The most anticipated event of the year for advertisers has finally taken place this week, so we’re here to catch you up on everything that went on at Google Marketing Live 2026.
For first-timers (or if you’ve been living under a rock), Google Marketing Live is the biggest annual announcement event for advertisers using Google Ads. Each year, Google unveils changes to campaign types, AI features, measurement tools, and platform strategy – updates that directly shape how advertising budgets are managed and results are delivered.
GML2025 Recap
Google Marketing Live 2025 centred on two themes: AI innovation and, to many advertisers’ surprise, greater transparency and control. The headline announcement was AI Max for Search – a one-click enhancement to existing Search campaigns using keywordless technology to reach audiences traditional keyword targeting would have missed. Smart Bidding Exploration followed closely, opening new territory for lead gen through flexible ROAS targets, while Channel Performance Reporting for Performance Max finally gave advertisers the visibility into channel-level spend they’d been asking for. The event’s parting message said it all: “You’re not competing against AI, you’re competing against those already using it.”
You can find our entire coverage on last year’s event here.
Google Marketing Live 2026: The Gemini Advantage
This year’s event theme was ‘The Gemini Advantage’, which focused on the AI-first direction that Google (and honestly, the entire world) is signalling. Specifically, the 2026 Google Marketing Live event was centred around how Gemini is being integrated into the core operating system for Google’s advertising, commerce, and measurement ecosystem – with cross-platform AI collaboration being a key talking point.
Google Marketing Live: The Key 2026 Announcements
This year, Google reiterated their unwavering focus on continuing to optimise and enhance their products with AI capabilities, as well as a commitment to ‘frictionless shopping’. Rather than, like previous years, what feels like an endless barrage of new products and changes, many of the announcements focused on improving the search and shopping experience for consumers, as well as the Google’s product interfaces for advertisers and brands.
Read on for some of the key updates.
AI-Powered Shopping Ads
When someone searches for a product – say, an espresso machine – Gemini pulls up the most relevant products and instantly writes a custom explainer for each, highlighting why that specific product might be the right choice for that specific user. Rather than a static product listing, shoppers get a tailored recommendation built in real time from their query. AI-powered Shopping ads are expected to roll out later this year in the US, so it’s one to get ahead of now – making sure your product feeds are well-structured and your campaigns are built on AI Max and Performance Max foundations will be key to taking full advantage when it arrives.
Ads in AI Mode
Google is introducing a new generation of Gemini-powered ad formats across AI Mode and Search, designed to make ads feel more conversational, contextual and helpful. Rather than sitting above or below the AI response as they do today, ads are woven into the conversation itself – surfacing at the moment a user is actively exploring a topic or weighing a decision. Conversational Discovery ads, for example, are designed to answer a person’s specific question directly inside AI Mode – someone searching for ways to make their home smell like a spa could see tailored creative generated with Gemini that highlights relevant product features. The message from Google was clear: AI Mode is becoming a serious monetisation surface, and advertisers who adapt to conversational formats early stand to benefit the most.
AI Brief
AI Brief is a new way to guide AI Max – and eventually Performance Max – campaigns using natural language rather than settings and toggles. Advertisers write a description of their brand: what to say, what to avoid, which audiences to prioritise, how the tone should feel – and Google uses that as context to generate ad copy. Think of it as handing Gemini the same brief you’d give a copywriter. What makes this genuinely exciting is the strategic implication: it will now be possible to run an A/B test not just between different variations of ad copy, but between different variations of your overarching brand proposition – a meaningful unlock for understanding what’s actually resonating with your audience in market. Brief writing looks set to become a new core skill for PPC practitioners.
Ask Advisor
Ask Advisor is an agentic conversational interface that spans Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Marketing Platform and Merchant Centre – connecting the specialised agents embedded in each part of the Google ecosystem to give advertisers a single place to analyse strategy, diagnose issues and identify opportunities. Google’s pitch is cross-product orchestration: one agent across ads, analytics, commerce and measurement – something that has historically only ever happened in the background. Ask Advisor is available globally for English-language accounts from today, making it one of the most immediately accessible announcements from the entire event. If it delivers on the promise, it could genuinely change the day-to-day workflow of how PPC teams manage and interrogate performance.
What’s Next?
Once again, Google really ensured that the AI agenda was driven home, and that those who adapt their strategies to align with Google’s vision are the ones who will see the benefits.
