We all know that connecting with the right customers is paramount. However, in today’s fast-paced marketing environment, not all customers are created equally – nor should be treated as such.

Marketers need precision, and that’s where the power of AI-driven audience segmentation comes into play. At Making Science, our proprietary solution, Clustering, tackles the challenge of maximizing your marketing impact by separating customers and prospects by behavior. 

Clustering dives deep into behavioral, transactional, and contextual signals instead of relying on outdated demographic assumptions . This allows us to identify distinct user groups based on their actual engagement and purchase patterns. While lookalike audiences can be a part of the strategy, Clustering truly shines when it comes to remarketing and re-engaging your existing customer base – the individuals who have already shown interest in your brand.

Let’s imagine a thriving online retailer brand that specializes in sustainable and ethically sourced apparel. They’ve built a loyal customer base, but their broad marketing campaigns sometimes miss the mark, reaching many individuals with little interest in their unique products.

By implementing Clustering, our retail brand can analyze past purchase history, website interactions (like browsing specific product categories or spending time on their sustainability page), and even responses to previous marketing efforts. This data allows Clustering to identify key audience segments within their existing customer base:

• “Eco-Conscious Enthusiasts”: Customers who frequently purchase items from their sustainable collection and actively engage with content related to ethical sourcing.
• “Urban Style Seekers”: Customers who gravitate towards their trendier, city-inspired pieces and often engage with fashion-forward content.
• “Loyal Repeat Buyers”: Customers with a history of multiple purchases across various product lines, indicating strong brand affinity.
• “Just Browsing”: Customers who aren’t ready to purchase.

These audience segments allow for multiple marketing activation activities. For example, instead of sending generic promotions to their entire email list, they can now tailor their messaging. The “Eco-Conscious Enthusiasts” might receive exclusive previews of new sustainable arrivals or invitations to a webinar on ethical fashion. The “Urban Style Seekers” could be targeted with lookbooks featuring the latest trends and styling tips. And the “Loyal Repeat Buyers” might receive personalized thank-you offers or early access to sales events.

For a digital ads campaign, these audience segments can be sent to ad platforms to help with targeting, bidding and even exclusion lists. While bidding algorithms in these tools provide some level of segmentation, Clustering is based on propensity and predictive modeling. The online retailer can also use these segments for audience expansion or to build similar audiences.   

The impact? By focusing their efforts on high-value segments identified by Clustering, our online retail brand can expect to see a significant boost in sales from their existing customers and a considerable reduction in the media cost it takes to achieve each conversion. Our benchmarks show that businesses leveraging similar AI-powered audience segmentation can achieve a 20% incremental sales increase and a 20% reduction in cost per conversion.

Additionally, all the cluster results are transparent. Normally models are black boxes, but in addition to each cluster, the information about the users in that cluster are also provided. This information could be used to inform creative, website landing pages, messaging and more.

So let’s stop wasting marketing budgets on lukewarm leads. Embrace the precision of AI-powered audience segmentation with Making Science and start connecting with the customers who truly matter. Ready to see how Clustering can transform your marketing results? Reach out to our team today to learn more.

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In the era of automated advertising and artificial intelligence, we have more tools than ever to unlock the full potential of our campaigns. A prime example is Meta’s Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns, where AI plays a fundamental role in optimizing results. These campaigns analyze millions of signals to identify users most likely to engage, purchase, or click on an ad, maximizing performance through data-driven insights.

With automation handling campaigns and audience targeting, creativity becomes the primary focus for optimization. Studies show that creativity is a major driver of campaign performance on platforms like Meta, where brands have only milliseconds to capture users’ attention in an increasingly competitive environment. Additionally, the high volume of ad impressions can lead to creative fatigue, significantly impacting campaign results.

This new digital paradigm highlights the importance of audience automation, but above all, positions creativity as a key lever for advertisers. Recognizing this shift, Making Science launched ad-machina for Social, extending its automated creative generation capabilities from Search and Performance Max to Meta. ad-machina leverages AI to enhance Meta campaign management, helping brands maximize their advertising investments.

What can ad-machina offer you?

ad-machina is designed to help advertisers maximize the value of their Meta campaigns through automation and the use of AI. Through the API, the tool allows campaigns to be created, managed and published in record time, giving advertisers a competitive advantage by significantly reducing execution times while ensuring continuous optimization.

