PPC “Back To School” Presentation for SEMpdx

On September 9th I gave a talk at SEMpdx’s “Back to School” event. I was asked to review changes in the PPC/SEM world that occurred over the summer. There were some exciting and controversial changes in paid search recently, and my presentation reviewed the following changes in AdWords and Bing.

My Presentation

 

 

Links to the changes covered in the deck

AdWords Updates

• AdWords migrating from PLA to Shopping campaigns
• AdWords introducing Display Select
• AdWords changing close variant match settings
• AdWords Dynamic Site Links

Bing Updates

• Bing interface changes
• Bing auto tagging updates
• Bing Enhanced campaigns

These recent changes were met with mixed feelings from the PPC community. It’s great to see many changes at Bing that incorporate feedback that has been around for years. The most controversial was definitely the match setting changes from Google. PPC managers don’t like it when you take away control.

Additional Resources & References

Here’s also a list of references from my presentation:

Google shopping

• RKG blog post: https://www.rimmkaufman.com/blog/google-shopping-campaigns-overview/26062014/

Close variants

• Larry Kim quote: https://searchengineland.com/farewell-pure-exact-match-google-will-soon-force-campaigns-close-variants-enabled-200615
• Matt Umbro study: https://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/66088-Demystifying-Google-AdWords-Keyword-Variants

Site links

• Larry Kim quote on site links: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/07/25/dynamic-sitelinks

 

And some pics from the event

Thanks to Nathan Isaacs, Jason Wright and Mike Rosenberg for the pics!