel.

• Leverage funnel reporting in Google Analytics 4. By enabling enhanced e-commerce measurement, you can capture online bookings and pick up on checkout optimization opportunities based on events tracked on your website (i.e. scroll depth, button clicks, etc.)
• Link GA4 and Google Ads to enable Google Ads’ optimization features. This allows Google Ads to use your website audience data to improve targeting.
• Focus on campaign optimizations correlated to your primary goals (revenue, leads, booked moves, or registrations) and secondary goals (contact us, gated assets, newsletter sign-up, or product shares) to improve lead quality and user engagement. Don’t get distracted by the metrics and design elements that aren’t directly affecting the user experience and goal completion.
• If you’re hesitant to invest more in your advertising budget or change your strategy in 2024, we highly recommend at least performing regular A/B tests on your website. This can be the most efficient way to learn from your audience and increase conversions.

The moving and logistics industry landscape is changing again this year as more companies enter the market and the financial landscape shifts. We hope these opportunities to evaluate your marketing strategy and stand out from the crowd serve you well in 2024. 

If you have questions about any of our recommendations or would like a complimentary assessment of your Analytics, Organic Search, Paid Search, or Paid Social performance and opportunities, please don’t hesitate to book a meeting with us. 

The post Expert Advice for Moving & Logistics Brands in 2024 appeared first on Portent.

Love it or hate it, Artificial intelligence is here. It’s forever changing the way that we do digital marketing. Content Strategists have felt this most acutely, as consumer-facing AI has primarily been comprised of Large Language Models (or LLMs) to date.

We’ve started using AI in our Content Marketing and even had an AI writer (Page) start producing blog posts for us.

But Open AI’s ChatGPT recently introduced an Advanced Data Analysis feature. Of course, that has all Digital Marketing Analysts scrambling overnight to protect our jobs.

The fear is understandable, but we need to be realistic. Future marketers will not be machines but humans who have learned to harness the power of machines. 

In this post, I’ll cover ways to prompt AI to aid in analysis tasks. Coexisting with the bots is possible. You just have to know how to ask.

Start With Clean Data

It may seem like a no-brainer, but the same rules apply to computers and AI: Garbage in, garbage out.

For any files you intend to upload to GPT, ensure the following:  

1. You’re not using any unstructured data 
2. Null or blank values are filled in with suitable placeholders
3. Columns are appropriately labeled

It seems like three straightforward things to do, but you’d be surprised how many data sets don’t naturally conform to these standards.

Ask GPT If It Understands Your Data

This might seem like a dumb thing to do, but start with the most basic question. Does the AI understand the data that you’ve uploaded?

Sample questions to begin with are:

• Which fields are present?
• What is the relationship between the data in the fields?
• Do you notice any patterns in the data?

This will allow you to immediately catch any errors in the data or misunderstandings the AI model might have with what you’ve provided before you ask more complicated questions about the data set.

Define Your Segments Early

We digital marketers often segment our data by device type, geolocation, new vs. returning visitors, campaign name, channel, and source.

GPT won’t assume any of that unless you tell it. So, when you’re asking questions about the data, bake your segments into the prompt.

This will save you follow-up prompts and might unearth some gems very early in your line of questioning.

Consider Time-Consuming Questions

The point of using GPT for data analysis is to save time. Skip the questions that you could figure out yourself by simply glancing at the data.

Instead, consider the following uses:

• Apply forecasting models to the data.
• Draw correlations between the data.
• Join two data sets and perform analysis on them together.
• Build a custom weighted scoring model and stack-rank the data.

Use the CPU power for complex tasks or to make your part of the analysis easier.

The processing power at your disposal should encourage you to be more inquisitive, not less.

Learn From the Output

Whenever GPT says “Analyzing,” it’s usually doing some complicated Python in the background. Believe it or not, it does show its work.

If you’re not particularly adept at Python (or R, or SQL), pay attention to GPT’s steps to solve your problem. Ask follow-up questions about the processes to learn more about the coding language and pick up additional use cases. This is how you’ll pick up a new coding language based on your curiosity and use your use cases.