It was refreshing to see updates to existing products, and a focus on how these will assist in making the shopping experience more seamless for consumers, rather than a barrage of new AI-powered products. Additionally, the focus on helping advertisers to utilise AI for previously time-consuming tasks such as asset creation and ad copy is a welcome one.
Similarly to last year, Google left us with a profound closing remark that reinforced that AI is absolutely here to stay: “Using manual strategies in the algorithmic era leaves you at risk of falling behind.“
The Ecommerce PPC Metrics That Actually Drive Results
Ask ten PPC managers which metrics they’re watching, and you’ll likely get ten different answers. Click-through rates. Cost-per-click. Impression share. The list goes on. The problem isn’t a shortage of data – it’s knowing which PPC metrics genuinely matter for your ecommerce business, and which ones are just noise.
At Circus PPC, we work with ecommerce businesses every day, and one of the most common things we see is budgets being managed against the wrong metrics. It leads to decisions that look good on paper, but don’t translate into actual growth.
So, which ecommerce PPC metrics are actually going to make a difference to your performance? We’ve broken them into three groups: the classics you should absolutely be tracking, some less obvious ones worth adding to your dashboard, and the ones that tend to distract more than they inform.
3 Classic Ecommerce PPC Metrics That Matter
These are the fundamentals – the metrics every ecommerce business should have front and centre when evaluating PPC performance.
Revenue
It sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how often revenue gets buried beneath layers of intermediary metrics. At the end of the day, PPC exists to drive sales. Revenue – the actual money coming through the door from your paid campaigns – is a clear measure of whether that’s happening.
Where businesses go wrong is optimising towards proxy metrics (impressions, clicks, even conversions) without tying them back to revenue. A campaign can rack up hundreds of conversions and still be losing you money if those conversions are low-value or poorly attributed.
ROI (Return on Investment)
ROI gives you the big-picture view of how much you’re getting back for every pound you put in. For ecommerce, this typically means looking at revenue generated against total ad spend – though the most accurate version factors in product costs and overheads too.
A healthy ROI target varies significantly by sector, margin profile, and business stage. A brand in aggressive growth mode might accept a lower short-term ROI in exchange for customer acquisition. An established retailer with tight margins might need that number carefully managed.
POAS (Profit on Ad Spend)
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) gets a lot of airtime, but POAS is another metric we’d encourage more ecommerce businesses to get familiar with. Where ROAS measures revenue relative to ad spend, POAS measures profit – a crucial distinction when your products carry very different margins.
Imagine you’re running ads for two product lines. Line A has a ROAS of 8x but a margin of 10%. Line B has a ROAS of 4x but a margin of 45%. Optimising purely for ROAS pushes budget towards Line A – even though Line B is far more profitable. POAS takes this into account and sees more than ROAS might.
3 Helpful Ecommerce PPC Metrics You Might Not Be Aware Of
These metrics don’t always make it onto the standard dashboard, but they offer a level of insight that can genuinely change how you manage campaigns.
Search Lost IS (Impression Share Lost to Budget/Rank)
Impression Share (IS) tells you what percentage of available impressions your ads are actually showing for. Search Lost IS breaks that down further, showing you how much potential visibility you’re missing – and crucially, whether it’s because of budget constraints or ad rank issues.
This matters because the fix is very different depending on the cause. Lost IS due to budget means you’re simply running out of money before all eligible searches are covered. Lost IS due to rank means your bids or Quality Scores aren’t competitive enough, and throwing more budget at the problem won’t solve it.
Thumbstop Rate
Thumbstop rate is a metric more commonly associated with paid social – particularly Meta and TikTok – and it measures the percentage of people who stop scrolling to watch or engage with your ad. In a feed dominated by content, it’s one of the clearest signals of whether your creative is actually cutting through.
For ecommerce brands investing in social ads, a low thumbstop rate is often the root cause of poor downstream performance. Your targeting might be fine, your offer might be strong, but if the creative doesn’t make someone pause, none of that matters.
Profit vs Loss by Product
This is less a single metric and more a lens through which to view your campaign performance. Breaking down profitability at the product or SKU level – accounting for ad spend, cost of goods, returns, and fulfilment – reveals which products your PPC activity is actually making money on, and which are quietly draining budget.
Many ecommerce businesses are surprised to find that a significant portion of their PPC spend is going towards products that, after all costs are considered, generate little or no profit. In some cases, heavily advertised products could be actively loss-making.
3 Ecommerce PPC Metrics To Avoid Getting Hung Up On
These metrics aren’t useless – but they’re frequently misread, over-weighted, or used as a basis for decisions they shouldn’t be driving.
