Google Ads Interview Questions and Answers

1. What do you feel are the most common mistakes people make with SEM?

The most common mistakes I see are:

a) counting duplicate conversions,

b) tracking vanity conversions,

c) not trying smart bidding (broad match + tCPA or tROAS),

d) keeping display selected on search campaign,

e) not excluding brands and negatives from PMax,

f) not using negatives on search campaigns,

g) not optimizing bids and budgets to scale... the list is long!

2. What are the most important 'house keeping' tasks on a weekly and monthly basis for SEM?

Weekly basis:

a) qualifying search terms as negatives and targeting,

b) making sure conversion tracking and dynamic remarketing tags are working properly

c) Optimizing budget on campaigns based on their performance trends

d) Optimizing bids (tCPA/tROAS/CPC/CPV) based on performance trends

e) Adding new keywords and audiences for scale

f) Reviewing and optimizing placements based on performance

g) Reviewing and optimizing feed issues if any

Monthly basis:

a) optimizing assets based on their performance

b) optimizing (including/excluding) products and ads based on their performance

c) Reviewing and optimizing bid strategies based on performance trends

d) Reviewing and optimizing matched locations for campaigns

e) Reviewing and optimizing device bid adjustments based on performance

and more...

3. Imagine this situation: Our brand terms used to perform very well, but recently performance has started to slip (cost up, earnings down). What would you check/explore to try and solve and improve performance?

The most likely culprit is the change in bid strategy or bid itself. Next I would check the auction insights and see if other competitors are bidding up and accordingly change the bid strategy if needed.

4. What would you say are the main differences for how to optimize Performance Max vs legacy/shopping campaigns?Here are the main differences between PMax and Shopping campaigns:

- PMax can serve on 6 different channels (Shopping would go on search and shopping only)

- PMax can do dynamic remarketing out of the box (for shopping we need to setup a separate dy remarketing campaign)

- PMax is designed to go after brand keywords and known audiences, Shopping would only go after matching keywords

- PMax therefore is better suited for maximizing Revenue and ROAS, Shopping to acquire more new customers

- Shopping can show search terms, PMax is a black box

Therefore, depending on the account goal, I like to test both PMax and Shopping with differ product variants and scale with their respective advantages.