Paid Media News & Opinion #100

🔎 Segment asset group data for Performance Max now available 🔎 Google pilots “Business Links” as a new asset type 🔎 LinkedIn rolls out post boosting for lead generation

Today’s highlights:

🔎 Segment asset group data for Performance Max now available

🔎 Google pilots “Business Links” as a new asset type

🔎 LinkedIn rolls out post boosting for lead generation

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Segment asset group data for Performance Max now available

> What’s happening

Performance Max campaigns in Google Ads are seeing the rollout of the segment feature at asset group level. This allows advertisers to breakdown data by time, conversions (action, category, days to conversion etc.), device, and top vs others. It also allows for click type and network, though this will only show ‘cross-network’, not a true breakdown.

The segment breakdowns don’t allow for actual adjustments and are just for reporting purposes only.

> Why we care

Understanding basics breakdowns that are available on all other platforms, such as which devices ads are serving on, is a huge improvement to the analytical and reporting experience for advertisers. We’re really excited about elements such as days to conversions, a crucial metric for understanding lead/sales cycles, and the ability to break down conversion actions in-platform.

If you have an account with multiple primary conversion actions, and have those conversion actions applied to the campaign goals, this will mean you can now break those down to get the correct conversion rate or cost per metric that you need.

This feature has been highly-requested by the paid media community so it’s great to see Google Ads, once again, listening to feedback. However, we think it should have been available sooner!

> What’s happening

Google has launched a pilot for a new asset type known as “Business Links”, which are quite similar to Sitelinks and would appear alongside search ads. The key difference is that you can write 3 different headlines per business link, which AI will then determine the best option to show depending on the search term and signals. You still only have one URL, but you also get a 90 character description to use.

There is also the option for AI enhancements, enabled by default, that will allow Google to generate and serve additional headline variants which it deems relevant to the specific search. Business links can serve either independently to sitelinks, or a combination of the two.

> Why we care

Although this is still just a pilot, it’s an interesting addition to the collection of asset options. The multiple choice of headlines is interesting, but it’s also useful to have a 90 character description. One of the biggest challenges of sitelinks is making the description of sitelinks fit within two 35 character lines, and still make grammatical sense. This new asset type allows for an extra 20 characters, and no need to break up your sentences across 2 different box fields.

LinkedIn rolls out post boosting for lead generation

> What’s happening

LinkedIn has launched the capability to boost posts specifically for lead generation, which will allow brands to quickly and easily capitalise on organic content that’s performing well

It will work very similar to standard post boosting. Advertisers just need to navigate to their company page, select the boost for boosting and then choose your budget, targeting options, objective and end date. You’ll then get the option to create a lead form to attach to the ad, and then launch the campaign.

> Why we care

This is a good and quick option for advertisers looking to test the waters with some new lead generation, more so if this isn’t your core business objective. For example, a business who is typically B2C but might try and get B2B bookings around events like Christmas could use this as a simple option to get up and running quickly.

It’s not something that we’d expect established B2B businesses to overly use, as if it’s your core marketing objective then you should be creating bespoke content and proper funnels for your advertising efforts.

What else we've been talking about:

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