CPC (Cost Per Click)
Cost per click is one of the most watched metrics in PPC, and also one of the most misunderstood. A low CPC feels like a win. A high CPC triggers concern. But without context, CPC tells you almost nothing about the quality of your results.
A £0.30 click that never converts is far more expensive than a £3.00 click that reliably generates a £150 sale. The obsession with driving CPC down often leads to bidding strategies and keyword selections that reduce traffic quality rather than improving it.
Impressions
Impressions measure how many times your ad was displayed. They’re useful for understanding reach and brand awareness at scale, but for most ecommerce businesses running direct-response campaigns, impressions alone are a vanity metric.
High impression counts can feel reassuring – your ads are ‘out there’ – but if those impressions aren’t translating into clicks, conversions, and revenue, they’re not doing meaningful work. Chasing impression volume can also lead to broader, less targeted campaign structures that dilute quality.
CTR (Click-Through Rate)
Click-through rate measures the percentage of people who see your ad and click on it. It’s a useful indicator of ad relevance and creative quality – but it’s a means to an end, not the end itself.
A high CTR on an ad that drives unqualified traffic is actively harmful: you’re paying for clicks that won’t convert. Conversely, a lower CTR on a tightly targeted, high-intent keyword set might be entirely appropriate if those clicks reliably convert at a strong value.
The Bigger Picture
Of course, there’s no single way of ‘correctly’ tracking, and no metric can claim to be the ‘best’ or the ‘worst.’ However, the metrics you do choose to track aren’t just a measurement decision – they shape how your whole PPC strategy gets managed. When the wrong numbers sit at the top of your dashboard, campaigns get pulled in directions that feel logical but don’t create real business value.
The most effective ecommerce PPC strategies share a common trait: they’re anchored to business outcomes (revenue, profit, growth) rather than channel metrics (clicks, impressions, CTR). The channel metrics have a supporting role – they help diagnose problems and understand what’s driving results – but they never take the wheel.
If you’re not sure whether your current PPC reporting is focused on the right things, it’s worth taking a step back and asking: if every metric on this dashboard looked good next month, would the business definitely be in a better position? If the answer isn’t a confident yes, it might be time to revisit what you’re measuring.
At Circus PPC, helping ecommerce businesses build reports that actually reflect performance – not just activity – is a big part of how we work with clients. If you’d like to talk through how your current setup stacks up, drop us a line.
PPC Agency Not Performing? 5 Signs It’s Time To Move On
If your PPC agency is not performing, you’ll usually feel it before you can fully prove it.
Maybe the results aren’t quite where they should be; updates feel vague; you’re asking more questions than you’re getting answers to; and deep down, you’re starting to wonder whether it’s the strategy – or the agency.
The tricky part? PPC performance isn’t always black and white. So knowing when to stick or switch isn’t always obvious.
Read on for the 5 biggest signs your PPC agency isn’t performing – and what to do about it.
What Makes A Good PPC Agency?
Before jumping ship, it’s worth thinking about what a ‘good’ PPC agency actually looks like to you.
Because if your PPC agency is not performing, the issue isn’t always just results or metrics, it’s usually deeper than that.
A strong, capable PPC agency should deliver across three core areas:
Relationships – You feel like a priority, not an afterthought. There’s open communication, honest conversations, and genuine investment and interest in your success.
Results – Not just vanity metrics, but performance tied to your business goals. Revenue, pipeline, and profit – not just clicks and impressions.
Expertise – You’re not paying for button-pushing – you can do that yourself! You’re paying for thinking, strategy, experience, and the ability to adapt when things change.
If one (or more) of these are missing, it’s often the first sign your PPC agency isn’t performing the way it should be… or the way you want it to be.
5 Signs Your PPC Agency Is Not Performing
‘Guaranteed’ Performance
No matter who you’re working with, nobody can guarantee a certain level of performance. Whilst there are best practices that should be followed when it comes to PPC, even the most experienced of agencies or individuals can’t be 100% sure of how campaigns will perform.
Unfortunately, like most things in life and in business, not everything can be in our control. External factors such as consumer behaviour, market activity and competitor behaviour can massively influence and affect the success of PPC performance.
Promises of or certainty around future performance should always be taken with a pinch of salt.
Lack of Communication
Being ghosted by your agency? Yeah, that’s not normal.
Whether performance is flying or failing, communication from your agency should always be consistent, transparent, and honest. An agency that’s hiding information, or lacking in meaningful communication, is a huge red flag and shouldn’t be ignored.
