Insights from a Google Ads Liaison

[00:00:00] Taylor Holiday: Welcome back to another episode of the Ecommerce Playbook Podcast. Today, I have been sent a very special guest down from on high in the Google empire. It is Ginny Marvin, the ads liaison. This is a cool title that we're going to dive into more, but I'm very excited to have her with us today to discuss all things, Google ads.

So Ginny, thank you so much for joining. And if you could start off by explaining what is a. Ads products liaison. And what are you here to represent for

[00:00:29] Ginny Marvin: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Taylor. I I started in this role about three years ago. I'll come back up and kind of give my, like how I got here. So I got into paid search digital, digital advertising back in 2005. So, Yahoo was big then. And I worked early days, mostly lead gen. And then and.

agency side and then kind of slowly ended up on the e com side. Sort of the last half of my ads career where I've been agency in house consulting. And then last seven years prior to joining Google was the Paid media editor at search engine land, which is a industry trade site and was editor in chief there.

The last couple of years I was there. And then. 2020 decided to, like, mix things up and try some new things and, moved on and Google called and said, you know, we've wanted this role on the ad side. There's a Danny Sullivan is the liaison on the search side. And so I started in 2021 and really my role is to help act as a bridge between our advertiser communities and our Teams internally and whether that's obviously like a lot of product focus, but teams across the org that touch what advertisers are doing experiencing and hopefully helping advertisers get more education, understand how the products work, policies work help answer questions and bring feedback in.

[00:02:15] Taylor Holiday: That's awesome. So one of us, so you come from our world, you understand the experience of our lived reality, which is awesome. And one of the other things that you are is you are at ads liaison on Twitter or X now, excuse me. That makes you basically as far as we're concerned, the sole voice of access into so many of the problems.

So I'm curious, like what's that experience been like playing that role on X in

[00:02:36] Ginny Marvin: Yeah, I mean, I guess it's been It's been great. I mean, I, I had a pretty good sense of what I was getting into. Again, coming from this world. So, you know, the community is active and engaged and vocal and 99 percent It's been great. Respectful. And so I, it's been, you know, I think it's a really important point of access for communication.

And so whether folks reach me on Twitter, where I'm most present or LinkedIn or elsewhere I'm hope to be present. I mean, I think one of the challenges obviously with this role is. I'm me and I don't scale as well as I would like. So, you know, staying on top of, of all the inbounds is can be a challenge, but, you know, I think for the most part, I find it to be extremely valuable for me and the teams internally to get that feedback and have that feedback loop be pretty dynamic.

[00:03:40] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, I think it, it does. It goes a long ways to feel like there's someone to talk to. And in many cases, I feel like that's a lot of what advertisers are just hoping for is interaction as it relates to their problems or experiences. And so I commend you for taking up that mantle and coming into that community.

And I'd be curious, like at, in your role, as it relates to the perception of the entity that you represent for advertisers, do you feel like Google has a trust problem right now with. Ad products or what do you think the general disposition is as it relates to people's interactions with you?

[00:04:12] Ginny Marvin: Yeah, I think, you know, we are in this time of, and again, this is sort of what was also really drew me to this role because I feel like we are in a very important time of massive change, whether that's it was automation. Now it's AI all the privacy change implications. And we have these two, you know, with, with privacy and everything happening on that font and everything happening on the AI, which is just You know, really exploded front.

There is just a lot of change for advertisers to be managing and whether that's, you know, they're managing their own accounts or they're working with clients and having to explain this new landscape to their clients you know, and as the products evolved to take advantage of new technologies I think, you know, it's really just been a, a time of just massive change management, mindset shift support along the way.

And I think when you're in moments like this Trust is a challenge because there's just so much to absorb and adapt to. And so I'm hoping, you know, part of my role is to really help bring people along and also bring feedback back into the teams. People are really struggling in this area. Like, what can we do to either help build more education?

Is there something we can do on the product side? Is there something on the support side? And really try to help bring everyone along and succeed as much as they can with the platform.

[00:05:57] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, I think that's a great call out there. There has been a ton of change it seems like from obviously P max GA four invoicing, cookies are going, cookies are staying. It feels like a pretty big rollercoaster. Maybe one of the things that you could help us educate on, 'cause I think this is sometimes hard to understand, is how do product decisions get made inside of Google?

