Could you tell us about the recent Google Ads ownership changes? Will this impact SA360 in any way?

Back in the day, you could link multiple ad accounts together. For example, let’s say you have a performance Google Ads account, where all your audiences and conversions are set. This performance account is linked to both an SA360 account and an MCC. However, while the new changes won’t impact what accounts can be linked together, you can only set one single account as being the owner.

The account with ownership is where you’ll now be defining conversions, audiences and even your invoices. So in this case, I would suggest that you set the MCC as the owner of the performance account, and this will be the only account which will be able to set which conversions are shared with the performance account. Everything else will stay the same, so the SA360 account won’t need ownership rights.

Your online marketing journey started with Google Ads Search and you then specialised on SA360 working at DQ&A. Could you share with us the main advantages that you’ve found that come with using SA360 for search campaigns?

I actually started with Affiliate Marketing and then moved to Google Ads Search and SA360. I would say that the main advantage of using SA360 is automation. With Google Ads, there is a constant need to make changes to your campaigns (price, product name changes for example) which sometimes requires you to create new ads. This is time-consuming.

With SA360 inventory management, it is possible to define how the ad should look like and once a new product is added to the feed, an ad is created automatically. If a product becomes out of stock, the ad will automatically be paused until the product is available again. This is a real time saver.

Another important advantage is Auction Time Bidding (ATB), which is made possible by SA360’s conversion measurement (Floodlight) and machine learning capabilities. It is possible, for example, to replicate the whole user journey within the search environment and use this information to adjust the bid strategy. With ATB, you also don’t have to bid on keywords any more and there are a lot more insights available to the system, which in turn allows for better results. ATB also optimises your spend and revenue and ensures that the campaign remains within your set parameters. In short, ATB will free a lot of your time and enable you to concentrate on reports and optimisation.

Finally, SA360 allows you to connect multiple ads accounts like Microsoft ads, Facebook, or Neva without logging in individually to each of these accounts. It also simplifies reporting as you can pull reports for all these platforms via SA360.

Can you give us a success story from a SA360 client who was impacted massively by using the platform?

We have many success stories but one of our best examples would be the SA360 implementation we have done for one of our retail clients. One of their biggest challenges was the huge amount of products available (300,00) and the number of markets (30 markets) all managed via Google Ads by only 3 people. Manual ad creation and campaign management was becoming too time-consuming for the small team and they needed to streamline the work to free time that should be spent on reporting and optimisation.

With Incubeta’s help, the client started using the Inventory Management feature which is available in SA360. Campaigns and Ads were automatically generated from product feeds created in SA360. After this was implemented, the team replicated the same process for the other markets using a reusable template. Additionally, the client implemented an Auction Time Bidding strategy that tripled their revenue and saved them a lot of time, thanks to its automation and machine learning capabilities.

SA360 saved a lot of time for the client and increased their revenue, allowing them to invest more into their search campaigns. It also pushed the company to explore new ways to improve their marketing investments by acquiring a GA360 licence and using Big Query to calculate real revenue and profit.

What are some new SA360 features to keep an eye on?

One of the latest updates is that Google improved the integration with Microsoft ads.

Another one is related to Bid Strategy. SA360 now gives more insights on the effects of the used bid strategy, for example on Audience and Keywords performance and costs.