The Insider's Guide to 11 Hidden PPC Features

The PPC ad world is continuously evolving and PPC ad platforms such as Google Ads and Microsoft Ads have features that can improve the performance and visibility of your PPC ad campaign.

Some of these features are less known but can be best for your campaign optimization. You might not be aware of all of these opt-out features, which is why we got you a list of 11 PPC ad features that can change the whole result of your ad campaign.

So let’s discuss 11 PPC ad features that you might not know about in this newsletter.

11 Hidden PPC Features You Should Know About

1. Video in Responsive Display Ads

No, we are not talking about video ads. Just like other standard assets like headlines, descriptions, and images, you can also add videos in responsive display ads. By doing that, you will be able to provide a better user experience by creating engaging content more than Google’s auto-generated video.

If you create your own video for responsive display ads, Google should not show their auto-generated video. All you need to do is uncheck the box while ad creation.

2. Call Reports and Recording

Google ads provide call extension or call-only ad features on which you can easily find the report that has everything covered about the calls received through Google ads in a detailed manner.

You need to open the call reporting and call recording option in settings to use this feature.

You can follow the process given below-

• Turn call reporting “on.”

• Turn call recording “on.”

• Provide data to call analytics provider. If you have a third-party tool, you will want to enable this setting.

In this report, you can outline the duration, caller’s phone number (if available), and call time. There are more matrices you can add to create effective strategies to optimize phone call engagement.

3. LinkedIn Profile Targeting

Microsoft ads come with the additional benefit of incorporating LinkedIn profile targeting for PPC ads apart from LinkedIn itself. You can easily target any industry, company, or job profile through this feature.

If your ads can benefit from these features select values from these, three dimensions. As these audiences are “bid only,” so it will not affect existing traffic.

Set-up from the campaign level:

• In the campaign, select Settings.

• Scroll down to the Campaign targets.

• Select Edit target categories.

• Select Company, Industry, and/or Job function.

• Scroll down again – you will see the targeting criteria appear and a link edit targets

4. Automatically Created Assets

Not many advertisers like the automatically created assets feature allowed by Google ads and Microsoft ads, as they do not want to lose control over their ad campaigns.

Whereas, we think automatically created assets are the best way to automate improved performance, save time, and reduce effort in managing your account.

You can automate the process of creating and adding headlines and descriptions in rotation knowing as the assets for ads with the help of assets you created as a responsive search ad.

You can turn on this feature easily from the campaign setting, as it is an opt-in feature in both Google ads and Microsoft ads.

5. Search Partners

You can easily forget one of the most important features of Google and Microsoft ads, serving ads on other search partners. These search partners are sites that are powered by Google or Microsoft.

You need to look out for two main areas while exploring about the search partners performance are-

Reporting and settings. In both Google ads and Microsoft ads, you can see performance through the campaign view, ad group view, or keyword by using the “segment” link to break out the “Network (with search partners)” performance. However, you can just go to the reporting tab and see the network data.

In the work of campaign settings, you can find out the performance going up or down by deselecting search partners under networks.

6. CTV Targeting

Consumer streaming video has become the revolution for entertainment and it has become by default our favorite activity. Therefore, with the help of Google Ads CTV targeting feature, you can create an easily accessible way to market to your audiences on this channel.

You can easily include this feature while creating a new ad campaign; you can use the New campaign creation experience in the web interface, and follow the steps below-

• Select Build brand awareness as the campaign goal.

• Select Connected TV (CTV).

• Follow the steps to get started on this new targeting opportunity.

7. Overlap and Outranking Information

It is important to analyze your current bidding position and competitors' position to improve bidding and optimizations in your account.

With the hidden tool given by Google ads namely keyword-level auction insights and automated reports, you can find overlapping and outranking information to optimize your account and ad campaign.

With the help of reports generated through this feature, you can analyze the competitive landscape weekly or daily (however you schedule it) to adjust your bidding against competitors.

8. Content Suitability

It is essential that your display or video ad campaign appears in a suitable place and this has been the most worrying thing for marketers as to where their ad is displaying, along with what kind of content.

With the help of the content suitability feature, you can select the type of content (inventory) to ensure that your ad is associated with the right kind of content, which is brand-safe content types and themes.

In this list, you can add sensitive content and placements such as political content, parked domains, or even specific YouTube channels in the excluded list.

9. Game Placements and Topics

If you are selling an app or a game, the best strategy is to use Google display campaigns. It might not be a good fit for every advertiser but for the people who want to generate awareness to reach out to the right audience, gaming placements are the ideal fit.

You can edit and fine-tune the game placement to help your ad directly reach to the more relevant placements. You can include or exclude some or all game topics through editing to fine-tune it.

Here is how you can do it:

• Click on your display campaign name.

• Content > Topics.

• Pencil icon to edit the topics.

• Select the Adgroup.

• Click edit all targeting.

• Click Add Targeting> Topics.

• Excluded Topics pencil to edit.

• See Games topics and checkboxes to exclude.

• Scroll to the bottom to SAVE or you will lose your work.

10. Optimized Targeting In Display

With the help of optimized targeting in the display, Google ads allow you to serve ads to the wide and similar audience as you have selected for your ad campaign, instead of restricting to your selected target audience only. It expands your ads' reach to a similar set of target audiences without restricting you to placements you manually selected for this campaign.

To save you cost, and time, and to expand your reach, always on this setting to introduce yourself to new segments that are also convertible.

11. Account Notes Panel

If you knew about the account notes panel feature in Google ads, you would not be worrying about noting changes, performance observations, budget changes, etc., in a small to medium account

While the change history has everything noted but is tough to understand due to its technicality, the account notes panel allows you to note everything, as they are a free-form writing area.

Note:

Now that you know these secret PPC ads feature, we want you to try at least 2 of these features every week. We are sure that it will improve your ads performance and optimize it for better ROI.

So do not wait and subscribe to our newsletter for more tips and tricks like these every week.