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What is anomaly detection, if not the ability to detect the unexpected?
“Expect the unexpected” is a frustrating scrap of fortune cookie wisdom that tends to come up whenever life throws a sudden curveball.
You can have your entire day planned down to the minute, but all it takes is one flat tire to derail all of that scheduling.
The reality is that life is too chaotic and random to truly expect the unexpected. You don’t have enough data.
Luckily, your PPC campaigns have more than enough data to enable proper anomaly detection.
This discussion will look at the impacts of anomaly detection in marketing and how the right approach will allow you to predict the future in PPC marketing through some intelligent tool.
Let’s get started.
There’s no such thing as a magic crystal ball to help you predict the future. That said, changes in your data allow you to anticipate what’s about to come.
Anomaly detection in marketing is your ability to recognize, track and analyze substantial deviations in your data from expectation.
With your PPC data constantly changing, anomaly detection is your ability to swiftly recognize shifts, trends and outliers.
The faster you detect an anomaly, the easier it is to respond.
In the case of a negative anomaly, you’ll mitigate how much potential damage the change causes. Detecting an unexpected positive change means you have the opportunity to be one of the first to capitalize.
You can group most anomalies into one of the following categories.
The obstacles of multi-channel optimization hint at an overarching problem that marketers universally face: data overload.
Data holds unlimited value. You can learn about your audiences, how to improve your strategies, how to spend your marketing budget and more.
The problem is that your marketing strategies produce too much data to feasibly manage and analyze on your own. This is particularly true for anomaly detection because you often have to find contextual clues to explain the event.
To counter the complexities of your marketing data, you need to invest in an automated anomaly detection tool.
This type of marketing automation software uses artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to scan your marketing data for anomalies and other notable changes in performance.
Uncovering these occurrences is one of the cornerstones of successful PPC marketing. These insights inform how and when to optimize your strategies.
Often, anomalies present subtle clues of larger events unfolding. The detection process helps you forecast these events with greater accuracy.
To better detail the advantages of AI-based anomaly detection, here are several primary benefits of this type of software.
By discussing these advantages, you’ll gain a fuller understanding of what AI brings to the table in marketing.
This is perhaps the most obvious benefit. AI-based anomaly detection is largely automated, meaning not nearly as much effort or work is required.
Any time you automate a task, you remove 95% of that responsibility from your to-do list. The remaining 5% is the effort it takes to review the tool’s changes or recommendations.
When you automate an extremely tedious task, like anomaly detection, the benefits are even more remarkable.
What makes anomaly detection so tedious? As mentioned, the main problem is data. More specifically, though, it’s that anomalies hide much deeper in your data than trends, shifts or outliers.
This means you have to analyze more segments of your data to uncover and understand an anomaly.
AI-based anomaly detection helps you reach these deep PPC marketing insights without having to work harder.
Saving time is an immediate effect of AI-based automation and anomaly detection. When you have to spend less effort on a task, it means you get it done in less time.
Again, we’re talking about 95% of the effort is off your shoulders thanks to AI-based anomaly detection.
This also means that it saves you the hours you would otherwise spend detecting anomalies with traditional, manual means.
Saving time in marketing is a massive asset because you only have so many hours available to commit to your marketing. Tasks that eat into this limited resource make it harder to complete other tasks on your marketing to-do list.
So, when you’re able to automate and save time, it doesn’t just make your life easier. It makes you more time-efficient.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to optimize your marketing campaigns, but optimizing your time is much trickier. Automation is just one of the few ways to do it.
Every hour you save on detecting anomalies through AI-based software is time you can spend on other marketing tasks, like dazzling your audience with fantastic customer experiences.
Time wasted is money wasted, right? Detecting areas of wasted spending in your Google Ads account is a major part of your job as a PPC manager.
To maximize your results and ROI, you have to optimize how you spend every dollar and cent. The goal is to find areas that produce positive returns and not negative ones.
The challenge is that it’s often hard to determine where you’re wasting money. It may take you weeks to realize that rising click costs in a particular ad group are eating huge chunks of your budget.
With AI-based detection, you can catch early warning signs of problems and correct them before you waste hundreds of valuable ad dollars.
“But isn’t AI-based anomaly detection itself very expensive? Won’t I spend more on the tool than I save?”
This is a common misconception. When we hear buzzwords like “sophisticated AI” and “advanced machine learning,” our brains immediately see dollar signs.
In reality, advancements in machine learning and AI have made these tools more effective and more accessible. There are many AI-based anomaly detection tools to choose from, many with affordable price points to cater to smaller and medium-sized companies and agencies.
AI-based anomaly detection isn’t just a matter of saving you time. This technology yields deeper analysis and overall better results. You can truly discover the individual tactics that move the needle up or down.
Plus, AI technology is less prone to make mistakes (although not immune to it), meaning you’ll have more consistent and more accurate insights to work with.
In terms of timing, AI-based anomaly detection software does more than help you make better use of yours. It also enables you to make faster campaign optimization decisions.
In a hyper-competitive marketing environment, agility is crucial. There’s more value to gain if you can respond faster to new trends and changes than your competition.
Imagine, for instance, that a new topic relevant to your business suddenly explodes in popularity. If no one is capitalizing on this trend, you can be the first to develop content, ads and other materials to capture this traffic.
Once competitors pick up on the same trend, your costs increase, it’s harder to secure top ad ranks, generate clicks, etc.
Bottom line: you want to be the first to respond to any change, whether positive or negative and AI-based anomaly detection helps you achieve this.