Try Some Data Visualizations

I’ve had mixed results getting GPT to produce charts based on its own output. It’s not a fully-fledged Business Intelligence or dashboard tool, but request a few visualizations anyway to see if the AI gets more powerful over time.

If all else fails, you can get it to output a basic table with its findings and visualize the data in a tool more equipped for the task. Looker Studio is my go-to, but Power BI or Tableau work too!

Stay Optimistic

It’s easy to see AI as a harbinger of doom in the information economy. But the reality is, it needs us more than we need it. AI can’t get any smarter without oodles of training data, and it won’t achieve any general intelligence without us guiding and shaping it.

Hopefully, this blog has given you some ideas for how to use GPT for data analysis. If you have prompts you’d like to share, leave them in the comments below, where everybody can benefit.

The post Guide: Using GPT for Digital Marketing Analytics (with examples) appeared first on Portent.

It can be argued that attribution is the most important tool for gauging credit in marketing, as it provides a holistic picture for marketers to understand which channels or campaigns ultimately led to a conversion.

Google Ads attribution models have a very strong influence over resulting conversion data. Google Ads provides us with a few different attribution models to determine how conversion data is tracked in an individual PPC campaign. 

In the past, the Last Click attribution model was Google’s default. However, along with Google’s recent pivot from Universal Analytics to GA4, they have introduced a new default attribution model: data-driven attribution (DDA). 

This model is significantly more nuanced than previous models, and it’s crucial that marketers understand how it works to get the most out of their conversion data. In this article, we’ll provide a refresher on previous models, explain how DDA works, and demonstrate how to add it to your current campaigns. 

Limitations of Last-Click, First-Click, and Linear Attribution Models

Google’s last-click, first-click, and linear attribution models serve individual purposes.  However, they also come with inherent flaws. Below, we’ll identify what worked and what didn’t. 

• Last-Click: The Last-Click Attribution (LCA) model credits the conversion to whatever the last interaction was before the conversion occurred. Until recently, this remained the default model in Google Ads, despite typically not being an accurate way to track a user’s path to converting.  
• First-Click: This model attributes the conversion to the user’s first interaction before converting. While helpful in crediting top of funnel strategies, it’s also not necessarily the most reflective of the user’s journey to converting. 
• Linear: Linear attribution does take the user’s full journey through the funnel into account, but it spreads the credit equally over all the interactions. This can be inaccurate, especially when trying to determine what in particular is driving conversion success. 

How Does Google Ads’ Data-Driven Attribution Model Work?

DDA provides intelligent solutions to the issues with the abovementioned models by considering the user’s full pathway interacting with your ads. Similarly to Linear attribution, DDA credits all of the user’s interactions on the way to converting. The difference is that instead of splitting the credit equally across all steps, it weighs which interactions impact your account’s overall goals most.  

Key Characteristics

There are a few characteristics of DDA that differentiate it from other attribution models:

• DDA uses conversion data to determine how much credit each user interaction deserves for a given conversion. 
• It analyzes the interactions your ads get on all Google platforms (Search/Shopping/Display/Video/Discovery) and identifies patterns with users who ultimately convert to identify which platforms are most likely to lead to a conversion. 
• DDA implies more instances of partial conversions compared to Google’s other conversion models. 

Data Requirements

Due to the more nuanced and analytical approach to DDA, there are some requirements that must be met in order to utilize this model: 

• 3,000 interactions with your ads across all Google ads platforms (i.e., Search, Shopping, YouTube, Discovery, Display, etc.) 
• At least 300 conversions over the last 30 days on the conversion action you’re trying to track

Benefits of Using Data-Driven Attribution 

There’s much to be gained by utilizing DDA. The data tracking and analysis it provides give you the insight needed to make smarter decisions in your business’ PPC strategy. Below are some of the key benefits of making the switch: 

1. Accurate Attribution

As discussed earlier, DDA provides us with the most accurate understanding of the significance of each step along the user’s journey from top-of-funnel to converting. 