What sets ad-machina apart is its ability to connect to the customer’s first-party data. This opens up a range of possibilities to automate campaigns directly aligned with business objectives, using customized rules such as:

• Automation based on sales data: The advertiser can set up rules so that sale ads automatically include the best-selling or high in-stock products. This not only saves time, but also ensures that ads are always aligned with business needs.
• Adaptation to seasonality and local behavior: for global brands, ad-machina can adjust creatives based on seasonality and local preferences. This is especially relevant for industries like fashion, where demand greatly varies depending on location, seasonality and the weather. By connecting weather data, advertisers can show different product categories for each geographic location. 
• Margin optimization: by connecting product margin data, ad-machina can prioritize the promotion of categories, brands or products that offer higher margins, helping to maximize the value of each euro invested in Meta.

The most disruptive aspect of ad-machina is its ability to apply AI to analyze and improve creative. Meta uses creative as a crucial signal in its Advantage+ campaigns, and ad-machina leverages this intelligence to help advertisers discover which elements within their creative drive better campaign performance.

For example, ad-machina can analyze factors such as:

• Whether the people in the images are smiling.
• Whether natural light is used in the photos.
• The visual style of creativity.

These details, often overlooked because they are difficult to analyze, can make all the difference in a campaign’s performance. Once the technology identifies key success factors, it allows AI-enabled creative to be adapted to incorporate these improvements. This ability to generate new creative quickly solves one of the biggest challenges facing Meta advertisers: creative fatigue.

In a dynamic environment like Meta, where ads quickly reach their fatigue point, the ability to refresh creatives frequently is essential to maintain performance. ad-machina simplifies this process, reducing dependence on creative teams to perform constant refreshes, helping Meta’s algorithms find the right audience through signals like CTR (Click-Through Rate). In automated campaigns like Advantage+, where the audience is no longer selected by the advertiser, CTR becomes a crucial signal to guide the algorithms towards users with the highest purchase intent.

This all happens in real time and without human intervention, allowing advertisers to focus on strategy while the tool takes care of the entire execution. 

Making Science: Leader in AI for Creativity

With ad-machina, Making Science positions itself at the forefront of AI-powered creativity. This tool not only enables advertisers to optimize their campaigns on Meta, but also transforms the way they manage their advertising spend, aligning creative with business needs and using AI to maximize performance.

In an era where automation is redefining digital advertising, creativity is the key to success.  ad-machina empowers brands to thrive in this new era, ensuring campaigns remain fresh, engaging, and highly effective.

The digital advertising landscape is currently undergoing a seismic shift. Third-party cookies, long the backbone of targeting and measurement, are declining. The rise of the Privacy Sandbox has many marketers scrambling to find alternative solutions. Online advertisers are testing platforms with Privacy Sandbox APIs, and one stands tall compared to the rest: Google’s Display & Video 360 (DV360). 

Unlike cookie-dependent platforms, DV360 is built with a privacy-first approach. DV360 offers a variety of alternative targeting and measurement solutions that don’t rely on third-party cookies. This makes it a future-proof option for advertisers navigating the evolving privacy regulations. We will go into more detail on DV360’s performance without the use of third-party cookies and how it compares to the market, unlocking the power of conversion modeling in DV360 to maximize your campaigns performance, as well as how to maximize your return on ad spent (ROAS) with DV360 using optimized bidding.

Google Privacy Sandbox: A Testing Ground for DSP’s

This Google article* highlights that Google has been running experiments using Privacy Sandbox APIs for the web on Google Display Ads and DV360. These experiments had three groups: comparing the use of ads with both third-party cookies & Privacy Sandbox APIs, neither third-party cookies nor Sandbox APIs, and one final group with only Sandbox APIs active. These tests provide a true scope of how viable interest-based advertising is without relying on third-party cookies. While the results are still preliminary, they show promise:

DV360 shows an 86% recovery in advertiser spending compared to the market average, which shows a 60% decrease in publisher revenue without third-party cookies.* 

Although these experiments are in the early stages, same as the Sandbox API, we have a baseline answer for how Google’s DV360 will last without third-party cookies. Although just about every advertiser will be taking a hit without third-party cookies, Google has an answer to minimize the damages.

Conversion Modeling Unlocks Hidden Value

In programmatic advertising, traditional attribution models have limitations. They often struggle to capture the full impact of your campaigns, especially for online-to-offline conversions or complex customer journeys. This is where Conversion Modeling with DV360 steps in, unlocking the hidden value in your campaigns.

As explained in a Google support article** Conversion Modeling utilizes machine learning to estimate online conversions that wouldn’t be directly attributable through traditional methods. This could include conversions happening on other devices, offline interactions, or conversions with a significant delay after exposure to your ad.

