Google ads is going to be recommending to advertisers to switch or supplement some of their search ad campaigns to use broad match with its Smart Bidding. Google wrote "using broad match and Smart Bidding together can help you reach more relevant queries that meet your performance objectives."
I am not surprised that Google would recommend this but I am surprised, a bit, that Ginny Marvin thinks you should give it a try and see what happens. She said "like it or not, this is where Google Ads paid search is heading. This is a radical shift anyone who’s been managing paid search campaigns for any length of time, but in this way it’s becoming much more like paid social where we are more accustomed to loosening the reigns and segmenting less to let the algorithms run and learn."
Google's example is "a broad match keyword like women’s hats could match to relevant queries you may not have thought of, like winter headwear for women or women’s accessories. By pairing this keyword with Smart Bidding, you can use auction-time signals to set the right bid for each of these queries. This means that you no longer need to anticipate and manage every potential search." Google said if you are using Smart Bidding, Google will "identify existing keywords that are likely to improve performance if you switch them to broad match."
Google will begin automatically surface these opportunities to you on the Recommendations page in your account, so be on the look out for it. Google said "on average, advertisers that switch their phrase match and broad match modified keywords to broad match can see more conversions and a higher conversion value."
Here is some of the chatter around this:
Just had this convo internally today. If controlled and limited, using broad match with smart bidding like TROAS is like smart DSA usage, and even upper funnel shopping ads: a great upper funnel, outreach strategy. It’s not the whole account, but a piece of the puzzle? Sure!
— Kirk Williams (@PPCKirk) November 16, 2020
100%. The reason it’s an increasingly good strategy, is it’s putting Smart Bidding to work as the important filtering factor to limit straight broad. So in that way, it’s not ***technically*** straight broad match… which is probably an important distinction for anyone concerned.
— Kirk Williams (@PPCKirk) November 16, 2020
I agree that we will need to figure out how to do more with less ... but keywords vs audiences are very different targeting options pic.twitter.com/ru35qHaabE
— Andrea Cruz (@andreacruz92) November 16, 2020
As these people and Ginny did point out, Google is hiding some search data and should we trust them?
🙏Please show all search terms, we can grow our business very well by eliminating negative keywords.
— Md Azharuddin (@digitalazhar) November 16, 2020
I'd like to find new search queries in my search query report because you've added back the ability to see them all again.
— Josh Yates (@Jates) November 16, 2020
PLEASE BRING BACK SEARCH TERMS
Forum discussion at Twitter.