To recap this discussion so far: anomaly detection is important, but can be challenging and time-consuming. Yet, if you can automate this process through AI, you’ll see many tremendous benefits.
Thus, the question changes from “What is anomaly detection?” to “How do we get started with AI-based anomaly detection?”
The answer to this query is simple: PPC Signal.
PPC Signal is like a 24-hour babysitter for your Google Ads account.
While you’re busy with other tasks, the AI-based Google Ads management software is watching your ad campaigns like a hawk, looking for any shifts, trends, outliers or anomalies.
This means PPC Signal isn’t just the best anomaly detection method for marketers, but also the best complete Google Ads management tool.
Instead of constantly stressing over your PPC big data, you can use PPC Signal to extract the most crucial details automatically. No more overwhelming spreadsheets or complex analyses.
You receive a steady stream of performance-related actionable insights. You can mitigate risks and prevent a loss in performance or swiftly capitalize on opportunities to increase your results.
There’s almost no manual analysis required. You can start making data-informed adjustments to your PPC campaigns in just a few clicks.
How does PPC Signal take you from raw data to action in a handful of clicks? Let’s take a look at the tool’s main dashboard.
The design of the PPC Signal dashboard is exceptionally user-friendly. The straightforward layout allows you to see and browse all of the active signals in your account.
What’s an active signal? You can think of it as a complete insight covering a notable change currently happening in your Google Ads account.
Every signal includes all of the details you need to understand and act on the change.
You can see what’s changing, when it started, how substantial the change is and more.
In the above sample, there are currently 21 signals. That’s 21 significant changes happening to your Google Ads account right now.
For a more extensive account, you could have hundreds of active insights ready to be investigated. To make it easier to find the ones that matter most to your goals, you can filter your dashboard signals.
For example, let’s say your main objective is producing revenue. You might elect to filter your signals to only show ones involving conversions. Suddenly, you have just a small handful of insights.
Aside from filtering by metrics, you can also look at a particular campaign, ad group or even a single keyword. Another option is to filter by dimensions like device type or the hour of the day.
You can explore any signal to receive more information, including an interactive chart that allows you to compare metrics alongside one another.
With this feature, you can quickly get to the bottom of any trend, shift, outlier or anomaly in your data. This makes it easier for you to act swiftly to resolve risks and capitalize on opportunities.
Let’s take a look at some anomalies detected by the PPC Signal system. This will help you see how easy it is to find data abnormalities in your data with this tool. It’ll also showcase how different anomalies impact your performance.
Many metrics in PPC share close relationships. These correlations form expected patterns and behaviors. When your data behaves counter to these expectations, it’s known as an inverse correlation anomaly.
This is the case with the following sample:
Conversions and clicks share one of these correlating relationships. The expectation is that if your clicks increase and more people migrate to your landing pages, your conversions should also rise.
In this instance, the opposite is happening. Even though your clicks are rising, conversions are actually decreasing.
This raises several red flags. The most significant of these flags relate to your costs and ROI. Since you pay per click, more clicks mean higher costs. If you aren’t able to offset those costs with more conversions and revenue, it hurts your ROI.
The PPC Signal system makes it easy to detect this unexpected pattern and find the cause. Is this just a random occurrence or is there a larger problem causing you to lose conversions?
This is another excellent example of an inverse correlation anomaly. Impressions are increasing, but clicks are decreasing.
Typically, the two metrics should be traveling in the same pattern. If your ads are generating more impressions and views, you have more opportunities for clicks. You don’t expect your CTR to decline just because your ads see more views.
With this anomaly automatically detected thanks to PPC Signal, you have the chance to get to the bottom of why the data is behaving this way and resolve it.
Is a competitor’s new ad copy pulling clicks away from your messages? Perhaps a change you made to your own ad copy isn’t resonating with audiences.
Again, PPC Signal allows you to answer these questions swiftly and take actions that consistently improve your campaign performance.
Anomalies in your marketing data often mark much more prominent risks and opportunities. If you can detect these odd occurrences early on, you can prevent issues that may be wasting your ad spend, while also recognizing emerging opportunities.
Anomaly detection in marketing helps you avoid unexpected swings in performance. This allows you to more accurately and consistently track and improve your performance and returns.
The biggest obstacle to detecting anomalies is data. The PPC Signal system solves this problem by automating the detection and analysis of anomalies. This means that all you have to do is select an anomaly insight from the tool’s dashboard and take action. You can detect and resolve anomalies, whether positive or negative, in just a handful of clicks!
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a magic marketing crystal ball that accurately depicts the future of all of your strategies. However, anomaly detection does give you pretty good foresight. With this level of accurate forecasting, you can anticipate upcoming shifts, trends and other events with greater speed and efficiency.
AI-based technology is changing how we answer, “What is anomaly detection?”
In the past, marketers could detect and remove outliers. Still, the complexity of these data events made it too time-consuming to get to the bottom of why these abnormalities occurred.
Yet, this “why” holds tremendous value because anomalies are not always one-off, random events. They are frequently signs of much bigger issues and opportunities.
Today, anomaly detection utilizes AI technology to make it easier for marketers to detect, understand and act on these unexpected patterns in their data.
PPC Signal is the best anomaly detection tool for PPC marketers. It is a complete Google Ads management tool that shows you every noteworthy change happening across your accounts.
With this marketing automation software, you can act swiftly on the latest changes and consistently work towards improving your account.
Creating positive changes to your campaigns takes only a few clicks — no more tedious analysis and overwhelming spreadsheets.
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