Google Display Network

Google Display Network:

What Is the Google Display Network?

Google AdWords is split into two networks, the Search Network and the Display Network. When advertising on the Search Network, businesses place text ads in the search engine results. On the Display Network, businesses instead place display ads on a huge network of sites across the internet.

Display advertising is a type of online advertising that comes in several forms, including banner ads, rich media and more. Unlike text-based ads, display advertising relies on elements such as images, audio and video to communicate an advertising message.

The Google Display Network allows to you connect with customers with a variety of ad formats across the digital universe. This network spans over two million websites that reach over 90% of people on the Internet. It can help you reach people while they’re browsing their favorite websites, showing a friend a YouTube video, checking their Gmail account, or using mobile sites and apps.

Right place, right time. That's the power of the Google Display Network

Display advertising lets you

• Create all types of ads - text, image, interactive and video ads.
• Place those ads on websites that are relevant to what you’re selling.
• Show those ads to the people that are likely to be most interested.
• Manage and track your budget, campaigns and results as you go.

Watch the video

How it works:

The AdWords has two main networks: Search and Display. The Adwords Search Network reaches people when they’re already searching for specific goods or services. The Display Network helps you capture someone's attention earlier in the buying cycle. For example, if you run an art supply store, you can catch a mom's eye when she's reading reviews about the best brands of washable paints, but before she puts her toddler in the car seat and heads out to buy.

Get inspired with different ad formats.

The Google Display Network lets you place ads on a variety of news sites, blogs and other niche sites across the internet
to reach more potential customers. Learn more about display ad formats.

• 
  Text Ads on websites
• 
  Image Ads on websites
• 
  Video Ads on websites
• 
  Ads on Mobile Websites

Find the right audience

The Google Display Network is designed to help you find the right audience across millions of websites. It lets you be strategic and put your message in front of potential customers at the right place and the right time.

• Reach users by keywords and topics: To find you an audience who’s interested in your business and more likely to take action, AdWords uses contextual targeting based on your keywords or your campaign’s specific topic area.
• Select where your ads appear: Within the Display Network, you can select types of pages or specific websites for your ads, as well as audiences to show your ads to. With manualplacements, you can show your ad on specific webpages, online videos, games, RSS feeds, and mobile sites and apps that you select. You can even block your ads from sites you don't think are relevant.
• Find users who are already interested in what you have to offer: Show your ads on Display Network websites to specific groups of people, e,g, those who have previously visited your site by creating a remarketing campaign. To reach TV-like audiences on a broad scale and drive brand awareness, you can use affinity audiences. To reach specific audiences ready to make a purchase in a specific product or service area, you can use in-market audiences.

Use a variety of ad formats

Display is your chance to engage users with appealing ad formats. Text, image, video, or rich media formats can appear on the Display Network. Color and motion attract attention. Animation or video can tell a story. The AdWords Display Network makes it possible. 

Meet your goals

Display ads give you a chance to make a more lasting impression on people. Here are some common goals that you can achieve by advertising on the Display Network:

• Sell more products or services
• Build customer loyalty
• Engage with customers
• Increase brand awareness

Measure your results

AdWords lets you measure how well you’re meeting your goals. See exactly on what webpages your ads ran, which ads deliver the most clicks, and which sites give you the most sales for the lowest cost.

Based on your campaign reports, you can adjust your targeting and bidding strategy to get the most value out of your campaigns. When data shows that a click from a Google Network page is more (or less) likely to help you meet your specific goals—such as online sales, registrations, phone calls, or newsletter signups—the AdWords system may automatically reduce the adjust your bid helping you stay on budget, gain value, and reach your business goals.

Display Network getting started guide

What does it take to get ads on to the Google Display Network, which is comprised of over 2 million sites, videos, and mobile apps that partner with Google to show ads?

In this guide we’ll walk you through the key decisions you’ll make when building your Display Network ad campaign, using a travel agency as an example. Follow along with your own business in mind, and you’ll have the building blocks to create your own basic "Display Network only" campaign in AdWords by the end.

What is a display ad?

An example of display ads.

Display ads are the visual banner ads you see on advertising-supported sites everywhere, like the highlighted ads above.

Build Your Ads

Great ad campaigns start with great ads. The Display Ad Builder tool within AdWords lets you easily create any ad for free.

• Create free, professional-looking image ads in minutes.
• Choose from hundreds of templates and customize the colors, fonts, and layouts of every ad.
• Use images from our stock files, from your computer, or even straight off your website.
• Update your ads easily, or create new ones for each offer.

Ready to create your own vibrant image ad?

Watch the interactive demo and follow the steps below.

1. Log in to your Google account at www.adwords.google.com.
2. Go to the campaign where you'll be running the new ad and click the 'Ads' tab.
3. Click 'New Ad' and then select Display Ad Builder.
4. Customize and save your ad.

Launch Interactive Demo.

Already have text ads in your account?

The tool provides pre-made image ads for you using your text ads. You can add these ads directly to one of your campaigns, or customize them further if you want.

See your suggested image ads now

Ad Formats:

Text ads

Write text ads with clear and compelling language about exactly what you offer. You’ll want ad text to relate to the keywords you’ve chosen and the landing page where you send people who have clicked that particular ad.

You can also use other ad formats like image or video ads. You can upload an image or video ad you've created directly to your ad group. Or, you can make use of pre-made templates to build a custom image or video ad in just minutes with your logo and product images.Other ad formats

Image ad

Luxury cruises for $1,000 a night. Book now!

According to Google, the Display Network reaches over 90% of global internet users expanding across 2 million sites!

Where ads might appear in the Display Network

When you advertise on the Google Display Network, your ads can appear across a large collection of websites, mobile apps, and video content. Here are some examples:

• Google AdSense publisher sites, including AdSense for Domains and AdSense for Errors
• DoubleClick Ad Exchange publisher sites
• Google sites such as Google Finance, Blogger, and YouTube (Google web search not included)

With over 2 million Display Network sites that reach over 90% of Internet users worldwide (Source: comScore), there are a lot of opportunities to reach customers. However, to target your customers effectively, choose campaign settings and add targeting methods to your ad groups that specify the conditions for when your ads can show on the Display Network.

