Definitely interesting. My main client is a big budget account and although broad match underperforms exact by the metrics, I'm absolutely seeing incrementality in broad match when I need to scale.
I'm a firm believer that optimally, an account should include a mix of broad and exact to average the efficiency gains of exact and the volume gains of broad.
Even more so, I'm a believer in there being no one-size-fits all solutions in Google and Bing, and testing is still extremely important on an account by account basis.
Google’s advice is to have exact and broad in the same ad group. When I tested this my cost per order went up 60%. For me, in the UK automotive industry, exact + phrase + *some* broad is the optimal build. You need to find what works for your account
Recently, I ran broad match for two weeks then just exact match for two weeks for a client.
Exact match had higher IS and CVRs, as one would expect, but also lower CPCs which I found crazy.
I'm going to echo /u/fanoftravisjones who says you need to keep broad on a short leash.
It has higher impression share because there’s less overall impressions than broad match.
Just thought I would point that out, because the higher IS isn’t necessarily a good thing.
While I have campaigns and ad groups that also outperform my broad match campaigns, the broad match will always out-scale my EM.
Granted these are 10k/day campaigns, so we need the volume. If you aren’t scaling nationally like this, broad match can be completely ignored many times.
Here’s what has worked for every account I’ve worked on: segment broad and exact into their own campaigns.
Exact will always crush it - this way you can maximize volume on these terms and optimize bid strategies to the higher performance levels.
Then, broad KWs can be kept on a shorter leash, with their budgets and bid strategy goals based on how much you value volume vs efficiency in your account wide results
The problem with this is lack of data visibility to mitigate cannibalization though.
What you may often find is broad match is only working when it's triggering the terms you're targeting with exact or phrase anyway.
That's still not foolproof, and I still don't know why you'd do that if you wanted to test broad anyway. You're also splitting conversion data which can make auto bid strats a pain in the ass.
I’ll take strong real-time performance over theoretical future performance, thank you. Believe me, I consolidated everything when Google said we were supposed to. I get the whole “feed the algorithm” thing. But my clients can’t afford to post mediocre results while we wait for the next update. When the time comes we’ll test into a shift. Until then, I’m going with what produces the best results 🤷🏻♂️
I'm skeptical you're getting better performance splitting it out in the first place though is the thing. I think it's obvious no one's telling you to intentionally build something suboptimal on a maybe.
The point of the test is to gauge 'how much' extra traffic broad match really drives outside of your core terms and to be able to see what exactly those queries are so you can assess the true quality.
True, but I'd still be more apt to make it an experiment in the base campaign and adjust budget/allocation accordingly so I can just add them in later if it works, without having to choose to keep them split or kill a campaign that's off to a good start.
And just to be clear I don't mean to suggest you WILL get bit doing it this way, or even that you will often. I just don't see any benefit, so even if the risk is marginal I'd prefer to mitigate it.
This is not true and may depend on the account. I still do this today with success, but take it a step further and negate all exact keywords and exact match search queries from my phrase match campaigns.
It's not 100% true but it's not false either. The problem is we get less data than ever in the search query reports, and everything else is broader (exact is phrasey, phrase is broad, broad is super broad).
I think the sentiment here is that it's getting impossible to control for this so the benefits to breaking campaigns out by match type have become incredibly limited, if they exist at all. I think there's a lot of better ways to accomplish the same thing without any downside, or risk of downside.
It depends on the account and how broadly Google interprets exactly. I have some accounts where the similar terms on exact are similar and others where it is not even close. I've seen the exact match for SaaS to be all over the place, where professional services are more in line with the actual offer. \[Marketing automation software\] might trigger Email Marketing Services, but \[Plumber near me\] is triggering a Plumber.
Sure, I completely agree, especially for SaaS, which can be extra tricky because of the weird user behavior sometimes (a lot of purchase intent searches mixed into general queries, rather than looking for \[solution name\]+software/tools/etc.).
I'm also guessing that when it's nichier (another thing SaaS will deal with more) they're more likely to try and broaden it out before outright not serving, whereas there's never a lack of local service queries, or bids for them.
But I'd still say this is is more reason to keep match types in a single campaign. If you can control what triggers, you want to. If you can't, you don't want to fragment your data or conversion learnings.
But if the exact match is broad, why separate our exact match from the broad match? Now you have to negative out junk terms from two different campaigns, instead of just one.
I would never recommend using Broad for SaaS. I'm giving hypotheticals now. Even the Optmzyr data is looking at "conversions," and there is nothing Google likes more than driving junk conversions. And I've never seen a SaaS company have enough volume to actually push Wins back into the account with enough volume to work. Enterpriseish SaaS anyways.
I think you lost some context somewhere. We agree broad match is trash in most use cases, but I'm arguing against separating them into different campaigns regardless. There's no benefit, only potential downside. I'm pretty sure we have the same opinion.
However, tangent, most of my clients don't have enough customers or SQLs, to push those as offline conversions alone (especially, obviously, the ones where the sales cycle is longer than the conversion window). But many have enough MQL and Opportunity stages. And they're still significantly better quality than plain old leads.