Here’s how Conversion Modeling in DV360 benefits your campaigns:

• More Accurate Reporting: By attributing credit for conversions that might have been missed previously, Conversion Modeling provides a more complete picture of your campaign performance. This allows you to make data-driven decisions and optimize campaigns for maximum impact.
• Improved Bidding Strategies: With a more comprehensive view of conversion data, DV360’s automated bidding strategies can be optimized. This ensures your bids are directed towards impressions most likely to result in a conversion, even if it takes time or happens offline.
• Greater Campaign Efficiency: By attributing credit more effectively, you can identify campaigns that are driving conversions, even if traditional models wouldn’t show them. This allows you to allocate your budget more efficiently and focus on the most successful channels.

Important Considerations:

Conversion Modeling is a powerful tool, but it’s important to use it strategically. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Conversion Modeling is an estimate: While it provides valuable insights, it’s still an estimation. Don’t rely solely on modeled data, but use it in conjunction with your existing attribution models.
• Data Quality Matters: The accuracy of your Conversion Modeling results depends on the quality of your data. Ensure you have a clean and complete data set for optimal performance.

By leveraging Conversion Modeling in DV360, you can gain a deeper understanding of your advertising impact and unlock hidden value in your campaigns. This allows for more accurate reporting, improved bidding strategies, and ultimately, a more efficient and impactful advertising experience.

Expand Your Reach with Precision Using Optimized Targeting

Reaching the right audience is paramount to a successful advertising campaign. Traditional targeting methods can be limiting, but Optimized Targeting in DV3060 offers a powerful solution. This innovative approach leverages machine learning to go beyond your initial audience selections and identify new, relevant users with a higher conversion potential. 

According to the Google support article*** Optimized Targeting utilizes two key elements:

Audience Signals: These are your initial targeting selections, such as demographics, interests, and custom audiences. These provide a starting point for DV360 to identify similar users.

Real-Time Data: DV360 analyzes vast amounts of real-time data on user behavior, campaign performance, and marketplace trends. This allows it to discover new audience segments that share characteristics with your initial audience and are more likely to convert.

Optimized Targeting offers several key benefits. It expands your reach beyond initial audience selections, finding new potential customers. By focusing on high-conversion users, it boosts campaign effectiveness and optimizes budget allocation. Additionally, it reduces the need for constant audience refinement, saving time and effort while maintaining performance.

Here are some tips to maximize the effectiveness of Optimized Targeting with DV360:

• Start with Strong Audience Signals: Provide a solid foundation by choosing relevant and well-defined audience segments.
• Utilize Diverse Data Sources: Integrate data from various sources like Google Analytics and CRM systems to enrich your audience profiles.
• Set Conversion Goals: Clearly define your campaign goals to guide DV360’s targeting algorithms.
• Monitor Performance: Regularly monitor campaign performance to assess the effectiveness of your optimized targeting strategy.

By utilizing Optimized Targeting with DV360, you can reach more relevant audiences, increase conversions, and ultimately achieve your marketing goals. Utilize DV360’s intelligent algorithms to do the heavy lifting, while you focus on crafting compelling ad creatives and strategic campaign initiatives.

Google’s DV360 positions itself as a formidable force in the evolving digital advertising landscape. Its emphasis on privacy coupled with robust tools like Conversion Modeling and Optimized Targeting, make it a compelling choice for marketers navigating the cookie-less future. While the industry faces new challenges, DV360’s adaptability and performance in Privacy Sandbox experiments demonstrate its resilience and commitment to delivering results. By harnessing the power of DV360, advertisers can not only weather the storm but thrive in this new era of advertising. As Google Marketing Platform resellers, Making Science can help elevate your display campaigns using the full capabilities that DV360 has to offer. Reach out to us today to discuss what we can do for your marketing efforts.

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*https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/15192137?sjid=3266901102191875360-NC

**https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/11905523?hl=en

***https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/12060859?hl=en&sjid=3266901102191875360-NC

We are in the era with digital marketing on top of the world, and looking for the right tools & solutions to excel in your company’s presence is essential. With Google’s Display & Video 360, businesses can reach their target audience with compelling and intriguing still image and video content that drives positive events such as conversions, subscriptions, or whatever your team is reaching to achieve. Let’s look closer into DV360 and the rising question of user privacy within this impactful tool.

So, what is DV360?

