You know, when you really dive deep into PPC ad platforms, you’ll find all kinds of Hidden PPC Features that can seriously boost your performance and make managing your campaigns a whole lot easier. Some of these Hidden PPC Features are actually “opt-outs,” and they can be incredibly useful when you’re trying to optimize and run things more efficiently. The thing is, these platforms are super complex and constantly changing, so the average user probably doesn’t even realize some of these lesser-known options are available.
What Is PPC?
PPC—it stands for Pay-Per-Click. It’s a type of online advertising where you only pay when someone actually clicks on your ad. Sounds pretty fair, right? One of the great things about PPC platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads is that they offer many Hidden PPC Features to help you optimize your campaigns for better results.
For example, let’s say you run a bakery. You create a Google ad that shows up when someone searches for “best cupcakes near me.” If someone clicks on that ad and visits your website, that’s when you’re charged. If no one clicks, you don’t pay a thing. These Hidden PPC Features can help you control your budget, refine your audience, and track results in real time.
It’s a great way to get targeted traffic to your site—people who are actively searching for what you offer. Platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads are the big players in PPC, and the cool part is, you can control your budget, set your audience, and track results in real time.
So, in short, PPC is all about paying for results, not just exposure
Let’s Uncover 12 Hidden PPC Tricks
Explore some hidden PPC features you can start using today in Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. There might be one or two you haven’t discovered yet—features that could really boost your campaign performance.
Video In Responsive Display Ads
Don’t confuse this with regular video ads or Performance Max assets—this feature is one of the valuable Hidden PPC Features found in responsive display ads. Besides headlines, descriptions, and images, you can upload your own video to make ads more engaging than Google’s auto-generated videos. Google usually won’t show auto videos if you add your own, but you can also manually opt out by unchecking a box during ad setup. This gives you better control over how your ads look and helps keep your message consistent. Here’s a quick rundown:
Key points:
- You can add your own video content alongside headlines, descriptions, and images.
- Using your own video usually creates a more engaging ad experience than Google’s auto-generated videos.
- Google generally won’t show auto-generated videos if you upload your own.
- To be certain, you can opt out of auto videos by unchecking a box in the ad setup.
- This helps you keep control of how your ads look and connect better with your audience.
Call Reports And Recording
If you’re using call extensions or call-only ads in Google Ads, there’s a useful reporting feature that shows detailed info about calls from your ads. But first, you need to opt in by turning on call reporting and call recording in your account settings. If you use a third-party call analytics tool, make sure to enable data sharing with that provider.
After setting it up, go to Reports > Reports > Call details to see call time, duration, and the caller’s number (if available). You can add extra metrics to improve your call strategies. Plus, you can listen to or download call recordings—but remember, recordings are only saved for 30 days.
Key points:
- Opt in to call reporting and call recording in settings
- Enable data sharing for third-party call analytics tools
- Access call details via Reports > Reports > Call details
- View call time, duration, and the caller’s number (if available)
- Add metrics to optimize call engagement
- Listen to and download call recordings (saved for 30 days)
LinkedIn Profile Targeting
Here’s a cool but often overlooked feature in Microsoft Ads that you might not know about. Besides LinkedIn itself, Microsoft Ads is the only platform that lets you target LinkedIn profiles directly in your PPC campaigns. You can focus on people by their industry, company, or job function.
What’s great is that this targeting is “bid only,” so boosting bids won’t reduce your overall traffic. Setting it up is easy but done at the campaign level: go to Settings, scroll to Campaign targets, click Edit target categories, and pick Company, Industry, and/or Job function. You’ll see your selections listed below, with an option to edit.
This feature works across search, shopping, and display campaigns, making it a versatile way to use LinkedIn’s professional data without leaving Microsoft Ads. Definitely worth exploring!
Here’s a quick breakdown:
- Microsoft Ads lets you target LinkedIn profiles by industry, company, and job function—unique among PPC platforms except LinkedIn itself.
