Seen a lot of changes to your google ad campaigns, youtube videos and advertisements… Let’s not forget Google reported the highest revenue of all time for Q2-2021 at $61,880,000,000, up 62% from Q2-2020.

Things are heating up! The old Google is gone and in its place is a push for massive monetization. Google is facing a slew of investigations and lawsuits from multiple layers of the US government and don’t even get me started on what is happening globally. The Internet and its interconnectedness makes small legislative changes that happen globally affect how ads serve domestically. 

I won’t go through all of the changes that have led to this massive surge in Google profits but I will go through the major 3 that have led to now. 

1.Toward the end of 2019 Google made 3 HUGE changes to their advertising platform that has affected all advertisers ever since. The big 3 were 1.They eliminated average position ( this one was enormous) 2.They eliminated accelerated delivery 3.They opened up all match types to close variant matches. 

These 3 changes were in part due to automation, in part due to Bert or emerging changes in how users search and in part due to the expansion of local services ads for more service related businesses. 

Local services ads have majorly impacted paid search. Here is the thing and I get it. I said to a colleague the other day, “ What do you do with 20 years worth of data for every major vertical that produces income for Google?….. You make local services ads!” The thing is that with the enormous amount of data that Google has at their fingertips, they can make choices in where and when to show what kind of ad. Over time in any vertical you will be able to see where and when the most people convert and then make choices based on this information. Google uses this information in order to serve the most expensive ad format. 

The other changes , eliminating accelerated delivery were also related to local services ads. Now Google does not have to show your ad for every search that happens. Accelerated delivery meant that until your budget was depleted you showed up for every search. Now Google can space out when you show and instead show other ad formats. The last change was close match variants and this was another huge one! This means that you now can show up for a whole lot of things that you don’t want to show up for. With this change they made all match types a little more broad. Then the final one was eliminating broad match modified match types. Again push toward automation and push toward you showing up more for things you don’t want – BUT that means you will show up more and get clicked more and make Google more money. 

Finally this year a whole new bucket of changes. This year’s changes were mostly packaging up unused google ad products, throwing in a shiny object and then making advertisers use them. This has been extremely profitable for Google. Lastly is Youtube – There has been a huge push toward more and more ads in youtube videos. As an advertiser you can see the reach you’re getting which is great, however there are always drawbacks and you need to thoroughly investigate your data to make sure there is an actual ROI from Youtube and new ad formats. There are still ways and always will be ways that you can use the information provided and the changes Google makes to advertising to your advantage. You just need to know what to look at!