2. Making Micro Conversions More Visible

Micro-conversions, defined as actions that indicate a user is engaging with the content on your site and may be interested in becoming a customer in the future, are more easily traceable because partial credit for interactions besides a full conversion are assigned.

3. Improved Budget Allocation

Once you determine how different interactions contributed to the main conversion event, you can use that insight to make more educated budget allocations. For instance, if you see that interactions like creating an account or sharing a post are bringing in a lot of partial conversions, it may be wise to raise the budget of whichever campaign is driving those actions. 

4. Data-Backed Decision-Making 

DDA helps you to strategize more confidently because it provides you with the data to back up your decisions. Whether it’s adjusting bidding strategies, refining ad creatives, or optimizing landing pages, you can make decisions based on evidence in a way that wasn’t possible previously.

How to Set Up Data-Driven Attribution in Google Ads

We’ll walk you through a few easy steps to switch an existing conversion action to DDA. It’s important to remember that DDA is Google Ad’s current default for new conversion actions. 

Step 1: Navigate to the Tools and Settings Menu in Google Ads

Click the “Tools and Settings” option in the top right corner of your Google Ads account.

Step 2: Select “Conversions”

Select the “Conversions” option under the “Measurement” column. 

Step 3: Select Conversion Action

Click on the conversion action you want to update. 

Step 4: Edit Settings

Click the “Edit settings” button in the bottom right corner.

Step 5: Select “Data-Driven” 

Select the “Data-Driven” option in the Attribution menu.

Step 6: Save and Exit

All that’s left is to save your selection!

Choosing Data-Driven Attribution for Your Google Ads Campaign

Choosing an attribution model for your PPC campaign will depend heavily on your business goals and which conversion action you need to track.

If you’re looking for more accurate data on your customers’ pathway through the conversion funnel, we recommend taking advantage of Google Ads’ data-driven attribution to optimize your PPC strategy with more data-informed decision-making. 

The post Using Google Ads’ Data-Driven Attribution Model appeared first on Portent.

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is a complex digital marketing channel. It presents a significant opportunity for digital marketers to grow their traffic and conversion metrics. But without a smart strategy and careful tactics, pay-per-click can cause major headaches.

We’ve put together the answers to some of the most common questions we get asked to better explain PPC marketing.

If you’re looking to skip ahead, here’s what we’ll cover on this page:

• PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Marketing Meaning
• Types of PPC Ads
• How PPC Works
• Major PPC Advertising Platforms
• Benefits of PPC Advertising
• Pitfalls of PPC Advertising
• Three Things to Determine Before Launching a PPC Strategy
• PPC Ads for Each Conversion Funnel Stage
• Tips to Optimize PPC Strategy and Campaign Management 
• Learn More About PPC

If you want to start from the top, let’s dive in!

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Marketing Meaning

Pay-per-click marketing is an advertising channel where marketers generate ad impressions on a search engine, website, or social media platform and are charged on a per-click basis versus per impression. The bid amount may affect placement, but the advertiser only pays when their ad is clicked by an online user.

The most common pay-per-click ad format appears on search results pages of search engines like Google or Bing. Advertisers can place their brand, product, or service front and center in the form of an ad targeting a specific keyword or behavior.

Here’s an above-the-fold look at a recent Google results page for the query ‘personal loans.’

Everything outlined in red is an ad. Yep, it’s nearly everything you see on this search engine results page (SERP). And it’s not just text-based listings like this one above. Here is another above-the-fold look at a recent Google results page for ‘carry-on luggage.’

Those listings featuring the product picture, title, etc., are also all ads outlined in red.

There are other types of PPC ads that appear outside of SERPs as well. Let’s take a look at a more comprehensive overview below.

