Some of the greatest game changers have been because of a bad call or a change in the rules. If you are a baseball fan, you are aware of the ill fate of Detroit’s pitcher Armando Galarraga and his loss of being awarded a perfectly pitched game due to an umpire’s bad call. Unfortunately for Galarraga, the baseball commissioner did not over turn the decision even though ump Jim Joyce tearfully admitted his mistake.
Fortunately for us PPC Managers, Google gave us a game changer and announced yesterday that they are making changes to the campaign settings in the Display Network. Keywords are making a comeback on the managed placement, audience and topics campaign setting. (Insert crowd wave here!)
First things first… the campaigns need to meet the following criteria:
- campaign setting is on placements, audiences and topics
- the ad group is targeting only keywords
- and of course, the account must be opted into the display network. (Good call Google…)
So now that the obvious things are out of the way – what are they changing? Well, previously if a PPC Manager picked the setting for placements, audiences and topics only for their campaign and they have only keywords in the ad group, the ads are not eligible to show. At all. Ever. As in banned from the network like fans wanted to ban Jim Joyce from baseball. Google explains, “ads with this type of setting conflict will start appearing on relevant pages across the entire Google Network based on your keywords…If you add a placement, audience, or topic, your ad will continue to appear only on relevant pages within that placement, audience, or topic.” There is no need to make any changes to the ad groups.
Google has also renamed the settings for these two options.
This will be a great addition to the tools that we can use to heighten our client’s presence on the display network and hopefully get lower cpls out of it. The keywords will give more flexibility than just a managed placement, topic or audience. Now they can all work together and create PPC history! So congratulations, Google Keywords, for hitting a grand slam homer and becoming a productive player on display network team!
How will your display network campaigns be affected by this change? Let us know here at PPC Hero – we would love to hear from you!
Need other resources to help you be an MVP in the display network? Check this out!:
