Explore Silicon Valley and you will see Waymo minivans full of bubbles, essentially “self-taught” how to drive without a human in charge. In air transport, the largest and most modern jets are becoming almost infallible, with pilots in command less and less on a given flight.
Automation is great … when applied as part of a more strategic approach to solving needs in our society. But automation is not foolproof. It`s not perfect. And it does not take all variables into account, particularly intangibles.
Do not confuse automation with autopilot
Machines are getting smarter – if not brilliant – but machine learning and artificial intelligence are none of the following:
Artificial intuition
Artificial intellect
Artificial improvisation
Artificial perception
Humans have these essential characteristics of intuition, intellect, the talent for improvisation and perception.
The human still plays a central role in paid research. Of course, it is possible to create a functional and competent Google Ads automation by placing things essentially on autopilot. But who just wants to be functional?
Great automation of Google Ads is at your disposal, but it requires automation professionals who want to use the autopilot for what is good, allowing them to remain captains of the plane.
As a pilot in charge, the analyst needs to monitor all systems – exploring nuances and every crack in his programs. They need to look beyond the superficial information because the myriad of automation built by the ad engines can only take them so far towards their true goals.
Alerts: your ticket to prosper
Being in charge of paid search programs requires agility. Agility needs seeing subtle differences and nuances in an instant. This is where great automation professionals, armed with powerful automation management tools, can thrive.
When set up correctly, the alerts point us in the right direction to deepen the anomalies and subtle changes that can hinder the success of the campaign or open doors to much more effective programs.
For example, tools in the Optmyzr PPC Management package, such as PPC Investigator, make it easier to identify and act on opportunities, such as adjusting settings, adding negative keywords, changing CPA or TROAS, updating ads, and a myriad of others.
They can generally be categorized into five levels:
Account-level alerts can help prioritize time allocation, for example, by working first on accounts that are losing their target conversion volumes by the greatest amount.
Campaign-level alerts can reveal opportunities to make even well-performing accounts perform even better, for example, by pointing to a campaign that is reducing account averages.
Label-level alerts help you monitor campaigns with a common theme, such as brand campaigns or campaigns for specific product lines.
The s alerts at the level of bidding strategy allow you to monitor the performance of campaigns whose bids are automatically managed by the ad engine.
Budget-level alerts help advertisers spend their entire budget without spending too much on individual accounts, a specific set of campaigns, or many accounts on platforms, including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon.
Alerts look great. BUT…
Creating alerts is easy at Optmyzr. The problem may be discovering the limits that lead to useful alerts. It is common for even the most experienced automation professional to strive to choose a target for all metrics when their primary focus is usually on just one or two main metrics.
Here’s the good news: Optmyzr used insights from the millions of campaigns that our package helped manage and used our algorithms to simplify this process. Our PPC Management Suite has the option to select a specific target automatically, based on recent performance.
This setting allows you to be notified if performance drops overall, even if you don’t have a specific goal in mind, such as a specific target CPA.
The automated alert configuration also helps automation professionals to quickly identify negative trends, BEFORE the trend leads to missed targets. Alerts can reveal accounts that are meeting their ROAS target today but have been steadily decreasing in performance, making it likely to lose ROAS in the coming weeks.
This helps search marketers make human, informed decisions to correct problems before the customer is dissatisfied. Remember what we said a few years ago: Machines + Humans = better automation!
Like an aircraft pilot, identifying the underlying problem quickly before it becomes a real problem facilitates intelligent corrections and course adjustments to help achieve or exceed the objective.
Beyond alerts: smart planning leads to success
While we wanted to focus primarily on alerts for this article, it is important to remember that any facet of the tools you use must work perfectly with the big picture. Optmyzr offers a variety of ways to keep your accounts in top condition while discovering problems when they arise.
Automation audits – functionality that helps automation professionals identify structural problems, which can lead to missed targets.
Account designs – one of Optmyzr’s newest features that enables entire teams to work collaboratively and seamlessly to execute the comprehensive strategy defined by your team.
Insights – tools that help identify the root cause of problems.
Optimizations – one-click simplicity to implement bulk optimizations based on best practices and proven performance across all managed accounts.
Many automation professionals miss the opportunity to maximize the highly automated world. Can an automation professional succeed by running competently and “hands-free”? Clear. Many do. Those who want to stand out, however, know that a great opportunity is hidden in the different ways in which we monitor and manipulate automation.
Automation is a game where fractions of a percentage point can make the difference between winning and losing. Subtle changes in performance, new market dynamics, missed creative opportunities and many factors can come into play.