Targeting methods available for your ad group

Targeting methods are used to match your ad to places or audiences on the Display Network. When you advertise on the Display Network, you have many targeting options. Before choosing an option, it’s important to understand the concept of a placement. Placements are locations on the Google Display Network where your ads can appear. A placement can be a website or a specific page on a site, a mobile app, video content, or even an individual ad unit.

Let’s take a look at three categories of targeting methods:

Contextual targeting: Match relevant site content

You can target based on relevant website content in two ways: Keywords: First, choose words and phrases relevant to your products and services. Then, AdWords looks for sites with content related to your keywords, to show your ads. Your ad may also show on websites that someone visits after they’ve visited another site that is related to your keywords. When you add keywords to an all features campaign that targets the Display Network, you’ll find the keywords on the Display keywords tab, under the Display networktab. Topics: Similar to keywords, this lets you place your AdWords ads on website pages about the topics that you choose. Instead of developing a list of words or phrases, you choose categories of information, such as “Autos and Vehicles.”

With keywords and topics, Google selects relevant placements on the Display Network based on website content and other factors, to show your ads. These placements are labeled automatic placements in your statistics table on the Placements tab.

Learn more about contextual targeting, choosing keywords for the Display Network, or targeting websites about specific topics.

Audiences: Reach specific groups of people

You can target your ads based on audiences in these ways: Audiences: Depending on your advertising goals, you can choose the audience that best matches your customers. To drive brand awareness, use affinity audiences to reach TV-like audiences on a broad scale. To reach as many potential customers as possible with an affinity for a specific product area, you might try addingcustom affinity audiences. To reach specific audiences actively shopping for a product or service, use in-market audiencesinstead. Interest categories: This allows you to reach people interested in products and services similar to those your business offers. When you target interest categories, you can show your ad to people who demonstrated specific interests, regardless of whether your ad correlates with the particular topic of the page or app they're currently on. You’ll find interest category targeting alongside remarketing in your account. Remarketing: This option can help you reach people who have previously visited your website while they visit other sites on the Google Display Network. You’ll find remarketing alongside interest categories in your account. Demographics: This option allows you to reach people who are likely to be within the age, gender, and parental status demographic group that you choose.

With audiences, you don't manually select places to show your ads. So, the sites or apps where your ads appear based on these methods are labeled "automatic placements" in your statistics table on thePlacements tab.

Learn more about different types of audiences you can reach, adding audiences to your ad group, using remarketing or demographic targeting.

Managed placement targeting: Select specific websites and apps

When you hand-pick the placements on the Display Network, these placements are labeled "managed placements" in your statistics table on the Placements tab.

Managed placement targeting allows you to pick individual sites, or mobile apps where you want to show your ads. For example, if your typical customer spends a lot of time on a specific website and you want your ads to appear there, you can add it as a managed placement.

Learn how to add managed placements, or target YouTube, or mobile apps.

How to target your ads on the Display Network

Choose an eligible campaign type

When you choose a campaign type, such as "Search Network with Display Select" or "Display Network only," this broadly determines where customers will be able to see your ads. Your campaign sub-type, for example, “Standard” or “All features”, determines which campaign settings and options are available, such as the types of ads you can design. To advertise on the Display Network, you’ll need to choose from one of three campaign types, but have the option to choose the sub-type that works best for you.

Campaign type	Locations	Devices
Your ads can appear on the Display Network when you choose one of the following campaign types: “Search Network with Display Select” “Display Network only”	Your ads can show everywhere or in specific cities, regions, or countries that you specify.	Your ads can show on all types of devices from desktops, tablets, and mobile devices or just the ones you specify by model, operating system, and more. This advanced option is only available for some types of “Display Network only” campaigns.

Add targeting methods to your ad groups

When you add targeting like interest categories or keywords, you’re telling AdWords who can see your ads as they browse the Display Network or where they can show. You’ll need to add targeting to the ad groups in your Display Network campaigns in order for your campaign to run.

1. Click the Display Network tab under All campaigns
2. Click + Targeting
3. Select the “Add targeting” drop-down menu and choose one of several targeting methods
4. Choose targeting. For example, you might pick “Soccer fans.”
5. Click Close and save your ad group.

For those of you unfamiliar with the difference between display and search, let me give you a quick recap. Google’s Search Network targets users typing directly into Google’s search engine or Google partner search sites, if you opt to expand to Google Search Partners (like AOL). In contrast, think of the display network as a more passive form of advertising. You’ve likely already seen many display ads today, for example while perusing the Huffington Post or skimming your favorite blogs. You may or may not have noticed banners or small boxes promoting a product or service, above and to the side of the articles you were reading – those are display ads.

WordStream’s Erin Sagin states, “When users are on the GDN, they may not necessarily be in ‘shopping mode.’ Instead, they are going about their daily internet activities—catching up on news, reading blog posts, watching video clips, etc.” You may be thinking, if they’re not in shopping mode, then what’s the point?

Hesitation to jump on the display network bandwagon is not uncommon, but as Paid Search Strategist Sergey Rusak explains, “Look at how much you spent in one month and how many impressions you received. You might be able to get the same amount of impressions in a local newspaper or a billboard on a highway, but you’ll end up spending hundreds upon thousands of dollars. With Display, you promote your brand and don’t even pay for these impressions.”

To get a clear picture of what works and what doesn’t work on the Google Display Network, I spoke with a few of WordStream’s top-notch PPC experts. All four of the people I interviewed work on the Managed Services (MS) team, where they are fully emerged in Google AdWords accounts every day. Our MS team operates similar to an agency, managing AdWords accounts for clients and helping them achieve their business goals. Essentially, the experts on MS spend 40+ hours a week working directly in Google AdWords across the search and display networks, helping clients from a variety of industries. So yeah, they know a lot!

Here are seven bits of display network wisdom I learned from these experts, plus three mistakes to avoid.

Display Network Tip #1: Start with Remarketing

All experts unanimously agreed that remarketing is the place to start when it comes to the display network. Paid Search Strategist Mark Irvine says, “If you’re ever going to see any kind of return on the display network you’re going to see it from remarketing first.” 