Types of PPC Ads

There are several different types of pay-per-click marketing ads. Like the examples above, some appear via a search network on a SERP (e.g., Google, Bing). Others appear outside of SERPs and contain different components. In essence, there are four main types of ads that can appear in various formats:

Text Ads

A text ad is composed of a written copy by the advertiser. Format and character limits depend on the PPC platform you are working on. Text ads are most commonly triggered through the Search Network – when users search on Google or Bing for a keyword held within your PPC campaign. Text ads can also appear outside of a SERP if they’re contained in a campaign that targets beyond the Search Network.

Product Listing Ads

A product listing ad is typically delivered after a searcher submits a query through a search engine or shopping engine. However, they can also appear outside of a SERP, be it in a display format on a website you’re visiting, in your email inbox, or even in a video you’re watching online.

These ads contain an image of the product, its price, and any pertinent specifications like size, color, dimensions, etc. All of these components derive from a product feed that is housed and regularly updated in a platform’s merchant account associated with a particular website domain.

Image Ads

An image ad is typically delivered in the format of an image or motion graphic. PPC platforms that offer display advertising often have size and content requirements advertisers must comply with when creating their visual creative.

Image ads typically show up and are available for advertising placement on websites across the internet and mobile apps. They can even appear in your personalized feeds and email inboxes. These ads may target you based on contextual signals or via remarketing (when an advertiser has a record of you visiting their site previously).

Video Ads

A video ad is, well, a video that often appears before, after, or even during another online video you’re watching on a platform such as YouTube or on an app (including on Smart TVs). Think of them as commercials. They can appear on webpages as well through a platform’s Display Network. Like image ads, video ads may target you via contextual signals or remarketing.

How PPC Works

PPC advertising works by using an auction system. Advertisers bid on signals (e.g., keywords, audience details) that are relevant to their business. When a user inputs a search term or is eligible to see an ad impression on a website or app, the search engine or website displays ads that are relevant to that search query or that user’s data profile. Ads are ranked and shown based on a combination of the bid amount set by the advertiser and the quality of the ad. The higher the bid and the better the ad quality, the higher the ad will be ranked.

PPC advertising is a productive way to reach a targeted audience. Advertisers can select or manipulate a number of different criteria to target their ads, such as keywords, geographic location, time of day, device type, audience demographics, and more. This allows advertisers to reach the right people at the right time with the right message in the right format.

Bidding can work in several different ways. Most platforms have various “smart bidding” options allowing the advertiser to set a target result they want any campaign to reach. For example, if you want a specific campaign to acquire as many sales as possible at a return on ad spend (ROAS) level of at least 200%, or 2-to-1, you can utilize a smart bidding option that allows you to target exactly that. Those results aren’t guaranteed, but the goal and target allow the platform’s bidding algorithms to place bids for you effectively.

Major PPC Advertising Platforms

Countless platforms offer text, display, and shopping PPC ad placement, but there are a few you cannot ignore:

Google Ads

Google Ads is Google’s primary PPC advertising platform and is, by far, the largest search engine in the market for most of the world. Google offers PPC text ads through its search network and various other formats (image, video, etc.) via their display and cross-network solutions, including ads on Google-owned mobile apps and video ads on YouTube.

Microsoft Advertising

Microsoft Advertising (formally Bing Ads) is Microsoft’s PPC advertising platform. While its share of the search market is dwarfed by Google, according to Impression Digital, Microsoft Advertising has doubled its share within the past 3-4 years. The platform allows pay-per-click advertising on its Search Network (Bing.com) and search partner sites (including Yahoo), along with native display advertising on Microsoft-owned web properties (such as MSN).

Amazon Advertising

Amazon is nearly 40% of the entire e-commerce market in the United States alone, according to Statista’s 2023 e-commerce report. Amazon Advertising is their solution that empowers advertisers to create display- and shopping-focused campaigns that promote their products on Amazon’s shopping network.

Social Media Advertising

Yes, social media platforms use PPC advertising as well. The exact format of ads, their capabilities, and their reach will depend on the platform being advertised on. The most prominent social media platforms with advertising options are:

• Meta Ads – services Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp.
• LinkedIn Ads – services LinkedIn and specializes in business-to-business (B2B) PPC.
• TikTok For Business – services TikTok with various video ad formats.

