When it comes to PPC account managers, they are held to exacting performance standards. Their efforts are judged by KPIs like CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
Of course, it’s a lot easier to set tough performance standards than to actually achieve them. When there’s more competition, an accountant may have to decide to shorten their time horizon to four months, rather than years, when trying to figure if keeping the gig is the smart thing to do. That leads to something called “Operation Obfuscate,” which is basically fooling the boss by the attributed conversion numbers over the short term.
A column that was written by Andrew Goodman for Search Engine Land is reversing the damage when Operation Obfuscate has sapped the strength of an account that used to have some real customer acquisition power.
Even if the process gets uncomfortable, the path to prosperity usually start with getting back to basics and weeding out all the attribution tricks. In the aforementioned column, Andrew writes about seven different ways PPC accounts can slowly lose their mojo.