Like how do these things happen? 'cause I think sometimes it feels confusing. When something rolls out in a way that feels sudden understanding that there's actually probably tons of thought and time that goes into these things, but it feels sudden externally. So maybe tell us a little bit about on the ad side in particular, what is the sequence of making major product changes?

[00:06:36] Ginny Marvin: Well, and I don't want to totally speak for product, but I will say that there. Yes, absolutely. There's a thought testing all kinds of oftentimes there are roundtables. There's customers conversations. There's it's, you know, a change is coming because of customer feedback that, you know, whether, it's coming from. Lots of customers, or there are really key needs that are not being met that we're hearing from the market. Those absolutely get brought into product decisions. And I know it can feel sudden. I think 1 of the things that I've really seen in these conversations is, you know, I've been talking about some of these things for 5 years and advertisers talk about them as being brand new.

And so what change or, you know, a new thing can feel sudden. When the look back window has actually been quite long the testing period and onboarding period has been quite long. And I think also one of the things that can make things feel sudden is because there is so much change, right? So you take your eye off the ball, you're focusing on this aspect of your campaigns, your products.

Other platforms come back and you know, this piece of the puzzle is working differently. So I think, you know, that's another whole piece of this that I again, try to help amplify changes, help educate people on like, this is now working this way. And here's sort of the backlog of how this came to be.

So that people feel less like, It's sun change that said, like, we're in digital. Things move really fast. This is a fast moving world. Part of the reason why I love it and it was drawn to it. From way back in early 2000s is that pace of change. I think the key for us is to be able to explain change with purpose, right?

Like, what is the purpose behind these changes? And that, when you're talking about major mindset shifts takes time and takes repetition, takes patience and takes really I think deep empathy with the customers and what they're experiencing.

[00:09:06] Taylor Holiday: That's great. I appreciate that. And I can, I can empathize with that as a leader. We have this sort of joke that I'll talk about with my sort of executive team that if you aren't exhausted, Repeating yourself over and over and over again, then you haven't said it enough because people just don't internalize it enough.

And so I can, I can certainly empathize with the complexity of trying to distribute information broadly across millions of people and creating consensus around those is hard. I want to dive a little bit into the specifics of maybe some of the things that we've experienced as challenging amidst this change and get your perspective on some of those.

And I'd like to start with Pmax, if that's okay with you. I think this has probably been. One of the larger changes to the ads product in particular over the last few years, or really, even since I've been running Google ads for the last decade, I'd say it's as dramatic a product shift has I've experienced.

And I think there's been some frustration about the ambiguity Related to the product. It seemed to give initially, and I think there's been some movement away from this now, but advertised. There's less control and clarity of what was occurring in a way that made it harder to make decisions. So maybe can you tell us a little bit about from your perspective, the vision with P max, what the hope is and what you're hearing in the market as it relates to the impact of the product today?

[00:10:22] Ginny Marvin: Yeah, I mean, yeah, so I think we step back P max is a goal based. I powered campaign type, right? It's designed to find the most. Cost efficient higher ROI conversions across all Google channels. It performs best when it has flexibility and when it also has solid data about what good quality conversions look like to your business.

So it is this, it is a shift where, you know, hands off on The idea is to have a hands off, give it the most flexibility to find that marginal ROI, while also the way it can do that is when it knows what matters to you and what your goals are, what, and again, what that quality conversion looks like to you, so that is sort of the data piece that feeds back into it.

I think, you know, certainly, like, to your point, reporting and controls have continued to evolve from that you know, initial. You know, roll out where it was really like, keep their hands off, give us the data and let this thing run and find find those. That additional R. O. Y. Additional at your additional spend, right?

Like marginal ROI focused bidding optimization model. And as we've started to again, like, this has been a process of taking in a lot of customer feedback. You've seen iterations on reporting and controls continue to evolve. But that really is the main, the goal is to be able to find. High ROI conversions across the channels and and optimize bidding across all the inventory opportunities

[00:12:21] Taylor Holiday: there's a couple of phrases in here that I just want to like double click on to borrow a really annoying tech pun there, but you use the phrase marginal ROI and the, I know that there's sort of two things that Google is moving towards, and we've seen some betas around, marginal optimization related to inclusive of the costs, which is where the phrase marginal to me would be a net result, inclusive of the cost of goods.