Whilst different agencies have different ways and frequencies of working and communicating with clients, you should (at the very least) be receiving updates and reports detailing performance on a consistent basis.
Without communication, how else can you be expected to collaborate effectively?
Refusing Account Access
Under no circumstances should you ever be refused access to your own ads account.
If your PPC agency isn’t performing and is also gatekeeping access, that’s a serious issue. Your ad account is your asset – not theirs.
At best, this creates unnecessary friction. At worst, it’s a lack of transparency that prevents you from understanding what’s actually happening with your spend.
Also, let’s face it – a good agency has nothing to hide.
Reactivity, Not Proactivity
If the only time you hear from your agency is when something goes wrong, that’s a problem.
A high-performing PPC agency doesn’t just react to dips in performance – they’re constantly looking ahead. Testing, iterating, and spotting opportunities before they become obvious.
If your agency is only making changes after performance drops, they’re not managing your account – they’re firefighting it.
Lack of Strategic Insight
Working with a PPC agency is a significant investment, and with it comes the expectation that you’ll receive strategic insights that help guide and improve your account performance.
If all you’re getting is surface-level reporting (‘clicks are up’, ‘CPC is down’), your PPC agency is not performing at the level you’re paying for.
You should be getting:
- Clear explanations of why performance is changing
- Recommendations tied to business outcomes
- Ideas that go beyond the ad platform itself
Otherwise, you may as well be running the account yourself.
When Should I Switch From A PPC Agency That’s Not Performing?
There’s no perfect moment to make a change – but there is a point where staying becomes more expensive than switching.
If your PPC agency is not performing, and you’re consistently:
- Not seeing the performance you were promised
- Feeling like you’re being ghosted
- Struggling to get access to your own account
- Only seeing changes when something goes wrong
- Still leading the strategy yourself
…then it’s time to ask some honest questions.
Good agencies will welcome conversation and questions. But if nothing changes? That’s your answer.
Because the longer you stay with a PPC agency that isn’t performing, the more opportunity (and spend) you’re leaving on the table!
Working With Circus PPC Agency
At Circus PPC, we’ve built our approach around the three things most agencies claim – but don’t always deliver: results, relationships, and expertise.
We’re not about hiding behind dashboards or overcomplicating performance.
If something’s working, we’ll scale it.
If it’s not, we’ll tell you – and fix it.
Simple as that.
Whether you’re working with a PPC agency that’s not performing, or want a second opinion on your current setup – we love talking all things PPC (it’s in our nature… and our name)! Drop us a message here.
Meet The Team – Caitlin
Caitlin heads up our Paid Social team, ensuring that we’re delivering the best possible service, results and strategy for clients across their Paid Social accounts.
Get to know Caitlin here…
Name: Caitlin Dillon
Role: Senior Paid Social Manager
What first made you want to pursue a career in Paid Social?
The fact you need a mix of different types of skills – I’m naturally really analytical and that’s important for our roles, but bridging that with creativity to lean into the ‘connection first’ nature of social media is really fun.
What’s your favourite thing about working at Circus (so far)?
The team! I’ve had such a warm welcome to the agency and feel like I’m surrounded by great people every day.
Who is your dream client?
Working with non-profit organisations always feels like we’re using our skills for the best purposes there is. I volunteer with Childline as a counsellor, so I suppose supporting the NSPCC with their paid media activity too would be a dream for me!
If you could solve one Paid Social issue forever, what would it be?
A measurement solution that’s magically right for every business.
What’s your dream holiday destination?
I want to visit most countries so this question is impossible! Currently planning a trip to Sicily, though.
What would your desert island meal be?
I’m a small plates fan, love sharing little bits of everything, so it would defo be something along those lines.
Tell us something about you that might surprise people.
I collect records!
If you could guest star on a TV show, which one would it be and why?
Gilmore Girls
Meet The Team – Esther
Esther works as part of our Paid Social team, driving results and strategy for clients across their Paid Social channels.
Get to know Esther here…
Name: Esther Jackson
Role: Paid Social Analyst
What first made you want to pursue a career in Paid Social?
I fell into managing the organic social media for a retail company and then taught myself the Paid Social side – very much enjoyed both.
What’s your favourite thing about working at Circus (so far)?
How friendly everyone is and the general vibe in the office.
Who is your dream client?
Charlotte Tilbury.
If you could solve one Paid Social issue forever, what would it be?
The usability of the Meta platform.