Benefits of PPC Advertising

There are four distinct benefits to PPC marketing:

1. Speed – Set up and launch advertising campaigns quickly.
2. Precision – Target the right users with the right message based on their intent.
3. Agility – Test many different components in one ad unit and adjust budgets instantly.
4. Measurement – See real results, including actual revenue generated from ads, almost instantaneously.

Pitfalls of PPC Advertising

While there are distinct advantages to PPC, the advertising model does come with potential pitfalls that advertisers should be aware of.

1. Cost – PPC advertising can be expensive relative to other marketing channels.
2. Waste – It’s easy to unintentionally spend money showing ads to users you don’t want.
3. Volume – You are dependent on what users are actually searching for.

Things to Determine Before Launching a PPC Strategy

If you have a website, you must consider PPC advertising as a marketing channel. The key word is ‘consider’. Just because you have a website does not mean that you should engage in PPC. Before starting your first PPC marketing campaign, consider your advertising goals, overall marketing strategy, budget, competition, and risk tolerance.

Clear Advertising Goals

PPC advertising is most effective when you can match dollars spent to a conversion like a transaction or lead form completion. Clear conversion goals help you do that. Set a specific goal you want a set of campaigns or your entire account to achieve. For example: 

• “I want as many leads as possible at a maximum of $100 average cost per lead” versus “I want as many leads as possible.”
• “I want to maximize revenue with a minimum return on ad spend of 300%” versus “I want to maximize revenue.”

Overall Marketing Strategy

PPC is great for responsive, nimble advertising. Search ads, in particular, are great at targeting users with a high level of intent based on what they’re searching for. However, PPC ads should not be your only search marketing strategy. To get more users to eventually become your customers, you need to help usher these users on their journey through getting to know and understand your business.

This process cannot be achieved through PPC alone. While you can effectively advertise to users throughout the marketing funnel with PPC ads to assist them in their journey toward conversion, you need great content on your website and the ability for users to consume this content efficiently. That means you need to fully invest (time, energy, resources, and money) into the following service areas as well as PPC:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Content Strategy
• Conversion Rate Optimization
• Web Development
• Analytics

PPC Budget

How much do you have to spend on PPC ads? What’s possible in my respective search market? How much should I spend on bottom-funnel ads (users ready to convert) versus top-funnel ads (users still learning and researching)? All of these are questions you need to answer before you can estimate your PPC budget. Whatever answers you arrive at, you should have a solid number or range before you get started.

Competition

You are, with almost absolute certainty, not going to be the only business bidding on the keywords or users you want to target with your ads. You need to understand your market share versus your competitors, how much they seem to be investing in PPC advertising, and what messaging they’re using in their ads/on their site. Figuring out how much money you’ll need to spend to make real headway in your vertical’s search space, along with how you can best position your business to stand out, is vital.

Risk Tolerance

Not all of your PPC campaigns will target the same users, use the same messaging, and convert at the same rate (or even convert at all). So don’t go into this laser-focused on only creating campaigns that will convert users right away.

How much money are you willing to spend on “trying things out” and testing different ideas?  How much are you willing to invest at the top of the funnel so you eventually grow the volume of your sales or leads? Figure out the answers to these questions before you start spending money on ads.

PPC Ads for Each Conversion Funnel Stage

The type of PPC campaigns you create depends entirely on your marketing strategy and goals. It’s important to remember the conversion funnel when deciding the type of networks and ads you’ll show up on.

Display Ads for Top-of-Funnel Strategies

If want to drive awareness and interest, Image and video ads on display networks are a solid option. Display Network and display ad strategies are geared for advertisers who want to get in front of potential customers who are starting research, aren’t ready to buy, but may remember a brand for a later purchase.

Display Network advertising typically offers lower average cost-per-click figures, allowing advertisers to get more impressions and clicks than the Search Network. However, display network traffic is typically lower in quality than from the Search Network when looking at the intent of those visitors. That’s simply due to the nature of these types of users.