But by default, that's not what the system is optimizing for, right? Just to clarify and distinguish between those things in that term.

[00:12:54] Ginny Marvin: So, are you talking about, like, new customer acquisition or what? Or are you?

[00:12:59] Taylor Holiday: Any, well, I'm just saying the default optimization setting for a PMAX campaign wouldn't be related to anything associated with the marginal value of a campaign. Of a sale, you're asking the advertiser to assert a target based on their understanding of the systems, but not by default, absorbing any cost

[00:13:16] Ginny Marvin: I see. I see. Yeah. Yes, although I will point to the Profit goal that is in beta and coming. So that's where we're going to hopefully go, right? That's the that's the aim there. And that's been in, in pilot with some customers now where you will have that COGS data come in. So right now the, you're right.

The focuses are either your marginal CPA, marginal ROAS focus. Right. And so. That's those are your optimization settings now.

[00:13:51] Taylor Holiday: And one of the challenges, I think that. Created initially. And again, I acknowledge that you guys are giving more controls back in a way that I think has been super collaborative and helpful and good is that the issue related to branded search and the incremental value of these conversions is what begins to, in my experience, obfuscate the result.

So let's imagine I set up a PMAX campaign and I use the default setup. The hard part is to understand where to set the target relative to the business impact that you want. When, you know, most of us would agree that if we were to separate out historically branded search and our Ross target there versus maybe a standard shopping that was categorical and non brand related, they would have very distinct targets of efficiency related to their incremental impact.

But when they're all balled together, what I've watched advertisers struggle with Is to understand what good is on that campaign. How would you help advertisers think about or sort through that problem?

[00:14:54] Ginny Marvin: Yeah, I mean, I definitely hear that. I think to your point, we have worked in more levers and controls on the brand side. I think, again, it's really looking at, less on the average, right? That's why we're like, don't really report that. So it's looking at what is the most cost efficient high ROI conversions and going after that? And that's where again, it's looking at the, the marginal contribution that said, if we want to back up and look at where things are today with, because I, I do think that the brand brand exclusions and now brand inclusions on search, I want to make sure that people really understand that because One, one thing I want to make sure people understand is that brands and brands lists are different than keywords.

And so. In a really great way, you know, keywords do their thing. The brand the brands and brand lists, I think are. A really great step forward in that the brands are treated as entities. And so, You are we're looking at websites, logos, trademarks to determine the right brand. And and they also will work with the newest version of broad match to look at multiple languages.

You don't need to add in variations. It looks at different spellings and variants as well. So that's 1 thing. I just want to kind of lay the groundwork on from a brand standpoint. If you do, you know, if you're running brand search and you have PMAX and you have a dedicated brand brand targets, brand budget, and you want that to be living your, like your search campaign focus, right?

So we now have brand inclusions in or they're going to be rolling out in search where you essentially can now. One thing is, it allows you to now use Broadmatch with brand. And so you'll set your brand inclusion for your brand campaign. It will just broadly capture all of those brand variants without you having to build out this massive list.

That would also allow you to make sure that that campaign is prioritized over anything else. Every P max as well, you can set then again on the P max side, you can present a brand exclusion.

[00:17:34] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, I think, and I think that's a good step to helping solve for the ambiguity that gets created when those things are put together, which I've just watched people be unable to make a decision against the target. They're like, is this a good or bad result? And that I think is sort of compounded by the next wave of things that I think are, that have been.

Big topic complication, which is that the actual goal that we would have as advertisers is incremental contribution, right? In other words, that there's a causal relationship between my ads and the impact on purchase. And my experience with Google is that they have trailed metal a little bit in their willingness to go after conversion lift and geo lift studies on their own products.

They've stepped through the door more recently. So maybe, I don't know. How much you could talk about geo X 2. 0 or what's, what's happening as it relates to the incrementality studies that Google is now stepping through the door on. And we've gone through a number of the results. And it sort of confirmed our concern around P max as it relates to the incremental impact of those sort of combined assets.

But how much is this going to be a part of the future roadmap and how much is the incremental impact something you think an advertiser should be considering?

[00:18:47] Ginny Marvin: Yeah, I think well, again, like the. Basis of the cross channel bit of optimization again, like, just going back is to look at. What additional are you going to get with your additional spend? And that's what it's those cross channel bit optimization is doing incrementality, I think, is certainly important.

