Unlocking PPC Campaign Potential: How to Protect Ad Budgets from Returning Users

With digitalization accelerating rapidly, marketers are increasingly eager to tap into a growing online audience. As more users access the internet through smart devices, marketers see a massive opportunity to build loyalty and engagement through personalized strategies and reward programs. The numbers are staggering—according to Data Reportal, 5.44 billion people globally were using the internet by April 2024. However, with this vast audience comes a hidden threat: returning users unknowingly eating into advertising budgets. These users, though beneficial in building brand loyalty, are actually preventing digital campaigns from reaching their full potential and are hurting ROI. Without proper measures in place, marketing teams are risking significant losses in ad spend.

The Silent Barrier to Success

Returning users have created an unforeseen problem for PPC campaigns. In their effort to return to a familiar brand, they often click on paid search ads that are part of a company’s pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. While seemingly harmless, this action slowly drains marketing budgets and drives up customer acquisition costs (CAC). This is especially concerning as ad budgets that were intended to acquire new users end up being wasted on existing ones.

In fact, we’ve observed cases where companies allocated 97% of their branded keyword budgets to returning customers—leaving their PPC budgets nearly drained without generating any new conversions. Additionally, the data from these campaigns becomes misleading. When returning users inflate the click-through rates, it can create a false sense of success. Marketing teams, misled by these metrics, could end up reinvesting in strategies that appear to be effective but fail to deliver genuine new conversions. This misallocation of resources leads to further losses over time.

As the digital landscape becomes increasingly competitive, wasting ad spend is a luxury few companies can afford. Research by Wordstream reveals that up to 29% of PPC budgets go toward bidding on brand keywords. Therefore, it is critical that marketers not only focus on attracting new users but also on ensuring that returning users are not inadvertently contributing to budget wastage.

Preventing Unnecessary Losses

To combat these issues, marketers need to implement specific strategies that protect their ad budgets without alienating their loyal customer base. Several tools and methods can help:

• Click fraud threshold: marketers can set limits on how frequently a user can interact with an ad. By placing a cap on the number of clicks allowed per user, they can ensure that returning visitors are not excessively driving up CACs. This also serves as protection against non-genuine traffic, like bot clicks.

• Shadow campaigns: another highly effective method is the use of shadow campaigns, which are duplicates of existing campaigns. These duplicates can be shown exclusively to returning users at a much lower cost, while the original campaign remains focused on acquiring new visitors. Shadow campaigns ensure that loyal users can still access the site through paid search, but they do so without negatively impacting the ad budget meant for customer acquisition.

Maximizing Results

As the competition in the online marketplace intensifies, marketers must prioritize making the most of every dollar spent. A growing audience and heightened demand mean there’s tremendous potential to increase revenue, but only if ad budgets are effectively managed. Marketers need to be vigilant in ensuring their PPC efforts are targeted toward new users who will contribute to the bottom line, rather than inadvertently wasting resources on returning visitors.

By leveraging tools like custom verification rules and shadow campaigns, marketing teams can strike a balance between keeping returning users engaged and ensuring that CACs remain under control. These strategies will help marketers safeguard their PPC investments, reduce unnecessary spend, and optimize campaign performance to achieve the highest possible return on investment.

With these solutions in place, marketers can not only protect their ad budgets but also fully capitalize on the opportunities presented by a growing online market, allowing them to stay competitive and profitable in the long term.