Top-of-funnel display advertising allows for greater ad creativity while still being able to leverage specific user targeting parameters. Not only can you take advantage of user targeting options to help ensure your ads show to the right people, but you can also use image and video assets to capture a user’s attention. 

These creative options allow you to stand out from your competitors and convey a message effectively, creating new potential customers and growing the size of your sales funnel from the top down.

Search and Shopping Ads for Mid- and Low-Funnel Strategies

Potential customers are searching for your brand or the products and/or services you offer. They’re either aware of a problem and searching how to solve it, aware of a solution and searching for which businesses can help them, or aware of your brand and searching for you specifically. 

They are in the “desire” and “action” portions of the marketing funnel. Pay-per-click ads through the Search Network will help ensure you’re fully visible, front and center on a SERP when users submit these queries. 

Search Network and Shopping traffic is typically more expensive than the display network, but searches are much further down the funnel— meaning they’re more likely to convert on what you’re offering. As a result, you’ll almost certainly see better conversion rates for these types of ads regarding transactions and lead submissions.

10 Tips to Optimize PPC Strategy and Campaign Management 

Creating and managing a full-fledged PPC strategy is no easy task. It requires constant analysis and routine optimization. If you’re looking to get started with your own PPC efforts, here are 10 tips to take into consideration:

1. Reference Your Site to Set Up Campaigns: Use your site’s navigation and hierarchy to organize and differentiate your campaigns. If your company provides Services A, B, and C and you have separate pages on your site speaking to each of those services individually, then create one campaign for each.
2. Separate Search from Display: Display campaigns are typically going to reach audiences of a different level of intent versus search campaigns. They’re different tactics for different purposes. As such, keep them separate. You’ll have much better control over your daily budgets and have a far easier time optimizing campaigns accordingly.
3. Separate Brand, Non-Brand, and Competitor Terms: A user who searches for your brand, in particular, will have a greater chance of converting with you versus a user who is searching for something generic or a user searching for one of your competitor’s brands. You’ll want to consider bidding on all of these types of keywords for search network ads, but be sure to keep them separated into their own campaigns.
4. Utilize Settings and Assets to Your Advantage: There are many campaign settings and ad assets available for you to use and adjust to your advantage. Ad scheduling, location targeting, sitelinks, and image extension are just a small handful to speak of.
5. Understand Keyword Match Types: On the search network, you have the option of choosing different keyword match types. It is imperative you understand just how flexible each match type can be so you have clear expectations of what search queries may trigger an ad impression from one of your campaigns. Use these match types wisely!
6. Reference On-Page Copy to Write Ad Copy: It’s one thing to write an ad appealing enough for a user to click through. You then want that user to stay on your landing page and engage with your content. To ensure users’ expectations are met once they click through, utilize language from your landing page for your ads and have clear calls to action.
7. Link Your CRM to Your Advertising Platform: PPC platforms use advanced algorithms to try and target the right users. Having the most accurate conversion data is essential for this to work properly. For businesses that rely on lead generation, you’ll get the best results if your link your CRM directly with your platform and allow your final close-won lead data to be imported as a conversion. Feeding the platform that data on the final stage of the sales funnel will allow it to understand what types of users are actually becoming your customers and generating revenue for your business.
8. Use Smart Bidding: Don’t try and pretend you can outsmart a multi-million dollar bidding algorithm. Use your platform’s smart bidding options to your advantage and get the best conversion-based results.
9. Don’t Over-Optimize: Making an optimization based on quality analysis is essential. However, you don’t want to make too many changes in too short of time for any given campaign, as your platform needs time to learn to work with the optimization changes you’re making. A good rule of thumb is to give any change you make two weeks to work before you decide to make further changes.
10. Continually Test New Ideas: Finally, never assume you have everything perfectly set, and stop optimizing entirely. Come up with hypotheses and test new ideas either in your advertising platform itself, on your landing pages, or the site’s conversion funnel, or a combination of these things. Your PPC strategy will never be perfect, but you can and should continually test new ideas to try and close your distance from perfect.

