Breaking: Google’s Algorithm Might Be Faking Your Brand’s Growth Ceiling

Here’s how we broke a brand out of its Google scale rut by tossing “best practice” to the side and intentionally reducing the amount of data available to its algorithm.

The Challenge
A client’s Paid Search program was stagnating—implementing Smart Bidding with CAC and ROAS constraints resulted in hitting a spend limit that limited efficiency and scale.

This is such a common problem. One you are likely facing right now.

The Test
If we remove the algorithm from the auction, would it allow for more scale at a similar CAC efficiency? Definitely not a “best practice” but like most ad platforms, if you’re in it and have seen the shifts over the years, you know how to work the platforms.

To remove the algorithm from the auction, we simply removed Target CPA/ROAS so the algorithm could not predict whether someone will convert at a target constraint. This moved our campaign to unconstrained bidding, where we’re allowing Google to our ads more across all relevant terms

Education: When campaigns leverage Target CPA/ROAS, Google uses predictive modeling to determine whether a user will convert at the desired target, ultimately limiting your reach for the sake of hitting a target. This is fine for some businesses, but for others looking to grow, it caps volume.

The Results
With more volume, we were able to capture more non-brand search terms and add incremental growth to the business. As performance started to scale, we made some account optimizations to cut losses but and the rest is in the numbers:

• +554% PoP Investment

• +419% PoP Conversions

• No Negative Impact to CVR

• Maintained Goal CPA Range

Best practices are great, until they’re not. Test. Learn. Test again. 📈.

While we’re talking about Search…have you tried PMax for competitive conquesting yet?

This is a DTCo special. We’ll talk more about why we don’t like PMax another time, but here’s 1 way we like to leverage this Google buy tactic to:

1. Propel cross-platform performance

2. Box out our competition in-auction

3. Learn about what motivates their shoppers

🥊 A 1-2-3 PMax punch. 🥊

No gatekeeping here — this is what you’ll want to do:

1. Set up a PMax campaign with no product feed.

2. Add your brand’s headlines, descriptions, images and a video — a must so that Google doesn’t take creative liberties.

3. Add your brand list and keyword exclusions so this doesn’t serve on your brand search.

4. For the audience signal add:

   1. Competitor Brand name(s): Brand, Brand + Descriptor, Brand + Product Name

   2. Add a custom audience for URLs — the deeper, the better. Don’t do: theirbrand.com, do: theirbrand.com/checkout.

The thought process behind this is to let PMax conquest competitor brand names while uncovering hidden pockets of opportunity on keywords that might not be in your account today.

We’ve rolled this out for a few of our clients, and have been quite pleased with what we’ve learned so far.

Pro tip: keep an eye on brand search impression share to see if anyone is doing this to you.

We’ve generally got a bone to pick with platform Best Practices, particularly when they’re not backed up by thoughtful strategy. Sound like a conversation you’d want to continue with us? Hit us back at [email protected] 📧