Hagakure is the new fashion word in the Google Product Expert community. It is essentially a method used in Japan to structure and optimize Google Ads campaigns, taking full advantage of machine learning, automated bidding and dynamic search ads.
Actually, this word that now begins to sound in Europe had already been used in Japan for more than two years. Then it was reinforced with a new system: Gorin. And it even evolved even further and now they apply a new and improved system: Mugen.
The thing is, Google has embraced the Hagakure concept and is evangelizing Europe’s most beloved partners.
Ok, but what is Hagakure
Hagakure (葉 隠) means “in the shade of the leaves” or “hidden in the leaves”). However, Hagakure is also a literary work on the thoughts and sentences that provide knowledge about the philosophy and behavior of the Bushido spirit, that is, a book that all young samurai used to learn the rules that governed the lives of warriors .
This campaign structure uses two important automated tools in Google Ads search campaigns, which are:
- DSA (Dynamic Search Ads)
- Bid Automation
The pre-Hagakure campaigns were highly segmented and the data was too scattered, preventing dynamic optimization. In other words, the algorithm is not able to bring out its full potential to shine in hyperpigmented or overly granular structures.
In Google Ads, the bid strategy method works at the campaign level. If you have multiple bid strategies across multiple campaigns, you are decentralizing the information. All of these bid strategies are less powerful separately than if you put them all together in one campaign.
What are the changes ?
To take full advantage of all the functions, we must make sure that our account data is grouped efficiently.These are the 5 changes that are recommended to implement to follow the Hagakure method in Google Ads:
- Use one URL for each ad group.
- Keep only URLs (landing pages) with a significant volume of visits.
- Create campaigns corresponding to product categories.
- Create dynamic search ads to capture queries with less volume.
- Use audience-based IF functions to generate ultra-relevant ads.
Google experts have come to realize that there is a need to simplify the structures of AdWords accounts so that automation (which they increasingly favor) optimizes campaigns.
This would be our example of campaigns for a clothing store following the Hagakure method in comparison with SKAG structure (credit image:https://www.effilab.com/blog/google-ads/hagakure-adwords/) :
So , it is the end of SKAG structure ?
This is not the first time that a serious competitor to SKAG structure has popped out, I have met few of them during this years that yet have not dispute the skag efficiency so far, before Hagakure , it popped out the STAG structure, which consist in “Single theme ad groups focus on themes rather than syntax, ensuring there are three to five similar themed keyword concepts per ad group.” (check this post in Wordstream)
But when it comes to Hagakure , I strong believe that this is a game changing for Advertisers as smart bidding is taking over the bidding strategies across the industry. So The most important question remains: If we structure our account in this way, will we obtain better results? While an approach like SKAG (Single Keyword Ad Group) focuses on delivering the most relevant ad to the user, Hagakure focuses on the automation features available in Google Ads and makes them work for us . This improves relevance as well as your ROAS (Return on Advertising Investment).
Conclusion
I believe , at some extend SKAG will be dead soon enough as we’re clearly heading towards a period of simplification after a period of overcomplication and being too granular in account structure. SKAG may not completely go away but it will certain get reduced to fewer use cases.
With smart bidding, looser match types, question is if even separating match types into separate ad groups in certain scenarios because some advertisers rather have a cleaner account structure and an easier time testing ads. If the ad groups are tightly themed and there’s not a ton of intent deviation in the queries, I don’t think it matters much.
We will still use SKAG but not nearly as much as we used to 2 years ago, and the transition has began. What do you think about it ?