What’s your dream holiday destination?
Sri Lanka.
What would your desert island meal be?
Rudy’s pizza.
Tell us something about you that might surprise people.
I was part of a Bollywood Commercial in India.
If you could guest star on a TV show, which one would it be and why?
The Traitors – I think I would make a good traitor.
PPC 2026: The Expert Predictions
The role of PPC has changed dramatically over the past few years – and 2025 accelerated that shift faster than most businesses expected.
Automation, AI-driven campaign types, and reduced data visibility have transformed how PPC is planned, managed, and measured. As a PPC agency working across multiple industries and platforms, we’ve seen first-hand which advertisers adapted – and which struggled to keep up.
Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, successful PPC won’t be about chasing every new feature (though understanding new features will be paramount). It will be about strategy, creativity, and understanding how PPC fits into wider business growth.
In this post, our PPC agency experts share their predictions for what will matter most in 2026.
2026 PPC Predictions from Our PPC Agency Experts
To understand where PPC is heading next, we asked our PPC agency specialists one question: what do you think is going to change within the PPC landscape in 2026?
Inny Vaiciute, Senior PPC Manager:
“Google Ads will improve reporting and performance visibility for Demand Generation campaigns which will help us understand how to best use Demand Gen to support overall marketing activity.”
What this means for brands: Clearer reporting will help brands use Demand Gen more intentionally to support awareness, consideration and performance goals. It should also make it easier to optimise creative and budgets based on real impact rather than assumptions.
“Next year, Google is likely to push its integrate AI or ‘Ads Advisor’ in Google Ads, particularly for creative development – making asset generation and optimisation a bigger part of PPC strategy in 2026.”
What this means for brands: This could help brands improve creative consistency and performance without significantly increasing production costs. It also places more importance on strong brand inputs and messaging frameworks to guide AI outputs effectively.
Ahmed Chopdat, Chief Strategy Officer:
“First party data is going to be gold dust. With it comes clearer insights that will allow advertisers to make much better decisions around account optimisation.”
What this means for brands: Access to high-quality first-party data will allow brands to optimise accounts with greater confidence and precision. It also increases the value of investing in data infrastructure beyond paid media alone.
“In 2026, winning PPC will start earlier than the search. Upper funnel and demand gen investment will drive cheaper CPCs, warmer audiences, and more efficient performance than ‘traditional’ search alone.”
What this means for brands: Building demand earlier should make search activity more efficient by lowering CPCs and improving conversion rates. It also encourages brands to think beyond search as a standalone growth lever.
Chloe Tetmajeris, Senior PPC Manager:
“Phrase Match is finally going to be sunset by Google, and we’re just going to have access to Broad Match and Exact Match.”
What this means for brands: Simplifying match types could streamline account management and testing. However, brands will need to be comfortable trusting automation while tightening safeguards elsewhere.
“Google will continue its expansion of ad placements across more than traditional search ads.”
What this means for brands: Broader placement expansion could support discovery and consideration alongside traditional search. Brands that adapt creative and measurement accordingly are likely to benefit most.
“Advertisers will see a bigger spike in cross-network conversions from video ads, especially if Google continue to push the likes of video shopping in YouTube Shorts.”
What this means for brands: Video ads could play a bigger role in driving downstream conversions across Google’s network. This gives brands more reason to invest in video earlier in the funnel to support performance.
“Old school PPC strategies will be left in the dust when ads come to the AI overview.”
What this means for brands: This shift could favour brands that already think beyond search as a conversion-only channel. It also creates new opportunities for those willing to experiment early.
Paid Search In 2026: The Key Takeaways
We don’t want to state the obvious, but AI is going to continue to be a BIG player during 2026 and beyond.
Not only are brands seeing the effects of AI-driven changes to the search engine results page, but also how Google is pushing the AI agenda with campaign types, agentic features, and more.
The buyer journey will only become more complex, meaning that it’s more important than ever for brands to focus not only on driving conversions, but reaching those earlier on in the journey with focused upper funnel activity and brand awareness campaigns.
Data is, of course, another huge topic that will continue to be at the forefront of strategy moving forward. First-party data will become hugely important for brands and advertisers, not just for targeting, but for giving platforms better signals to optimise against as automation continues to increase.
As Google takes on more of the decision-making within accounts, the role of PPC will shift away from manual levers and toward strategic input – from defining the right audiences and conversion signals to feeding platforms with strong creative and brand messaging.