I know there's a lot of work going into helping advertisers better understand that the There are some uplift studies that are going and some other tooling that said, absolutely happy to hear the feedback and bring that back to the teams. If there's more, we can be doing on that front.

[00:19:37] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, I think it's cool. Like I actually love, I actually have one of the like test results up right now that I'm looking at. And one of the things I'd like that you guys say it is the last slide literally says random experiments are the gold standard. And that's like the frame of the thing in a way that I go, Oh, okay.

If Google actually believes that internally, it would seem to me that we should bring that to the forefront and allow advertisers the clearest, simplest, direct access to that product. And that, but I think that's where the tension has been for me between my experience of Google's willingness to participate in this kind of thing and how forefront it's been.

Versus that statement that this is the gold standard of how things should be measured. And how we just reconcile that. Because I think the biggest challenge is when you think about the default optimization setting, it's not actually related to incremental or incremental impact. It's not what the optimization setting is.

It's a, It's a purchase as it relates to a 30 day click, three day engage view, one day view optimization against a attribution through that lens. That's very different than the incremental impact. And I think the delta between those things is where I've seen them be fairly wide, repeatedly in a way that goes, Ooh, how am I supposed to relate to these two numbers as a agency provider or a brand?

When I go in my platform every day and the. Campaigns reporting this result, and then I go run the incremental study and I get a different result that feels confusing. And I think in some ways perpetuates this distrust or concern that I don't know how to relate to these different elements as an advertiser.

[00:21:07] Ginny Marvin: Yeah, no, that's fair and I will, I'll bring that back to the team, I think, and there's probably things we can be doing to help show that. That better.

[00:21:18] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, that's fair. I'd be curious if you put on your hat, like, go back to being a digital advertiser with me. And I'm going to create a imaginary scenario based on what, you know, right now, you're the operator of a 10 million a year women's apparel business. Let's that's sort of my customers that are listening to this pod.

What would you set up in a Google ads account today? You're bootstrapped. You don't have a bunch of venture financing. You need to produce profitable growth. How would you manage an ad account?

[00:21:44] Ginny Marvin: All right. You're putting me on the spot. So I and again, also, I think part of it depends on what you're doing on the brand side in terms of right brand recognition. , you know, are going to be great. Start there.

And build out search. I do some PMAX. I'd also look at, Oh, again, I'm just going to start playing. I'd look at some demand gen. I think that's a really interesting product. There's a lot of I think untapped opportunity in that space and some really interesting things happening. With demand gen too, I'd look at standard shopping.

I, you know, I would look at search standard shopping, PMAX and demand gen and just start putting them on a

[00:22:29] Taylor Holiday: So you would set them all up.

[00:22:31] Ginny Marvin: that?

[00:22:32] Taylor Holiday: That's so you would use all of the ad products. You would actually set up variations of all of those things. So you would have search and shopping and P max all existing

[00:22:41] Ginny Marvin: yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, obviously, if you're going to use PMAX and standard shopping, right? What are you going to be focused on? So you're not overlapping. But. I think there's opportunity to be testing and experimenting and obviously am I going day one with all of that? No, probably not. But I, I wouldn't leave any of it off the table for XYZ reason, if that makes sense.

[00:23:11] Taylor Holiday: No. Okay. I think that's fair. So, and I, I recognize that it's a challenging question without specifics. It's more just trying to understand, like in a lot of ways, that's the question I have to answer, right? Is that's what a brand comes to me and asks. Okay. Hey partner, what would you

[00:23:25] Ginny Marvin: do we get

[00:23:26] Taylor Holiday: And so I have to walk back.

Yes, I have to walk through that door and go, okay, well, I've got a combination of best practices out of Google. I've got my experience as it relates to some of these test results, I've got all these things and now I've got to make a recommendation to you that I have to stand on. And so to be able to hear directly from you, okay, this is what Google themselves would say they would do.

I think it's important. I think it's a valuable idea to try and try and get as specific on as possible. 

[00:23:50] Ginny Marvin: Also, I mean, part of that is going to depend on, obviously, what the budget is, what the margins are that you're working with and, you know, you can go full Speed ahead on search and build that thing out. You can do some additional prospecting with PMAX. And you know, or make sure that you're covered on the shopping site.

I think it's, it's not an easy it's not easy. That's why you guys are.

