Join or Die: Digital Advertising in the Age of Automation

Many websites are set up in a way that leads to a higher conversion rate on desktop. Therefore, advertisers are willing to pay more for desktop traffic, thus increasing the market rate for that click.

Behavioral targeting has less to do with the medium and, instead, relies on customer behavior to determine the timing, placement, and audience of an ad. This placement favors the who.

Your primary responsibility now is to have a deep understanding of how platform algorithms work and to guide the machine in achieving your client’s goals.

Additionally, clients often have expectations, or demands, that are far from what would be considered a Google best practice, so concessions need to be made on our end for the good of the relationship.

It is likely that ad recall on YouTube skips is so powerful because, in order for a user to skip the ad, they have to actively engage with

At this point in the game, your competitors have the same basic knowledge as you do.

You can also choose to pay for conversions instead of clicks on Smart Display campaigns that use Target CPA bidding.

A client will leave if they feel that the value your agency provides has declined over time. Campaign performance might be strong—phenomenal even—but if your perceived value has declined, the client will choose to terminate the relationship in search of a more proactive agency, or decide to bring the efforts in-house.

The algorithm’s goal is never to become perfect; that’s impossible. Its goal is to reduce the gap between expected outcome and actual outcome.

As we discussed in Chapter 3, automation has changed all of this. We should no longer assume that bottom-funnel search terms are more valuable than top of funnel search terms. However, this traditional approach is still useful for many accounts.