- These audiences are “bid only,” so boosting bids won’t reduce overall traffic.
- Setup is done at the campaign level via Settings > Campaign targets > Edit target categories.
- You can select Company, Industry, and Job function targeting options.
- The targeting criteria appear below with an option to edit anytime.
- Available for search, shopping, and display campaigns.
Automatically Created Assets
Depending on how you look at it, automatically created assets can improve performance, save time, and reduce effort in managing your account.
On the other hand, some advertisers really dislike the quality and lack of control associated with Google and Microsoft’s AI-powered feature injecting itself into human-created messaging.
It is tricky to control these settings as they are sometimes hidden and a multi-step process.
In Google Ads, automatically created assets exist at the account level and campaign level.
Account level:
- Sitelinks, dynamic, taking copy from the site to create sitelinks.
- Structured snippets, dynamic, taking a copy from the site.
- Location assets: address, phone number, call buttons, directions.
- Seller ratings: Online ratings and reviews show in ads.
To turn these automated assets off in Google Ads, be prepared for an epic click journey.
There is a nine-step process, but if one of these steps is not appropriate for your business, it’s necessary.
Automatically created assets for ads allow Google or Microsoft to create and add headlines and descriptions in rotation with what you have already provided as a responsive search ad.
Find this in the campaign settings as an opt-in feature. You can access this at the campaign settings level in both platforms to turn on if you wish.
Search Partners
One feature that’s easy to overlook is the way your ads show up on Google’s and Microsoft’s search partner networks. These search partners are other search sites that display ads powered by Google or Microsoft, helping you reach an even broader audience beyond the main search engines.
For instance, Microsoft Ads uniquely serves your ads on platforms like Yahoo search, AOL, DuckDuckGo, and several others, giving you access to valuable traffic that you might not realize is included in your campaigns.
If you want to get a better understanding of how your ads are performing on these search partner sites, there are two main areas you should check out:
- Reporting: Both Google Ads and Microsoft Ads let you drill down into search partner performance. You can do this at the campaign, ad group, or keyword level by using the “segment” option and selecting “Network (with search partners).” You’ll also find detailed network performance data within the report tabs on both platforms.
- Settings: If you notice that traffic from search partners isn’t delivering good results, you can easily opt out. Just head to your campaign settings and deselect the search partners option under the Networks section to exclude them from your campaigns.
CTV Targeting
Consumer streaming video has become the default way to watch our favorite entertainment so it’s time one of the ad platforms creates an easily accessible way to market to our audiences on this channel.
Microsoft ads serves video ads on Netflix’s ad supported plan and over 860 other CTV publishers. Advertisers can target by demographics, location, audiences (including remarketing), and content genre.
Its simple to get started. In the New campaign creation experience in the web interface, create a campaign:
- Select Build brand awareness as the campaign goal.
- Select Connected TV (CTV).
Follow the steps to get started on this new targeting opportunity.
Overlap And Outranking Information
One powerful but often overlooked feature in Google Ads is the ability to generate keyword-level auction insights through custom automated reports. This lets you dive deep into how you’re competing with other advertisers on specific keywords, helping you make smarter bidding decisions. By setting up these reports, you can regularly monitor important metrics like impression share and outranking share, giving you an edge in optimizing your campaigns without having to check manually every day.
Here’s how you can take advantage of this feature:
- Access the Reports section in Google Ads and create a custom report.
- Choose the output as a table and configure it by keyword, competitor domain, and quality score (such as ad relevance).
- Include important metrics like:
- Search overlap rate (sort from high to low to see where competition is fiercest),
- Impression share (your visibility compared to competitors),
- Outranking share (how often you rank above specific competitors).
- Schedule the report to run automatically on a daily or weekly basis and get it delivered to your inbox.
- Use these insights as a regular reminder to review the competitive landscape and adjust your bids to stay ahead.
