Inside
Google Marketing
Three Steps to Master
Digital Advertising
Kevin Murakami
Director, Global Performance Media
Google Marketing Team
Introduction
How do you make digital advertising as
successful as possible?
Which Google Ads products are best
for you and your business goals?
At Google Marketing, we spend a lot of time thinking about these
questions. We’ve developed three key steps to help you answer them,
with a particular focus on best practices for performance goals.
This guide takes you behind the scenes to share our
Google Tips
global learnings across our B2C & B2B advertising
campaigns—covering products like Play, YouTube,
Chrome, Google Ads, Cloud, hardware products &
subscription services.
Kevin Murakami, Google Marketing Team
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Use data to set goals
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Use data to set goals
Type of goals
We always structure our ad campaigns towards clear goals.
Here’s our thought process:
This is our marketing objective (MO). Google ads
What do we want
performance products are designed with a
to achieve with an
particular focus on these four: Lead Generation,
ad campaign? Online Sales, Offline Sales, & Mobile Growth.
What metric do we
have to improve to This is our key performance indicator (KPI).
fulfill that MO?
What value does That is our campaign goal. This value is determined
the KPI have to hit by the ROI required by our business based on the
to be successful? Customer Lifetime Value (or nearest proxy to this).
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Use data to set goals
Type of performance goals
This framework helps us evaluate the effectiveness and
cost-efficiency of our marketing efforts.
Examples of
MO Examples of KPIs Campaign Goals
Lead Calls, contact form Cost per lead, return on
Generation completions ad spend
Purchases, Cost per acquisition,
Online Sales
subscriptions return on ad spend
Cost per acquisition, cost
In-store visits,
Offline Sales per store visit, return on
appointment sign-ups
ad spend
Apps + Cost per install, cost per
Installs, engagement
Mobile Growth daily active users
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Use data to set goals
Choosing a goal
We’ve learned that a useful campaign goal is:
Quantifiable Incremental Commercially
viable
Results can be Goes beyond what we Produces positive
clearly measured. would naturally achieve return on investment.
without any media spend.
At Google Marketing, our gold standard for performance campaigns is
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), which measures a customer’s value over
a specific time-frame.
Never calculated a
Google Tips
customer’s value before?
Here’s a handy guide to
figuring it out.
Rocío Abril
Google Marketing Team
6
Use data to set goals
Performance campaign
metrics
When we work on campaigns to grow sales or revenue
(which we call “performance” or “direct response”
campaigns), we typically set targets for:
Tells us how much we are willing to pay to acquire
Cost per acquisition new customers. The reason CLV is so vital (see
(CPA) previous slide) is that it helps us set the CPA with
the appropriate financial return.
Return on ad spend Tells us the revenue we return for every dollar of ad
(ROAS) spend we invest in our campaigns.
Google offers multiple incrementality tools that can
Google Tips
be used to measure conversions directly attributable
to your performance media campaign that would
not have otherwise occurred. These include
Conversion Lift Studies & Geo experiments (GeoX)
Rocío Abril, Google Marketing Team
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2
Use conversion tracking
to unlock automation
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Use conversion tracking to unlock automation
Conversion tracking
A conversion occurs when a customer completes
a valuable action (e.g. a purchase).
Conversion tracking is critical because:
It shows whether the campaign is effective in
driving the desired KPIs and goals.
It allows us to calculate the campaign ROAS or CPA,
to see if the campaign is cost-efficient.
It allows us to save time and improve efficiency by
unlocking automated bid strategies in Google Ads.
Check out this page
Google Tips
for help setting up
conversion tracking.
Kevin Murakami,
Google Marketing Team
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Use conversion tracking to unlock automation
Automation
Google Ads uses powerful machine learning algorithms to
help get the right ads in front of the right customers.
Once we’ve set up conversion tracking, we always
implement automated bidding.
Automation optimizes our It’s guided by our CLV (customer
campaigns towards a metric lifetime value) and our target ROI
or objective (eg. CPA). (return on investment).
Saves us time, providing both Ensures efficiency by placing
flexible control options and the right bid at the right time.
insightful reporting tools.
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Use conversion tracking to unlock automation
Dynamic creatives
Another great form of automation we access via conversion
tracking is dynamic creative formats.
We’ve seen that machine learning outperforms manual
testing of our creative assets. We use dynamic creatives
because in our experience, they deliver more revenue/sales
per media dollar spent.
These ads are driven by machine learning
algorithms to show images and/or text tailored to
different customers & contexts.
With up to 30 individual text, logo, video and image
variations, there are 45K+ potential permutations
available to test.
