Google Ads Management Tips: Avoid These Traps That Make You Spend More

Rachel: 00:00:00

Hi, everyone.

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We're Jeannie here with starter PPC.

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Today, I'm going to talk to you guys about

three out of the possibly hundreds of

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ways that Google is making small, tricky

tweaks to their features instead of the

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Google ads dashboard to Manipulate its

users to help make Google more money.

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Now, 99 percent of Google's

revenue comes from ads.

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How does Google make that money?

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They charge a commission on every click.

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So they're basically just printing

money and the us, the users who use

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Google ads or we are fueling what is.

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the entirety of Google for the most part.

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manipulation and persuasion

are the exact same activity.

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manipulation is done for the person's

own game, persuasion is done for the

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other parties game or for a mutually

beneficial gain between both parties.

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Google makes money, on every click.

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And the easiest way for them to make

more money is increasing competition.

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So every time there is a auction,

meaning, somebody on Google's searching

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for something, or there's a potential

impression because they're walking around

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the internet and, there's an opportunity

to show them an ad, that's an auction.

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And in any given auction where

ads could potentially show there's

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multiple bidding for a click and each

competitor has its own settings, right?

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Maybe one competitor is

willing to pay this much.

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The other competitor is

willing to pay slightly more.

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This person is probably going

to win the click in this case.

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And so if there's three or four

or five competitors that kind

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of drives it up to everyone's

max that they're willing to pay.

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just gonna pay a little bit more to

win the click Whereas if there's three

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competitors over here this person's bids

will go to its max that they're willing

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to spend Google collects a percentage

of the commission on that, right?

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So Google loves increasing, upping the

competition on every auction available.

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How do they do that?

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They convince you to go more broad.

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So what do I mean by that?

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So instead of hyper targeting only on

the placements that you are willing to

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bid on and telling the algorithm no.

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I only want right here.

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Google convinces its users to go.

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To be open to more auctions and go more

broad and they use some sneaky tactics to

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do this because the more auctions that you

are available to bid on the algorithm will

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go ahead and enter the auction, right?

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And that's going to drive Everyone's

clicks up, that's how they win.

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So let me show you three of the most

obvious and also I think impactful ways

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that Google manipulates things here.

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So the first one I'm going to

show you go inside this standard

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shopping campaign and click settings.

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this is a location setting.

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when you're setting up your ads,

go check every single campaign,

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not just the shopping campaign.

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I'm just using this as an example,

check all of your campaigns in the

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campaign settings, click on locations.

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And what you're going to see

is there's a hidden nested.

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down here.

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Location options.

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It's called and you have to

expand that even to see it.

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Why don't they just have it pre expanded

because they don't want you to see it.

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And what you're going to see is it

says, do you want to, we've already

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entered our locations, right?

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We're right for this.

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In this case, we're

targeting the United States.

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We're actually excluding Alaska and Hawaii

because the client doesn't ship there.

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And then Google by default chose

this other targeting option.

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Which basically ignores all of the

targeting preferences that we put

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in up here, and I'll show you why.

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So the Recommended and Default

option that Google chose is this

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top one that's not selected anymore.

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Why?

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Because we changed it.

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Because it doesn't make

sense to choose it.

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And it says Target people in,

regularly in, or who've shown

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interest in your targeted locations.

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Okay, so that opens it up

to everyone who's ever shown

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interest in the United States.

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That's like the world.

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we might as well just not put any

targeting in and just target the

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entire world full of countries.

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There used to be a third option,

which is not available anymore.

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Google took it away and it said people in.

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your targeted location.

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So at the time that the auction

happens, that person's, location

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has to be in your targeted location.

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So the best we can do at this time

is to choose this option down here.

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People in a regularly in,

which is not the recommended

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and not the default option.

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So whatever you do, do not just

use Google's recommendations When

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you're setting things up and don't

be afraid to open nested features,

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because often Google's trying to hide

something like that, where they're

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just overriding some of the other

targeting options that you've chosen.

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So open everything up,

read it, understand it.

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let's move on to sneaky setting.

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Number two, this happens

inside of search campaigns.

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I'm going to go over to a search campaign

and then I'm going to click on settings.

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Hi there.

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Quick interruption.

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Do you know the main thing that

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A lot of businesses, especially

those that are just starting

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out, have limited budgets.

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And so because of this, they're turned

away by most ad agencies because most ad

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agencies have minimum budget thresholds

that they're willing to work with.

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So what happens is the business owners

end up learning Google ads themselves.

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And the problem with that is

that most of the advice online is

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geared towards larger accounts.