Display & Video 360 is Google’s integrated tool for managing programmatic ad campaigns. It’s part of the Google Marketing Platform and offers comprehensive features for planning, executing, and optimizing display and video advertising across various channels. It offers robust analytics and real-time optimization features, making it a powerful choice for advertisers looking to maximize their reach and performance. The impactful feature of enhanced automation helps maintain performance using an advanced AI prediction model to curate an advanced optimization algorithm for your campaigns. Enhanced automation has led to a 60% median decrease in cost per acquisition* in most cases. When it comes to successful verticals, retail, travel, and automotive sectors often see strong performance with DV360 due to its precise targeting and rich media capabilities. What’s unique about DV360, however, is its versatility. DV360’s flexible formatting and diverse content inventory makes it an effective tool across many verticals.

Protecting User Data with DV360

In the year 2024, everyone has seen some case and situation of user data being exposed, which is why 4 of every 5 online users** are worried about their privacy and how easily their data can be stolen. At the same time, 66% of the general population** is still expecting to have a unique, personalized ad experience, which leads to the complications of exposing their data. So, how does DV360 & Google come into the picture and please both parties?

Google continuously updates its practices to ensure user data is protected while maintaining ad effectiveness. Their efforts to continue to preserve user privacy while maintaining a personalized ad experience has been labeled the Privacy Sandbox Initiative. The Privacy Sandbox is Google’s initiative to develop new web standards that prioritize user privacy while allowing targeted advertising. For DV360, this means evolving to use these new technologies, like Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), which should positively impact its ability to deliver personalized ads while respecting privacy. Overall, the changes brought by the Privacy Sandbox should positively impact DV360. While there will be an adjustment period, the move towards more privacy-focused advertising will ultimately build greater trust with users and ensure long-term sustainability for the platform.

DV360 will stay on top

Google’s Display & Video 360 tool is here to stay atop of the digital marketing landscape when it comes to video and image campaigns. Their expansive inventory and capabilities to be activated on almost any platform thanks to Google makes it a top choice for advertisers.

As Google Marketing Platform resellers at Making Science, we are prepared to help deliver the best results for businesses to grow to their fullest potential. Reach out to us today to learn more about our services regarding DV360 and other GMP tools.

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*Source: Google, DV360 & CM360 3P Cookie Deprecation Holistic Readiness Guide, 2023

**Source: Google, DV360: Level Up Webinar, 2024

SGE (Search Generative Experience) will be a major change in the search experience and the way results are displayed in the SERPs.

But first of all, what exactly is SGE? It’s a radical update from Google, which will start using AI to generate contextual answers to complex questions.

AI in search engines

The impact of ChatGPT since the end of 2022 and its very rapid integration into the digital status quo, especially among young people, has led tech giants (such as Google) to further accelerate the deployment of their AI-related technologies.

Within the search engine market, Microsoft has moved ahead with the integration of ChatGPT into Bing as early as 2023 and Google has responded quickly with the announcement of SGE, based on Gemini, its LLM that promises to be more powerful than GPT-4.

The common formula is the integration of an AI module on top of the search engine that not only directly answers complex queries accurately, but also enables deeper searches through a conversational interface.

What do we know so far about the impact of SGE on SEO?

SGE will bring about an evolution in the way we search for information on the Internet, as ChatGPT has already done.

SGE is being tested in the USA, and the SEO team at Making Science has already been testing this new experience to draw some preliminary conclusions before its final international roll-out:

Several sources of information

This new AI module draws from many sources to offer more complete information:

• Media: Very relevant, especially in information searches. Media attention, through PR teams, is essential to manage the conversation around brands.

• Shopping feeds: PDPs everywhere in searches closer to conversion. A good product feed is essential to appear here. It seems that achieving a more complete shopping experience is one of SGE’s main objectives.

• Reviews: Google knows that reviews are powerful conversion triggers, and integrates them into SGE for searches close to conversion. The focus should be on optimal Schema markup and online reputation management.

• Social media: Social media conversation is especially relevant for topical or trending searches. Inspirational approach.

• Google Maps / Business Profile: Many of the searches, even when not explicitly geolocated from the query, return local SEO results.

• Multimedia: Text, images, video, FAQs, social media… what seems evident is that covering searches with multiple formats is going to be essential to capture the key terms in SGE

SEO strategies impact

There are a few things that seem to be clear, and that don’t really change the ‘traditional’ approaches to SEO strategies that much:

• The classic Google Top 3 will determine what comes out of this block.
• There will still be ads (as they are Google’s main revenue stream), but to a lesser extent. At least at launch.
• SEO-optimized elements or content will continue to be relevant in order to match users’ searches

And what will the SEO performance be like?

Organic traffic is expected to decrease because it is assumed that the traditional SEO results will show even lower in the SERPs (with the consequent drop in CTR): Google as a “media” in its own right, which means a drop in overall SEO CTR.

However, the user has the opportunity to become more qualified in conversational mode before clicking on a link, which could benefit SEO conversion.