For those of you unfamiliar with remarketing, it is essentially when you cookie your past site visitors to follow them around with ads on various sites they browse. It might sound a bit creepy, but it works – because the people you’re remarketing to have already expressed a genuine interest in your business (because they visited your site, duh).

Remarketing is used to keep your past visitors engaged, “completing the whole circle of engagement,” says Paid Search Strategist Caleb Hutchings. The majority of those reading this post have likely been successfully remarketed to. Just the other day I was shopping for a pair of fall boots when a few days later that stylish high-kneed suede pair of black boots would not leave me alone. They kept appearing on multiple sites that I was on at various points during the week, until I finally gave in and took the plunge. If I wasn’t remarketed to, would I still have bought the boots? Probably, because I actually needed fall boots, BUT the chances of me getting that pair from that domain would have dropped significantly if remarketing was not in place. This is just one example of the power of remarketing, which has been seen to work across a variety of industries.

“Remarketing is always a good idea. Your CPA’s are generally much lower, you’re keeping people engaged. It’s essentially free advertising,” Caleb states.

Display Network Tip #2: Utilize Managed Placements

Managed placements is the only targeting method that gives the advertiser granular control over where their ads are being placed. If you use methods like interests or topic targeting, Google is basically doing the decision-making for you and guessing which sites are relevant. Managed placements allows you to pick and choose exactly the sites that you want your ads to be displayed on, which is why it’s a safe bet when branching out into display. According to Caleb, “It’s the best way to have control because the people you’re targeting and conversions are consistent, so it tends to cost less.”

WordStream Paid Search Strategist Mike Griffith explains the process he uses with clients new to the Display Network: “We start as granular as possible, identifying 5-10 domains that are very applicable to the product or service and start serving up ads on those specific placements first. If the volume is limited, then we expand to other related sites.” But how do you know which sites are relevant? If you’re struggling to make that decision, Griffith advises digging into your top referral sites in Google Analytics.

Display Network Tip #3: Let Your Budget Guide You

“Since display is such a large space (reaching over 90% of the U.S. daily!) you need to be extremely careful when it comes to setting your budget,” Mark Irvine explains. He recommends starting out small with an amount that you are comfortable testing with.

Caleb explains how setting up a new display campaign is all about budgets. For example if you have a great list of managed placements, allocate more of your budget towards that campaign, and separate the different placements into their own ad groups so you can feed more money into the ad groups that contain the placement providing the best return.

Once you get a campaign or ad group running successfully and providing remarkable returns, the next step is to feed more money into it. Mark told me about one client who took their remarketing campaign from $1,000/month to $50,000/month and still saw great ROI!Another client in the travel industry was seeing such great return that they stopped running their search campaigns and reallocated that money to further grow their reach on display. “Remarketing and display are wonderful because once you hit it right you can just give it more money and get even more return. Your reach is pretty much unlimited,” Mark says.

Display Network Tip #4: Create Ads in Every Format Available 

I know what you’re thinking … isn’t it a waste of time and resources to create an ad in EVERY format? Why should I create a text ad if image ads statistically outperform this format?

I understand these concerns, but the majority of WordStreamers agree: having an ad in every format is critical due to the fact that some websites will only support one format.

“Some people feel strongly that you shouldn’t include text ads. I’d say include them and make that decision later. Some placements are only going to support text ads and it could be a junk site or it could be Pandora, so just do it,” says Mark. “If you’re the only advertiser with a specific format, you’re going to get more exposure at a discount.”

Caleb recommends utilizing both image and text ads, but splitting them into different ad groups. “Text ads are displayed so often, but people prefer image ads because it resonates with them and tells more of a story.”

Display Network Tip #5: Create Ads That Are Simple and Visual

This tip seems obvious and yawn-worthy. That’s what I thought as well until I found out that67.5% of ads on the display network are plain text ads! This is shocking, due to the fact that text ads have much lower click-through rates than image ads. Just check out this table from WordStream founder Larry Kim’s recent study.

This brings me to my next point: as important as it to include text ads in your display campaigns, image ads are a necessity! Sergey says “Ads need to be simple, visual, and easy to read.” Sergey goes on to explain how image ads perform best for visual industries that are naturally appealing, such as travel, where the destination can essentially sell itself. But even B2B companies see success with image ads. For one of Sergey’s clients, he tested out a banner ad with a “Download Now” image that linked right to a product page. This visual format far outperformed the text ads running and helped the company generate more leads.

Don’t have the bandwidth to create visual ads? Is outsourcing too expensive? Use Google’s display ad builder. According to Larry, this tool is shockingly under-utilized, especially since you do not need “superstar Photoshop skills” to create a wide variety of display ad formats through the tool. Check out Larry’s post to find out the variety of possibilities the display builder can provide.

Display Network Tip #6: Give Your Display Campaigns the Same Love You Give Search

For those of your running successful search campaigns, you have likely learned that continuously monitoring and adjusting your account is critical to continue knocking it out of the park. You can’t just rest on your laurels. You likely spend time each week evaluating your account, scraping through search query data, adjusting keyword bids, setting new negatives, restructuring campaigns, tweaking under-performing ads, and the list goes on. This should be no different with display!

“Look at last week and ask, how did it perform? Similar to how you want to add negative keywords with search, you might want to exclude placements with Display,” says Mark. “Display is a slightly different animal, but needs the same love.”

To see where your display ads are being placed, navigate to the “Display Network” tab in AdWords, making sure your Display campaign is selected on the campaign tree, and then select “Placements.” If you want to exclude a certain site, select the site and use the dropdown to change it to “Excluded” (see image below).

Sergey explains why monitoring this report and making sure your settings are correct is critical: “The majority of your impressions could come from weather.com, where people go for 3 seconds before work – they don’t have time to check out your product. Make sure you're getting the right placements. You don’t want to be selling life insurance to 18 year olds or serving banners for college to people who are 60+.”