[00:24:26] Taylor Holiday: don't you think this is the problem though? Genuinely, don't you think that there should be an

[00:24:30] Ginny Marvin: Yeah. So here's what, I mean, like if you were, if, if, if you were, Okay, hands, like, this is it start with search and some shopping in PMAX, but that would be second, right? Like, or third, like, so, and but I think a lot of companies, if you're, you've never done anything, also, I think PMAX is a A good place to start to and just start kind of getting some data.

So, but again, like, do you have customer data? Right do you have solid goals? Are you going to be able to give P max the the signals that it needs? If not, then step back and what can you do in search and shopping in those realms?

[00:25:17] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's fair. I think that's probably sequentially close to where we would end up. I think the P max variable is still the hardest one to sort out exactly how to interact with. But the other question I have that is like, as it relates to target setting and Let's just imagine again, let's keep really simple numbers here for making it easy to do mental math for people.

If I have 50 percent gross margin, which isn't too unrealistic in apparel. Like in theory, the idea would be okay. If I need to make money on first order, if I'm bootstrapped and can't really afford a very latent value capture, I have to get a two to one return on that ad spend. But what I'm really saying is I have to get an incremental two to one.

Like I have to actually not be attributing purchases that would have happened anyways. I have to truly get to an impact. That's going to make me. A marginal return on my dollars. How would you, by default, think about, would you just be comfortable going TROS two to one, roll it out there? Or should we have some assumption about over attributions that relates to incrementality?

Like how should, how would you think about where to set the target prior to having any data that would give me a very specific causal answer, running a study, et cetera. If I'm starting out, how aggressive or conservative would you be in that position?

[00:26:34] Ginny Marvin: If you're just starting out and you're, you're just trying to get the data, I would start more aggressively than, you know, if you've got the room. I think part of the, part of the challenge is if you start out too conservatively, you have the potential of hamstringing yourself. And not being able to see what the actual potential and opportunity is out there.

So if you're starting with a budget, that is not. That is going to be too low for you to be able to get the volume of information. That you need to then make that assessment. Or if your targets are not giving you the flexibility to find those conversion opportunities. It's going to be really hard and going to be a very slow, frustrating process to, to be able to make those decisions.

I mean, I think that is that's really important so that you know, when you're starting this to have knowing that there needs to be some one time and giving the system flexibility to, to find those conversion opportunities is, is really critical.

[00:27:56] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. And I, again, as a staunch advocate of machine learning and all of the things that it can enable, that conversation is one that I would empathize with the complexity and saying to a customer, which is, Hey, be willing to spend a bunch of money in hopes of future value. The question of how much over what time period sort of immediately follows.

Right. Of like, okay, I'm in, I I'm willing to walk the road. How long am I going to be on that road? What is like, what do you, what would you do to somebody who would sort of step through it? Cause I think that's the next logical question I would get. And I've said very similar things to what you're saying to customers.

And it's like, okay, help me understand how long am I going to lose money for? What was the actual expectation here as it relates to this kind of

[00:28:39] Ginny Marvin: Yeah. And I think also, I mean, yes, this conversation has changed somewhat with automation, but you know, pre Pre smart bidding, we're having those conversations with clients already and customers already, right? Like, you don't have the budget to get the click volume to get the conversion volume you're, not going to be able to make progress.

So it's just, it's essentially just kind of the evolution of the same conversation. And in terms of what and how long it is going to depend on the, what, what either campaign type, what bidding strategy you're using, what goals you set, how much data you have, how competitive the auctions are that you're going to, I mean, there are You know, there are multiple variables.

We kind of have benchmarks for some of these things that are in Help Center. As much as we can give guidance, we do. So, but I think, you know, really, those factors are what's going to be determinant of how long things are going to take.

[00:29:53] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. Yeah. And that's fair. I think, I think in some ways it's an. Too broad of a question. So maybe, let me ask something that I think is a little, would you use T Ross in that process or would you leave it ungoverned?

[00:30:06] Ginny Marvin: So. You know, if you are, if you, I guess I would take it back to like, what are you working with? If you're have a fixed budget and you want to use value based bidding, you would use maximize conversion value without a target. If you have good information about what your targets are, should be, could be, and are not constrained by a fixed budget, then go ahead and use as when you, you know, if you've got that the data behind it.

