5 Split Testing Ideas for Your PPC Campaign
As PPC marketers, there are certain A/B tests we are always running — especially in a competitive market like Dubai, where every PPC agency in Dubai is constantly optimizing campaigns to outperform competitors. Landing page, ad, and audience tests are all important, and even the Best PPC agency in Dubai continuously refines these elements to improve ROI.
But if you have been regularly testing these items and are looking for new features and ideas for testing, look no further! Even a results-driven PPC agency in Dubai knows that advanced experimentation is key to staying ahead in paid advertising.
Below is a list of less obvious PPC tests that you should try out — strategies often implemented by the Best PPC agency in Dubai to maximize performance and brand visibility.
Let’s hop in.
1. Test Increasing Brand Awareness with Target Impression Share Bidding
Smart bidding strategies are a way to incorporate automation without relinquishing complete control of your campaigns. Many campaigns managed by a professional PPC agency in Dubai leverage smart bidding to balance efficiency with scale.
Google has a smart bidding type that is perfect for increasing brand awareness: Target Impression Share. This strategy is frequently used by the Best PPC agency in Dubai when the goal is to dominate top-of-page visibility and strengthen brand recall.
Using this smart bidding model, you can choose how often your ads will appear in auctions, along with preferred page position and the maximum CPC you are willing to pay. For businesses working with a reliable PPC agency in Dubai, this approach ensures greater exposure while maintaining cost control and measurable performance.
How to Get Started
This bidding strategy works best when your goal is to increase or stabilize visibility and brand awareness — an approach commonly recommended by a professional PPC agency in Dubai when brands want stronger top-of-page presence.
If your competitors are encroaching on your brand terms, it’s a great time to test Impression Share (IS) bidding. The Best PPC agency in Dubai often applies this strategy to help businesses protect branded keywords and prevent competitors from capturing high-intent traffic.
If you’re seeing cost per leads trending too high and want to decrease the impression share your ads are receiving, you could set the IS at a lower percentage to be less competitive. A data-driven PPC agency in Dubai will carefully adjust this percentage to control costs without sacrificing valuable conversions.
We ran a test for a client who also wanted to increase leads while decreasing costs by lowering IS, which proved to be a delicate balance. This type of performance testing is something the Best PPC agency in Dubai consistently performs to optimize both visibility and efficiency.
If you have a new brand with a core group of highly competitive terms, this could also be a useful bid model. However, you should be cautious and potentially test only a few core terms at the beginning — a phased strategy that any experienced PPC agency in Dubai would recommend to minimize risk while collecting actionable data.
2. Test Competitor Keyword Campaigns
Some advertisers are opposed to competitor campaigns and some are all for them. In today’s competitive paid media landscape, I always recommend at least testing competitor campaigns — something every experienced PPC agency in Dubai evaluates before scaling performance strategies. Even the Best PPC agency in Dubai understands that competitor targeting, when done strategically, can unlock new growth opportunities.
Competitor campaigns are a delicate balance, as they can inflate CPCs and ultimately CPAs. However, when executed properly by a skilled PPC agency in Dubai, they can also help you gain brand awareness among audiences that have already shown strong purchase intent. The Best PPC agency in Dubai typically tests competitor campaigns in controlled phases to ensure profitability is not compromised.
How to Get Started
Head to Auction Insights in the search channels to identify who your biggest competitors currently are — a standard analysis step for any data-driven PPC agency in Dubai.
When drafting ads, make sure not to use the competitor’s name in the ad copy, as those ads will get disapproved. Instead, use this insight to highlight your own brand, emphasize what makes you different, and clearly communicate your unique value proposition — an approach the Best PPC agency in Dubai consistently applies.
Starting with a smaller scope allows you to test the waters before committing a significant budget toward users actively searching for competitors. A strategic PPC agency in Dubai will often recommend phased testing to minimize financial risk.
There are a few ways to do that:
- Start with a limited set of keywords, such as long-tail variations like “chewy.com dog food” instead of simply “chewy.com.” This controlled targeting is commonly used by the Best PPC agency in Dubai to capture high-intent traffic more efficiently.
- Test a limited geographic area. Instead of targeting an entire large region, begin with one specific market segment. Any experienced PPC agency in Dubai understands that geo-testing can significantly reduce wasted ad spend.