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And the advice doesn't have any of those

strategies or tricks that can kickstart

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the algorithm into giving a small

account a leg up over larger competitors.

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So it often just doesn't work.

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And the business just ends up

losing money month over month.

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com.

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Okay.

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Back to the video.

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And right here where it says

networks, when you're setting up a

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search campaign by default, Google

will include the display network.

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You guys display ads are not search ads,

so you can literally set up a search

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campaign and by default, Google will

ignore your wishes to do a search campaign

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and they'll start spending however amounts

of unknown amounts of your budget for

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this campaign on the display network,

they will not tell you how much of the

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budget is being spent on display because

it's all bundled together into one.

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Search campaign, which is

not even a search campaign.

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It's just called that.

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So the only way to make it a true search

campaign when you're setting up a search

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campaign is to find this setting in

the networks and uncheck include Google

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Display Network every single time.

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Isn't that crazy?

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And for those of you guys who are

confused about what display is,

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display ads are just Image ads.

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So this would be like outbound display.

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it's just going to use the account

wide assets basically, and just

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start showing images to everyone.

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This is probably the easiest way

for Google to make money because

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they can just have a hundred people

bidding to show an image on the

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side of a website everywhere you go.

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And that drives up all of that revenue.

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When you are a small business just

starting out, we don't usually

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recommend doing outbound display,

which is what this would be until

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you're a little bit bigger.

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I would say there's some

exceptions to that rule.

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For example, if you

have a B to C product.

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This is to consumer and that

product doesn't really have a

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existing body of traffic that's

already looking for that product.

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If it's more of an impulse by

products where people need to see

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it and go, Oh my God, that's cool.

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I have to have that now, then you might

make an exception and do an outbound

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display campaign while you're still small.

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I'm talking 5, 000 or less.

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It really depends on

what you're selling and.

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A million other things, but when

you're small, you want to start

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at the bottom of the funnel and

outbound display is top of funnel.

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So you want to start at the bottom

and work your way up to the top.

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Unless you have an impulse buy product.

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However, when you do decide to do

an outbound display, don't do it

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inside of a search campaign, create a

dedicated outbound display campaign.

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Why?

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So that you can control

everything about it.

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You can control the budget and you have

features and settings inside of that type

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of campaign that are made for display ads.

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Let's move on to tricky

setting number three.

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This is inside of a remarketing campaign.

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It's also infuriates me.

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Let's click on, we have two

remarketing campaigns going here.

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I'm just going to click on one of them.

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Okay.

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First of all, in a remarketing campaign

over in audiences, you first have to

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add your remarketing audience, right?

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So you go here, you click edit audience.

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You choose the existing remarketing

audience that you have set up over

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in tools and settings a long time

ago, and it's been populating for a

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month or two, and now you can apply

it to your remarketing campaign.

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And you'll see here, if I expand this

table, it's the only audience here.

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And if I were to go into the

settings for this audience, it

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would be targeting, not observing.

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Observing is.

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It's not the same as a remarketing

campaign because in a remarketing

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campaign, you only want to

remarket to people that have

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been on your website already.

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So you have to target people

that have been on your

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website, not just observe them.

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Once that audience is applied, now

head over to settings again you're

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going to click on additional settings.

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actually, I think the only way to get to

it, even in the main campaign settings.

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Google by default will turn

on optimized targeting.

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Optimized targeting means that

Google's going to take your

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audience settings that you just.

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laboriously worked to build that audience,

make it eligible for a month and a half,

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and then apply it and make sure it's

targeting over in the audience section

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and create a true remarketing campaign.

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And Google's gonna throw it out the window

because optimized targeting means they're

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going to show it to anyone they want to.

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So it completely undoes all

of your targeting settings.

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And there's so many people

out there that think they're

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running a remarketing campaign.

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And because of this setting, they're

not running a remarketing campaign.

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It's just an outbound display or video,

whichever type of campaign you're running.

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It's not remarketing.

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So make sure you turn this off.

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Again, the way you get to this is

first you add the audience because

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that setting won't even be available

if you didn't apply your audience yet.

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And then you have to go to the ad group.

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And then you have to click

little settings icon.

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It's not in the main

campaign settings area.

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It's hidden.

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Sorry to deliver this news to you guys

that you're being manipulated by Google.

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the more you have some control over.

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What you're doing inside of Google ads,

all these little things really matter.

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It should be that what you think

you're purchasing through the company.

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Google is what you're

actually purchasing, right?

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You're paying for a service and they're

selling you a completely different

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service without telling you and

they're hiding it in the settings.

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So it's up to you to

educate yourself, All right.

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Good luck.

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Thanks for watching.