Google Ads is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers pay to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, video content, and generate mobile application installs within the Google ad network to web users.

Be seen by customers at the very moment that they’re searching on Google for the things you offer. And only pay when they click to visit your website or call.

Why Google Ads

  1. Google’s massive reach

Today Google has elevated itself beyond a brand to a verb. The term “Google” is actually defined in the Merriam Webster Dictionary

 

  1. Targeting

With AdWords, there’s something for every business and every prospect at every stage of the buyer’s journey.

Bidding on broad keyword search terms like “accounting software” will show your ad to prospects at the earlier stages of the product research process and allow you to fill the top of your funnel with two really simple but powerful techniques.

Capture their information with your post-click landing page and start sending them informative content that proves your authority.

  1. Harness intent

The biggest difference between the people you’re reaching with Google AdWords and the people you’re reaching with other forms of advertising is their intent.

On the search network, though, you’re not advertising to people who don’t want to be advertised to. You’re advertising to people who are looking for something specific, like the best post-click landing page platform for agencies:

  1. Any budget work

Winning a click can cost some businesses hundreds of dollars. In the legal industry, there are long-tail keywords reaching around $1,000 per click:

But most keywords don’t cost so much. And even if they do, an advantage to using AdWords is able to put constraints on your daily budget, maximum bids, and more. That way, you can be confident that even if you’re not monitoring your account like a hawk, you’ll never spend more than you want to.

  1. Get quicker results than with SEO

Search engine optimization is still the backbone of most highly visited sites. When you get started with AdWords, though, your chance of leapfrogging all the organic results on a search engine results page grows exponentially.

Start running ads and boost the odds people see you first thing, on a page like this, where organic results don’t even appear until below the fold:

 

Search ads

The Google Search Network is a group of search-related websites and apps where your ads can appear. When you advertise on the Google Search Network, your ad can show near search results when someone searches with terms related to one of your keywords.

Where Search Network ads can appear

Your ads can appear with Google search results and on other search sites when your keywords are relevant to a user’s search.

  • Google search sites: Ads can appear above or below search results on Google Search. They can appear beside, above, or below search results on Google Play, Google Shopping, and Google Maps, including the Maps app.
  • Google search partners: Ads might appear with search results on websites of Google search partnersor as part of a related search or link unit. For text ads, search partners include hundreds of non-Google websites, as well as Google Video and other Google sites. Product Shopping ads can appear on search partner sites that display and link to products for sale. The clickthrough rate (CTR) for ads on search partner sites doesn’t impact your Quality Score on google.com.

Types of ads on the Search Network

  • Text ads, Dynamic Search Ads, and call-only ads: The most common kinds of ads on the Search Network. These ads appear with an “Ad” or “Ads” label on the search results page, and might have an “Ads by Google” label on partner sites. They often show with ad extensions, which allow advertisers to include business details like location or phone number in their ads.
  • Shopping ads: Shopping adsdisplay and link to products for sale. They’re labeled as “Sponsored.”
  • Image and video ads: Search partners can host image ads and video ads.

 

Display ads

Display advertising refers to the process of advertising a product or service through visuals like images and videos on networks of publisher websites such as the Google Display Network.

Display ads are placed on relevant third-party websites in the form of banner, image and text ads. Display advertising is pretty much a blanket term that includes every visual ad placed on a website, however, it can be divided into three basic categories:

  • Site placement advertising: In this type of display advertising the advertiser/marketer chooses the website they would like to run their display ads on.
  • Contextual advertising: In this type of display advertising networks place ads on relevant websites, for example showing an ad for dog food on a pet adoption website.
  • Remarketing: Remarketing display ads appear in front of users who have been on your website or post-click landing page but have left without completing the relevant conversion goal.

Below are the targeting criteria, based on which Google selects the websites to place the banner ads.

 

Keywords – The ads are displayed based on the keywords that they are optimized for. Let’s say the keyword for the ad is “Social Media Marketing”, then Google would choose websites that have content on the topic.

Placements – Placements are nothing but the websites on which you want your ad to appear. Just add the websites where you want to show the ads, instead of keywords. For example, if you want to show your ads only on travel related websites, then look for advertising supported travel sites and add them to your targeting.