In addition to investigating these placements, monitoring and tracking your campaign to the best of your ability is essential to making changes and improving your return. “Tracking needs to be consistent. Google isn’t consistent with their algorithm so you could be showing on one site for a long period of time and then suddenly lose that placement due to an algorithm update,” says Sergey. “The metrics to focus on depends on your goals. For branding purposes, focus on impressions and clicks, and for sales-oriented goals focus on view-through conversions.”

Caleb recommends looking for conversions, but also looping in analytics to see metrics like time-on-site. Take a look at the top conversion paths to see how these different channels impact your overall conversions. “If you see display is helping organic or even paid search, it’s making an impact by introducing your brand,” he states. “This starts painting the picture of how display is working.” He goes on to explain that tracking is so critical because with Display, “you’re trusting Google to define your audience, but they’re not telling you how they define that, which can be tricky.”

Display Network Tip #7: Set Aside Some Budget for Testing

As I’ve started time and time again, the Display Network is HUGE, which means your reach is pretty much endless. Google also continues to release new features and targeting methods to reach people, so if you’re not testing some of these options, you could be missing out on a plethora of potential customers.

“Once you’ve hit your main goal, use the leftover budget for testing,” Mike Griffith says. He explains that if your Display campaigns are performing well, then YouTube will probably work as well. Mike recommending setting 10-20% of your budget aside for testing.

Sergey likes to start testing right off the bat by creating separate ad groups for contextual targeting, topics, interests, and managed placements. Why? Interests could work great and topical targeting could be a budget-eater with no return. “Normally we don’t know what’s going to work and what’s not, so we need to figure this out,” Sergey says.

Mark makes a valid point as well: “Google Display is SO big and no advertiser can completely own it all. It’s all about finding your niche and using existing data from smaller campaigns to build your next larger campaign.” In order to do so you need to experiment!

• Ad Group & Keyword Performance – Similar to search, you can see performance of your display advertising campaigns (if contextually targeting) at the keyword level. All keywords are treated as broad match when using keywords in display advertising. So, make sure if you simply copy over your search campaigns, you get rid of duplicate keywords, even with multiple match types, as they would technically be read as the same keyword.
• Ad Performance – Display ads introduce several different ad types in addition to the standard text ads in search, and it’s important to watch performance of all ad types. You might also consider having them in separate ad groups to better keep an eye on performance. For the most part, I’ve seen text ads perform better from a cost per conversion standpoint (some times the cost per conversion for image ads have been 5 to 6 times higher than text ads). However; image ads definitely have more of an impact on brand awareness and assisting future conversions (i.e. view-through conversions and attribution).

• Device Performance – Reviewing performance by device and using bid modifiers for mobile to bid higher or even exclude mobile completely is something that needs analyzed regularly just like your search campaigns.

Advertising Strategies

 Advertising Strategies

ADVERTISING STRATEGIES in Google Adwords:

In their book Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords, online advertising and Google AdWords experts Perry Marshall, Mike Rhodes and Bryan Todd offer information that will help you get more clicks from Google for less money, convert more visitors to buyers, and make your online business more effective than ever. In this edited excerpt, the authors reveal how to determine if your Google AdWords campaigns are really working and what you can do to improve your results.

If you’ve been running AdWords campaigns for any length of time, it’s a good idea to perform a full audit. Here are the main steps to follow to quickly identify and address problems and issues that have crept in unnoticed:

1. Structure your account just right. Start by getting a bird’s-eye view of your Google AdWords account. Remember the 80/20 rule? Look for the 20 percent of problems that are causing 80 percent of your slowdown or cash loss, and that will give you 80 percent of your potential improvement once you fix them.

Here are some clues to where some of your biggest problems might be hiding:

Not enough ad groups. The key to page-per-click success is matching the right ads with the right people. If a campaign only contains one ad group, then every one of your potential prospects is seeing the same generic pair of ads from you regardless of what keyword they searched on. That’s going to earn you some terrible clickthrough rates (CTR). Each of your themes needs an ad group of its own, with custom ads written to match the key­word.

Number of keywords per ad group. Dig a little deeper and see how many key­words you have in each group. Ideally you want to see no more than 20 keywords per group. If you’ve exceeded this amount, create new ad groups and split your keywords into more tightly focused sets.

Number of ads per ad group. If most or all of your ad groups only contain one ad, you’re making a big mistake. You’re missing valuable opportunities to test and find new, better-performing ads. Just two or three ads per group is plenty for the vast majority of campaigns.

2. Find the right devices to show on. Google no longer gives you the option to create ad groups that specifically target mobile users. However, you can see numbers that will help you decide whether or not to show your ads to mobile audiences.

If your impressions, clicks and conversions are substantially lower for mobile users, odds are the mobile version of your site isn’t functioning properly. Updating your site for mobile users could give you a huge boost in conversions. But before you invest time in that, look over your results, and do the math.

3. Know your best networks. As with mobile targeting, you don’t have a massive amount of control over which of Google’s networks you show on. You can keep your Search Network and Google Display Network campaigns separate, but targeting Google’s search partners is limited to “on” or “off.” Check your search partner network numbers. If they’re good, consider increasing your bids across the board. If they’re poor, it may be wise to opt out of the search partners network completely.

4. Show in positions on the page that convert. Hint: Unless you’re already a master of ad copy, nothing will boost your CTR faster than improving your ad position, especially when you make the jump from the right side of the results page to the premium positions top and center. This is why the “average position” metric in your campaign reports can be incredibly helpful. The “Top vs. Other” report will give you this data.

Check to see how often your ads are at the top of the page versus other positions, such as on the right. There’s no perfect place for everyone; you’ll need to test to see which positions give you the best ROI. But the premium listings at the top will give you a much higher CTR—up to 15 times that of the other places on the page.

If you’re in position one or two, odds are you’re getting the maximum potential traffic. If you’re ranking lower, somewhere “below the fold” where searchers have to scroll in order to see you, then you’ve got room for improvement.

How do you push your ad up one or two places? Answer: Bid more. If it means the difference between you being in the top three or not, it’s almost always a profitable move.

Regardless, don’t expect to bat 1,000. Placing in the top three 100 percent of the time for any keyword is nearly impossible. Aim for a minimum of 50 percent, and consider anything around 80 percent to be a job well done.