Winning in 2026 won’t be about finding loopholes or clinging to legacy tactics, but about understanding how paid search fits into a wider marketing ecosystem and using it intentionally to support long-term growth, not just short-term results.
Ready to future-proof your PPC strategy for 2026 and beyond?
Circus PPC Expands Service Offering With Paid Social Department
Circus PPC is excited to announce the expansion of its service offering with the launch of a dedicated Paid Social department, marking an important milestone in the agency’s continued growth as a performance-driven marketing agency.
As client needs evolve and the digital landscape becomes increasingly multi-channel, Circus PPC is investing further in specialist talent to ensure clients can reach and engage audiences across every relevant touchpoint through strategic campaigns. The new department strengthens the agency’s ability to deliver joined-up strategies that combine performance, creativity and insight across platforms.
Welcoming New Talent
To lead this expansion, Circus PPC has welcomed Caitlin Dillon as Senior Paid Social Manager and Esther Jackson as Paid Social Analyst, both of whom joined the agency at the beginning of 2026.
Caitlin joins Circus PPC from fellow Leeds agency Journey Further, where she built extensive experience managing and scaling campaigns for ambitious brands across multiple platforms. In her new role, Caitlin will head up the new department, working closely with clients and internal teams to develop high-performing strategies across platforms.
Esther brings a strong mix of in-house and agency experience, giving her a well-rounded understanding of how paid social supports wider business objectives. As Paid Social Analyst, Esther will play a key role in campaign execution, testing and performance analysis, ensuring insights are translated into continual optimisation and growth.
Strengthening a Multi-Channel Paid Social Approach
The launch of the department reflects Circus PPC’s commitment to delivering integrated, multi-channel strategies that support long-term performance growth. By aligning paid social with the agency’s established PPC expertise, clients can benefit from a more holistic approach to performance marketing – one that considers the full customer journey rather than isolated channels.
The expansion has been led by Chief Strategy Officer Ahmed Chopdat, who has overseen the agency’s growth as part of its long-term strategic vision.
“Bringing Caitlin and Esther on board marks an exciting chapter in our growth. By uniting their specialised skills with our established PPC team, we are strengthening our commitment to delivering the comprehensive, multi-channel strategies that allow our clients to reach their most ambitious marketing objectives. Very exciting times ahead!”
Paid Social Services: Looking Ahead
With the addition of paid social services, Circus PPC is even better positioned to support brands looking to scale through data-driven, audience-first marketing strategies. The new department enables closer collaboration between search and social, unlocking greater efficiencies, clearer insights and stronger overall performance.
As the team continues to grow, Circus PPC remains focused on what it does best: combining specialist expertise with a transparent, results-led approach to help clients achieve meaningful, sustainable growth.
If you’d like to learn more about Circus PPC or discuss how PPC and paid social could work for your business, get in touch with the team today.
Black Friday 2025: The Ultimate PPC Strategy and Checklist For Success
Black Friday 2025 is just around the corner – and with it, one of the biggest opportunities of the year for businesses to boost sales, attract new customers, and dominate their markets.
Whether you’re running an eCommerce brand, managing client campaigns, or planning your biggest sale of the year, now’s the time to build a powerful Black Friday PPC strategy that ensures you’re ready when the rush begins.
To help, we’ve created the ultimate Black Friday checklist – full of proven Black Friday PPC ideas, expert insights, and actionable steps to help you prepare, perform, and profit.
Download the checklist here, or read on for more useful tips and insights.
Your Black Friday 2025 Steps To Success
Plan Ahead For Black Friday
A winning Black Friday 2025 strategy starts long before the event itself. Early preparation is often what separates successful campaigns from the rest.
- Review last year’s data to understand what drove performance.
- Audit your website to ensure it’s fast, secure, and mobile-friendly.
- Prepare your ads, product feeds, and content well ahead of time.
Planning early gives you the flexibility to test, optimise, and launch with confidence when Black Friday 2025 arrives.
Craft Compelling Black Friday Campaigns
When it comes to Black Friday strategy, creativity and clarity are key. Your audience will be flooded with offers – so your message needs to stand out and inspire action.
- Write powerful, benefit-led copy that highlights your best offers.
- Use countdown timers, limited-time messaging, or exclusive deals to drive urgency.
- Keep branding consistent across all platforms, from ads to landing pages.
- Tease offers early to build anticipation, then maximise conversions on the day.
The best Black Friday strategies are those that blend creativity with strategy – connecting emotion and value for your customers.
