Has anyone given thought or analysis to determining how much of your existing text keyword coverage is being picked up by PMAX? Given that PMAX is feed-based and uses AI/ML to determine ad relevance, I would think that the text experience is superior to PMAX particularly for Brand keywords. We want to put our best foot forward in market which, in my opinion, is the message created by marketers using brand value propositions rather than the message created by robots.
Our Google support team have said that text is the default placement served when their systems determine that a user query could be served by an advertiser’s text or PMAX campaign. However, our initial analyses indicate that this is not the case as we have seen aberrations in impression and click volume as well as anomalies in a PMAX placement reporting script we have been testing. PMAX is taking an increasingly larger share of our total budget.
I work with a major brand spending more than a million dollars a month and any small efficiency gain will have considerable impact on the bottom line. Here is what we will test in the coming quarter:
Negate Brand Keywords from PMAX – We have strong Brand recognition and see this as a simple way to cut back on the inflated costs of PMAX.
Utilize Standard Shopping as a Catch-All – This means running Standard Shopping in conjunction with PMAX with very low CPCs. The logic being that Standard Shopping will catch any brand traffic missed by PMAX at an efficient cost.
I’ll be sure to report back as to the effectiveness of this strategy but I am fairly confident in the logic
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