Now that you’ve organized your campaign and decided on your campaign settings, let’s focus on setting up your ad groups. As a general best practice, you’ll want to create a separate ad group for each theme or product that you offer.
Each ad group contains a set of keywords, ads, and bids that you manage. For your Display Network campaigns, your ad groups can include other targeting methods, like demographics or remarketing lists.
Now, let’s take a closer look at some of the main components of ad groups for campaigns that you’ll run on the Search or Display Network.
Keywords
Building a good keyword list can help you show your ads to the customers you want. Below are some tips for creating your keyword list.
Choosing and organizing your keywords
- Think like a customer: Think about the main categories of your business and the terms or phrases that would fit into each of those categories. Include terms or phrases that your customers would use to describe your product or service.
- Align your keywords with your goals: If you want to get the most bang for your buck, you might want to select specific keywords that directly relate to your ad’s theme. Or, if you’d prefer to reach as many people as possible, choose more general keywords. No matter how general or specific your keywords are, they should always be as relevant to your ads and website as possible. Also, keywords of two or three words (a phrase) tend to work most effectively.
- Group similar keywords into themes: Follow the structure of your ad groups, and bundle similar keywords together in one ad group based on your products, services, or other categories. For your Display Network campaigns, you’ll also want to make sure your keywords are related to the websites your customers visit.
Researching new keywords
- Use the Keyword Planner or Display Planner: For your Search Network campaigns, you can use the Keyword Planner to get keyword ideas and related data, like the average number of times people searched for certain terms. For your Display Network campaigns, you can use the Display Planner to get keyword ideas and related data, like how many times ads could show for those ideas based on a week-long or month-long period.
- Review your Search terms report: You can use the Search terms report to see what people were searching for when they saw your ad and clicked it. This information can help you identify new keywords and poorly performing ones that you’ll want to remove from your keyword list.
Optimizing your keywords
- Use keyword match types: Keyword match types are settings for each of your keywords that give you greater control over who sees your ad. For example, you might use the phrase match type to show your ad for searches that include the exact phrase with additional words before or after. Or, you might use the exact match type to show your ad for searches that include the exact phrase without any additional words. Both the phrase match and exact match types expand to show your ad for close variations — including misspellings, singular and plural forms, and acronyms — of your keywords.
- Include negative keywords: You can also use negative keywords, which prevent your ad from showing for terms that aren’t relevant to your product or service. Adding negative keywords can help you reduce costs and make your ad appear only for the search terms you want. You can identify negative keywords with the Keyword Planner or Search terms report, using both to find terms that aren’t relevant to what you offer.
Example
Antoine’s started creating ad groups for Fiona’s Search campaign, first building a keyword list based on what he knows about her business, target audience, and the children’s furniture industry. Here are the ad groups and keywords Antoine sets up for Fiona:
Antoine chooses keywords based on terms that people might use to search for children’s furniture. To start, Antoine uses keywords that are more specific and relate to the ads that he plans to create for the campaign. Antoine also uses broad match keywords — the default keyword matching option — and plans to use other keyword matching options once he gets more campaign performance data.
Ads
The text ads that appear alongside Google search results are just one of several ad formats you can create. Other ads format that you can use to promote your products or services include video ads, image ads, app or digital content ads, and more.
Depending on the type of campaign you create, different types of ads formats and ad extensions will be available for you to use.
Keep in mind that all ads go through an approval process — we want ads to be useful, varied, relevant and safe for users when serving them across the Google Network. We review your active and paused ads, keywords, and website according to our advertising policies.
Types of ad formats
Text Ad:(These might look different on the display network.)
Text Ad with extensions: Extends your ads with more information, such as additional links to your website, store address, or phone number. These formats usually appear only across the Search Network. However, location extensions and call extensions may also appear across the Google Display Network. (You can opt to extend your ad for mobile devices differently than how you extend your ad for tablets and computers.)
Image Ad: These can be static or interactive graphics and are often referred to as “banner ads”. Animated ads in .gif and Flash format can be used. These types of ad are used on websites that partner with Google (the Display Network). Animated ads in .gif and Flash format can be used.
WAP mobile: This is an older mobile phone format (before Smartphones) but is still used on less sophisticated devices, primarily in developing nations.
App promotion ads: Drive app downloads and engagement with app promotion ads. Send your customers to download your app from an app store, or include a deep link directly into your app. Note: Ads will appear only on devices compatible with your content
Video ads: Video ads that show online. Run standalone video ads or insert them in streaming video content. Deliver a rich and engaging experience to customers. Reach customers on websites like YouTube or websites that partner with Google (Display Network).
Product Listing Ads (PLA’s): Text and image ads that contain product features and pricing information. Goes to a product purchase page on your website. Encourages your customers to learn about the products that you sell before they click to your website.
Call-only Ads: Drive phone calls to your business with ads that include your phone number. People can click on these ads and then call your business directly. These ads will only appear on devices that can make phone calls, and any field in these ads can be hidden to fit on smaller screens. The ads will not link to your website, as they are call-only.
Types of ad extensions
Some ad extensions can be added manually and others are automated. Here’s an overview of the different types of ad extensions that you can use:
Manual extensions
App extensions
Show a link below your ad text that sends people to the app store or begins downloading your app. Get started here.
Let people click a button to give you a phone call. Give your ad a call button.
Help people nearby find your nearest storefront or give you a call Add a map pin, nav assistance and a call option.