In addition, users could make even more intensive use of Google, especially younger audiences, who now turn to platforms such as TikTok. In any case, it remains to be seen if this hypothesis is true and, if so, if it will compensate in terms of traffic for the drop in positions of traditional organic results.

Types of content that could be most affected by SGE

We predict that the impact of SGE will be even greater for some types of content:

• General informational content: Direct answers to factual questions, definitions of concepts, general explanations of a topic, etc. SGE could directly answer many general information queries without the need to take the user to another website.
• Comparative content: Such as product comparisons, rankings of best options, pros and cons reviews. SGE could generate this comparative content in an automated way.
• Simplified content: Such as summaries, simplified guides, step-by-step explanations of a process. SGE could extract and synthesize the most relevant information.
• Repetitive content: Such as similar listings on a topic, frequently asked questions, duplicate content. SGE would reduce the need for multiple pages of redundant information.
• Local content: Location-specific answers, such as business hours, local business addresses, geolocated recommendations.

Websites that rely on this type of content for their organic visibility should rethink their SEO strategy with the arrival of SGE if they don’t want to be negatively affected.

Conclusion

Essentially, Google’s SGE marks a revolutionary development in SEO. With AI shaping the digital realm, it’s vital to keep pace with these shifts and comprehend their significance to uphold an advantage in online presence

Certified to deliver all 11 Google Marketing Platform (GMP) services, Making Science is now a GMP Sales Partner licensed to resell contracts for the full suite of GMP products

Chicago, January 30, 2024 – Making Science, a global digital marketing company, today announced its official status as a Google Marketing Platform (GMP) Sales Partner in the United States. This strategic partnership empowers Making Science to resell contracts for the full suite of GMP products, providing brands and agencies with platform access to help navigate the evolving digital marketing landscape.

“We couldn’t be more excited about our newly minted status as a Google Marketing Platform Sales Partner,” commented Jason Downie, the US CEO of Making Science. “By delivering GMP services over the years, we observed the transformative power of GMP to connect brands with audiences. Our elevated partnership formalizes our commitment to democratizing access to these cutting-edge tools, allowing Making Science to resell GMP products and help US brands and agencies unlock the full potential of Google and accelerate their digital transformation.”

As a new GMP Sales Partner, Making Science continues to offer unparalleled expertise and comprehensive services, which include:

• Data + Activation: Making Science helps brands develop strategies to collect, analyze, and transform first-party data from site analytics, CRM, and Cloud platforms into assets for media activation.
• Performance Enhancing Technology: Making Science has built award-winning automation and AI technologies that supercharge Google Ads and GMP media performance. With 400+ engineers, they are the rare marketing consultancy backed by proven IT and developer horsepower.
• Privacy-Forward Solutions: Making Science helps brands prepare for third-party cookie deprecation and navigate a rapidly evolving digital marketing landscape with proprietary reporting technology, audits, privacy-preserving consultation, and mitigation plans.
• Strategic Partnership Development: The US leadership team has 30+ years of combined experience at Google and across the broader AdTech industry. They have an unmatched understanding of multi-partner collaboration with Google, agencies, and industry-leading data and technology providers. 
• Delivery at Scale: Making Science offers agile, on-demand service teams dedicated to US customers with the ability to scale globally.

“As one of only a few certified GMP resellers in the US, our unmatched expertise offers clients a competitive edge as they navigate cookie deprecation and bolster their first-party data assets,” commented Founder and Chairman of Making Science, José Antonio Martínez Aguilar. “This is an exciting step in our growth and enables us to truly collaborate with and support our clients in every aspect of their digital marketing initiatives.”  

This alliance marks a significant milestone for Making Science and the company’s global expansion while further solidifying its position as a trusted global guide for brands seeking to unlock the full potential of their digital marketing efforts. Organizations can gain a competitive edge, achieve measurable results, and drive sustainable growth by leveraging the power of GMP and Making Science’s expert guidance.

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About Making Science 

Making Science is a global digital acceleration company with a dynamic team of over 1,200 experts across 15 markets, including Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Colombia, France, Italy, the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany, Georgia, and the USA. As a proud consulting partner of Local Planet — the world’s premier network of independent media agencies — we deliver a suite of digital, technology, and performance marketing services to a global clientele. Our expertise spans digital marketing and MarTech, software and cloud solutions, artificial intelligence, and SaaS, all underscored by a relentless pursuit of innovation.

As part of its commitment to innovation, Making Science offers its clients end-to-end capabilities required for consulting, developing, integrating, and maintaining advanced IT solutions. Our global network of delivery hubs not only fosters job growth but also serves as an incubator for cultivating top-tier tech talent, fueling projects that accelerate transformation and modernization.