Optimise Your PPC Performance
When Black Friday is in full swing, both speed and strategy matter. Keep your campaigns agile, and make decisions based on live data.
- Monitor performance and adjust bids or budgets in real time.
- Track which products and audiences are converting best.
- Ensure your analytics and tracking are up-to-date for accurate results.
- Review website performance and fix any slow-loading pages immediately.
A well-optimised Black Friday strategy means staying alert, flexible, and data-driven throughout the event.
Review, Learn and Keep the Momentum Going
The days following Black Friday are just as important as the sale itself. Analysing your performance helps you refine and improve for future events.
- Review campaign data to see what worked best.
- Continue remarketing to users who engaged but didn’t convert.
- Capture insights to shape your 2026 Black Friday PPC strategy.
A great campaign doesn’t end on Black Friday – it evolves from it.
Get Your Free Black Friday 2025 Checklist
Ready to make Black Friday 2025 your most successful sales event yet?
Download our complete Black Friday 2025 Marketing Checklist – designed to help you stay organised, optimise performance, and outperform the competition this peak season.
👉 Download the Black Friday 2025 Checklist and start building your most effective campaign yet.
Image Attribution: Black friday sale icons created by inkubators – Flaticon
How to Outsmart PPC Competition This Q4 (Without Blowing Your Budget)
Q4 is the quarter we all anticipate (and sometimes dread). With Black Friday and Christmas on the horizon, it’s no surprise PPC advertisers feel the heat – serving much bigger in-market audiences while bracing for fierce bidding wars and PPC competition.
Retail giants like Amazon and eBay dominate impression share with massive budgets, while smaller competitors deploy sneaky tactics like brand-term bidding to knock others off balance.
PPC is, at its core, a game of strategy – only you’re playing with real money that needs to deliver a return.
The Stakes: Why PPC Competition in Q4 Is Different
During Q4, search volumes don’t just rise – they surge. High-intent shoppers flood the SERPs, and with them comes intensified PPC competition. Additionally, higher CPCs mean mistakes are more expensive than ever.
Consumer expectations are sky-high: fast shipping, tempting discounts, and seamless mobile experiences. Even loyal customers are willing to shop around when every brand is shouting for attention. To win, advertisers must plan ahead, anticipate these shifts, and ensure every pound works harder.
3 Tips To Beat Your Competitors
We all know there is no one-size-fits-all strategy that drives ‘good’ PPC performance. The same goes for fighting PPC competition – success is dependent on a number of factors including industry, budget, and seasonality.
However, there are some things that shouldn’t be avoided when it comes to optimising your PPC ads against competitor activity.
1. Highlight Your USP
Even in crowded markets during a saturated time period, your USP can cut through. Tailor your messaging, and creatives to address customer pain points, and test ad variations early to get ahead of rising CPCs.
2. Defend Brand Terms
Competitors bidding on your branded keywords can drain traffic. Bid defensively, use compelling ad extensions, and monitor Auction Insights to respond swiftly.
Tools like Adthena’s Brand Activator can also help to strategically defend your brand without wasting spend where it’s not required – our fashion client saved a total £425k of budget across brand campaigns, with the Brand Activator recognising when competitors are bidding on brand terms, and pushing organic listings to save budget when competitor ads don’t appear. These savings were reinvested into Bing and drove an average 87X ROI during the summer months.
3. Analyse Competitor Campaigns
Use tools like SEMrush or SpyFu for competitor keyword research, set up Auction Insights alerts, and consider conquesting campaigns strategically. Staying informed lets you adapt faster and avoid costly missteps, whilst also remaining a step ahead by keeping your eyes peeled for competitor behaviours.
How To Get Started
Beating PPC competition isn’t about the biggest budget – it’s about the smartest strategy. Sharpen your USP, protect your brand, and study your rivals to thrive in Q4’s chaos.
We have plenty of tips, tricks and insights to help you to refine your strategy and make important changes in time for Q4. Check out our Black Friday Guide or Black Friday Checklist, or if you’re a homeware brand, download our Homeware PPC Tips Checklist to get ahead of the PPC competition and drive measurable growth.
Or chat to our team about how we can help you have the best and most profitable Q4 ever! Drop us line here.
Homeware PPC Tips: Tackle Ecommerce Challenges With Smarter PPC
This guide shares essential homeware PPC tips designed to help you overcome the biggest ecommerce challenges – from reducing wasted ad spend to aligning inventory and marketing.