Review extensions
Showcase positive, third-party reviews from reputable sources. Start adding reviews.
Sitelink extensions
Add links to help people find what they’re looking for. Choose your sitelinks.
Callout extensions
Add descriptive text to your ad to help people learn more about what you have to offer. (In contrast to Sitelinks, Callout extensions do not link to your website.) See how callout extensions work.
Structured Snippets
These will display additional details about your site with your ads, helping people learn more about your business. You can generate them manually, or you can let google generate them automatically based on your website content (the latter known as “dynamic structured snippets”). NOTE: If you don’t want any structured snippets to show, you will need to opt out of dynamic structured snippets. Learn more about structured snippets.
Automated extensions
Tip
If you don’t want automatic extensions to show, you’ll need to contact Google to opt out. Usually you can opt out via a form on the “learn more” links below, or you can contact Google directly by calling them.
Consumer ratings
Show off what customers appreciate with high-quality survey data. Learn more about consumer ratings.
Previous visits
Show people if they’ve clicked through to your website from Google Search results before. See how previous visits work.
Social extensions
Show how many Google+ followers you have. Add social extensions.
Seller ratings
Show your online business ratings with your ad. Learn more about seller ratings.
Dynamic Sitelink Extensions
Automatically add links to help people find what they’re looking for. Learn more about dynamic sitelink extensions.
Dynamic Structured Snippets
Automatically display additional details about your site with your ads, helping people learn more about your business.add links to help people find what they’re looking for. Learn more about dynamic structured snippets.
Creating effective ads
As you can see, your ads are the face of your products and services. Ads that are more relevant and engaging to your customers are likely to get more clicks.
The components of a text ad
All online ads are essentially clickable messages that connect customers with a website. Text ads, the simplest version of a clickable message, contain three components: a headline, display URL, and a description. Let’s look at the components of the sample ad below:
Headline
The first line of your ad is the one that customers are most likely to notice. If you really want your headline to stand out, consider including keywords. People are more likely to notice headlines that match what they’re searching for. In this sample ad, the keyword “advertise” should get the attention of people who are searching for ways to advertise online. AdWords can show up to 25 characters in your headline.
Display URL
Appearing in green, this line of your ad shows the address of the website that you’re promoting. AdWords lets you choose a brief but meaningful display URL to give people who see your ad a clear idea of where it’ll take them when they click on the link. Behind the scenes, you can also assign your text ads a different destination URL, which takes the person who clicks your ad to a precise location on the same website that’s relevant to the ad itself. People can only see the display URL in your ad and not the destination URL.
Long display URLs
AdWords can show up to 35 characters of your display URL due to limited space. For languages that use double-width characters, like Chinese (simplified or traditional), Japanese, or Korean, they can show up to 17 characters of your display URL. If your display URL is longer than the maximum character length, they’ll shorten your display URL when they show your ad.
Best practices for creating effective ads
Connect your ads and keywords and landing pages
Include at least one of your keywords in your ad text to show potential customers that it’s relevant to what they’re looking for. Ideally, you want to show the most important keyword in the headline of the ad for each adgroup. (You want make sure that your ad text is readable, however, so don’t include too many keywords in your ad). Your landing page should also use the keyword explicitly, and help lead the user to the next step in the conversion funnel. Look at the page that you’re linking to from your ad (the landing page), and make sure that the promotions or products in your ad are included in there. You can also look for call-to-action phrases on your landing page.
Highlight what makes you unique
Include the products, services, or offers that make you competitive, like discounts, promotions or exclusives. For example, if you offer free shipping, tell your customers that. You’ll also want to consider including your brand or company name so your customers see a name they recognize. If your company name isn’t well-known, consider including the a recognizable brand(s) you carry or service. You’ll want to review competitor’s ads and make sure that the elements you are highlighting stand out as unique, so that your ads don’t read exactly the same as their ads.
Include a strong call-to-action
Whether you’re selling a something or offering a service, tell people how they can buy your products or contact you. Call to actions like purchase, call today, order, or get a quote make clear what the next steps are. Make sure the call to action matches the nature of the query contained in the keywords for each adgroup.
Use ad extensions
Show extra information about your business with ad extensions, like sitelinks, location, and call extensions. Ad extensions, which “extend” from your text ads, tend to improve your ad’s visibility and can help improve the clickthrough rate (CTR) of your ads. Keep in mind that the expected CTR from ad extensions is one factor that AdWords uses to calculate your Ad Rank.
Tailor your mobile ads for mobile devices
People looking at mobile ads are more likely to want to know where you’re located, or to call you. Create mobile-preferred ads with mobile call-to-actions like “Find nearby stores” and send people to mobile-optimized landing pages. Add a call extension or make the campaign a call-only campaign to encourage phone calls if your conversions are better offline (ie., over the phone) than on your mobile webpages. Make sure your sitelink extensions and callouts you use for mobile campaigns are mobile-optimized.
Experiment
When you start a new campaign, create two to four ads for each ad group, and use different messages for each to see which does the best. Use dynamic keyword insertion in the headline for at least one of the ads. In Campaign settings, set the ads to rotate indefinitely so that you can be the arbiter of which ad is winning, based on both CTR and the Conversion rates you see. If you don’t rotate evenly indefinitely, adwords will often pick a winning ad very early in the process and cut down the impressions on the other ads in your adgroup.
Additional study materials
- Learn more about building an effective keyword list.
- Get tips for writing great ads.
- Use dynamic keyword insertion.