Josip Vucic

Google Ads & More

Google Ads advertising

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What is Google Ads?

Google as the most used search engine with 3.5 billion queries daily is a great channel to get new clients and leads.

Google AdWords became Google Ads in 2018. and you’ll still hear both terms.

Google Ads is a platform where you can put ads which show up:

  • On the Google search result page
  • On the Google Display Network
  • On YouTube
  • Inside of Gmail
  • Inside of Google Maps
  • Inside of mobile apps that are part of GDN

Important terms for Google Ads advertising

PPC – Pay Per Click – channel of digital marketing where you pay per click, not per impression.

AdRank – Value that’s used for ranking the ad in the Google Ads auction. It’s composed of the bid, quality of the ad, minimum AdRank threshold, competitiveness of the auction, context of the search and a few other elements that create AdRank.

Keywords – the main ingredient of Google Ads, with them we choose on which keywords we want to show the ad.

CPC – Cost Per Click – Cost in dollars per click on the ad.

Bidding – type of bidding in the auction, it can be manual or automated.

Campaign type – depending on the goal and niche, we select the appropriate campaign type.

CTR – Click-through Rate – percentage that you get when the number of clicks is divided with the number of impressions. 100 clicks and 10000 impressions give 1% CTR.

Conversion – goal which we want the person that got to our website to fulfill. It can be ordering something online, sending a lead form, signing up for the newsletter, filling out a quiz and etc.

Conversion rate – percentage that you get when the number of conversions is divided with the number of people that visited the site. (In the case of Google Ads, that’s the number that the ad generated.) 150 conversions and 8500 clicks give 1.76% conversion rate.

Google Display Network (GDN) – A network of websites where Display ads can show. All websites that have AdSense are part of GDN. Examples are index.hr, jutarnji.hr and a lot of other websites.

Remarketing – retargeting – method of advertising where we’re showing ads only to the people that were on our website or filled out a goal (click on video, video watched over 25% of time and etc.)

Ad extensions – extra information and CTA’s that go with the ad.

Quality score – QS – metric that shows how relevant is the ad and landing page for a certain keyword the ad should show. It’s a value between 1 – 10 and the goal is to have as high as you can QS which means as relevant as possible ad and landing page.

CPA – Cost Per Action – amount that’s spend to get a conversion

ROAS – Return On Ad Spend – ratio of revenue and invested money in marketing. If revenue from ads is 10000 dollars with ad spend of 2500 dollars, ROAS is 4.

CPM – Cost Per Mille – Cost of 1000 impressions. If we have a CPM of 20 dollars, we have to spend 20 dollars to get the ad to show up 1000 times.

Impression share – IS – ratio of impressions gained and impressions that the ad could get. If we have 500 impressions and 1600 possible impressions, the impression share is 31.25% which means that the ad showed up in 31.25% of qualified searches.

When and why do ads show up?

Every time someone searches something on Google, Google algorithms decide which website will show up in the organic part of the SERP, and at the same time, Google Ads auction is working its own algorithm and doing calculations which ads will show up and at which position.

How much does Google Ads advertising cost?

Budget for Google Ads is decided by the goal we’re trying to achieve. Cost per Click depends greatly on the niche we’re showing the ad in, keyword and quality of the ad.

Google uses a lot of factors to decide which ad will show up and on which position, but some of the more important ones are:

  • Expected CTR
  • Relevancy of the ad
  • Landing page experience
  • Maximum CPC bid
  • Context of the search intent
  • Competitiveness in the auction

Usually, the more lucrative the niche, the click is going to be more expensive. It’s not the same amount if you’re selling a fidget spinner for 2 dollars, service for creating business cards for 200 dollars or a car for 20000 dollars.

Some of the most expensive clicks in the US are in casino and lawyer niches, where a single click can be around 55 dollars. But if a lawyer can win a case and get a settlement of 1 or few million dollars, it’s cost effective to invest in Google Ads.

If you want to talk about the budget needed for your keywords, send me a message.

For what kind of company is Google Ads a good advertising channel?

Google Ads is a great advertising channel for a large number of companies that sell products or services. If Google Ads is going to be a good channel, you’d analyse the niche, keywords and wanted ROI. If you want to create a good analysis, you’d take into consideration the percent/amount of profit per sale and how big of a cost can you take to get a new customer and still have a profit.

Google Ads campaign types

There’s various Google Ads campaign types and picking the right one will greatly depend on the goal we’re trying to achieve. 

