What is Google Ads?

Search engine ad­vert­ising isn’t just reserved for global players. Thanks to cost-efficient pricing models and control functions, the online marketing sector gives small and medium-sized companies and freel­an­cers the chance to reach a large audience with a man­age­able budget. The market leader when it comes to search engine ad­vert­ising (SEA) is Google. Their ad­vert­ising platform, Google Ads, offers website owners the op­por­tun­ity to manage campaigns for the search engine and to sup­ple­ment these with mul­ti­me­dia ads on the Google Display Network.

Through Ads, Google offers a central tool for SEA. The internet platform has developed into the biggest online ad­vert­ising network in the world in just a few years and offers customers different ad formats on both search engine as well as third-party pages.

Ad­vert­ising formats on the search engine

Google Ads enables ad­vert­isers to place text displays on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) as well as on other platforms, like Google Play, Google Shopping, and more. These appear above and below the results of the original web search on the SERP. Google Ads ad­di­tion­ally co­oper­ates with various other search services.

• Text displays: Google text displays for the search engine consist of a heading with a maximum of 25 char­ac­ters, two lines of text, each 35 char­ac­ters, and a display URL, which doesn’t have to match the actual URL link.

Display format in the Google Display Network

Google Ads’ influence stretches beyond the search engine. The Google Display Network makes it possible for Ads customers to place ads on other Google sites, like Google Finance, Gmail, Blogger, and YouTube; placing ads on third-party sites is a further option. These ads are not limited to text displays – they are also available in mul­ti­me­dia formats.

• Image ads: banner adverts are set to standard image formats on the Google Display Network and are tailored to various webpage elements. An overview of the available formats can be found here.
   
• Rich media ads: these are image displays con­tain­ing in­ter­act­ive elements like call to action (CTA) buttons or product carousels in HTML, Flash, or video format.
   
• Video ads: Google Ads offers two varieties of video display on the Google Display Network and YouTube: TrueView In-Stream and TrueView In-Display. TrueView In-Stream ads are played out before, during, or after a video on either YouTube or a third-party site. TrueView In-Display ads appear each time an internet user searches for video content on either Google or YouTube.

The Google ad­vert­ising network’s principle aim is to display the most relevant ad­vert­ising possible. This is why Google Ads campaigns are keyword-based. If an internet user enters specific search terms into Google, the search engine auto­mat­ic­ally generates adverts that use these keywords and displays them in the SERPs. Keywords also play an important role in Google’s display network given that these make it possible to display ads on publisher sites according to themes. Should multiple Ads clients be suited to the same online ad space, then they go through an auction process to decide which ad­vert­iser wins.

Keywords

There’s more to Google Ads than simply dis­play­ing ads in a way that doesn’t disturb or annoy the user. It’s important to also offer them a concrete benefit as well. Every ad that appears will closely match the keywords entered by the user. These keywords could be a single term or a col­lec­tion of words, known as keyword phrases. Typically, ad­vert­isers will include keywords that potential customers use most commonly when searching. This means that keyword research is central to any suc­cess­ful Google Ads campaign. In order to help ad­vert­isers find out which keywords are used most often, Google has in­teg­rated a free research tool into Google Ads, known as the Keyword Planner. This enables ad­vert­isers to find new keywords for their adverts, assess their use­ful­ness in campaigns using stat­ist­ics and traffic forecasts, and determine the ap­pro­pri­ate ad­vert­ising budget.

Prices

There are three bidding strategies to choose from when de­term­in­ing the cost of a Google Ads campaign. The ad­vert­iser can decide whether to focus a campaign on clicks, im­pres­sions or con­ver­sions.

• CPC (cost per click): cost per click means that the ad­vert­iser only pays when users click on their ad. The ad­vert­iser sets a maximum CPC in Ads, before an amount is de­term­ined for each click, based on the quality of the display. This means that the higher the Quality Score for the ad, the less it will cost for a click. CPC is the most common form of billing for search engine ad­vert­ising.
   
• CPM (cost per mille): if an ad­vert­iser chooses to pay using the cost per mille strategy, they will be charged for the number of im­pres­sions (views) of an ad across the Google Display Network. As in CPC, the ad­vert­iser sets a maximum CPM, and Google cal­cu­lates a cost within that for every 1000 im­pres­sions. This bidding strategy is only available for campaigns across the Google Display Network.
   
• CPA (cost per ac­quis­i­tion): this pricing strategy focuses on user actions after clicking on the ad. In setting a CPA price, the ad­vert­iser confirms the price they are prepared to pay for sales resulting from clicks. The cost per ac­quis­i­tion model is re­com­men­ded for ex­per­i­enced Google Ads customers who wish to increase the con­ver­sion rate on their website.

In order to give ad­vert­isers com­pre­hens­ive control over their spending, Google Ads campaigns are centred on in­di­vidu­al daily budgets. Ad­vert­ise­ments are only displayed until the cor­res­pond­ing budget has been used up.

Before starting a campaign with Google Ads, it’s worth thinking about the ob­ject­ives of this marketing tool. Google Ads customers typically want to achieve the following goals when they place their ads on Google or the Google Display Network:

• Increase market awareness
• Increase website traffic
• Generate leads
• Improve sales
• Generate visits to offline stores

Google Ads is a powerful tool with an enormous global reach through the Google search engine and Display Network. However, ad­vert­ising budgets are normally quite limited, while prof­it­able keywords and online ad­vert­ising spaces are fiercely com­pet­it­ive. The challenge of running a suc­cess­ful Google Ads campaign is to optimise displays for their selected marketing aim and display them where they can be most effective. How ad­vert­isers manage this is discussed in depth in our article on Ads op­tim­isa­tion.