Digital advertising is a lot like trying to navigate a maze without a map. Google Ads and Meta are incredibly complex systems where a misconfigured setting can bleed budget for weeks before you realize the issue. This is a problem. The new reality for brands today is not to spend more money. It’s to tighten the operations ship to free up valuable time while reducing the risk of financial and reputation-related issues inherent in scaling quickly.
Identifying and Mitigating Risks
Every live campaign comes with a set of inherent baggage. The first risk is financial waste. This is typically the result of lax targeting parameters and a lack of attention to negative keyword lists. When you allow broad match keywords to run without a negative keyword list in place, you’re essentially paying for traffic with zero purchase intent.
However, the risk does not stop here. Data privacy is a major risk. Inaccurate tracking pixels and data management can lead to serious legal issues. It’s essential to consider the ad account a risk management environment. Auditing the account requires identifying the leaks. Leaks are the small misconfigurations in the account that put the brand at risk for violating user privacy or wasting money without generating a return.
Leveraging Automation and AI
Manual bidding is a practice from the past. If you’re manually managing bids every few hours, you’re fighting a losing battle against an environment where the machines never sleep. To streamline the workflow and reduce the risk of human error, you need to start leveraging AI. AI can analyze thousands of signals in real-time to optimize bids for maximum conversion value.
Automation has the same level of power for creative testing. Rather than manually changing out pictures and ad copy, dynamic creative optimization allows for thousands of versions to be tested and implemented automatically. This technology seeks out the winning combination of creative elements without any human intervention. This elevates the marketer to a high-level strategy position, where hours of the week are freed up for planning and strategy.
Integrating Compliance Protocols
Brand safety is not something you can compromise on if you want to remain a player in the market. You simply cannot afford to have your high-end ad placement appear next to other content that could potentially reflect poorly on you. Integrating compliance protocols into your marketing strategy will ensure that your brand reputation remains intact.
This involves setting up strong inclusion and exclusion lists and possibly even using third-party verification tools to monitor the environment. It’s all about control. You need to make sure that your automated marketing tools are not running outside of very strict boundaries that align with your corporate values.
The YouTube Kids Trap
One of the biggest inefficiencies in modern digital marketing and advertising is a prime example of how streamlining can help: the “YouTube Kids” problem. For many B2B businesses or brands targeting adults, appearing on channels aimed at toddlers and preschoolers can be a massive inefficiency and a huge waste of marketing dollars. Parents often give their devices to their kids to keep them occupied, and your ad impression will essentially go to waste on someone who can’t even possibly purchase your product.
Streamlining your account means actively working to eliminate these types of placements. By adding a series of negative placement lists that target children’s content, you can automatically exclude kid channels from YouTube and redirect that budget to where it actually matters. It is a simple solution that often has an immediate impact on cost-per-acquisition, but is often overlooked in our haste to get new marketing campaigns out the door.
Taking Control of Your Workflow
The key to streamlining is that it is a continuous process. The first step is to audit your placement reports and review your automated bidding strategies. The easiest places to start streamlining often involve eliminating irrelevant placements or broad targeting that is misinterpreting user intent. By cutting out operational noise, you ensure that your budget is protected and that your advertising is driving actual business growth!