We can select from:

  • Search campaigns – Google bread & butter and with what it started. Ad on the search result page.
  • Display campaigns – Usually image ads, which show up on all websites that are part of GDN. Display campaigns are great for remarketing.
  • Smart campaigns – Type of campaigns that are easy to start with if you don’t have experience with Google Ads advertising but gives the least possible optimizations available. When you create a Smart campaign, it’s necessary to create an ad, select keyword themes and budget. Then Google uses its algorithm to show the ad to users. A big downside is that there’s not a lot of optimization options and the inability to pick negative keywords on which we don’t want our ad to show up. Smart campaigns can sometimes be a great generator of data when we don’t have any historic data and we don’t know the niche well enough so we can get data and then switch to “normal” types after we collect enough data. Ads can show up on Google Search, Google Maps, YouTube, Gmail and Google display network.
  • Video campaigns – as the name suggests, the ad is in video format and we can show it on YouTube and other Google Video partner sites. Great type for remarketing and raising brand awareness. 
  • App campaigns – campaign type to advertise mobile apps. There’s no classic creation of ads but Google picks up text, images and rest from the Play Store listing and does a combination for the ad. We can input specific text, max CPC, budget and pick locations and languages we want to target.
  • Discovery campaigns – great campaign type if you want to reach up to 3 billion users on Google feeds. Ad is visually appealing and can show up on YouTube Home and Watch Next, Gmail promotions and social tab and Discover. It’s mostly automated and it’s harder to optimize.
  • Shopping campaigns – perfect campaign type if you’re in the eCommerce niche and you sell physical products. There’s Smart and regular Shopping campaigns but they aren’t available yet in Croatia.
  • Local campaigns – great campaign type if you’re a local company that serves the local area. It leans on Google My Business profile and location/s are necessary to create a Local campaign. Ads can show up on Search, Google Maps, YouTube and Google Display Network.
  • Call campaigns – This type of campaign is perfect for companies that rely on phone calls from prospects. Ads show up only on mobile devices which can make the call. You can get really good results in niches like home improvement, plumber, locksmiths and such.
  • Hotel campaigns – Special type of campaign that’s available for hotels and ads are adapted to people searching for a place to stay. It’s necessary to link a few things before starting a hotel campaign and it’s done via the Hotel Center account.

Type of Google ads

There’s various types of ads available depending on the campaign type selected, and those are:

  • Text ads – text ads that show up when someone is searching a keyword on Google. It’s made up of headline, display URL, description and various ad extensions.
  • Video ads – ads in the form of video that show up on YouTube and Google Video partner sites.
  • Shopping ads – ads that are specific to shopping campaign type. Name, images and prices are from the Data feed that’s uploaded to Google Merchant Center.
  • Responsive Search ads – type of ad where the Google algorithm decides what the ad will look like. You write multiple headlines and descriptions so the algorithm can combine those to get the best possible results.
  • Responsive Display ads – similar to Responsive Search ads, you write the headline, text and insert images so the Google algorithm can decide how to structure the ad, depending on the location where it’s shown and get the best possible results.
  • Local ads – perfect ad type suited for companies that want to get new local leads and customers. It’s interconnected with Google My Business and shows up NAP in the ad.
  • Hotel ads – Special type of ads for the Hotel campaign type.
  • Comparison listing ads – special type of ads for websites that are comparison sites like nabava.net and jeftinije.hr
  • Call ads – ads that only show up on mobiles and the main goal is to make the user call you. Works great for local companies and those that provide emergency services like a plumber or a locksmith.

What’s the best type of ad? Like most of the answers in marketing, it depends.

Depends on what the goal is, what does your competition use and etc.

A general rule of thumb would be :

  • eCommerce store – Shopping ads
  • Hotel – Hotel ads
  • Service providers locally (plumber, cosmetic parlour) – Local and call ads
  • Lifting brand awareness – Video ads and GDN

But it’s still debatable and every company needs its own research to see what will work.

Bidding in Google Ads 

One of the more important things you have to pick is bidding. You have to decide what type of bidding you want to get into the Google auction for a place for your ad to show up.

