Timothy Davis (Shopify) discusses Google Ads policies and how brands can protect against competitor keyword conquesting.
Opinion
Davis: Every company must invest in paid search due to AI results
“Hot take I would say paid is for everyone. I, if you look at the way each platform is doing Google introducing AI plus with paid taking up like the first four spots, you have to scroll pretty far down to get to an organic listing. Meta. It's almost a pay for p…”
Insight
Davis: Pre-PMF paid ads risk permanently alienating future customers
“All you're going to do is really annoy the users because say in the future they are, hey, I'm still interested, but I don't want to use that product because I already tried. It's like, no, no, you can totally use it now. I already tried. It's, I had a bad expe…”
Insight
Davis: Bring paid growth in-house once ad spend reaches $50,000 monthly
“Start there, get it to a good place, create that milestone of, hey, when we're spending 50 K a month, I need to hire somebody full time to take this over and just have that conversation with your agency and your consultant.”
Insight
Davis: Google Ads maintains a hidden account-level quality score
“I'm a firm believer in that there's a An account level quality score, not just necessarily a keyword or an ad quality score. So just turning this one off and removing it from the account, this one ad could dramatically improve your performance.”
Assertion Supported
Davis: eBay cut brand search ads realizing organic traffic converted anyway
“They ultimately decided to cut almost all of their brand spend because they found that users were already going to find them through organic anyway. So they were just kind of Throwing money out the window. And it was really hard for competitors to get their ad…”
Insight
Davis: Incrementality testing is useless below $50,000 in monthly platform spend
“If you're not spending more than, I would say, 50 K a month in the platform, doing this is going to be a lot more work than you're gonna get result from. You, you're just not gonna have enough signal there.”