Content Suitability
For display and video campaigns, advertisers often worry about the quality and type of content their ads will appear alongside.
Selecting an inventory type can help to ensure your brand messaging is limited to serving on brand-safe content types and themes.
Google has created bundles of content types labeled “Expanded inventory”, “Standard inventory,” and “Limited inventory” that address concerns of profanity, sexual content, and violence.
Currently, in the campaign settings, advertisers can find Content exclusions where you can select the appropriate inventory types.
This is changing. Soon, this setting will only be available at the account level in Google Ads renamed Content suitability.
- Tools and Settings.
- Content suitability.
After exploring and then selecting an inventory type, Google provides an “Estimated impact” statistic that shows the potential impact (reduced) on reach.
This is a new tool feature and is good to know to help inform your decision.
After making this decision, please be sure to scroll down to Advanced settings because another world of exclusions awaits your attention.
Here you can get into excluding more specific types of sensitive content and placements such as political content, parked domains, or even specific YouTube channels.
Please note, if you are looking to exclude placements in games, that is not going to happen here.
Game Placements And Topics
Google display campaigns are a great way to generate awareness and get your message out to the right audience.
However, some advertisers find that gaming placements are not a good fit.
If you are selling an app or game, this would be an ideal fit!
But for practically everyone else it could be an inefficient use of budget, for two basic reasons:
- People playing games are involved in a high engagement activity and turning one’s attention from a game to real interest in an ad is challenging.
- Game developers tend to put the ads in easy-to-click places where they will get accidentally clicked, especially by children.
Fine-tuning game placements can help to direct ad serving to more relevant placements. This is accomplished through editing topics targeting to exclude some or all game topics.
Here’s how:
- Click on your display campaign name.
- Content > Topics.
- Pencil icon to edit the topics.
- Select the Adgroup.
- Click edit all targeting.
- Click Add targeting > Topics.
- Excluded Topics pencil to edit.
- See Games topics and check boxes to exclude.
- Scroll to the bottom to SAVE or you will lose your work.
Optimized Targeting In Display
By default, Google Ads enables a feature called “optimized targeting,” which allows your ads to reach users who are similar to your selected audience, even if they weren’t part of your original targeting criteria. This setting helps expand your reach and can save time by automatically finding new potential converters.
However, if you prefer more control and want to limit your ads strictly to the audience or placements you’ve chosen, you can opt out of this feature. To do that, follow these steps at the Ad group level:
- Go to your Display campaign and click the campaign name.
- Navigate to Content > Placements.
- Click the pencil icon to edit placements.
- Select the specific Ad group.
- Click Edit all targeting.
- Go to Settings.
- Find Optimized Targeting and either select or deselect it.
- Don’t forget to save your changes—otherwise, your edits will be lost.
Account Notes Panel
This tool in Google Ads would be great for documenting changes, performance observations, budget changes, etc., in a small to medium account – if only you knew it was there.
The account notes panel allows you to simply add notes for the account. While any changes will be in the change history, the change history is more technical, while the notes are a free-form writing area.
The notes panel can also be opened and then minimized for easy access as one works in the platform. Notes can be made at the account or campaign level.
- From the All campaigns view, a note entered refers to the entire account.
- From an individual campaign view, the note will be applied to that specific campaign only.
Where do you find that elusive notes panel? It is under the More icon.
Conclusion
Optimized targeting in Google Ads is one of the Hidden PPC Features that can be a valuable tool when you’re looking to broaden your reach and let Google’s algorithms find new, high-potential users for you. It’s designed to save time and enhance performance by identifying audiences similar to the ones you’ve manually targeted. However, if precision and control are more important to your campaign strategy, opting out—another of the useful Hidden PPC Features—may be the better choice.
The key takeaway? Understand your campaign goals first. Whether you decide to keep optimized targeting on or turn it off, make sure the setting aligns with your specific advertising objectives. Always review your ad group settings and monitor performance regularly to ensure your targeting strategy is driving the right results.