Sometimes you see a great result which you want to be true, but the truth is often more complicated.

Let’s take the example of one of our clients who was running Display campaigns for mixed brand awareness and lead generation objectives.

They came to me with, on the surface, great looking conversion rate numbers and a pretty standard CTR for a new display campaign. However, they mentioned that the phone calls they saw as conversions did not come through on their side and the phone numbers that were left in the webforms sometimes did not work or the people on the other side of the line could not remember they filled in the form.

So what was going on?
The settings of the campaign were set to use automatic placement for their ads. This means that Google serves the ads pretty much anywhere they can, including on fraudulent sites with bots that click on many display ads. These bots also are able to click the relevant elements on the page that are tracked as a conversion so that they would be included in potential retargeting campaigns.

How did we fix the issue ?
Initially, we played a game of whack-a-mole. We would exclude the fraudulent websites by looking at the placement information in Google Ads, but soon enough other websites showed up. So that didn’t work. Next step was to manually select the websites that the ads would be served on. This requires some research, but it does help from both a brand safety and ad efficiency perspective.

What was the result ?
The result was, if you solely look at the data, not positive, as the CTR and the Conversion rate went down. But the real result was visible in improved lead quality and a higher close rate. Less distraction for the sales team, less wasted ad spend – there were multiple wins.

The moral of the story?
We have a blind spot for things that we want to happen. If you see some results that come much quicker than expected, step back and take a holistic view. And trust that gut instinct you have developed over time. If you haven’t developed that gut instinct yet, feel free to contact us for a quick look together.