Our Favorite Chrome Extensions for PPC

We already shared with you a list of our favorite Chrome Extensions for SEO, but we wanted to make sure the other side of the shop was represented, too, so we asked them what their favorite Chrome extensions were for PPC (pay per click, or paid advertising). They were kind enough to give us their picks, and now we’re sharing them with you. Each entry includes a little peek into what our PPC gurus use the extension for, and a link to the Google Chrome Store so you can use them, too.

Why use Google Chrome?

Google Chrome is the browser of choice for DOM. You’ll find it the favorite of many marketing companies. It’s cross-platform, synchs up with a Google account, and stores all of the information you accumulate in the cloud, where you can always access it. You can be plugging away at your PC at the office and easily swap over to a Mac or even an iPhone to check how your ads look on mobile. It’s also no surprise that it works very well with Google’s other products, like Google Drive, making its implementation as part of a workflow easier than swapping Word docs in email.

The other big reason to use Chrome is the entire point of this post: the extensions. Other browsers have similar functionality, but no other platform has as robust and broad a selection of helpful extensions. They’re like little apps that you can use to do things the browser can’t do on its own. If you still don’t want to use Chrome, don’t fret—many of these extensions are still available in some form or another on their respective websites (like Safari or Edge extensions). You’ll have to check those out for yourself, but the links below will guide you.

Here they are: our favorite extensions for PPC

If these extensions have a theme, it’s this: making your ads better. That can be accomplished in a variety of ways, and it’s a job that pulls from many disciplines, as you’ll see.

1. Google Tag Assistant

This is the first extension on this list that is developed by Google itself, so you know to expect quality and reliability. It also works seamlessly with the products that go along with it, like Google Ads. This extension specifically checks a page for the tags Google uses, from Adwords Conversion Tracking to, yes, Google Tag Manager. This extension also includes a recording feature to “record a typical user flow to and through your website and instantly validate, diagnose, and troubleshoot issues with your Google Analytics implementation.” You will find yourself using this a lot because you’re going to be using Google Analytics a lot, right? Of course you are.

2. Page Analytics by Google

This extension technically isn’t supported by Google anymore (as of March 2019), but they assure us that it will continue to work, hopefully until they decide to create a replacement. As it is, there just is no other utility that works as well as the Page Analytics extension. It gives you a full Analytics report of any page you navigate to (as long as you’re logged in). You get all the insights you expect right from the source itself, and you don’t have to leave the page you’re visiting. 

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s Digital Advertising Account Coordinator Carl Zappa:

“The extension provides a quick, on-page, live snapshot of your Analytics data. All of the top-level stats are available (Pageviews, Unique Pageviews, Average time on the Page, Bounce Rate, and Exit %)—and quite flexible as you can plug-and-play the specific datasets into your dashboard however you like. Beyond being able to see your metrics while viewing your live page content, the Analytics Extension also conveniently shows a visual representation of which links and buttons are (and are not) being clicked on by displaying a colored heatmap or a pop-up graphic with the percentage of clicks above each link.”

3. Facebook Pixel Helper

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. This extension does exactly what you expect. Think of it as the Facebook version of Google Tag Assistant, except instead of looking at the data gathered up by Google, you’re looking at the data gathered up by Facebook’s Pixel. If you are advertising on Facebook (and, let’s face it, you probably are), then you are hopefully tracking conversions and other advertising metrics using the Facebook Pixel. The Helper extension lets you see how conversions are flowing through Facebook and your website and how effective your ads have been in driving traffic where you want it to go.

4. UET Tag Helper (Microsoft Ads)

If you’re detecting a theme in the extensions our advertising experts use, you’re not hallucinating—a big part of a successful ad strategy is measuring how your ads are leading your customers to the right pages, and many of these extensions are made to help you do exactly that. This one is in keeping with the theme, as it does exactly what it says on the tin: it helps you with Microsoft Ads tags.

Once you install this extension, it will tell you (with a simple UI) whether the tags you’ve implemented for Microsoft’s advertising network are working correctly. The entire panoply of Microsoft’s ad tags are covered by this extension, which will tell you if the tag is working as intended, and a little snapshot of the information it’s gathering.

5. Builtwith

The internet did not spring from the head of Zeus like Athena, fully-formed, and ready to serve you ads. It had to be built, brick by brick, line of code by line of code, piling up on top of what came before it. But this isn’t a list of web developers’ favorite Chrome extensions, so why is Builtwith on this list? Because even advertisers need to know the lay of the land, and Builtwith is perfect for its detailed reports of every analytic code, CMS, developer platform, web server, and framework used by any website you encounter. Information is an advertiser’s best friend, and BuiltWith provides it.

6. Grammarly

We’ll let Digital Advertising Account Manager Ryan Norman explain how an advertiser might need to use a service like Grammarly:

“Grammarly provides a solid review of grammar and spelling. I drop blog posts, email text, and ad copy into Grammarly as a final check for myself. I especially appreciate the spelling check. Sometimes I compose ad copy in Excel (which doesn’t have spell check) with formulas in place to count my characters to fit ad platform character counts—and inevitably I’ll have made a few spelling errors. Grammarly has helped me avoid personal and professional embarrassment by checking my spelling before I publish new content.”

7. Keywords Everywhere

Keywords are the building blocks of any ad strategy, but sometimes you need a little help figuring out which ones to use. This extension pops up on Google and Bing to serve you “related” keywords as well as “people also search for” results in a little widget off to the side of your search results. We don’t need to tell you how useful that information can be in crafting an ad strategy. This extension will help you know where you are and where you need to be with the keywords you’re using and the keywords you should be using. 

If you have any questions about how PPC can work for you, get in touch with us today.

To get more information on this topic, contact us today for a free consultation or learn more about our status as a Google Premier Partner before you reach out.