Committed to making a positive impact, Making Science actively engages in various ESG initiatives. We’ve joined forces with the Climate Pledge, the United Nations Global Compact, and Pledge1%, dedicating resources and efforts to support non-profit organizations. Through these endeavors, we are committed to driving meaningful change for a brighter, more sustainable future.

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing, staying ahead of the competition is imperative, especially in the hotel industry. Google Ads has long been a powerful tool for advertisers, but there’s a game-changer on the horizon – Tripmax. In this article, we will provide an exploration of this innovative Google Ads product to help you understand how Tripmax can revolutionize hotel advertising campaigns; and we will conclude by mentioning some tips and best practices that Making Science has implemented with one of our clients.

Simplifying Hotel Advertising

Tripmax is part of the Performance Max for travel goals campaigns, tailor-made for hotel performance advertisers. It offers a streamlined approach to reaching your target audience across all Google properties, simplifying the process and driving more direct bookings. With a single, user-friendly setup, Tripmax empowers advertisers to create property-specific asset groups, enhancing the overall performance of their Google Ads campaigns.

Getting Started with Tripmax

Before you embark on your journey, there are essential prerequisites to consider. Let’s explore the steps to set the stage for a successful Tripmax campaign:

1. Link to Hotel Center or Google Ads: To initiate the campaign, you must first link your account to either Hotel Center or Google Ads. This link serves as the foundation for your campaign setup, streamlining the process and enhancing efficiency. The choice between Hotel Center and Google Ads largely depends on the number of properties you have. If your account has no more than 100 hotels, linking to Hotel Center is the ideal choice. For those with over 100 properties, creating a hotel properties feed is the recommended path.
2. Creating a Hotel Properties Feed: To maximize the benefits of Tripmax, it’s crucial to establish a hotel properties feed within your Google Ads account. You can achieve this in two ways: using the hotel picker or Google Maps URLs. Each method simplifies the creation of property lists and the management of assets, contributing to a more efficient campaign setup.
3. Creating the campaign & asset groups: Once you have completed these tasks, you can create your Tripmax campaign by creating a new campaign as you would normally do. With “Sales” as the objective, choose “Hotels” under “What are you advertising?” and select your Hotel Property feed source. All other steps are the usual: specify budget, bidding, target, assets, etc; and publish! You can then create Asset Groups and link them to specific hotels. Google will automatically suggest headlines, descriptions, images and other assets, simplifying the process of setting them up – but they are 100% customizable.
4.  Let the ads run! Once everything is ready, it is possible to activate the asset groups and start reaching your potential clients through Search, Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Display, Video & Discover.

Best practices & Other tips

• Tripmax campaigns were originally designed to cover the Upper Funnel, increasing brand awareness. The more images (max 20) and videos (max 5) we include in the asset groups, the more options Google will have to show our ads in different networks. This is the reason why the recommended practice is to exclude the brand (through the creation of a brand list), preventing our ads from showing in searches that include the name of our brand. Apart from this, in settings of the campaign, you should select “Only bid for new customers”.
  • However! Since this is a tool that covers so many placements (even Search!), at Making Science we have started an experiment with one of our clients. For locations where the budget is limited and having different campaigns is not optimal, we have tried leaving only a Tripmax campaign, without excluding the brand. This way, we can cover all levels of the funnel while reducing costs – and it is working great. Even though this is not the ideal option, it is a very good solution for when resources are scarce. 
• The best practice for promotions is to create a new asset group that is not linked to any hotel, and that will work as a normal PMAX asset group. In it, we will include all the headlines, descriptions and creativities of the promotion, and we will activate it only during this period of time (until the next promo!). Given that we cannot decide how the budget is distributed among asset groups, to make sure that the message is reaching our potential customers, with our client we add a couple promo titles and descriptions -as well as images and videos- to the Hotel Asset Groups, to maximize the possibility of Google showing the discount to users.
• Adding audience signals to Asset Groups is recommended, because the platform will learn from these users and look for others that behave similarly. If you have a list of clients for each specific hotel, this will work even better!
• We understand that sometimes, our ads reach users that we never wanted to impress, and it is inconvenient. If you see this happening to your campaign, there is a solution. Even though it is not possible to exclude certain terms or topics from Tripmax, you can always ask Google to create a “negative list” for you, where you include all terms that should be avoided by your ads.

All in all, Tripmax is a great tool for the Hotel industry, especially for investing in the upper funnel level. Google will recognize when users are interested in hotels that are similar to yours, and will impact them with your property – increasing your brand awareness and helping your business grow.

