Google's Infinite Scroll

1) Advertisers may now see more mobile impressions and a lower CTR on Search, Shopping, and Local Ads 

2) Organic search may be deprecated.

3) Google MyBusiness co-location with ads becomes more important

Searchers using Google on their mobile devices are now seeing continuous scroll in search results, in the USA. (and coming soon to Canada) Instead of viewing a “See More” button after about ten results, searchers must continue scrolling through approximately four pages of search results to get to the “See More” link.

According to Google, this change does not affect how the ad auction works or the way Ad Rank is calculated, However there are changes in metrics.

Ads at the Top and Bottom Google is ‘redistributing’ the number of text ads that can show between the top and bottom of pages for mobile queries. Text ads will show at the top of the second page and beyond, while fewer text ads will show at the bottom of each page,” says Google Product Management. Shopping and Local ads will remain the same.

Ads Showing Multiple Time for a Single Query Google notes that ads have always been eligible (based on Ad Rank) to show on a search results page and again on a subsequent page. Google Ad’s systems takes into account if your ad was shown on a previous page when it calculates your Ad Rank for each page. 

How Metrics Will Change - According to Google - “You may see more mobile impressions and a lower CTR on Search, Shopping, and Local Ads. We expect clicks, conversions, average CPC, and average CPA to remain flat. Search campaigns may see more impressions from top ads and fewer impressions from bottom ads.”

How to Adjust Your Ad Campaigns To understand your performance, based on where your text ads show on the search results page, consider segmenting your performance data by Top vs. Other” and reviewing your prominence metrics.

Use Segments to view Google Ads tables to see how top and bottom ads perform. For mobile activity, you will have to compare information over periods of time and click type, to gauge how to adjust to this change. This Google Ads article explains how to use Segments.

Why You Should Care - This is an important change to communicate to anyone invested in the minutiae of campaign metrics. Google recommends reviewing your advertising goals and “monitoring your campaigns and continuing to optimize them based on your business objectives.” This change is only for U.S.-based queries right now but will roll out to Canada and additional countries and languages in 2022.

Bottom Line: Experience indicates that this could be a convenient change to support better usability for consumers. However, it’s not clear that this change benefits advertisers. Our initial assessment is that it may increase the competition focus for listings at the top of a page and continue to push advertisers to be more aggressive on bid strategies. This could mean an increase to advertisers daily budgets in order to maintain ad/brand placement experienced in 2021.

Alex Wozny is a digital analyst and data scientist with Concentric. Find out more about Alex here

This article is from the Fall/Winter Edition of Digital Dollars and Sense. Click here to view Digital Dollars and Sense editions and download the latest Digital Dollars and Sense ebook.