Google Ads Optimisation Framework | From the 4As to the 3Cs?
Are we seeing an evolution from Google’s 4As framework to the 3 Cs of Google Ads?
Google’s 4As provided a helpful framework for paid media account audits and campaign optimisations. So far, these have stood the test of time, we’ve been using the 4As framework at Varn since 2017.
The 4As framework includes:
Assets
Assets are the components that make up your ads and landing pages.
Well optimised ads generate a higher CTR which is often intrinsically linked to a lower CPC. This is because your quality score improves and your relevance to the search term improves resulting in a better customer experience.
Well optimised ads will benefit from having:
- All relevant extensions live to ensure advertisers are taking up as much of the SERP as possible
- Both responsive and dynamic search ads live
- Optimised images and videos for your Performance Max campaigns that scale YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Map platforms.
Taking responsibility for your landing pages, the quality of traffic and obsessing over conversion rate and AOV through continuous testing will ensure incremental sales and increased revenue.
Audience
Segmenting your message by specific cohorts of people based on LTV or propensity to convert into a lead makes sense, right?
Utilising data from a search perspective ensures you eliminate waste whilst appearing in key auctions that scale your products and services. Over time, we’ve gone through an evolution of using third party data to first party data, based on privacy and cookie laws. But the availability for advertisers to segment an ad at the right time to the right audience is still present and represents a massive opportunity for advertisers to connect with their audience.
Automation & Attribution
Arguably, with the evolution of shopping campaigns to smart shopping and now Performance Max, we have moved from the 4As to just 2As – being laser focussed on your Assets and your Audience will ensure you have control over your campaigns. Automation feels like an outdated term and advertisers have had to embrace automated bidding strategies and ad creation over manual bidding and copy writing. Advertisers are bored of describing their journey to work in attempts to explain attribution and last click attribution is archaic and a limiting way to optimise your campaigns.
Are Google now moving toward a 3 Cs model?
In the latest Google Marketing Live conference Google Introduced the 3Cs, with the majority of announcements aligned to how AI-powered tools can empower advertisers and businesses to drive improved results, connect with their customers and deliver the right message at the right time.
The 3 Cs framework includes:
- Customer Connection
- Creative
- Confidence
We’ve produced a SlideShare to provide an update on each of the three Cs:
In summary;
- Customer connection: Intelligently segmenting data to provide a more unique experience for customers across Google products.
- Creative: Using AI to create high-powered creative assets across your Google Ads strategies, quickly, it will be interesting to keep an eye on the quality of the creative and how they align with brand guidelines for advertisers and brands
- Confidence: Becoming more transparent with data and understanding how campaigns are performing while providing a privacy-first ad experience to searchers.
4As? Or 3Cs?
Whilst the 4 As are still vital considerations in order to follow Google best practices for account set up, we now also need to incorporate these 3 C’s of AI in order to keep up with the changing landscape of paid media and Google Ads.
If you would like to learn more, please get in touch with a member of the Varn team.
This article is uniquely written by a member of the Varn team.