5. Use keyword match types for efficiency. With your keywords, there are two common pitfalls to look out for:

1. Too many broad matches, or

2. Too many exact matches.

Rely too heavily on broad match keywords and you’ll end up with huge numbers of irrelevant impressions. Fill your ad groups with exact match keywords only, and you’ll miss out on huge volumes of traffic.

Take a careful look through your Search Query Report. It will tell you which matching options are being associated with your ads most often and how successful each one is.

6. Test to find winning ad copy. Find an ad group that has at least two ads and ask: How different are the ads from each other? Same headline? Same offer? Same body copy? Same hook? Just a word different here, maybe a comma there? If you’ve only been running the ads in a particular ad group for a few months or less, you want to be testing major differences, not minor tweaks. You want to see different headlines, different offers, even different display URLs where possible.

7. Landing pages that convert. Compare each ad to the landing page it directs to. Are the two consistent? Is the landing page obviously about the keyword? If in the ad you promised information or an opportunity to take action or get a free gift, is that clearly and obviously available on the landing page? Is there a clear call-to-action? If not, your conversions will suffer.

Set up Google AdWords Campaign

Set up Your Google AdWords Campaign in 9 Steps

In their book Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords, online advertising and Google AdWords experts Perry Marshall, Mike Rhodes and Bryan Todd offer information that will help you get more clicks from Google for less money, convert more visitors to buyers, and make your online business more effective than ever. In this edited excerpt, the authors describe the nine quick steps you can take to launch your first Google AdWords campaign.

To start your campaign, go to https://adwords.google.com, find the “Get started now” button, and sign up for an AdWords account. Once you're logged in, click the “Create your first campaign” button.

1. Select your campaign type and name. First, choose the campaign type—for now, we highly recommend the “Search Network only” option, then give your campaign a name. Also remove the tick next to “Include search partners” for now (you can always change this later).

2. Choose the geographic location where you’d like ads to show.Next, decide how large or small a geographic area you want to target. You can choose whole countries, regions of countries, states or provinces, cities—even U.S. Congressional districts. You can also choose custom-designated geographic areas, such as latitude-longitude coordinates or the radius of a set number of miles or kilometers around a specific address. Click “Let me choose ...” and then search for the most appropriate area for you.

3. Choose your “bid strategy,” and set your daily budget. Change the default “Bid strategy” to “I’ll manually set my bids for clicks.” This gives you more control and will help you learn AdWords at a greater level of understanding. You can always change to one of the many automatic options later.

Your daily budget is the maximum that Google is authorized to charge you per day. Chances are, you'll hit that maximum most days. Google offers several payment options: “You can make payments before your ads show (manual payments) or make payments after your ads show, and have those payments made automatically (automatic payments). Some businesses are also eligible for a Google credit line (monthly invoicing).”

Set your daily budget so that if you screw up big-time, your checking account won’t get emptied out. You can always come back and bump it up, but it’s important to have a safety net.

4. Ignore the “Ad Extensions” section for now. This is an important part of any campaign, but leave this for now and add these later after you've finished all nine steps.

Click “Save and continue.”

5. Create your first ad group, and write your first ad. More people click on ads when the headline includes the keyword they’re searching on. So use your keywords in your headline when you can. You’re limited to 25 characters here, so for some search terms, you’ll need to use abbreviations or shorter synonyms.

The second and third lines allow for 35 characters of text each. In most markets, you’ll be more successful if you describe a benefit on the second line, followed by a feature or offer on the third line. Later on, you can test which order converts better.

Even though Google places the field for your display URL—the web address people see in your ad—below your main ad copy here, when your ad displays on the search results page, its URL will actually show up right below your headline. The display URL has to be the same domain as your site, though the URL itself doesn’t necessarily have to be the specific landing page that you take people to.

The last line is your actual destination URL, or your specific chosen landing page. You can also use a tracking link here.

Here’s the short version of your ad template:

Headline: up to 25 characters of text

2nd line: up to 35 characters

3rd line: up to 35 characters

4th line: your Display URL

6. Insert your keywords into the keyword field in your account. Paste in your keywords. Start with just one set, and add plus signs (+), brackets ([ ]), and quotes (“ “) to see precisely how many searches of each type you’ll get. When you’re getting started, it’s not a good idea to dump hundreds or thousands of keywords in. Start with a tiny handful of important ones, and work from there.

7. Set your maximum cost-per-click. Set your maximum price-per-click now (called your “default bid”), but realize this: Every keyword is theoretically a different market, which means that each of your major keywords will need a bid price of its own. Google will let you set individual bids for each keyword later. 

If you can only afford $50 per day instead of, say, $170, it’s better to bid on low-cost keywords so that your ad can be seen by as many people as possible. Due to the limitations of any budget, if you’re going after high-priced keywords, you’ll exhaust your budget quickly and your ads will only be seen part of the day rather than for a full 24 hours.

8. Review everything. Double-check your ad and keywords to be sure they’re the best possible match. Check your cost-per-click to be sure you get the positions on the page you want. Double check your daily budget to be sure you don’t unwittingly drain your bank account right out of the gate.

9. Enter your billing information. Your ads will start showing as soon as you confirm your payment information. Now you’re set.

Google AdWords (Pay Per Click Advertising)

Google AdWords (Pay Per Click Advertising)

Learn from Experts in the AdWords Community

Wednesday, August 03, 2016

The AdWords Community exists to help advertisers like you improve performance and share best practices. If you haven’t visited the AdWords Community in a while, you might be surprised by what you find. Over the last six months, we’ve made a number of exciting changes. From a new design to expanded content areas, the Google Advertiser Community continues to evolve and help you connect with our experts and improve your performance.

An Improved Look and Feel 

We also wanted to improve the look and feel of the Community.

• Using Material Design, the Community now offers the same modern and intuitive experience that’s at the core of our favorite Google apps like Maps, Search, and Gmail. 
• Managing your advertising isn’t something you only do at your desk, which is why we’re re-designing AdWords for marketing in a mobile-first world. The redesigned Community is also responsive and mobile-friendly—perfect for browsing and resolving questions on-the-go. 

