Google removes broad match modifier – what is the impact?

There is a major change coming for PPC advertising with Google. They have announced that by July 2021, some of the ways in which search ads are targeted won’t be available anymore. In particular, the broad match modifier, which made it so that ads were targeted widely to a variety of related searches, will be ‘merged’ with another type of targeting, phrase match.

How would this actually impact performance, and what should advertisers know and do? Łukasz Wojnowski, our PPC Manager explains:

Simply stated, this move is yet another way in which Google allows less control of advertising and tries to increase advertiser spend.

Google claims that with the new approach they will help users to reach their potential goal faster, simplifying life of all people working with Google Ads in the same time. They don’t expect any actions to be taken from advertisers, meaning current BMM keywords will keep delivering under the old rules, but can we be sure about this? There is a need of data monitoring towards the change, since everyone would prefer to avoid transition of BMM to general broad and gaining more impressions, some more (not necessarily relevant) clicks, hence higher spend.

That said, even though Google claims that there will not be any effect on the existing keywords, there is indeed some more action expected from advertisers before the roll-out. We would definitely recommend to analyse the pros and cons of the switch, consider either adjusting BMM to phrase, or creating duplicates in order not to lose history. There are also several additional steps we would recommend, even though the overall impact is still unknown.