Search Ads 360: How One Add-On Reduced CPA by 15%

About the Client

Our client, Tickets Travel Network, is one of the leading companies in the field of travel. It sells air tickets, hotel reservations, and car rentals, among other services. The client involved us in a project related to the sale of tickets.

The Challenge

The client wanted to improve ROMI by optimizing ads costs. We had a task to reduce the cost of conversion to a certain level, then find and test the tools that would allow someone to do so.

Our Approach

Our task was to run search campaigns already running on Google Ads. Geotargeting, audiences, and ads themselves were extremely diverse, so we decided to automate the optimization process. To do this, we used the add-on Search Ads 360.

Search Ads 360 is a product for managing, controlling, and optimizing search advertising campaigns. It is part of the Google Marketing Platform ecosystem.

The main advantage of SA360 is its ability to work with campaigns for different search engines in one window: the tool integrates with Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines. But our tickets only moved to Google Ads, so this allowed us to test the optimization potential of Search Ads 360.

We integrated the client’s existing Google Ads account with Search Ads 360 and recently changed the target bidding type to the target cost per conversion – tCPA. The purpose of the conversion was to fill out a form to receive tickets on the client’s website. Accordingly, the optimization strategy was to show the most effective ads.

At the beginning of the work, the cost of conversion increased as expected, as the system learned to optimize campaigns. This was an important psychological moment.

Don’t panic and turn everything off when you see much bigger than expected numbers at the beginning, because it pays off later. Already in the fourth week, the cost of conversions equaled the target, and later even became lower than the target price, which we specified in the settings.

Result

The average cost of conversion during the campaign was 11 points (we apply the coefficient so as not to violate confidentiality). And during the campaign, it fell to 9.3 points, and this value continues to decline.

At the same time, the total number of conversions decreased due to the fact that the client optimized the marketing budget and was able to reduce the overall cost of the campaign. But average conversion revenue increased – that is, SA360 began to lead not only cheaper conversions, but also more valuable conversions. The exact data here is limited to the NDA, but we must emphasize this fact.

Client’s Feedback

“I am satisfied with the tool, SA360. Optimization by tCPA showed a high speed of learning and kept the result within the specified limits. I am waiting for the next stage of the experiment to finally consolidate the success.”

Sergey Krutiienko
Head of PPC Ticket Travel Network

Conclusions and Next Steps

Only the integration of Google Ads with Search Ads 360, along with the optimization of campaigns through SA360, can give a remarkable effect. It’s a professional tool that takes campaigns to the next level.

If we talk about the potential for further improvement, then in the future we want to find the “golden mean” regarding the question of the price per conversion – to reduce the target price per conversion until the moment of reaching the plateau. It will also be useful to experiment with a maximum conversion strategy using a limited daily budget.

In addition, it will be useful to use floodlight in Campaign Manager to specify data and track delayed, post-view and cross-device conversions.