Go Beyond AdWords 

Finally, we know that AdWords isn’t the only way to promote your business with Google. You can get information about other important Google products on the Community:Google Analytics, Google My Business, Google Partners and Google Small Business.

Get Involved 

Anyone can join the Advertiser Community, post questions and find answers. Visit today to connect with other advertisers.  

An Improved Look and Feel 

We also wanted to improve the look and feel of the Community.

• Using Material Design, the Community now offers the same modern and intuitive experience that’s at the core of our favorite Google apps like Maps, Search, and Gmail. 
• Managing your advertising isn’t something you only do at your desk, which is why we’re re-designing AdWords for marketing in a mobile-first world. The redesigned Community is also responsive and mobile-friendly—perfect for browsing and resolving questions on-the-go. 

Go Beyond AdWords 

Finally, we know that AdWords isn’t the only way to promote your business with Google. You can get information about other important Google products on the Community:Google Analytics, Google My Business, Google Partners and Google Small Business.

Get Involved 

Anyone can join the Advertiser Community, post questions and find answers. Visit today to connect with other advertisers.  

An Improved Look and Feel 

We also wanted to improve the look and feel of the Community.

• Using Material Design, the Community now offers the same modern and intuitive experience that’s at the core of our favorite Google apps like Maps, Search, and Gmail. 
• Managing your advertising isn’t something you only do at your desk, which is why we’re re-designing AdWords for marketing in a mobile-first world. The redesigned Community is also responsive and mobile-friendly—perfect for browsing and resolving questions on-the-go. 

Go Beyond AdWords 

Finally, we know that AdWords isn’t the only way to promote your business with Google. You can get information about other important Google products on the Community:Google Analytics, Google My Business, Google Partners and Google Small Business.

Get Involved 

Anyone can join the Advertiser Community, post questions and find answers. Visit today to connect with other advertisers.  

New cross-device attribution reports and benchmarks

Thursday, July 28, 2016

Consider this: 6 in 10 internet users in the US start shopping on one device but continue or finish on a different one.¹ To help advertisers measure these customer paths that start on one device but convert on another, we rolled out cross-device conversions overthree years ago. Using that same technology, we’re introducing three new reports in the Attribution section of AdWords to provide deeper insight into device usage along the full search conversion path.

• Devices -- see how much cross-device activity is happening in your AdWords account
• Assisting Devices -- inform your device bid adjustments by learning how often different devices assisted conversions on other devices
• Device Paths -- examine the top conversion paths for your customers using two or more devices

Advertisers in many industries around the world have already seen the impact of cross-device activity on last-click conversions. Today, we’re excited to share new search benchmarks that show the influence of cross-device activity across the full search conversion path.

There are two main ways to take action on these new cross-device insights:

• Select a different attribution model beyond last click. You can select one of six different attribution models for each of your conversion types: last click, first click, linear, time decay, position-based, or data-driven. These attribution models apply to your search ads and take cross-device behavior into account. When you pick a new model, credit will be reassigned across the conversion path and your conversion stats will change moving forward. Check out our recent best practices guide for additional information. 
• Update your device bid adjustments. The new Assisting Devices report can tell you how many conversions were assisted by clicks or impressions from different devices. The Mobile Assist Ratio shows how many conversions were assisted by mobile devices compared to the number of final conversions on mobile devices. For example, if your Mobile Assist Ratio for a campaign is 3.72, that means that for every conversion on a mobile device, 3.72 conversions on other devices were assisted by mobile devices. With this information, you can update your mobile bid adjustments. 

AdWords Editor 11.5 supports expanded text ads, mobile app engagement ads, and more

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

We’re introducing several updates to AdWords Editor, available today to all advertisers globally. This version includes support for expanded text ads and mobile app engagement ads, import/export and simultaneous posting for multiple accounts, and much more.

Expanded text ads

AdWords Editor 11.5 provides full support for expanded text ads. Expanded text ads offer nearly 50% more ad text for you to highlight your products and services before people even click into your ad. It’s important to take advantage of expanded text ads as soon as possible because after October 26th, 2016, you’ll no longer be able to create or edit standard text ads. AdWords Editor lets you create and edit expanded text ads at scale so you can easily migrate all of your standard text ads before this date. To help you get started, check out our best practices guide.

Mobile app engagement ads

Mobile app engagement ads are a great choice if you want to help existing app users take action in your app. You can now create and edit mobile app engagement ads in AdWords Editor, making it easier to reach more of the right app users with the right message.

Import, export, and posting for multiple accounts

We’re always looking for new ways to make managing accounts easier and more efficient. With this latest version of AdWords Editor, you can post changes to multiple accounts at the same time, import a CSV file into multiple accounts, and export more than one account into a single CSV file.

Structured snippet extensions

Structured snippets let you highlight features of a specific product or describe the range of products or services your business offers. AdWords Editor now allows you to create and edit structured snippets at scale.

and much more...

AdWords Editor 11.5 also provides support for filtering by type when downloading campaigns, aggressive targeting optimization for mobile app installs campaigns, multi-column sorting, and enhancements to advanced search. You can learn more about these updates in the AdWords Editor Help Center or download AdWords Editor 11.5here.

Available today: three ad innovations for a mobile-first world

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

The shift to mobile is no longer happening, or will happen — the shift to mobile has happened. At the Google Performance Summit in May, we announced a completely new ad platform built from the ground up to help consumers and marketers succeed in this mobile-first world: expanded text ads and responsive ads bring to life the canvas you use to connect with consumers, while device bid adjustments provide more control and flexibility so you can optimize with greater precision.

Starting today, these innovations will begin rolling out in AdWords to all advertisers around the world.

Get started with expanded text ads 

Earlier this year, we removed right-hand side ads to improve the search experience and make it consistent across mobile, desktop, and tablet. This helped pave the way for the biggest update to our ad creative since we introduced AdWords more than 15 years ago.


Expanded text ads are optimized for the screen sizes of the most popular smartphones and feature two headlines, each with 30 characters, and one long 80-character description line. That’s nearly 50% more ad text for you to highlight your products and services.