- Keep bids low but competitive to maintain sustainability and long-term profitability.
3. Test Dynamic Search Ads
Feel like you’ve plateaued with traffic and can’t find additional ways to grow? Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) may help uncover new keywords and search trends — something many growth-focused campaigns managed by a PPC agency in Dubai rely on for expansion.
DSA had a mixed reputation in the past, but this campaign type has improved significantly since its initial release. Today, the Best PPC agency in Dubai often uses DSA strategically to identify untapped search queries and content gaps.
How to Get Started
I always recommend having a page feed in place. This gives you greater control over a campaign type that, without structure, can quickly become inefficient. A structured setup is standard practice for any professional PPC agency in Dubai.
Always add every keyword you are actively bidding on in other campaigns as a negative in your DSA campaigns. The Best PPC agency in Dubai uses this method to prevent keyword cannibalization.
The ultimate goal of DSA is to either:
- Discover new keywords outside your current targeting that align with your website content.
- Or negate irrelevant queries that fall outside your scope.
By applying both techniques, your DSA campaign may eventually generate minimal traffic — at which point you can pause it after extracting valuable insights. A proactive PPC agency in Dubai closely monitors search queries to ensure DSA remains performance-driven.
Keep a close eye on queries and traffic — this is not a “set-it-and-forget-it” campaign type. The Best PPC agency in Dubai treats DSA as an ongoing optimization process rather than a passive strategy.
With Google rolling out new features and Bing introducing page feeds, both platforms provide strong testing opportunities for a forward-thinking PPC agency in Dubai.
4. Test Broad Match Keywords (Gasp!)
If you’re seeing excellent performance with certain keywords and have room in your budget for experimentation, consider testing monitored broad match keywords. Many campaigns managed by a PPC agency in Dubai use controlled broad match testing to uncover incremental growth opportunities.
How to Get Started
Break these keywords into separate campaigns so they do not interfere with other match types — a structural best practice followed by the Best PPC agency in Dubai.
As with DSA, do not allow broad match campaigns to run unsupervised. Continuous monitoring is essential for any responsible PPC agency in Dubai.
Create a separate negative keyword list that includes previously identified negatives along with modifiers from long-tail keywords used elsewhere in your account. This layered approach helps the Best PPC agency in Dubai maintain control while expanding reach.
Start with low keyword bids to mitigate risk during the testing phase. I would also recommend turning off eCPC (the default setting for new campaigns), since Google may increase bids significantly to drive conversions — something a vigilant PPC agency in Dubai carefully manages.
Set your initial daily budget to half of what you are comfortable spending during testing. Since Google can temporarily exceed daily budgets to capture “valuable clicks,” close supervision from the Best PPC agency in Dubai ensures that testing remains controlled and aligned with your overall performance goals.
Also Read – 5 Best Social Media Platforms To Focus On Your Brand
5. Test Audience Targeting + Demographic Data
There has been a lot of talk about layering In-Market audiences and Custom Affinity audiences into your campaigns for observation.
You can take audience targeting one step further and couple it with some basic demographic targeting for a next-level audience test.
How to Get Started
Run some initial tests on audience targeting and narrow down your desired audience demographics.
Make sure to exclude any demographics that you do not want to target.
For highly desired demographics, say the 65+ age group, consider setting a bid modifier to bid higher for these users. Targeting a larger audience to start may help prevent traffic from being too low to gather performance data.
Keep in mind that targeting and observation layers have different functions and limitations depending on the type of campaign. In order to limit the reach of ad groups in Search to users only in that audience, you’ll need to flip on Targeting.
Create a separate campaign or ad group that looks to target your desired criteria separate from your normal search ad groups.
Group by audience themes. By making these divisions, it allows you to personalize the ad copy and landing pages without throttling traffic from normal search ad groups.
Additionally, when it comes to demographics, I rarely exclude the “unknown” categories.
These categories are often some of my best performers, which leads me to believe that there is likely a good chunk of my target audience hanging out in the shadows.
Conclusion
It can be easy to get into a testing rut after running many A/B landing page and ad copy tests, but there are a lot of great testing ideas out there!