[00:30:42] Taylor Holiday: So you think it's related to whether the

[00:30:44] Ginny Marvin: Well, it's just a way of controlling. Right? So the if you, if you don't want to

[00:30:49] Taylor Holiday: You're altering the, altering the dynamic

[00:30:50] Ginny Marvin: don't want to use TRO as with a constrained budget. So if you're seeing budget limited that you're not giving the system, the flexibility needs to go after those opportunities. So that's where I

[00:31:06] Taylor Holiday: Well, let me, cause that just sounds like the mechanism that you would use to get me to spend at a lower efficiency, right? Like, cause I agree. Yeah. Having a T Ross will constrain the volume in some sense, but. It does, it is the input that seems to represent my interests in the process, which is to say like, I have an interest, you have an interest.

Your interest is spend. My interest is return. I need to represent my interest in this relationship that we have with

[00:31:32] Ginny Marvin: absolutely. And all I'm saying is that like, using TRO as when you know, that is, is fantastic. All I'm saying is if it's not, that's how you're controlling your spend right with that, that target. And so all I'm saying is if you, if you're Add in that additional clamp with a limited budget. This, the TROAS mechanism can't work the way it's designed to work.

That's all I'm

[00:32:02] Taylor Holiday: I get what you're saying. Okay. So in order to get to the optimization of

[00:32:04] Ginny Marvin: Just make sure. Yeah. Don't, if you have a capped budget, then you know, and that TROAS is, you're coming up against that, then take the target out and then just maximize for value within your budget.

[00:32:18] Taylor Holiday: Cool. That makes total sense. I appreciate you playing that little game with me.

[00:32:21] Ginny Marvin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:32:22] Taylor Holiday: but I think it is ultimately the question that we have to try to answer. And I think it is, I do think there's an, there's an impetus on you guys to create clarity for the ad product sequence, like to say, okay, you come to us, this is where we would begin.

This is what we would recommend and start with knowing that every novel business case is like a special flower, but at the same time I think the more clarity that we could. Create for people, the easier it is to enter into the system with confidence. What would you, the last thing I just want to get after it, cause I think this is probably the area where I just feel the most vitriol from advertisers or frustration is specifically related to the sense that branded search is just rent seeking.

That there's just this tax that I'm paying inside of this system that offers me almost no incremental value. What would you, how would you combat that? Like, what would you say to somebody who's like, Hey, Google is just extracting value off of my brand with this mechanism.

[00:33:13] Ginny Marvin: 1, I would say this conversation is not new and I don't mean that in any way, pejoratively. I'm just saying this has been just an ongoing conversation. I think. In again, it's, it's 1 of those, you need to come to your own decision about whether or not you're going to it makes sense for your business to bid on.

The brand or not the, you know, really, this discussion has been going on for as long, well before I got into Paid and no,

[00:33:45] Taylor Holiday: Yeah. To be clear, I don't hold you responsible for branded search, Jenny.

[00:33:48] Ginny Marvin: because I do think it's, it's an important conversation and it's something for I think, you know, for businesses to consider. So it, you know, there was a lot of conversation about the effect on text ads, ROI and when shopping ads launched, right?

So it's sort of, it's a little bit of the same conversation of like, how these. Dynamics work together. So, and it, you know,

[00:34:13] Taylor Holiday: you say these dynamics, do you mean that? Because like, to me, you're right. That is another great example where what it feels like to a user or to an advertiser is that, or even somebody, maybe this is probably even more impactful to people who worked in SEO or organic search is that like, yes, over time, it seems that Google continues to assert itself into value extraction from the ecosystem by adding value.

More paid listings shopping above my search listing. So now my text ads got diminished and same thing with branded search. And I think some of the contentious P max was just a way to add more conquesting into my arena. Like there was just this sense by which the value extraction, and this is understandable in some capitalistic business context, for sure, but it does feel a little like.

Like the, what's been lost is the customer is that me, like, and even the user experience of just trying to create value for me versus you. And that just the relationship between those things is just where it feels like, man, help me make my business work

[00:35:10] Ginny Marvin: yeah, so I think, you know, well, I, I think 1 thing, if we look at kind of what the value of brand search ads, I think 1, we can look at them together brand and organic together. I think it's really important to be having those conversations with your organic team and what they're seeing on the brand side as well.

