Lessons from Search Engine Land’s “Ask the PPC Winners” Panel
A big bonus of our second straight win in the Best B2B Search Marketing Initiative - PPC category in the annual Search Engine Land awards: the opportunity to chat with fellow winners about PPC insights and takeaways as part of the “Ask the PPC Winners Panel,” as Sr. Account Director Thomas Quinlan did on November 19.
Our man, who led the award-winning campaigns for longtime client Customer.io, joined Third Door Media moderator Anu Adegbola, Atra CEO Keegan Brown, and Aimclear Director of Integrated Ad Operations Tim Halloran to talk about topics including:
CRM data integration as an optimization lever
“Unicorn” tactics that blow the ceiling off of growth and performance
PPC trends that will shape 2026 - or emerge over the next 12 months
This post will dig into the highlights and best practices we hope audiences can take to the PPC bank. (You can also catch the full recording on demand below.)
Highlight 1: CRM data can be a growth and performance differentiator.
Whether it’s using lead quality data from your CRM to focus bidding more effectively on high-perfoming keywords and campaigns or (as we did for Customer.io) assigning values to each stage of the revenue-driving process to drive optimization and smarter bidding, your 1PD can and should be used to train Google’s algorithm to work smarter for your brand.
Highlight 2: AI search is changing user behavior and Google’s approach; advertisers must react quickly.
Not only are users migrating from Google to ChatGPT and the like, they’re using Google’s AI tools when they stick to the platform – and Google is intentionally driving more of that behavior. Advertisers need to be vigilant about testing emerging AI levers and campaigns (like AI Max and ChatGPT’s eventual ads) as soon as they have access.
Highlight 3: Value-based ROAS can work wonders for B2B.
Value-based ROAS is a bidding strategy more commonly seen in eCommerce campaigns, but it can be highly effective when B2B brands have a series of down-funnel events whose value can be quantified. Thomas described how the Blackbird team ascribed weighted amounts to those conversion events and optimized bidding accordingly, which was a big factor in the 12% efficiency lift we achieved for Customer.io even as we drove a 239% increase in revenue.
Highlight 4: The basics (campaign structure, negative keywords, guarding against lost impression share) still matter.
In response to Anu’s question about finding a “unicorn” growth and optimization lever in PPC campaigns, Thomas cited a reliance on buttoned-up fundamentals, including identifying the keywords driving qualified actions, leveraging exclusions, rigorously testing ad copy, and building clean campaign structures that allowed optimization opportunities to surface.
For all the award-winning goodness, watch the full video below.