The homeware sector is under pressure. From rising advertising costs to supply chain disruption and fierce competition, brands face more obstacles than ever in scaling profitably. For marketing professionals, the challenge is clear: how do you improve performance when so many challenges stand in the way?
PPC Tips for Homeware Brands
Before we dive into some of the biggest ecommerce challenges that homeware brands are facing right now, let’s talk about the positive – every online homeware retailer is in the same boat.
Rising ad costs, supply chain disruption, competition, and AI are just some of the struggles that stand between homeware brands and ecommerce success, but it’s those that adapt sooner, makes changes quicker, and work smarter, that are going to reap the benefits when others continue to fall behind.
Our smarter homeware PPC tips will help you to get rid of waste, optimise your strategy, and ultimately, improve efficiency and increase the ROI of your paid advertising efforts.
The 7 Key (Current) Homeware Challenges – and the Tips to Beat Them!
1. Rising Ad Costs
After comparing the CPCs of some of our homeware clients YOY, we saw a total 22% increase in CPCs – and they are only going up. Rising costs are especially painful for homeware brands, who often carry products with mixed margins and face longer buyer consideration cycles for big-ticket purchases.
Tip: Focus on smarter audience targeting, improve CTR and Quality Score with creative testing, and diversify spend away from Google Ads alone.
2. Supply Chain Disruptions
One of the toughest e-commerce challenges is ensuring ads reflect real-time stock levels. Running campaigns for unavailable products wastes budget, frustrates customers, and potentially sends them to competitors who do have the desired product in stock.
Tip: Use inventory feed automation to pause ads when stock runs out and test local inventory ads to highlight products available in-store.
3. Returns & Fraud
High return rates and fraudulent activity eat into profits – especially for bulky furniture that is expensive to ship, store, and handle.
Tip: Adopt value-based bidding to focus on customers with higher lifetime value, filter risky traffic, and ensure your ad copy sets clear expectations to reduce mismatched orders.
4. Inventory Management
Homeware brands often juggle overstock, seasonal peaks, and unpredictable demand. A lack of collaboration between inventory and marketing means campaigns can actually work against profitability – if the wrong products are being promoted.
Tip: Run dynamic campaigns linked to stock feeds so budget automatically flows to in-stock, high-margin products.
5. Tech & AI
Disconnected systems create data blind spots. Meanwhile, AI bidding strategies can seem daunting to implement, but the brands that lag behind risk missing out on insights that competitors are already leveraging to win customers.
Tip: Invest in feed automation tools and integrate CRM data for personalised targeting. Combine AI bidding with human oversight for the best results.
6. Labour & Talent
Logistics bottlenecks and talent shortages make it hard for in-house teams to manage both operations and advanced PPC campaigns.
Tip: Hire skilled logistics staff to strengthen fulfilment and partner with a PPC agency for homeware brands (like Circus PPC!) to ensure your campaigns are proactive and efficient.
7. Competition
From global retailers to niche DTC disruptors, competition in homeware ecommerce is intense. Some have larger budgets that make visibility more expensive, so using smarter PPC to your advantage is essential.
Tip: Defend your branded search terms, highlight your unique selling points in ad creative, and consider carefully targeted competitor campaigns.
Final Takeaway: Turning Pressure into Performance
These homeware PPC tips are designed to help brands face rising costs, inventory issues, and fierce competition head-on. PPC, when managed smartly, doesn’t just generate clicks – it increases efficiency and fuels growth.
💡 Bonus: Download our Printable PPC Checklist for Homeware Brands to put these tips into practice today.
Get Your Homeware PPC Tips Checklist 👇
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Common PPC Questions (That You Might Be Asking Too)
🤔 “What is PPC?”
PPC stands for ‘pay-per-click’ and is a type of online advertising where advertisers pay a fee to the associated advertising platform when their ad is clicked. It’s often used by advertisers and businesses to drive traffic and reach specific audiences by bidding on keywords that are relevant to the product they are advertising. When someone searches for one of these keywords, and clicks the ad, the advertiser pays for the click.
❓ “Who is the best PPC agency”
The best PPC agency partner for you and your business is completely dependent on your goals and needs. Some agencies (like Circus PPC!) focus solely on PPC and have the experience and expertise to effectively manage and improve PPC performance. Full-service agencies offer PPC management alongside other marketing channels.
🫰 “How much does a PPC agency charge?”
Different PPC agencies charge different management fees – and some of the things this can depend on are location, ad spend, and service offering. Some of the most common pricing models include percentage of ad spend, hourly rate, and fixed retainers.