And are they. For your campaigns working in concert together, one of the things that, you know, brand ads obviously can be much more dynamic and highlight promotions, point to specific landing pages and and have specific messaging that's timely in a way that, Organic just can't. So, I think that's one way to really think about it.

Like, are you actually making the most of of your brand ads? And are you serving your customers in the way that is giving them the messages that are going to help them engage proactively with you? And so that's one thing I would highlight is like, you've got a lot of potential for. Communication with your advertisers with with brand.

And this is it's across search engines, right? It's across many retail retail environments, whatever you're working in, I would just pay attention to what that messaging is. And and, you know, and have a real focus on it. And then again, though, like if you want, I think this is where we've also tried to have more flexibility with brand inclusions brand exclusions in PMAX and search.

And so I think that's, that's how I think of it. And again, I, you know, it's a, it's a conversation for every company to look at is this Making a contribution in the way we want. If not, why? And, and go from there.

[00:36:58] Taylor Holiday: Yeah, yeah, and I think, I think that's again, totally reasonable and fair. And the problem with these discussions is that there are absolutely cases where branded search is a positive incremental impact to a business. And so it's, we speak with really broad brushes and I recognize that. I think the, the sequence, if I could offer anything into the Google world for you to take and represent, is that if the conversation began every time with, Hey, all right, advertising partner, brand partner.

I desire to use these ad products to create the best incremental contribution to your business and to recommend them through that lens. Even if that came at a short term consequence to my own earning, I think they would do it a massive, like. Elevation to the expectation of what this relationship represents versus it's adversarial against one of us making money and the other potentially not.

And to acknowledge like branded search may not make any sense here. PMAX may not make any sense here. Or we ran the incrementality study and it didn't work. And so we're going to go divert a different direction versus feeling a constant tension around some of these things. 

[00:38:02] Ginny Marvin: I think one,

[00:38:03] Taylor Holiday: in a way

[00:38:03] Ginny Marvin: yeah. One thing I will go back to is though is I think this is where things like smart bidding, where it's you tell us what your goal is and,

[00:38:15] Taylor Holiday: right. Yep. Yep.

[00:38:17] Ginny Marvin: ads are. Either you bid on inventory or don't bid on inventory based on what the predicted outcome of that impression is going to be for your goal.

So I think that's where there is that real focus on what is in the what is this customer told us they want. And, and what are the signals are giving us in terms of what represents a good high quality conversion to them, the data they've been able to give us the signals we'll be able, we're able to use, and how are we going to maximize value for them based on their stated goals?

Right? Like, I think that's where that, that really is the focus and goal for smart bidding, especially.

[00:39:05] Taylor Holiday: I think that's a great thing to leave our people with is that as an advertiser, your job is to fundamentally, fundamentally represent what you need from Google and to hold that and state that very clearly, and then to ask them to participate against that business objective And I think absent that it's really easy to kind of get run about in a lot of different directions.

And so I think that's a totally fair call out that we as advertisers or agencies have an obligation to represent that interest, to get clear on what we're trying to

[00:39:33] Ginny Marvin: And part of this, when you're talking about like how to get started, I would really think I are, do we have our foundation set? Is our tagging in place? Do we have first party data lists that are clean and can be updated on a frequent basis that are going to really be able to send that strong signal?

Do we have all of the other fundamental pieces in place? Okay. Before That you're going to be able to give Google this instruction manual it needs to get the most out of that bidding algorithm and find the opportunities that matter most to your business before you start spending dollars or start investing.

You know making changes in your campaigns like the fundamentals are still I keep going back to this. I think the marketing fundamentals are still so so important probably more important now in this day and age than ever before and so like I would just keep going back to like Do we have our solid foundation set?

And if not, and if they, and also look back at that foundation, when things don't seem to be working the way you hoped or intended and are there holes and more groundwork that can be laid to help give those signals in a stronger sense? 

[00:40:56] Taylor Holiday: appreciate you giving voice to what is a giant behemoth of an organization and being willing to discuss these things with us. She is at ads liaison on Twitter, and she's going to do her best to get back to all of your replies as fast as she can, but knowing that there are tons of them, but Hey, we appreciate the conversation.

It means a lot,

[00:41:16] Ginny Marvin: you. It was really great.

[00:41:17] Taylor Holiday: to, to come out and participate with us. So thank you very much. And we'll talk soon.