PPC Chat Streamcap – Dynamic Search Ads

This week Matt Umbro (@Matt_Umbro) came up with yet another great question set titled “Dynamic Search Ads.” The following is the transcribed Streamcap from the live chat:

Q1: At what point in the progression of a client’s campaign do you believe it makes sense to use Dynamic Search Ads (if at all)?

• Considering you need a very high volume of potential keywords for DSA’s…some will never be able to use them. – Heather Cooan (@HeatherCooan)
• Two stages. 1. Exploration if budget room. 2. Growth when other areas are addressed. DSA is good for long-tail, ecommerce with high-SKUs. Think of it as an extra catch-all. Recommend lower bids. – Jeremy Brown (@JBGuru)
• No time like the present, but if a client is revamping their website, it would be the ideal time to use it. – Brian Gaspar (@BGaspar)
• I am just getting pitched to use them now to combat PLAs and LT Low Search Volume. Will test. – Chris Kostecki (@chriskos)
• Am going to say, with zero experience of them, I don’t see the use case for DSAs, so am looking forward to being shown otherwise. – Matt Whelan (@OldMatt)
• The use case is for sites with a potentially huge KW inventory. Automates much of the process. – Heather Cooan
• Personally I’m a bit cautious of this with how much spend will run away without return, will need a lot of optimisation to work. – Phil Walsh (@bwfcphil1)

Q2: How would you compare and contrast product listing ads vs. dynamic search ads?

• I believe DSAs are essentially a text based version of PLAs (with some minor differences). – Matt Umbro (@Matt_Umbro)
• PLA’s pull from merchant center, DSA’s pull from website…PLA’s you have an offer, DSA’s ad text is dynamic based on template. – Heather Cooan
• Visual (PLA) vs. Text (DSA) ads. PLAs are now part of central strategy whereas DSA is an extra. – Jeremy Brown
• As DSAs become more refined I can see a similar situation occurring with how PLAs have grown in prominence over the years. – Matt Umbro
  • Not sure about that as PLAs add something new to the landscape, whereas DSAs only fill gaps…? – Matt Whelan
• Both run on Google.com only and do not work with auto CPA bidding tools. At least not yet. – Heather Cooan
• One is powered by your feed, one by your website content, right? Could be big differences there. – Matt Whelan
  • Yes and you can bid at the product ID level with PLA’s, you have to rely on the auto-target currently for DSA’s. – Heather Cooan
• The obivous truth now is that PLA’s you have to pay for now while DSA’s are free. – Brian Gaspar
  • What do you mean that they are free? – Matt Umbro
    •  Free to show, you pay for click either way. PLA’s you have to pay Google to show up on their Shopping site results. – Brian Gaspar
• Probably growth for DSA, but less control at this point. It’s just about help for what you can’t easily get to manually. – Jeremy Brown
• PLAs pulling from a dynamic product feed, while DSA based on domain content. PLAs account for latency and priority, DSA does not. – Chris Kostecki
• One has a picture. One doesn’t. I like pictures. – Elizabeth Marsten (@ebkendo)
  • Valid point…pictures help my conversion rate increase. – Matt Umbro
• Are PLAs still giving advertisers fits when it comes to activating? I’ve heard of months-long delays struggling w/the program. – Theresa Zook (@I_Marketer)
• DSA is potentially applicable to more accounts, but PLA is only ecom. – Tamsin Mehew (@TamsinMehew)
• DSA’s are moving in the wrong direction, taking away control & targeting, compensating for the LT we can no longer go after. – Chris Kostecki
  • I understand your point, but I don’t necessarily agree…they do take away control but they help serve functions… – Matt Umbro
    • Good luck driving efficiency, testing messages, or controlling landing pages. – Chris Kostecki
      • It’s not perfect, but you do have some control. – Matt Umbro
      • That’s my concern. A machine isn’t smarter than I am abt what my client’s customers are looking for. – Theresa Zook
        • Especially the Google AdWords opportunity machines! – Chris Kostecki
• PLA’s run in shopping results, DSA’s run in regular ad spots and you can run PLA’s on display, DSA’s are search only. – Heather Cooan
  • In limited beta I believe. – Matt Umbro
  • PLAs on Display?? Where are you running those? – Jeremy Brown
    • Woops, not PLA’s…Product Extensions run on GDN. – Heather Cooan
• PLAs don’t cannibalize existing campaigns, DSAs can. – Martin Rottgerding (@bloomarty)
  • Not so sure on PLAs not cannabalizing. Haven’t heard final word if they impact your text ad showing. – Jeremy Brown
    • Only indirectly, I’d say ,by pushing normal ads down/away. But I dont think they clash w/ the same advertiser in particular. – Martin Rottgerding
      • Agree. Just haven’t heard definitively if having a PLA ad impacts text ad auction. – Jeremy Brown
      • You can definitely show both, i’d assumed there weren’t restrictions? – Matt Whelan
        • Probably a good assumption, but you never know. Seen many queries with PLAs up top and text ads only on bottom. – Jeremy Brown

Q3: How can DSAs help improve overall account performance?