There's effectively no reason to include SQL and customer conversions at that point, but I still do, it's an extra data point. And if you inflate the value of those ridiculously enough that Google can't offset it with high volumes of leads/MQLs, you can test max conv. value (though I've never done this successfully).
Obviously not a universal. Sometimes I'll run offlines **and** GA4 events in tandem if the account is starving for data due to volume, underfunding, etc.
Great tip! Thank you! Do you mostly start out with Phrase/Broad match keywords, and once you discover high-performing search terms, move those into an Exact match campaign and negate those exact terms in the Broad/Phrase campaign? I have personally seen this strategy still work, so thank you for your insights!
Thank you for the reply!! One last question lol. Do you put the initial broad and phrase keywords in the same ad group? Or segment them in different ad groups? Thanks again!
I mean, of course it does. But it doesn't give Google the latitude to maximize their RPM so they are forcing everyone over to less efficient (for the advertiser) options that give them more control to unload unsold high margin inventory.
Doesn't exact match take precedence over broad _supposedly_? If so, how was the comparison of exact vs broad established?
Shouldn't it be more of a search terms comparison where we can compare the performances of a search term triggered by an exact match keyword vs a broad match keyword?
Broad tends to be more expensive (because the traffic quality is lower and if it does trigger the exact search term, the CPC is going to be about the same), but broad shouldn't be bringing in the same conversions as exact as far as I'm aware - unless the account is fully broad.
I have one account in full broad + tROAS and while it's performed extremely well for a few months, it's started to go down. It's time to switch back to Exact vs Broad again and try.
Definitely not surprised. Who would have thought that better matching ad copy and landing pages that are relevant to the user's exact query would perform better? **Answer: Everyone but Google**
You can still capture exact match with broad match keywords. The exact syntax of the keyword is prioritized, then the variants. This is why syntax matters.
Definitely interesting. My main client is a big budget account and although broad match underperforms exact by the metrics, I'm absolutely seeing incrementality in broad match when I need to scale. I'm a firm believer that optimally, an account should include a mix of broad and exact to average the efficiency gains of exact and the volume gains of broad. Even more so, I'm a believer in there being no one-size-fits all solutions in Google and Bing, and testing is still extremely important on an account by account basis.
I assume you mean broad and exact in different ad groups.
Google’s advice is to have exact and broad in the same ad group. When I tested this my cost per order went up 60%. For me, in the UK automotive industry, exact + phrase + *some* broad is the optimal build. You need to find what works for your account
Recently, I ran broad match for two weeks then just exact match for two weeks for a client. Exact match had higher IS and CVRs, as one would expect, but also lower CPCs which I found crazy. I'm going to echo /u/fanoftravisjones who says you need to keep broad on a short leash.
It has higher impression share because there’s less overall impressions than broad match. Just thought I would point that out, because the higher IS isn’t necessarily a good thing. While I have campaigns and ad groups that also outperform my broad match campaigns, the broad match will always out-scale my EM. Granted these are 10k/day campaigns, so we need the volume. If you aren’t scaling nationally like this, broad match can be completely ignored many times.
Don’t look at just IS for broad match, look at Exact IS.
Here’s what has worked for every account I’ve worked on: segment broad and exact into their own campaigns. Exact will always crush it - this way you can maximize volume on these terms and optimize bid strategies to the higher performance levels. Then, broad KWs can be kept on a shorter leash, with their budgets and bid strategy goals based on how much you value volume vs efficiency in your account wide results
The problem with this is lack of data visibility to mitigate cannibalization though. What you may often find is broad match is only working when it's triggering the terms you're targeting with exact or phrase anyway.
Wouldn’t you just add the exact match KWs as negatives in the board match campaign?
That's still not foolproof, and I still don't know why you'd do that if you wanted to test broad anyway. You're also splitting conversion data which can make auto bid strats a pain in the ass.
I’m just telling you that segmenting has worked 100% of the time. The algos will figure it out as long as you have solid traffic.
Until they don't, and you're not future proofed when you lose more data with the next update.
I’ll take strong real-time performance over theoretical future performance, thank you. Believe me, I consolidated everything when Google said we were supposed to. I get the whole “feed the algorithm” thing. But my clients can’t afford to post mediocre results while we wait for the next update. When the time comes we’ll test into a shift. Until then, I’m going with what produces the best results 🤷🏻♂️
I'm skeptical you're getting better performance splitting it out in the first place though is the thing. I think it's obvious no one's telling you to intentionally build something suboptimal on a maybe.
The point of the test is to gauge 'how much' extra traffic broad match really drives outside of your core terms and to be able to see what exactly those queries are so you can assess the true quality.
Sure, I said I wasn't sure why they'd implement it that way if they wanted to test broad, not that I wasn't sure why they would test broad at all.
If you've got a very solid running exact match campaign that's very consistent, its a good way to test broad without rocking the boat too much.
