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, car rentals, etc. The client involved us in a project related to the sale of airline tickets.

The challenge

The client wanted to improve ROMI by optimizing ads costs. We had to reduce the cost of conversion to a certain level. And, accordingly, to find and test the tools that will allow us to do so.

Our approach

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

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 the ability to work with campaigns for different search engines in one window: the tool integrates with Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. But our client was promoting only in Google Ads, and this allowed us to test the optimization potential of Search Ads 360.

We’ve integrated the client’s existing Google Ads account with Search Ads 360 and 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 per conversion was expected to increase as the system learned to optimize campaigns. This is an important psychological moment. Don’t panic and don’t turn everything off when you see numbers much higher than expected at the beginning, because it pays off later. By the fourth week, the cost of conversions was equal to the target, and later it even became lower than the target price that we had set in the settings.

Results

The average cost per conversion during the campaign was 11 points (we’ll use a coefficient to avoid violating confidentiality). And throughout the campaign, it fell to 9.3 points, and this value continues to decline.

It should be noted that the number of conversions decreased overall, as the client optimized its marketing budget and managed to reduce total campaign costs. But the average revenue per conversion increased. That is, SA360 began to lead not only cheaper conversions, but also more valuable. 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.”

Serhiy Krutienko
Head of PPC Ticket Travel Network

Conclusions and next steps

Integrating Google Ads with Search Ads 360 and optimizing campaigns through the latter alone has a remarkable effect. It’s a professional tool that takes campaigns to the next level.

As for the potential for further improvement, we want to find a “golden mean” in the issue of cost per conversion – to reduce the target cost per conversion until we reach a plateau. It will also be useful to experiment with a maximum conversion strategy with 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.

Read our manual on Search Ads 360 and how to work in its new version in 2022