See terms.<\/a><\/p>\nUse case 3: Competitive analysis<\/h3>\n Want to look good for your client or exec team? <\/p>\n
Build a custom column that looks at decreases in click-through rate and increases in CPC to gauge potential market competition and activity. <\/p>\n
Flagging data here can help indicate when to look into Auction Insights to see what’s going on externally. <\/p>\nThis is extremely helpful for monitoring activity on brand keywords (e.g., competitor poaching), but it’s valuable information for key non-brand terms as well. <\/p>\n
Increased costs and competition could be a great trigger for testing new ad copy and differentiators (or taking on competitors directly in ad copy). And it’s great information to relay to higher-ups who crave information on what competitors are up to.<\/p>\n
If you’re not using this column set-up, you’re likely over-reliant on Auction Insights to catch competitor activity. Auction Insights are helpful, but they leave much to be desired in recognizing trends – a gap that Custom Columns can close for you.<\/p>\n
Use case 4: Spend anomalies<\/h3>\n How many of us (raises hand) have seen Google take liberties with budget caps? <\/p>\n
To combat this, I like to build a column to identify spend anomalies. It essentially flags instances where yesterday’s spend was more than 120% of the average spend over the last seven days. <\/p>\nThese fluctuations are important to spot and diagnose in touchy accounts, especially bigger-budget accounts. Adding this column means you won’t have to rely on your normal reporting cadence to catch them. <\/p>\n
Assess irregularities at the campaign, ad, and keyword levels, and make sure performance is justifying reasons for increased spend and that Google’s not just going a little rogue. <\/p>\n
Whether the performance is or isn’t the reason for the spend increases, calling out the alerts and subsequent findings is great EQ for your client or manager. In extreme cases, it can cause you to engage your Google rep for some make-good requests.<\/p>\n
Using Google Ads’ full functionality<\/h2>\n The 2022 updates added tons of agility to Custom Columns. If I had a wish list for other reporting features, it’d be short. (But since I mentioned it, I’d love to see competitive metrics like top-of-page and absolute top-of-page rates, plus a less glitchy UI that helps troubleshoot formula errors.)<\/p>\n
At this point, it falls on marketers to learn to use the tool’s full functionality, which shortens the analysis\/action loop by keeping everything directly in Google’s UI.<\/p>\n
Custom Columns can help you surface trends and insights to answer some of your most important account-related questions. <\/p>\n
Even for the most straightforward ad campaigns, the different views available by date range and formula functionality represent a chance for you to go from Google Ads Data 101 to EQ and analytics powerhouse – all for the cost of a little elbow grease.<\/p>\n
Contributing authors are invited to create content for Search Engine Land and are chosen for their expertise and contribution to the search community. Our contributors work under the oversight of the editorial staff<\/a> and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. The opinions they express are their own.<\/em><\/p>\nIf you’re a control-loving performance marketer like me, Google hasn’t given you many reasons to smile lately in its headlong rush toward an AI-driven world. But there is one that has the potential to provide incredibly helpful PPC reporting nuance and customization for marketers who know how to use it. Yup, I’m talking about Custom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[22],"class_list":{"0":"post-1886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ppc","8":"tag-ppc"},"yoast_head":"\n
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