Examples include Responsive Search Ads and
Responsive Display Ads. They can be used in Search,
Display, Shopping, Discovery, and App campaigns.
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Use conversion tracking to unlock automation
Examples of dynamic creatives
Google Store - 320x568
Stadia - Discovery ad responsive image ad
Google Pixel - YouTube Google Ads - YouTube
watch page responsive ad home page responsive ad
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3
Waterfall
media planning
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Waterfall media planning
The waterfall
A waterfall methodology allocates budget to different
channels based on their efficiency.
The best-performing channel receives full
funding until it captures all available demand
within our CPA and ROAS goals.
At this point it’s considered fully-saturated;
only then does the second best-performing
channel begin receiving funds, and so on.
We continue prioritizing channels in this way
until our overall CPA or ROAS reaches the goal
set by our CLV.
We almost always find it best to target
Google Tips
remarketing lists before anything else, on all
platforms. Additionally, conversion lift tools
are especially important to activate to ensure
proper accounting of incremental sales.
Lili Papadimitriou, Google Marketing Team
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Waterfall media planning
Waterfall budget planning
Initial budget spend
$
When CPA/ROAS
Best-performing exceeds target value,
channels, per MO $ move to next tier
Second best-performing
channel $
Goal
Continue prioritizing
channels until blended
CPA exceeds CLV target
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Waterfall media planning
Why use waterfalls?
Running multiple campaigns and products across
Google Ads can be complicated.
We’ve found that prioritizing our best-performing
channels ensures we remain financially
laser-focused and measurement-oriented.
The waterfall approach works equally across large
and small budgets, and for both single-country
and global campaigns.
The farther down the
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“waterfall” you move, the
more important multi-touch
attribution solutions become.
Lili Papadimitriou,
Google Marketing Team
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Waterfall media planning
The waterfall: Lead Generation
Every company and campaign is different, but here are the products
we use at each waterfall tier, depending on our marketing objective.
Examples of
MO Examples of KPIs Campaign Goals
Lead Calls, contact form Cost per lead, return on
Generation completions ad spend
$ Highest efficacy
Search ads
Discovery ads
$ Next tier
Display ads
Lead Form Extensions $ Next tier
Goal
Display & Video 360
YouTube*
*We are currently testing YouTube ads for lead generation & depending on
results, may change its priority in our waterfall planning
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Waterfall media planning
The waterfall: Online Sales
Every company and campaign is different, but here are the products
we use at each waterfall tier, depending on our marketing objective.
Examples of
MO Examples of KPIs Campaign Goals
Purchases, Cost per acquisition,
Online Sales
subscriptions return on ad spend
$ Highest efficacy
Search ads
Discovery ads
$ Next tier
Shopping ads*
Display ads $ Next tier
Goal
Display & Video 360
YouTube**
*Shopping ads or Smart Shopping campaigns depending on tracking capabilities
**YouTube Trueview for Action and Video Action Campaigns
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Waterfall media planning
The waterfall: Offline Sales
Every company and campaign is different, but here are the products
we use at each waterfall tier, depending on our marketing objective.
Examples of
MO Examples of KPIs Campaign Goals
In-store visits, Cost per acquisition, cost
Offline Sales per store visit, return on
appointment sign-ups
ad spend
$ Highest efficacy
Search ads
Local Search ads or
Local campaigns
$ Next tier
Discovery ads*
Shopping ads**
Call ads Display ads $ Next tier
Goal
Display & Video 360
*Currently no direct store visit tracking but we
use match market tests to determine offline sales efficacy YouTube***
**Shopping ads or Smart Shopping campaigns depending on tracking
capabilities
***Using location extensions
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Waterfall media planning
The waterfall:
Apps and Mobile Growth
Every company and campaign is different, but here are the products
we use at each waterfall tier, depending on our marketing objective.
Examples of
MO Examples of KPIs Campaign Goals
Apps + Cost per install, cost per
Installs, engagement
Mobile Growth daily active users
$ Highest efficacy
App Campaigns
(Install/Engagement)
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Case study
Case in focus: Google Fi
Google Fi is a phone plan, available in the US.
Our early marketing budgets were small until we could
prove growth potential.
The team started at the top of the waterfall with Search ads—our
most efficient channel due to its combination of reach and ability
to capture intent.
Once Google Fi subscriptions reached our goal of $70* CPA,
we requested 20% more budget so we could fully max out
Search Ads profitably. Then we tested new channels with the
next-lowest anticipated cost per subscription ($100 CPA).
Eventually we were funding five separate channels. Our
subscriptions had grown 200%, while our campaign
performance remained within our CLV-adjusted CPA goal.
*CPAs used are for illustrative purposes only
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