Paid Media News & Opinion #107

As 2024 wraps up, we want to thank you for your support and engagement this year.

We’ll be taking a short break and will be back on Monday, 6th January with more insights and updates to kickstart 2025.

Wishing you a fantastic holiday season and a Happy New Year!

Performance Max negative keyword exclusions are on the way

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> What’s happening

After many months of requests, Google is rolling out campaign-level negative keywords for Performance Max (PMax) campaigns. Currently in beta, this is likely to be available for all advertisers “early next year”.

Currently, account negatives can be added (which impact search, shopping and Performance Max campaigns), or a form can be sent off to Google requesting the changes. Both options have their limitations. While brand inclusion and exclusion lists have been welcomed, they are not as specific as something like a keyword negative.

> Why we care

This is a major announcement for many advertisers, given the difficult decision between performance and control of campaigns. For some niche verticals, negative keywords are essential for ensuring effective ad spend.

Brand inclusions and exclusions have been a great stop-gap but being able to easily add campaign-level negatives will be cause for celebration for many.

More control on irrelevant terms means less wastage and better segmentation between similar campaigns.

LinkedIn adds campaign manager updates for company engagement and measurement

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> What’s happening

LinkedIn has introduced several updates to Campaign Manager, aimed to enhance ad performance. These include:

• A new "Companies" overview that offers deeper insights into how other companies engage with your brand (both from paid and organic) over the last 90 days

• An updated data-driven attribution report to identify the most impactful touchpoints in your customer journey

• A "Measurement Insights" tab, providing comprehensive demographic overviews in one place, rather than having to jump between different tabs and reports

• "Qualified Leads Optimization" which is powered by connecting your CRM via the conversions API, which LinkedIn will then use to help find higher quality leads that are similar to your most qualified leads.

> Why we care

All of these updates help to streamline data analysis and provide actionable insights from your LinkedIn campaigns and prospects. The Qualified Leads Optimisation” is also like an enhanced lookalike audience, which LinkedIn say leads to higher conversion rates and reduces wasted spend.

LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful channel for B2Bs but the platform doesn’t tend to update and iterate at the same pace as channels like Google, Meta and TikTok. This is one of the first meaningful updates for a while, so it’s a positive step in the right direction for LinkedIn that advertisers should look to explore and take advantage of.

Google shakes up ad policies for CTV and privacy-enhancing technologies

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> What’s happening

Ad policies for CTV (Connected TV) and PETs (privacy-enhancing technologies) are have been updating in light of “new innovations in the ads ecosystem”.

Firstly, CTV ad policies are being updated to reflect the fast-growing channel by introducing requires on the use of data signals, and some ad creative changes including not allowing ads to mimic operating system warnings.

Google have said that while IP addresses are currently used for preventing fraud and spam, the new PET innovations will help IP addresses be used in user targeting but in a privacy-safe way.

For PETs, Google have noted that advances here have been integrated into their suite of products, including ad platforms, which are helping with utilising first party data (such as customer list uploads) alongside ensuring privacy for users.

> Why we care

The measurement system for CTV is difficult due to the indirect and view-through attribution from a user viewing an ad (on one device) to converting (usually on another device, like their phone), so tightening up the privacy and rules on data sharing will preserve user-privacy whilst helping advertisers re-enage users across multiple touchpoints without re-identifying them.

Advances in PETs will further ensure user privacy is upheld while enabling advertisers to measure performance.

Understanding the measurement and privacy ecosystem is key to ensuring ads stay compliant and your ad accounts are not disapproved.

What else we've been talking about:

• YouTube shares its top ad campaigns of 2024

• Social media ad spend by platform [Infographic]

• TikTok takes U.S. ban challenge to the Supreme Court

• 5 PPC measurement initiatives to set yourself up for 2025 success

• The future of paid search: 3 predictions for Google Ads in 2025

• Google experiments with double ad placements for same advertiser

• Google Ads tests AI-powered reporting tool