Online advertising management: an agency perspective

Agency Search spe­cial­ists are often the unsung heroes of PPC, usu­al­ly hav­ing mas­tery of mul­ti­ple Search Engines and third par­ty man­age­ment plat­forms. At a cer­tain point, though, it’s pos­si­ble to start feel­ing super­sat­u­rat­ed. So why learn one more? What are the ben­e­fits of adding an arrow to your quiver?

What if you weren’t just adding anoth­er arrow, but rather get­ting a sniper?

It’s true in a past life, the tech­nol­o­gy that became Adobe Media Opti­miz­er was a bit intim­i­dat­ing. Data-focussed, results-dri­ven, and – admit­ted­ly – not par­tic­u­lar­ly appeal­ing to stare at all day long.

Well, things have changed. Not only is Adobe Media Opti­miz­er more pow­er­ful since you last knew it, it’s also had a bit of a facelift – par­tic­u­lar­ly with a focus on adding func­tion­al­i­ty that make it eas­i­er to visu­alise what’s going on with your accounts and share your insights across teams. Think nerdy girl turned Prom Queen, Laney Bog­gs, in the late 90s pop clas­sic, She’s All That. (Feel free to con­sid­er your­self Fred­die Prinze, Jr.)

So what’s the deal with AMO these days?

1. You Get Alerts to Help You Mon­i­tor Performance

We know what it’s like man­ag­ing mul­ti­ple accounts at once. You need to be able to quick­ly have vis­i­bil­i­ty over any note­wor­thy fluc­tu­a­tions in per­for­mance to stay on top of things while jug­gling a sub­stan­tial to do list.

All the major areas of con­cern are auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­fig­ured for you so you can quick­ly see, for exam­ple, any cam­paigns whose spend is 70% or more of their dai­ly cam­paign bud­get, and take action accordingly.

Or how about the essen­tial miss­ing click data, so you don’t get to the end of the week before you realise you’ve got a data issue to manage.

We’ve also put the accu­ra­cy of your rev­enue and cost mod­els run­ning the opti­mi­sa­tion in one place, so you’ve got a bird’s eye view of any­thing that might be run­ning at less than the usu­al 90–100% range and dive into it asap.

This means you can stay on top of per­for­mance faster and eas­i­er than ever.

2. Col­lab­o­rat­ing is a Breeze with Sharable Dash­board­ing and Cus­tom Views

When you’re work­ing in a team, it’s imper­a­tive to be able to col­lab­o­rate and know you’re all work­ing from the same set of num­bers. That’s why we’ve made views across the plat­form cus­tomis­able and sharable.

This means you can have your per­son­al cus­tom views that make it easy for you to mon­i­tor per­for­mance, as well as be clear you and your team are ref­er­enc­ing the same met­rics when doing your week­ly report­ing or prepar­ing for QBRs. Take away the fric­tion and doubt and sim­ply work bet­ter together.

3. Our Spend Rec­om­men­da­tions Tool Lets You Test Out ‘What If’ Sce­nar­ios on the Fly

How often do you get asked – We’ve got a pro­mo com­ing up. The bud­get will be X. How many Ys are we going to be able to sell for that? Or how often are you star­ing at your bud­get try­ing to gues­ti­mate if it’s going to be enough to deliv­er against targets?

Once you’ve been asked, then you’ve either got to dive into the abyss of some com­pli­cat­ed and cum­ber­some Excel spread­sheet or stick your fin­ger in the air, put your neck on the line, and hope for the best.

Adobe Media Opti­miz­er helps you answer these ques­tions quick­ly and accurately.

Sim­ply select a busi­ness goal and the desired port­fo­lios that fall under it, and you’ll have visu­al­i­sa­tion of the effi­cient fron­tier of all the pos­si­ble trade­offs amongst all those port­fo­lios. As long as they’re work­ing towards the same goal, you can com­pare across port­fo­lios, accounts, Search Engines, and even channels.

To answer the ‘what if’ in ques­tion, sim­ply pop in the total spend tar­get in the upper right hand cor­ner and hit enter. The green dot on the curve will shift to the opti­mal spot, show­ing you total returns for that lev­el of invest­ment. Below, you’ll have an update on the best bud­get split across port­fo­lios to max­imise returns, and on the right hand side, you’ll see the break­down of mar­gin­al changes in cost and rev­enue port­fo­lio by port­fo­lio. All com­po­nents are ful­ly exportable, or just screen­shot it and pop it into your exec­u­tive Pow­er­Point or email.