Learn More About PPC

Pay-per-click marketing is a complex digital marketing tactic. It can be a risky marketing channel if not managed properly. But it offers significant value, and it has to be a core building block for any successful digital marketing campaign. Know your goals, set your budget, and test carefully.

If you’d like to learn more, we constantly add PPC-focused content to the Portent blog. For a more thorough understanding of PPC, reference our six-part “Building Successful PPC” series: 

PART 1: Structuring Your Google Ads Account

PART 2: Understanding Campaign Settings

PART 3: Researching Keywords

PART 4: How to Create Effective Responsive Search Ads

PART 5: The Best Google Ads Extensions to Implement

PART 6: Tracking Success

Portent also offers PPC marketing services for companies big and small. If you’re interested in working with Portent or learning more about how we could work together, reach out!

The post What is PPC? Pay-Per-Click Explained appeared first on Portent.

The topic of branded bidding leads many marketers to the question: “If I bid on my own branded terms, should I also bid on my competitor’s branded terms?”

There are many benefits to bidding on competitor brand terms, including lower cost per click, less competition, and capturing your competitor’s customers! 

In this post, we will argue why bidding on competitors’ brand terms is part of a successful middle-funnel PPC campaign and should be considered within all verticals.

What is Brand Bidding?

Branded bidding is a PPC strategy when you bid on your brand terms or brand names of other competitors. Some believe bidding on your brand terms is not worth the investment, as these keywords can rank organically. While brand terms may rank higher organically, it is worth investing in your brand terms, and we have the data to prove it. If you are not bidding on your brand terms, competitors will! 

The example above shows how Apple has bid on its brand terms. In this example, while Apple.com likely has enough domain authority to appear in the first organic position regardless, like many brands, they opt to bid on their brand terms to guarantee that they maintain the first position in the search results page (SERP). 

Branded bidding is a worthwhile investment if you are in a highly competitive market and know your competitors are probably bidding on your brand terms—which segues us into why you should be bidding on your competitor’s branded keywords.

Benefits of Bidding on Your Competitors’ Brand Terms

Many brands target their competitors’ keywords for various reasons. The example above shows that DoorDash targets “uber eats,” one of its key competitors in the food delivery industry. 

Below, we will use the UberEats/DoorDash example to explain the main benefits of allocating some of your PPC budget to bidding on your competitor’s brand terms.

Build Brand Awareness

The hypothetical customer searching for “Uber Eats” may have had no previous experience with DoorDash. Regardless, if they click on the sponsored DoorDash result, they are now exposed to their brand name and may grow to associate it with food delivery.

Gain New Customers

The UberEats customer may click on DoorDash’s sponsored ad and convert. While the conversion rate is usually lower when bidding on competitors’ brand keywords, the cost per click (CPC) on brand terms is generally lower than on non-branded keywords. The lifetime value of a new customer will likely be worth the higher initial cost to convert them.

Dominate the SERP

Like building brand awareness, the more space you can capture on a competitor’s branded term SERP, the more likely users will consider your brand and potentially do further research. For example, suppose you have a paid ad targeting their brand name and a comparative landing page for Doordash vs. UberEats that ranks organically. In that case, you can reap the benefits of having two positions on the SERP, resulting in increased clicks and impressions.

Reduce Your Competition

If you search for the non-branded terms in the food delivery space, you have four ads at the top of the SERP. The average CPC for “food delivery apps” in January 2024 is $3.79. 

The branded search for “uber eats” will cost an average of only $1.80, less than half the price of the non-branded term! Low prices and fewer paid ads on branded searches can decrease the cost per conversion.

Capture High-Intent Audiences

When building audiences for your top-of-funnel campaigns, competitor terms can bring in new users who have yet to visit your site.

If users click on your competitor’s term ad but do not convert, you can remarket to them in the future and know they are qualified visitors.

Along with remarketing lists, you can use Google’s proprietary audience tools. For example, DoorDash could create a custom intent audience targeting all users who have searched for terms related to “uber eats” in the past 90 days. 