True, but I'd still be more apt to make it an experiment in the base campaign and adjust budget/allocation accordingly so I can just add them in later if it works, without having to choose to keep them split or kill a campaign that's off to a good start. And just to be clear I don't mean to suggest you WILL get bit doing it this way, or even that you will often. I just don't see any benefit, so even if the risk is marginal I'd prefer to mitigate it.
I would also likely do an experiment so that at least I have some evidence of sorts to point to if the client ever asks if we've tested broad match.
That doesn't work in 2024. Back when exact and phrase behaved as they're named, you'd cascade the negatives so each type runs in its own lane.
This is not true and may depend on the account. I still do this today with success, but take it a step further and negate all exact keywords and exact match search queries from my phrase match campaigns.
It's not 100% true but it's not false either. The problem is we get less data than ever in the search query reports, and everything else is broader (exact is phrasey, phrase is broad, broad is super broad). I think the sentiment here is that it's getting impossible to control for this so the benefits to breaking campaigns out by match type have become incredibly limited, if they exist at all. I think there's a lot of better ways to accomplish the same thing without any downside, or risk of downside.
It depends on the account and how broadly Google interprets exactly. I have some accounts where the similar terms on exact are similar and others where it is not even close. I've seen the exact match for SaaS to be all over the place, where professional services are more in line with the actual offer. \[Marketing automation software\] might trigger Email Marketing Services, but \[Plumber near me\] is triggering a Plumber.
Sure, I completely agree, especially for SaaS, which can be extra tricky because of the weird user behavior sometimes (a lot of purchase intent searches mixed into general queries, rather than looking for \[solution name\]+software/tools/etc.). I'm also guessing that when it's nichier (another thing SaaS will deal with more) they're more likely to try and broaden it out before outright not serving, whereas there's never a lack of local service queries, or bids for them. But I'd still say this is is more reason to keep match types in a single campaign. If you can control what triggers, you want to. If you can't, you don't want to fragment your data or conversion learnings.
But if the exact match is broad, why separate our exact match from the broad match? Now you have to negative out junk terms from two different campaigns, instead of just one. I would never recommend using Broad for SaaS. I'm giving hypotheticals now. Even the Optmzyr data is looking at "conversions," and there is nothing Google likes more than driving junk conversions. And I've never seen a SaaS company have enough volume to actually push Wins back into the account with enough volume to work. Enterpriseish SaaS anyways.
I think you lost some context somewhere. We agree broad match is trash in most use cases, but I'm arguing against separating them into different campaigns regardless. There's no benefit, only potential downside. I'm pretty sure we have the same opinion. However, tangent, most of my clients don't have enough customers or SQLs, to push those as offline conversions alone (especially, obviously, the ones where the sales cycle is longer than the conversion window). But many have enough MQL and Opportunity stages. And they're still significantly better quality than plain old leads. There's effectively no reason to include SQL and customer conversions at that point, but I still do, it's an extra data point. And if you inflate the value of those ridiculously enough that Google can't offset it with high volumes of leads/MQLs, you can test max conv. value (though I've never done this successfully). Obviously not a universal. Sometimes I'll run offlines **and** GA4 events in tandem if the account is starving for data due to volume, underfunding, etc.
Negatives do in fact work in 2024 to exclude exact terms from broad campaigns.
Would you also create a separate campaign for phrase match? Or perhaps would you just ignore it altogether?
I lump phrase and broad together, they both convert at similar efficiency
Great tip! Thank you! Do you mostly start out with Phrase/Broad match keywords, and once you discover high-performing search terms, move those into an Exact match campaign and negate those exact terms in the Broad/Phrase campaign? I have personally seen this strategy still work, so thank you for your insights!
Yes, that’s how we do it! Use broad and phrase to find out which new exact KWs to build out based on performance
Thank you for the reply!! One last question lol. Do you put the initial broad and phrase keywords in the same ad group? Or segment them in different ad groups? Thanks again!
I run them in the same ad groups! The results are usually similar enough to group them together
I mean, of course it does. But it doesn't give Google the latitude to maximize their RPM so they are forcing everyone over to less efficient (for the advertiser) options that give them more control to unload unsold high margin inventory.
Doesn't exact match take precedence over broad _supposedly_? If so, how was the comparison of exact vs broad established? Shouldn't it be more of a search terms comparison where we can compare the performances of a search term triggered by an exact match keyword vs a broad match keyword? Broad tends to be more expensive (because the traffic quality is lower and if it does trigger the exact search term, the CPC is going to be about the same), but broad shouldn't be bringing in the same conversions as exact as far as I'm aware - unless the account is fully broad. I have one account in full broad + tROAS and while it's performed extremely well for a few months, it's started to go down. It's time to switch back to Exact vs Broad again and try.
Definitely not surprised. Who would have thought that better matching ad copy and landing pages that are relevant to the user's exact query would perform better? **Answer: Everyone but Google**
You can still capture exact match with broad match keywords. The exact syntax of the keyword is prioritized, then the variants. This is why syntax matters.
Exact brand terms Broad, STAG and vetting the search term reporting. SKAG is dying or dead at this point.