Standard text ad	Expanded text ad

Our research shows longer ad headlines are more useful to mobile users because they provide additional information about your business before they click your ad. In fact, here are some early success stories from advertisers who have started using expanded text ads:

	“Working closely with our agency Adlucent, Guitar Center was one of the first to adopt expanded text ads. With the additional ad space, we’re now able to highlight our promotions and sales while preserving our core brand message — like we did for the 4th of July. Our non-brand campaigns alone have seen more than a 2x increase in CTR.” — Robert Spears, Digital Marketing Director at Guitar Center
	"Expanded text ads represent a tremendous opportunity for L'Oréal and our agency iCrossing. We’re now able to showcase the breadth and depth of our beauty products, and build brand love — all from a single ad creative. So far, expanded text ads have helped us deliver a 92% increase in click-through rate for one of our brands, compared to our old text ads.” — Kirsty Woolley, Multi Channel Acquisition Manager at L'Oréal Luxe
	“In such a competitive industry like telecom, it was critical for EE and our agency MEC to implement expanded text ads as quickly as possible. From the start, we utilized the additional ad text to tell a better brand story and provide more information for consumers. By combining our ‘50% faster network’ value proposition with details around EE’s competitive pricing and packages, we’ve been able to increase clickthrough rates by up to 79%.” — Sam Richardson, Digital Media Executive, EE
	“Kueski jumped at the opportunity to use expanded text ads and immediately implemented a strategy across our best performing campaigns. By highlighting the speed of our service, and safety and security of our platform, we were able to take advantage of the additional ad space and deliver amazing results, including an 18% increase in conversion rate for generic keyword campaigns.” — Rodolfo Orozco, User Acquisition Manager at Kueski

It’s important for advertisers to take advantage of expanded text ads as soon as possible, especially with back to school and the holiday season right around the corner. To help you get started, we’ve published a best practices guide that walks through tips and tricks for creating and optimizing expanded text ads. Specifically:

	Create and test multiple expanded text ads for each ad group, and evaluate performance before pausing or deleting your standard text ads
	Remember to include important information about your business and other tried-and-true components from your standard text ads, like price and keyword insertion
	Focus on your headlines: they’re the most prominent part of your text ad

AdWords Editor and the AdWords API also support expanded text ads, which means you can create and edit your ads in bulk to help save time. If you use leading 3rd-party tools to manage your ads, DoubleClick Search, Kenshoo, and Marin Software all support expanded text ads as well.

Starting on October 26th, 2016, you’ll no longer be able to create or edit standard text ads — meaning you’ll only be able to create and edit text ads using the expanded text ads format after this date. Existing standard text ads will continue to serve alongside expanded text ads.

Create responsive ads for display 

In a mobile-first world, display ads need to fit seamlessly within the websites and apps people visit, while delivering a consistent experience across devices. We builtresponsive ads for display to help your ads adapt to the increasingly diverse mix of content types and screen sizes. Provide 25-character and 90-character headlines, a 90-character description, an image, and a URL, and Google designs ads that fit beautifully across more than two million apps and websites on the Google Display Network (GDN). Responsive ads also unlock new native inventory so you can engage consumers with ads that match the look and feel of the website or app they’re using.

JustFab.de, a fashion retailer, wanted to reach more shoppers as they browsed content online. JustFab provided headlines featuring its latest promotions, descriptions highlighting popular products like capri pants and strappy sandals, and images of its top selling items — and Google designed ads that fit anywhere on the GDN. As a result, JustFab drove a 56% higher conversion rate and a 55% decrease in CPA.

Set device bid adjustments 

As we re-imagine how ads look in a mobile-first world, it’s also important to have more flexible tools that help you optimize device-level performance. New device bid adjustments allow you to maintain the efficiency of managing a consolidated campaign that reaches consumers across devices while giving you more control to set individual bid adjustments for each device type — mobile devices, computers, and tablets. Our updated best practices guide can help you evaluate your bidding strategy and set accurate performance targets that reflect the full value of mobile. You can also join us for a Hangout on Air at 9am PDT/12pm EDT on August 9th, 2016 for a live Q&A about device bid adjustments with Google product experts. Register here.
While device bid adjustments enable you to optimize with greater precision, you still need to factor in other signals which impact performance, like location, time of day, and audience. To optimize at scale across this wide range of contextual signals, you should take advantage of automated bidding. Smart Bidding utilizes the power of Google’s machine learning to set more informed bids and help you get the most out of your marketing budget. The latest Smart Bidding innovations are available in both AdWordsand DoubleClick Search. In the coming weeks, you’ll also be able to set device-specific CPA goals with Target CPA Smart Bidding in AdWords.

The way consumers use technology to connect with the world around them has changed. As a result, we’ve re-designed AdWords, from ad formats to bidding, to help you reach potential customers in more meaningful and relevant ways. We’re excited to undertake this journey with you and look forward to hearing your feedback.

Get more powerful bid automation with new AdWords Smart Bidding

Monday, July 25, 2016

Efficient and effective bid management is a foundational component of any successful digital marketing program. Today, we’re excited to announce Smart Bidding, our new name for conversion-based automated bidding across AdWords and DoubleClick Search that reflects the powerful machine learning behind it.

Making bidding smarter for improved performance

Smart Bidding is built on Google’s deep experience using machine learning to power a wide range of products, including the Google assistant, automatic album creation in Google Photos, and AlphaGo, the first computer program to ever beat a professional player at the game of Go. Smart Bidding can factor in millions of signals to determine the optimal bid, and it continually refines models of your conversion performance at different bid levels to help you get more from your marketing budget.

Even when it encounters areas with lower conversion volume, Smart Bidding's learning capabilities quickly maximize the accuracy of your bidding models to improve how you optimize the long-tail. It evaluates patterns in your campaign structure, landing pages, ad text, product information, keyword phrases and many more to identify more relevant similarities across bidding items to effectively borrow learnings between them.

On top of its machine learning capabilities, Smart Bidding is built on three pillars, inspired by feedback we’ve heard from you about what’s important in a bidding solution:

• Precise bid optimization tailored to a user’s context 
• Flexible performance controls that factor in your unique business goals 
• Transparent reporting that provides clear insight into how your bids are performing 

 In AdWords, we have several innovations coming soon across these areas. Get a full overview of AdWords Smart Bidding here.