Google’s internal audiences, such as “custom intent,” “in-market,” and “infinity,” are generally going to see lower conversion rates than a remarketing audience.

Potential Risks and Challenges to Consider

When bidding on competitor brand keywords, there are some potential challenges and risks to consider. 

Trademark Infringement

As there have been legal repercussions for brands bidding on competitor brand terms in the past, there are valid reasons why some marketers and companies are apprehensive to do this strategy. With clear guidelines on executing this within trademark laws, there are ways to work around the challenges of brand bidding.

When making ads targeting your competitor’s brand names, you have to be careful not to include their name in the headlines or descriptions of your ads. If the advertiser finds and reports these on the Google SERP, you risk Google pausing your campaign or your competitor taking legal action.

Bidding Retaliation

When targeting your competitor’s brand names, you risk upsetting competitors and inspiring them to start targeting your brand name in retaliation. This unnecessary competition can increase your CPC on brand terms and risk decreasing the search impression share on your own brand keywords. 

While this is not avoidable, you can reduce the risk by only targeting competitors who target your brand terms.

You may see some of your competitors when looking at your branded campaign’s auction insights in Google Ads (as shown in the screenshot above). Another way to check if competitors bid on your brand name is to simply search your brand terms in Google and see if competitor ads appear.

High Costs per Conversion

As mentioned under the “Trademark Infringement” challenge, you cannot include the competitor brand name keywords you are targeting in your ad copy. Because of this, you will inevitably see lower quality scores on competitor keywords. 

This means you will also have lower search impression share,  top impression share, and click-through rates. All these factors, combined with visitors who click on your ad expecting to see your competitors’ websites, will result in low conversion rates and high conversion costs. 

If you have a limited PPC budget or are struggling with campaign performance, there may be better investments than competitor brand bidding until you can scale your budget.

Tips to Successfully Bid on Competitors’ Keywords

Several ways to improve the success of targeting competitor keywords include frequently updating ads, creating comparative landing pages, and following legal requirements.

Emphasize Value Proposition in Ad Copy

As mentioned above, you can’t include competitor’s brand names in your ads. So, to entice visitors to your site, emphasize what sets your brand apart from the competitors. Understanding the weaknesses of particular competitors should inform which value propositions to pin in your headlines as “position one” or focus on across all headlines and descriptions.

Create Comparative Landing Pages

If you only send visitors to your homepage or product page, they may think they clicked on the wrong link and return to Google to look for the competitor’s site. 

Proactively create landing pages to direct paid traffic that compares your brand vs. your competitor and moves more visitors into the consideration phase of the funnel. 

See this example of a comparative landing from Wix on Wix vs WordPress.

Catching their attention by including the brand name they searched for within the landing page will increase their engagement and time on-site.

Follow Legal Recommendations

To avoid copyright infringement, consult your legal team before creating competitor ads. Ensuring that your landing page content is accurate and ads follow legal guidelines can save your brand from needing to take future legal action.

Constantly Test and Optimize  Keywords

Once you have created your campaigns, regularly check the keywords in your competitor campaign. See which keywords are limited by low-quality scores and consider adding them to your paid landing page to improve user experience! If you find competitor-branded terms have a very low search volume, consider pausing low-performing terms and testing new keywords. Also, check your search term report and add negative keywords to improve quality scores.

Moving Forward with Competitive Keyword Bidding

Bidding on competitors’ brand terms is a recommended middle-funnel PPC campaign strategy to target the ‘consideration’ part of your customer’s journey. Before creating the campaigns:

• Check with your legal department.
• Analyze each competitor’s value propositions and weaknesses.
• Evaluate what landing pages you have on your site or will need to create before launching.

Continue testing new keywords and checking quality scores to generate the highest return on investment. Despite the drawbacks, the potential lifetime value of customers gained from your competitor bidding makes this a worthwhile investment and strategy!

The post Why You Should Bid on Your Competitor’s Branded Terms appeared first on Portent.