One Tiny Toggle

How a small change to the default Google Ads setup could have big consequences for your next marketing campaign.

Warning: Google’s Broad Match Now On By Default

Every other week, our Google ads correspondent Jyll Saskin Gales walks us through the latest platform changes. Jyll spent six years at Google in a senior ad role, and today runs the Inside Google Ads training program.¹

Summary

Broad match keywords in Google Ads now default to “on” for new campaigns.

Existing campaigns are unaffected unless the setting is manually changed.

Broad match uses more signals and can show ads on related searches, not just exact matches.

Benefits of broad match include leveraging context and potential new features like brand name advertising.

Negative keywords and search terms reporting have been improved to include misspellings and impressions without clicks.

Watch the Interview

Edited Transcript

I have been reading a ton about this new broad match default setting. What is happening here?

When you set up a new search campaign in Google Ads, there's a setting called broad match keywords. This box has been there for some time. If you turn broad match keywords on, Google will ignore all the match types of your keywords in that campaign and set everything to broad match. If this setting is off, Google will respect your match types.

Until recently, the default was off and you could use match types as you please. Now, if you set up a new search campaign, the default is that this broad match keyword setting is turned on.

Practically, this means if you don’t notice, you add your keywords in phrase or exact match, and once you hit save, Google's going to remove your match types without telling you. In the future, if you add keywords to that campaign, even if you add them with phrase or exact match types, the moment you hit save, Google strips out your match types.

This sounds like a bad idea. Is it? Am I reading this wrong?

For Google, it's probably a very good idea. I joke that for my [Google ads coaching] business1 , it's a good idea. But yeah, I don't think this is a very good idea.

I see a lot of confusion happening because most people who use Google Ads are not experts. They're following some tutorial as they go through to set up their campaigns. If they notice their match types are disappearing, they will probably have no idea why. Especially if you start working on an existing campaign and don’t think to check this new setting in the campaign settings, you could end up frustrated, trying to figure out why your match types keep disappearing.

It’s important to note that no changes are made to existing campaigns. If you have existing search campaigns with your match types, those will work as intended. But if someone turns on the setting accidentally or on purpose in an existing campaign, or when setting up a new campaign, this could impact the kinds of searches you’re eligible to show on. Broad match means you’re eligible to show on any user search related to the idea of your keyword, versus exact match, which means you can show on searches that at least share the same meaning as your keyword.

We've seen all platforms broaden out targeting. Google has been aggressive with this, especially with Performance Max when it first launched, then they tightened things up a little here and there. But this sounds like another move toward opening it up. I guess the theory inside Google is that AI will sort it out. Is this just trying to collect more data for machine learning?

It is. Google really wants us to use broad match.

Does it make Google more money? Sure. But there are potential good reasons to use broad match. One is that broad match incorporates more signals than exact or phrase match. It will use the context of your website and other keywords in the ad group to help figure out what search is to serve on, while exact and phrase don’t do that. Kind of like how a smart bidding strategy incorporates more signals than a manual bidding strategy.

There’s also broad match inclusions, where you can use broad match keywords to advertise on your brand name, something you couldn’t do before. So, there are potential benefits to using broad match. If you’re at large budget levels, I’d absolutely recommend broad match.

There’s a common feeling that while you go in and type keywords like inexpensive shoes, fashion shoes, cheap shoes, can you compare broad match now to 10 years ago? Today’s broad match is absolutely smarter than it was two years ago. Exact match today is probably the way broad match worked five years ago. Things are getting broader, but I give Google credit that negative keywords are also getting broader.

Now, negative keywords will exclude misspellings as well. So, Google is broadening both positive and negative keywords, leading to a fundamental shift in how keywords work. Google Ads is no longer about picking exact searches and showing ads. It’s about picking general ideas and themes and letting machine learning do the rest.

Yeah, there was a whole industry around the Keyword Planning tool. With broad match, can you tell me about the reporting? Do we have transparency?

You do have transparency with a big caveat. You have your search terms report, but many search terms are not visible and get bucketed under other search terms. Google has made advances; you now see searches with impressions even without clicks. Recently, Google announced misspellings will show up in the search terms report. You can see more in your search terms report today than two years ago.

Be sure to check out Jyll’s Inside Google Ads training program¹

Facebook Will Summarize Comments on Your Ads

Many brands spend a lot of time curating the comments on their social media ads — replying to the questions, praising the good comments, hiding the bad, and so on. Some do it on their own; some hire agencies like ours to do it for them.

