Because you might be leaving a lot of money on the table in this wave of Machine Learning and automated smart bidding, and the sea is never favorable for those who depend on results.
Be careful with this wave of automated bidding; it might be there to make Google earn more, not you
Google has redefined its entire Bidding strategy, betting on the intelligence of machine learning to ensure the best results for advertisers. What does this really mean for you, the mortal advertiser?
First, it’s important to say that it’s somewhat of a one-way street; all Google products are infused with Machine Learning. Remember this little image below? Pretty cool, right? Well, it’s absolutely true.
That’s right; the chef is putting machine learning into everything. It’s supposed to be great, but hold on, not so fast.
Facts about the new technology implemented by Google:
I have attended all the major technical events from Google in the last 4 years: Google Academy, Google Partner Summit, Google Live Marketing, Google Experts, and what I’m about to say is not easy to hear. Be careful; you might be losing a lot of money even on Google.
This will essentially depend on what type of Google Ads advertiser you are because it might be a day of joy for you:
➡ For the small advertiser who knows nothing about the subject and doesn’t have a specialist to manage their account, results do improve.
You know that uncle who thinks it’s expensive to pay the Google guy and feels it’s worth it to stay up all night doing GOOGLE ADS, even at the cost of missing his kids and getting cheated on by his wife? Because this is REALLY COOL.
You know? That uncle? Well, for him, the problems are over. Really, compared to the previous model of automated bids, we’ve seen a surprising advancement.
This means that the mechanism is very smart when it comes to identifying the right people to be impacted by the right offers, those most likely to convert. But hold on; you still don’t get it. I’ll remind you of that anecdote about intelligence being used for evil.
➡ Automatically, it offers the possibility of instant conversion by globally sharing the behavior of all users without the need to create a history of your own account.
Yes, it knows that you buy a certain product more easily and is giving it away for free to the competitor of the same product, right? “Privacy is overrated,” right?
But of course, Google is doing this to keep everyone happy, paying exorbitant costs per click to deliver more and more results for shareholders, I mean advertisers.
➡ Google Ads Machine Learning is extremely intelligent
This is a fact; it is indeed analyzing the behavior of the target audience, and through the Data-driven tracking model, it seems to be modifying bids more assertively. And of course, as a Premier Google Partner agency, I must tell you all the importance of implementing this. But hey, my friend, I have a commitment to my clients' results, and here comes the not-so-encouraging news about all this: the little robot is not working just for you.
➡ What the advertiser doesn’t understand is that it works for Google’s revenue, not for their own results.
That’s right; in all the tests I conducted using custom bidding tools and even American BI tools, the differences were as follows:
➡ Average CPC 3x higher using Smart Bidding
To maintain impacts on the audience it considers most likely to generate conversions, it significantly raises the CPC offer to ridiculous parameters. When the offer was limited, it drastically reduced positioning, delaying result delivery by weeks. Do you have time to be without selling?
➡ CPA 4x higher on average with Smart Bidding
The cost of acquiring leads has increased significantly with Smart Bidding, incomparable when compared to manual campaigns with the help of a BI bidding tool and our positioning manager (That’s what I call a JavaScript I programmed while drunk at night; don’t spread it).
➡ Conversion Rate 20% higher with Smart Bidding
Conversion Rate of 25% with CPA (Cost per Acquisition) 3x higher doesn’t pay the bills for most advertisers. Even when the tool manages to reduce CPA, it still does so at numbers higher than the cost of the manually managed model with the help of a smart bidding tool.
Conclusion from the Little Friend
We know that no one could have a better tool than Google to optimize campaigns on Google; it is GOOGLE!
It knows everything; it knows I wrote this article and won’t even let it be indexed (help by sharing :P).
This makes it clear that we are witnessing a clear strategic positioning of those who want to earn more off of you.
Invest in a specialist and BI tools that help the advertiser outsmart Google. I do this for my clients with a lot of love; can they send me to jail?