Opportunity:
Performance Max represents Google’s cutting-edge campaign type designed to empower advertisers in reaching users across multiple Google Channels, including Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Shopping, Maps, and the display network. At EMSC, our mission is to deliver top-tier advertising programs while ensuring the highest lead quality. By leveraging various Performance Max Audiences such as the newest addition, Search Themes, we were able to identify which Performance Max Audience delivers the highest lead quality.
Overview:
Search themes are a new audience type that allows advertisers to provide some additional context and signals (similar to keywords) to Google to help target their Performance Max campaigns. EMSC runs a combination of Audiences when using Performance Max. With the addition of the Search Themes audience type, we took this opportunity to compare the lead quality among Remarketing, In-Market, Geo and Search Themes Performance Max Audiences. We conducted A/B tests with Google accounts currently running a mix of Remarketing, In-Market and Geo audiences within their Performance Max campaigns. Then compared the lead quality of the new Search Themes Audience vs the current (Remarketing, In-Market & Geo) audiences.
Hypothesis:
The introduction of the Search Themes audience enables advertisers to capitalize on their highest-performing keywords, resulting in the creation of a more precise and targeted audience. By utilizing Search Themes, which utilizes provided keywords to identify optimal users, it is hypothesized that leveraging our top-performing Google Search Keywords will generate a highly targeted and low-funnel audience. This highly targeted audience will then deliver a lower CPA, longer average call duration, a higher percentage of calls over 60 seconds and a lower percentage of calls under 10 seconds compared to In-Market, Remarketing and Geo targeting.
The Strategy:
EMSC created a new Performance Max campaign with the new Search Themes audience for 2 clients to run alongside existing Performance Max campaigns utilizing In-Market, Geo and Remarketing audiences to conduct an A/B test. Call quality and performance data was collected monthly over the course of 90 days to ensure an appropriate test period. We then compared CPA, average call duration, the percentage of calls over 60 seconds and the percentage of calls under 10 seconds.
