With rising CPCs, how are marketers proving paid media is driving profit—not just traffic?

[mikeyvalet]

If you have your attribution dialed and weekly KPIs defined this is pretty easy to see.

[jermoc]

Report on metrics tied to actual revenue/financial goals for the client or company… At my current company (education), we only look at things like CPC/CTR for diagnosing campaign inefficiencies, auction performance, etc. All of our performance reporting is focused on CPL, all the way down to application/enrollment/start rates that actually lead to revenue.

also is this an ai slop/bot post? lol

[welcometosilentchill]

It’s definitely a real challenge, but can easily be offset by good targeting, audience insights, and tight conversion tracking. Automated bidding is generally better than it’s ever been at producing results at specified targets.

The way I have been explaining it to clients is that unit costs are higher (CPC), which reduces the margin of error for converting a click into a lead, but that there’s plenty of middle ground between click to purchase/lead gen to optimize around to secure lower overall costs and higher ROAS. Advertisers who are willing to work with the changing system, rather than against it, are likely to maintain performance or continue to grow accounts.

I imagine small businesses are being affected the most and are being priced out of auction, but that’s also not a new trend.

[potatodrinker]

CPCs aren’t rising much for me, our account has actually dropped something like 15c YoY. Ignore PMAX being in play with cheap crap display CPCs though.

We optimise and use third party vendors with predictive bidding better than Google’s to serve ads when no one else is in auction. Also AI MAX that came out in June helps, +30% conversions from more reach for about 15% cheaper CPA. Can’t argue with it when Google invoices and Salesforce leads data back this up

[Initial-Increase-601]

Depends on the client. Some are doing fine but I also have several that were getting $40 conversions a year ago that are closer to $100 now. It’s getting wild and I don’t like it lol. I’ve been slowly shifting away from selling ppc because of it

[pmmeyournooks]

Are you not using a CRM or is tracking not monitoring purchases with amounts?

[Ok_Face_2942]

The issue is honestly the attribution model. Ex. Google has the 90 day period. Now something I try to do is analyze not only offline conversion metrics on platform but also analyze the hidden field parameters of the users in the CRM.

Although not perfect, it can sometimes allow you to see that the user journey is rarely as linear as one hopes, so something may generate a click but the person ends up redirecting to homepage and downloads a downloadable asset (now this isn’t the primary conversion so this results in 0 to google). But they could come back & convert past the 90day period or within and then tracking that as last page seen would work. Especially in B2B SaaS, buyer journey is painfully long. Attribution is always and likely always be a nightmare due to the # of touch points. Another trick, add a simple drop down to forms & utilize user provided attribution, this is a polarizing strategy but comparing this as a source of data vs your first party data in CRM does allow for more visibility.

[Legitimate_Ad785]

Im having 80% success with clients. Certain industries do very well and others no.

If paid ads aren’t working for u, its time to try other platform. Google ads doesn’t work for all industries

[ppcwithyrv]

focus on conversions not clicks