Google has announced that at the beginning of 2024, the Search Ads 360 (SA360) interface that we all know (one of the most popular tools of the Google Marketing Platform [GMP] marketing suite) will cease to exist for good and be replaced by a new SA360 interface. Google created the new interface to improve the experience for advertisers and to help achieve better results with better management of search campaigns across multiple channels.

While it may seem straightforward, not migrating to the new interface can negatively affect advertisers. Keep reading to find out how to avoid potential conflicts.

What conflicts can arise from not migrating to the new SA360 interface?

If advertisers do not migrate, there are several issues that will arise:

• Disconnection of the SA360 API with reporting platforms
• The loss of custom columns
• Misconfiguration of conversion goals and Smart Bidding
• Involuntary synchronization issues with search engines

What are the differences between the current and new SA360 interface?

With a modern infrastructure, the new Search Ads 360 offers better support across multiple advertising channels and search engines, including third-party partners. This means advertisers can access more features from other search engines.

• Current Search Ads 360 has limited search engine functionality, conversion goal setting at the bid strategy level, and automatic daily search engine synchronization with manual forcing for instant updating.
• The new Search Ads 360 interface offers expanded coverage of other search engine features, campaign/account level conversion targeting and actions, and the ability to create rules to adjust the value of conversions. In addition, it will allow us to differentiate between campaign conversion targeting, bidding strategies, and budgeting strategies and automatically synchronize real-time changes to search engines.

Additionally, there are new user roles in SA360, allowing for more granular control of access.

When should you migrate to the new interface?

Before you consider this migration, we recommend that you take a look at Google’s timeline:

• Up until January 2024, we recommend scheduling the migration of your bidding and budget management strategies to the new Search Ads 360 experience.
• During February 2024, we recommend to proceed with the migration to ensure continuity of service.
• Between February and April 2024, the old Search Ads 360 interface will no longer be available to all users. Google will notify all advertisers at least 60 days in advance.

Ready to move forward?

Making Science is uniquely poised to assist you in planning your migration to the new SA360 interface. As a Google Marketing Platform partner, we’ve helped over 100 companies across a variety of industries with GMP-related projects. Don’t hesitate to reach out! Or, click here for additional details about the change.

 Get in touch

Google is known for creating products that help companies keep up with consumers’ wishes. That’s why it is also constantly improving its Google Marketing Platform products, such as Search Ads 360.

Nowadays, users are impatient and want immediate results that reflect their search queries, hence the need for personalized, timely advertisements.

The purpose SA360 is to equip businesses for the future. This is made possible through innovative features that make the platform more user-friendly and intuitive. With improved search engine and campaign support, marketers can accomplish more tasks from one central location, boosting efficiency and improving outcomes.

So, what do we like best about the SA360 platform?

1. Streamline Campaign Management: Centralize the setup, adjustment, and management of your search campaigns across various search engines, all within one platform. Experience the power of automation in bidding, budget allocation, structural modifications, event-induced changes, and much more. Unleash the potential of an all-encompassing solution that enhances campaign management at scale.
2. Advanced Business Innovations: The platform focuses on account granularity and flexibility. The main interface supports multi-advertiser workflows, allowing users to report and manage account activity across various levels. It also enables features like sharing tags, setting rules, creating campaigns, and groups, along with comparing and reporting on multiple accounts and advertisers. The Performance Center merges the functions of Budget Management and Performance Planner to allow planning, executing, and managing budgets and performance. Customizable overview dashboards provide quick access to metrics and high-performing areas at different levels. The report editor enables tailored graphs, charts, and tables, with options to schedule and download them. Also, the interface supports GA4 (Google Analytics 4).
3. User Interface Designed for Rapid Navigation: The main interface integrates views from Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, offering a fresh yet familiar user experience. The intuitive design fosters effective and straightforward navigation.
4. Great Search Engine Support: The interface enhances support for search engines, paid advertising platforms, and third-party partners, resulting in a richer feature set for Search Ads users. For instance, expect improvements in Google Ads’ support for Local, Discovery, and Performance Max campaigns. In the case of Microsoft Advertising, anticipate enhanced support for responsive ads and shopping campaigns. Yahoo will offer improved use and measurement of dynamic ads.

Google is always introducing new features to make their products better and more user-friendly. To stay ahead of the game and learn about the newest features being released by Google, subscribe to our GMP newsletter by clicking the button below!