Regardless of how these brands handle it, it’s been clear for more than a decade that comments on social media posts — paid or organic — can make or break a reputation.

AI coming to comments

So you might be surprised — or not — to learn that Meta plans to throw a wrench into it with their new AI Comment Summaries.

These will appear at the top of Facebook post comment sections, and will try to wrap up what the general vibe of the comments below are. Certainly a nice touch for users, but this could be disaster for risk-averse brands.

The downsides

For one thing, AI gets it wrong more times than it should. It’s also not great at understanding evolving Internet-speak, though that might be less of an issue on Facebook than on, say, Snapchat.

There are a few controls

The big question — can you turn this off on your brand page? Yes and no.

Yes, there is a setting to remove a comment summary from a single post…

…but no, there’s no way to guarantee it won’t keep adding them to your brand’s posts in the future.

They do have a toggle switch which claims to disable these summaries on your posts entirely…

…but there’s one big catch. Right below that toggle, Meta says that regardless of where you set that on/off switch, these new AI comment summaries may still show up on your ads, whether you, the advertiser, wants them or not.

A nice touch for users

To be fair, this does exist on other platforms and they can be helpful. I’ve joined several YouTube lives and there’s been a quick summary of what people were saying in the live chat before I joined.

Not everyone is a fan

Paramount Offers TV Ads for Small Businesses

If you’ve ever wanted your brand to get more into television and video streaming, one major player just made it a lot easier.

Paramount’s ad division is rolling out a new self-service ad platform aimed at small- and medium-sized businesses that might be new to television advertising.

Low budgets welcome

In the past, of course, getting your ad on TV meant phoning an ad rep, having several three-martini lunches, and coughing up a lot of money. Paramount says campaign budgets can be as low as $500.

Don’t have an ad yet?

They’ve also licenced tech from Waymark, which produces AI-created video content. You know how these work by now — you give it your brand web site or upload some assets and it makes an underwhelming video just a tiny step above a PowerPoint slide with animations.

They’re also using a company called Spaceback to turn social media posts into TV-ready ads. That will be coming later in the year.

Basic targeting for now

As for targeting, you can pick the geography and demographics, and Paramount says it can push your ads out to the right people in that group using your first-party data you upload to their platform.

Shorts to Have Thumbnail Editing; Still No Customs

YouTube moved pretty fast to capitalize on the vertical video trend made popular by TikTok. They called their version Shorts and by all accounts, it’s done quite well.

One thing they didn’t copy, to the confusion of many, was the ability to add a custom thumbnail to your Short. Take a look at almost any TikTok profile page full of videos and you’ll see how important thumbnails can be.

Shorts Thumbs aren’t critical

But that’s only if you’re getting to videos from that bio page.

Most discovery — whether it’s TikTok, Shorts, Reels, or similar formats — happens when a video just starts playing after the previous one. No thumbnail is shown because, unlike YouTube’s longform videos, you’re not really picking which video to watch; you’re being fed them.

Small edit function coming

Still, YouTube says it’s working on a way for you to edit the Shorts thumbnail it auto-generates for each upload.

The company announced yesterday they’re testing letting brands and creators edit those images by adding text or filters to it.

Still not the solution many marketers and influencers want, but at least it’s part way there.

In Brief

YouTube: YouTube is testing a new feature called Community Spaces aimed at boosting fan engagement. This feature will let brands and creators interact more closely with their audience through dedicated community hubs. more

Instagram: Instagram now lets users add multiple audio tracks to their Reels. You can add up to 20 tracks in a single Reel. Once added, you can trim them to include only the part you want. more

Google Docs: In the next two weeks, Google Docs will roll out the ability to convert pasted markdown copy into its documents. Markdown is a lightweight language that lets you add formatting elements to documents quickly. A couple of years ago, Google added some lightweight markdown support. Once this month’s rollout is done, you’ll be able to paste markdown, import a markdown document, or export a document as markdown. more

Apple: You know those bottom-feeder clickbait Taboola ads everywhere — “95% of low credit customers in [city name here] just got millions!” and “You won’t believe what skin cream this influencer just swam in!” Of all the apps you wouldn’t expect those parasite ads to be in, did you think Apple would be on that list? It’s true. Apple this week announced it will now let Taboola sell ads in its News and Stocks apps. You won’t believe how much Taboola’s stock rose after the announcement!!! (It was 20%.) more

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