• Long-tail ecommerce coverage with lower bids. Also, you can then mine for new manual build-outs. – Jeremy Brown
  • Exactly! Great for finding new keywords that are showing interest. – Matt Umbro
    • How do SQRs work with DSAs? More/less transparent? – Matt Whelan
      • Same way. – Matt Umbro
      • I’d say the SQRs are about the same for DSA. Negatives are probably more important though. – Jeremy Brown
      • Very transparent IMO. Great to see dynamic headlines as well. Strange thing is headline length – can be more than 50 chars. – Martin Rottgerding
      • You can see query, ad headline & landing page. – Tamsin Mehew
• Can help capture what is not represented. Can give insights into further account expansion or optimizations. – Brian Gaspar
• Can get you in front of more traffic. – Chris Kostecki
• Can help find new KWs and cover previously uncovered queries, but can also undermine your bidding for existing Keywords. – Martin Rottgerding
  • Do they cannibalise? I thought they were “held back for any search where u have an eligible kw targeted ad”? – Matt Whelan
    • I thought so, too, maybe that was changed – now docs say that it’s only held back for exactly matching KWs. – Martin Rottgerding
      • Really, so anything “low search volume” is fair game…? Not sure if that’s good or bad! – Matt Whelan
    • Only if kwd is exact match I think. – Richard Fergie (@RichardFergie)
    • Traffic for ‘low search volume’ kw intriguing. Have clients where most targeted kw are low volume. – Theresa Zook

Q4: How in-depth do you set your dynamic ad targets?

• I have each Category as it’s own adgroup. Manage bids based on price/margins. - Brian Gaspar
• Since it’s designed for catch-all, and to help with changing inventories, broader targets make sense. – Martin Rottgerding
• Depends on the client. Sometimes segmentation is more important. If DSA spend is low, then not as important. – Jeremy Brown
• I guess we will try out individual URLs with DSA, too. With PLAs it seemed wrong at first, and then came ID targets. – Martin Rottgerding
• Has anyone run into non-brand safe ad copy due to the dynamic ad copy component? I have a couple of clients worried about this. – Heather Cooan
• Does anyone use the predefined categories AdWords auto-generates? If so, any success?
  • They can be ok sometimes. If low volume, it might make sense to go with those. – Jeremy Brown
  • Only with the catch-all target for all pages. Guess we’ll evalute this later, along with categories from SQRs. – Martin Rottgerding

Q5: How do you setup your dynamic tracking URLs?

• Carefully. For me I have to back end code it so it captures on our ERP. – Brian Gaspar
  •  Interesting…anyone else run into situations where a more custom solution is needed? – Matt Umbro
    • Our ERP is last click attrib, DSA click results in a direct/organic/email conv they get credit & we get the cost. – Brian Gaspar
• Sometimes some work is needed for tracking. Depends on the client. Overall, negatives are very important for DSA. Weed out irrelevant traffic as well as sculpt traffic to manual coverage. – Jeremy Brown
  • Yes, and that goes for anything that runs on an auto-target. *negs* – Heather Cooan

Q6: Do you believe DSAs can be used effectively for non ecomm campaigns? Say a B2B or B2C site?

• I think so…if they have the potential keyword inventory for it. – Heather Cooan
• It’s tough for a B2B. You target both with these ads so the conflict of interest is huge. Much more effective for B2C. – Brian Gaspar
• Possibly, but I’m skeptical. Feel like you should be able to build out most coverage manually for those. - Jeremy Brown
  • And plus you don’t want to bid dynamically on keywords that are potentially going to cost in the double digits! – Matt Umbro
    • Exactly. You want more control over that when possible. – Jeremy Brown
• DSAs are great b/c they help dealing with the complexity of inventories, which makes them a potentially great tool 4 Shops. – Martin Rottgerding
• To add to this, I’ve had to turn off certain categories because of potential conflicts with vendors & retailers. – Brian Gaspar
• Apartments would be a good exception. So much variety in search queries and locations. – Jeremy Brown
  • For sure, it’s all in the potential KW inventory. DSA’s are really for massive KW inventories. – Heather Cooan
• For a B2B site w/ limited topical complexity DSA’s probably won’t do much. Maybe help with keyword research for a month. I think with DSAs it’s mainly about volume. For B2B campaigns you’d rather go the extra mile to ensure quality. – Martin Rottgerding

Resources

• Google AdWords Editor (version as of today’s PPCChat 9.8.1)
• Microsoft adCenter Desktop
• http://www.google.com/ads/answers/
• PPCChat Member List (Twitter)
• adCenter Feature Suggestion
• Bing Keyword Research Tool

More PPC Chats

Don’t forget to stay tuned for the next #PPCchat on Tuesday at 12 noon Eastern, 9 am Pacific and 5pm in the UK. Same Chat time, same Chat channel.

Participants

Check out the PPC Chat Twitter list to see and connect with all current and prior participants.

Doing Streamlaps around your Streamcap

This is a guest post by Paul Kragthorpe; WebRanking SEM Manager in Minneapolis, Minnesota, #PPCChat Streamcap Grabber, SEO Blog Author. Connect with me @PaulKragthorpe, and Google Plus.
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Tags: dsn, dynamic search ads, Pay-Per-Click (PPC), ppcchat

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2012 at 10:01 am by Paul Kragthorpe and is filed under Pay-Per-Click (PPC), PPC Chat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.