Remarketing – This helps you reconnect with your existing website visitors. Using this, you can target visitors who have come to your website but have not taken any action.

Topic – There are specific topics in AdWords, under which all websites are grouped. It will be easier for the advertisers to choose topics related to the businesses. For example, websites related to travel will be listed under the topic ‘travel.

 

Shopping ads

If you’re a retailer, you can use Shopping campaigns to promote your online and local inventory, boost traffic to your website or local store, and find better qualified leads. To get started, you’ll send Google your product data with Merchant Center and create a campaign in Google Ads. We call these placements Shopping ads, because they’re more than a text ad–they show users a photo of your product, plus a title, price, store name, and more. These ads give users a strong sense of the product you’re selling before they click the ad, which gives you more qualified leads.

Benefits

Better qualified leads: As a merchant, you can increase the quality of your leads by featuring product information directly in your ads to help shoppers make informed purchase decisions. This makes shoppers more likely to complete a purchase on your site.

Easy retail-centric campaign management: Instead of keywords, Shopping ads use the product attributes you defined in your Merchant Centre data feed to show your ads on relevant searches. Browse your product inventory directly in Google Ads and create product groups for the items you want to bid on.

Broader presence: More than one of your Shopping ads can appear for a given user search and, if relevant, a Shopping ad and a text ad can also appear at the same time. This means your reach with shoppers for a single search could double.

Powerful reporting and competitive data: See how your products are performing at any level of granularity you want.

 

Video Ads

In Google Ads, you can create compelling video campaigns with a range of video ad formats to engage customers in different ways on YouTube and across video partner sites. Available video ad formats include: skippable in-stream ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, video discovery ads, Outstream ads and bumper ads.

While video ad content must be hosted on YouTube, video ads can appear on YouTube and on video partner sites and apps across the Google Display Network, including on tablets and mobile devices (depending on your format and settings).

Types of video ads

  • Skippable in-stream ads: Your video ad plays before, during, or after other videos. After 5 seconds, the viewer has an option to skip the ad.
  • Non-skippable in-stream ads: Your non-skippable in-stream ad is 15 seconds or shorter and plays before, during or after another video. Viewers do not have the option to skip the ad.
  • Discovery ads: Your ad consists of a thumbnail image from your video with some text. While the exact size and appearance of the ad may vary depending on where it appears, video discovery ads always invite people to click to watch the video. The video then plays on the YouTube Watch page.
  • Bumper ads: Your bumper video ad is 6 seconds or shorter and plays before, during, or after another video. Viewers do not have the option to skip the ad.
  • Outstream ads: They begin playing with the sound off. Users tap the ad to unmute. Advertisers are only charged when more than half of the ad screen space is shown for two seconds or more. The format is designed to increase your video reach at an efficient cost.

3 main benefits of running video ads are:

  • Better targeting – This ad type has demographic, location, interest, keyword and device targeting which helps you reach the right audience on YouTube and Google Display Network.
  • More reach – As of January 2017, YouTube is the 3rd most visited website and has 30 million visitors every day. Additionally, video ads are also available on Google Display Network. This means that you have access to a wider audience.
  • Measurable – Unlike advertising on TV, YouTube ads let you know all the necessary metrics like views, view rate, clicks, reach and frequency, engagement, performance etc. This helps you measure the success of video ads.

 

Universal app campaign

Google use your ad text ideas and assets from your app’s store listing to design a variety of ads across several formats and networks. All you need to do is provide some text, a starting bid and budget, and let Google to know the languages and locations for your ads. Google’s systems will test different combinations and show ads that are performing the best more often, with no extra work needed from you.

To help you get the best value from each download, Google Ads also automates targeting and bidding. You can optimize your campaign targeting to focus on finding valuable users based on actions you care about, like in-app conversions.

Your ads will be eligible to appear across Google’s properties. This includes Google Search and Google Play, as well as our search partners, YouTube, the Google Display Network, AdMob, and many more publishers who host app ads. Here are some of the places where your ads can appear:

Google Search Network