We have:

  • Manual CPC – the easiest and hardest way to do bidding. You decide on the max cost per click you want to go. I personally always start with manual CPC until I can get more data.
  • Enhanced CPC – similar to manual CPC, you decide on the max CPC, but in case Google thinks the click could lead to a conversion, it automatically raises the max CPC to the needed level to get the click. To be eligible for ECPC, you need conversion tracking set up (which you should have anyways). ECPC is a good compromise between fully automated and manual bidding.
  • Cost per View – bidding used for video campaigns. You get charged when a person views more than 30 seconds of the video (if the ad is shorter than 30 seconds, then the whole video) or if the person clicks on any of the elements of the ad. That way your budget is protected from people who don’t want to watch the ad or skip it..
  • Maximise conversions – automatic way of bidding to get the most number of conversions for the set budget. It’s a good way of bidding if you have historic data of conversions so the algorithm can lean on that data to do its thing.
  • Maximise conversion value – similar to maximise conversions, but here the goal is to get the most conversion value for the set budget. Also a good way if you have historic data on conversions.
  • Target impression share – Target IS is a bidding method when you want to show the ad for a specific percentage of time and specific location. You can select absolute first, top of the page results (usually first 3 slots, but depends on the SERP) or anywhere on the results page. Example : we want to show up on 65% of possible searches for the set budget. It’s a great method when you get to the “plateau” in clicks but there’s still room for improvement in impressions.
  • Viewable impressions – it can be used with display or video ads, and charging happens when the ad is viewable by 50% on the screen for at least 1 second and longer or 2 seconds or more of video view time.
  • Impression bidding – a great way if you want to show your ad to the biggest possible audience. It’s mostly used for brand awareness.
  • Maximise clicks – automatic bidding where we want to get the most number of clicks for a set budget. It’s sometimes good to use it when you don’t have any historic data, but there’s other better bidding methods.
  • Target CPA – tCPA – probably the most useful way of bidding. We use the target cost per action where you want to get the most number of conversions at the max defined cost per conversion. Great method when you have enough historic data and know your tCPA.
  • Target ROAS – tROAS – When you have the value of the conversion, tROAS is a good way to generate return on ad spend. You have to have at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days so you could start bidding with tROAS.

What’s the best way of bidding? Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer and it depends. It depends on the goal, how much data we have and a few other things and also it’s always good to test things out because if you have 2 similar companies with similar budgets, they can have different better performing bidding methods.

Google Ads extensions / assets

Extensions are an add-on for the ads which aren’t charged extra, but if a person clicks on the extension, you get charged the CPC which you would pay if it was clicked on the ad itself.

It’s always a good tip to enable all eligible extensions that make sense for your company because that way you can get more real estate on the search results page and get the click.

We have a few different types of ad extensions, and those are:

  • Call – ad extension that shows the number which the person searching can click and call the company immediately.
  • Callout – advantage we want to promote. Example : free shipping, 24/7 support and etc.
  • Image –  newly introduced extension that follows the psychology that we’re visual types. Focus should be on the image quality and it enables us to get more real estate on the SERP.
  • Location – great extension that connects with Google My Business profile and is used for companies that depend on local customers. When showing the ad, the extension shows the location, clickable button to call and a button for more details about the company.
  • Price – great extension to get more real estate on the SERP. It can show a range of prices for services provided or exact prices for the brands listed and so on. There’s no HRK in the currency list.
  • Promotion – Perfect extension when you have a sale. Example: you can promote a sale for Black Friday for 25% off of all products. You can decide on the sale duration, exact dates and amount of sale percentage.
  • Seller ratings – automatic extension where Google collects reviews about the company and then shows them within the ad.
  • Sitelink – if you want to add more links to the ad, you can use the sitelink extension. One of the first extensions and it’s recommended to basically everyone since by using it, you get more real estate on the search results page.
  • Lead form – relatively new extension where the person clicks on the ad, gets to fill out a lead form directly in the ad. Not currently available in Croatia.
  • Dynamic structured snippet – part of the ad can be filled with structured snippets. Example: you want to show a list of brands you sell.
  • Interactive video ad – additional things you can add in the video ad. You can add cards, CTA button, end card and a few other things. Useful if you use YouTube as a network to promote on.
  • Auto end screen for video ads – automatic extension that adds an end card at the end of your video ad. Example: when you have a campaign where you want more app installs, you can show features and other things about your app after the video ends.

It’s impossible to cover all options on Google Ads, but I hope I’ve managed to explain it simply: what is Google Ads and why should you think about it as a marketing channel that’s worth investing into.

If you’re interested in Google Ads advertising, send me a message.