Is the new Search AI feature supposed to help with "Sponsored" 3-pack results?

[Cuoreimpavido]

Hi, I tried using Search campaign and didn't notice much success getting my GBP to the "Sponsored" spot of the 3-pack (4-pack?),
using PMAX campaign I had much more success with that, BUT also got tons of spam, I've got many irrelevant impressions and phone calls from sketchy websites (urls that I can't even access directly from my browser, looks like they require google ads referral to load the page, and all the phones calls I've got was Spanish speaking people looking for a job).

I was wondering if the new Search AI feature can close the gap between these 2 options, allow me to appear in the Sponsored spot but without losing money on advertising on websites and platforms I'm not interested in (basically I'm only interested in Google SERP + Google Maps, nothing else is really relevant for our type of emergency services).

Thanks!

 

[Chris Barnard]

Was it a bidding, keyword, or budget issue that prevented your location assets from showing in the Search campaign? Were you bidding on brand and money terms?

I hear you on the PMax, even excluding just about everything and training it tight delivered similar results (lots of spam).

Only one way to find out, test it and let us know how it worked for you.

 

[Cuoreimpavido]

Was it a bidding, keyword, or budget issue that prevented your location assets from showing in the Search campaign? Were you bidding on brand and money terms?

I hear you on the PMax, even excluding just about everything and training it tight delivered similar results (lots of spam).

Only one way to find out, test it and let us know how it worked for you.

TBH I'm not sure. I was only able to appear in search ads (text), my location extension sometimes appeared under the search ads, but not as a sponsored google my business page (it did with PMAX).
My budget and bidding were pretty generous so I don't think that's the issue, and my keywords are the most popular money terms, not brand.

Unrelated question about search campaigns for local business:
I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong with tROAS. When I switch from manual bidding to tROAS, it drastically reduce our impressions/clicks/conversions. I count conversions as phone calls of over 60 seconds, and tROAS bidding did decrease our avg click cost and increased tROAS a bit, but the huge decrease in total impressions/clicks/conversions amount made us lose too much business. with tROAS I wasn't even getting close to my daily budget.

Any suggestions?

 

[Chris Barnard]

If only we could exclude channels on PMax, among other things. Is your industry eligible for LSAs?

I'm guessing this decrease in visibility and conversions is after the "learning phase" has completed, and ran the same amount of time, so you're judging apples vs. apples. But yeah, that would be expected with tROAS. I'd tend to try tROAS with products or ecommerce, not so much a service-based business where costs/customer value fluctuate and depend on different factors.

How about using manual CPC (or Max Clicks) to get the conversions (30-50), then test Max Conversion or tCPA bidding? I tend to favor Max Conv as that should deliver the maximum amount of conversions, whereas tCPA has a goal of delivering each conversion at that cost.

Try running an Experiment to test the different bidding models, and give it enough time to learn/run.