Once everything’s signed off, scroll down and hit Apply All. Your new bud­gets will push to your port­fo­lios and go out at the next bid cycle.

What’s most impor­tant here is not that this process can be done on the fly at any time with­in a mat­ter of sec­onds; rather, it’s that it’s all backed up by the data com­ing in for every sin­gle key­word, so you can be con­fi­dent your over­all spend rec­om­men­da­tions are just as accu­rate as your bid mod­els. This means you’re not putting your neck on the line and hop­ing for the best. You can fore­cast and action with confidence.

4. You Can Bulk Edit, Upload, & Sched­ule Activ­i­ty across Accounts & Search Engines in One File

How much time in the day do you spend wait­ing for mul­ti­ple Excel files to load, try­ing to process all your updates across mul­ti­ple accounts and Search Engines? But it’s all the same updates! Why lose time?

In Media Opti­miz­er, you can make a wide range of changes across accounts and Search Engines in one file, then upload them to the dash­board and either push them live straight away or pre-sched­ule them to go live at a lat­er date.

The impact is sig­nif­i­cant time sav­ings, and the lim­its are as much of your data as Excel can han­dle. Imag­ine if you had ten accounts for one client – ten dif­fer­ent files are now one. That’s cut­ting your time spent down 90%.

5. Our Live/Staged Envi­ron­ments Make It Crys­tal Clear What You’ve Got Posting/Scheduled & What’s Show­ing in Search Engines Now

When you’re work­ing in teams or need to ensure you’ve got sign-off before going live, it’s imper­a­tive to know what’s live and what’s not. That’s why Adobe Media Opti­miz­er has live and staged views.

With the flick of a switch, you’ve got full vis­i­bil­i­ty over the sta­tus of your account com­po­nents, and are primped to take direct action. Man­ag­ing your com­ings and goings has nev­er been easier.

6. You’ve Got Con­trol When Hard & Fast Con­straints Need to Be Applied

We all know the val­ue of auto­mat­ed port­fo­lio opti­mi­sa­tion for scal­able, effi­cient, and effec­tive bid­ding; how­ev­er, some­times, there are some strate­gic rules we have to abide by. Key­words x, y, and z must be in at least posi­tion 2. Key­words a, b, and c can­not exceed a cer­tain CPC or CPA. In these instances, you need con­trol, and AMO gives it to you.

You can cre­ate a range of con­straints, and attach them at any lev­el in the account – from the indi­vid­ual key­word, all the way up to port­fo­lio-lev­el. Not only does it give you con­trol in imple­ment­ing busi­ness-sen­si­tive strat­e­gy, it allows you to set pri­or­i­ty when you’ve got a com­plex set of con­straints at play. And all of this lay­ers on top of port­fo­lio opti­mi­sa­tion, so you know you’re still pay­ing the best price pos­si­ble for the max­i­mum return in the over­all pic­ture. Con­straints can be added, paused, and removed at any time, empow­er­ing you to be as agile as your clients require.

Algo­rith­mic port­fo­lio bid­ding with your final say lay­ered on top – that’s what Adobe Media Opti­miz­er provides.

There’s a lot more tool where this came from, and our ded­i­cat­ed Lon­don-based team is here to sup­port you in learn­ing AMO, deliv­er­ing ini­tial and on-going train­ing, answer­ing ques­tions on func­tions and strat­e­gy, and check­ing in on util­i­sa­tion, so you can be sure you’re get­ting the most out of what’s avail­able to you. What’s more, our team have been hands-on account man­agers, them­selves, so they have expe­ri­ence deliv­er­ing for clients with Media Opti­miz­er and under­stand exact­ly what you’re being asked on a day-in, day-out basis. You can also get Media Opti­miz­er cer­ti­fied, and beef up your PPC credentials.

Ready to vote for your new Prom Queen? Get in touch! We’d love to have a con­ver­sa­tion about what we can do for your team.

Cov­er Image — © bloomua — Fotolia.com