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A lack of attention has superseded a lack of information as the bottleneck of our human capacity. What is called the “attention economy” has long been the centerpiece in the development of digital media, and rightfully so. But what lessons can marketers take going into 2023? And how does the attention economy manifest itself in the upcoming year?

Information today is abundant, even oversaturated. A Google search for “sewing on a button” yields 57,000,000 sites, when, in the past, our parents called grandparents for such advice. Meanwhile, our world is filled with ads, all featuring bright colors and lively animations. According to Red Crow Marketing, it is estimated that a person is exposed to approximately 4,000 to 10,000 ads every day. However, few remember even a fraction of them. That’s because, although our access to information has increased exponentially in the digital age, our capacity to process this information has remained unchanged. In essence, all content in the digital sphere is competing for the one scarce good left: our time and attention. 

So why should this worry digital marketers? Simply put, an ad not seen is a message not received. And that is money thrown out the window. So in a world where clients demand increased transparency and value for their money, and customers increasingly value their digital integrity and privacy, attention should be in every marketer’s toolbox, ready to be employed.

Consumers are reclaiming their time

It seems as though humans are at a pivotal moment in their internet journey. Daily online screen time has decreased by 13 minutes in 2022 to pre-pandemic levels, according to GWI (2023). That is over 3 full days a year of less online time. Apps that are designed to be non-addictive (and maybe more crucial, ad-free), such as Wordle and BeReal, have seen incredible popularity in 2022 (Bloomberg, 2022). Audio formats are loved for their screenless form of entertainment, and a mostly lockdown-free world means people can enjoy each other’s company in real-life again (Dagens Media, 2022). All these signs point towards a customer that is more aware of their online behavior and actively takes steps towards balance and well-being.

To make matters worse for advertisers, people are great at avoiding ads and distractions when on the internet. Whether it is physical avoidance by leaving the TV for the ad break or mentally blocking out anything resembling a banner on a website, these are just two of many techniques that many use to avoid spending time watching ads. In short, advertisers find themselves now in the perfect storm of these trends coming together at the same time in 2023. Marketers need a data-driven approach to effective advertising to create ads that people want to give their attention to.

Care for your customer and make your customer care

It is easier said than done. But, the most important factor to get customers’ attention is to get them to care about what the ad has to say. This requires a customer-first approach to identify a benefit that the customer can obtain from interacting with your ad. By utilizing contextual and native advertising, marketers can ensure that the content is relevant, usable, and correctly targeted to their target audience. Research suggests that contextual advertising drives interest and information-sharing more so than interest-based or demographic-based advertising. Perhaps more importantly, respondents feel less annoyed when seeing the ad (Seedtag, 2023). 

And annoyance is precisely the feeling you do not want customers to link to your brand. Your products or services have already been designed to alleviate a customer pain point, so why should your advertisement not do the same? Furthermore, the unavoidable cookieless world makes a great case for contextual and native advertising and provides a future-proof way of reaching your target audience with great ads. In short, contextual and native advertising is a great way to capture your customer’s attention and deliver value through advertising. 

Make AI your #1 companion

AI has been a hot topic for a while. Recent months have shown that advancements can come fast and from unexpected corners. New tools like chatbot ChatGPT and image-generator Dall.E have proven the immense value of AI-based technologies and the wide-reaching consequences that these can have on all types of businesses. Anyone who thinks that human attention is not predictable by AI is sorely mistaken.

In the field of attention-based advertising, eye-tracking measurements of ads have become increasingly precise in tracking human attention. Thus, they have become a popular way to quantify attention to data-driven actions. The downside is that they require an extensive setup, a panel of customers to sit in front of a computer, and they take a long time to complete. However, AI-based eye-tracking models have proven to show up to 95% accuracy in predicting where customers will look at any given ad, whether it is digital ads, out-of-home, or videos (Neurons, 2023).

AI-based eye-tracking delivers the advantages of real-life eye-tracking at reduced cost and time. This enables companies to make rapid, informed, and data-driven decisions on creative materials pre-, mid-, or post-campaign. The technology will surely evolve, but it already yields impressive results, helping marketers invest in attention directed to the right place.

What to take with you this year

The field of advertising has grown more competitive, but marketers can still capitalize on human attention to create impactful ads. By employing contextual and native advertising, companies can deliver genuine value. Artificial Intelligence, a powerful tool for predicting attention, enables swift ad optimization to grab customers’ focus. Though attention is challenging to quantify, Making Science’s team provides exceptional expertise and experience, optimizing your campaigns and ads for success in 2023.

At Making Science we have worked extensively with AI-based eye tracking solutions to efficiently obtain data-driven recommendations on creative materials. Get in touch with us to learn more!