New bidding signals that give you a richer view of user context 

AdWords Smart Bidding tailors bids to each and every auction across Google properties - this is what we call “auction-time” bidding. It allows you to register the wide range of signals that make up a user’s context in a particular auction, and includes signals like device and location, which are available as manual bid adjustments, plus additional signals and signal combinations unique to AdWords such as browser and language. We’re continuously exploring new signals to add to our bidding models that are impactful predictors of performance. These include recent additions like location intent and similar product attributes, and others like seasonality and price competitiveness that are coming soon. Learn more.

Set device performance targets with Target CPA bidding 

Device is a major dimension in campaign optimization and new Target CPA with device performance targets allows you to set separate CPA goals by device. For example, if you’re a telecom advertiser who drives better lead quality from mobile due to higher conversion rates from calls and store visits, you can now set a higher mobile target CPA compared to other devices to account for this offline data. This will become available to all advertisers over the next few weeks across Search and Display campaigns.

Bidding statuses and alerts brought to the forefront 

Transparent reporting available with AdWords Smart Bidding shows you exactly how your bid strategies are performing and immediately flags issues that require your attention. This includes new bidding-specific alerts, which are available now, and rich performance reporting for campaign-level bid strategies that are currently rolling out. In the coming weeks, we are also integrating bidding statuses front and center into your primary campaign and ad group status columns. Learn more about these new reporting features.

Advertisers like AliExpress, SurveyMonkey and Capterra are already using AdWords Smart Bidding to drive better performance.

AliExpress is a subsidiary of the Alibaba Group and a global e-commerce retailer. They’ve used campaigns drafts and experiments to test Target CPA head-to-head with their existing bidding solution. Says Jessy Sheng, Marketing Manager, “We wanted access to more diverse signals for our bidding to make it more dynamic and help raise online sales across multiple markets.” After only one month of testing Target CPA, they saw a 93% increase in conversions and 46% reduction in CPA. “With drafts and experiments, we can easily test new bid strategies quicker than ever before, which is important in our fast-paced business. Smart Bidding with Target CPA produced fantastic, actionable results and we’re excited to expand it to more campaigns.”

SurveyMonkey is an industry leader in web-based surveys. With strong competition on its keywords, leading-edge bid management is a priority for SurveyMonkey to maximize performance from their marketing budget. “We’re open to testing any feature that will get us more conversions and help us reach our CPA target,” says Brittany Bingham, Director of Online Marketing. “After only three weeks of testing AdWords Smart Bidding, we saw a 44% increase in conversions, which is incredible. We’re looking forward to scaling Smart Bidding with Target CPA across more campaigns.”

Capterra offers a smart way to find the right business software by providing buyers with comprehensive user reviews, product ratings and detailed infographics. With a large, complex campaign structure that spans over 1 million keywords, 400 software categories, and targets more than 30 countries, its advertising team was looking to move away from manual bidding so they could focus their time on other growth opportunities. Zachary Rippstein, Director of Advertising at Capterra, says, “We’ve gained so much efficiency by using AdWords Smart Bidding. More importantly, though, we’ve seen great improvement in performance and profit dollar growth. By leveraging Target CPA, we were able to drive 121% higher profit during our test period compared to the control period.”

To learn more about AdWords Smart Bidding, visit the Help Center and check out ourbest practices to maximize your success with automated bidding. If you are a DoubleClick advertiser or looking for bid and campaign management across multiple search engines, learn about DoubleClick Search Smart Bidding.  

Simplifying conversion measurement: saying goodbye to "Converted clicks"

Monday, July 25, 2016

Conversion tracking was introduced to AdWords in 2001 to measure what happened after someone clicked on your ad. The ability to know whether or not people completed a desired action on your site meant that you could determine which keywords, ads and campaigns were the most effective. The original conversion measurement metric was very basic - simply reporting whether an ad click led to any type of action on your site. That outdated metric is called “Converted clicks” in AdWords today.

In the 15 years since the introduction of conversion tracking, multiple improvements have been made to measuring and attributing conversions. Notably, the “Conversions” column family now offers the full picture of how many conversions AdWords drives for your business. In order to simplify things, ”Converted clicks” will soon be retired, with “Conversions” becoming the default way to measure valuable actions for your business.

“Conversions” is the ideal way to measure these valuable actions, and most advertisers already use “Conversions” as their primary reporting and bidding metric.
“Conversions” are capable of measuring behavior that spans multiple conversion events or multiple clicks. For example, “Conversions” can take advantage of non-last-click attribution models and different counting options. Additionally, they can measure important, mobile-centric actions like cross-device conversions and store visits. “Converted clicks,” on the other hand, can do none of that. For those reasons and plenty more, “Converted clicks” will not be supported past September 2016.

If you’re already using “Conversions” for reporting and bidding, no action is required. However, if you use Target CPA or Enhanced CPC and your primary bid metric is set to “Converted clicks” at the present time, you should plan to update to “Conversions” by September 21st. We’ve put together a simple migration tool if you’re automating your bidding based on “Converted clicks” which we will be sending via email to affected accounts. Of course, you can always update your settings manually.

The Conversion bid metric setting in AdWords will be retired in September

If you rely on the “Converted clicks” reporting column to make bidding and budgeting decisions then you should also move to “Conversions.” This column can be configured to report similar numbers to your “Converted clicks” column, though you should review your setup to make sure you are counting the actions that matter most to your business. “Conversions” can give you everything “Converted clicks” does, along with much more.

If you’re in need of updating, there are a few considerations as you make the change:

• Choose which conversion actions that you measure should be included in the “Conversions” column. Other actions can still be measured in “All conversions” 
• Determine whether to count multiple instances of a conversion after a click or only one 
• Customize your conversion windows and values (if necessary) 
• Review your cross-device conversion numbers, which will be included in the “Conversions” column starting in September 
• Download any historical “Converted clicks” reporting stats that you want to keep 

You can adjust settings for each of your conversion actions in AdWords

Proper conversion counting is important, and it’s something that’s imperative to get right as online behavior evolves. Please read our Help Center for further information about this upcoming change.