How Ad Groups Work
An ad group contains one or more ads which target a shared set of keywords. You set a bid, or price, to be used when an ad group’s keywords trigger an ad to appear. This is called a cost-per-click (CPC) bid. You can also set prices for individual keywords within the ad group. Use ad groups to organize your ads by a common theme, such as the types of products or services you want to advertise.
Keep Organized
Many advertisers find it helpful to base their ad groups on the sections or categories that appear on their website. Your ad groups should contain focused search query keywords based on the the products/services you would like to sell and on your audience insights. These ad groups should also be aligned with your audience buying cycle to address each type of query correctly.
Creating New Ad Groups
Within a given AdWords campaign, an ad group lets you easily manage the status and default bids for one or more related ads as well as their shared set of keywords.
For example, let’s say you own an art supplies shop. You could create a series of ads for all your watercolor paints, and bundle them into a single ad group named “watercolors.” From the “Ad groups” tab, you could pause all your watercolor ads simultaneously (if you’re temporarily sold out), or increase the default bid of all their keywords to get more clicks.
Creating a new ad group in a campaign
If you don’t have any campaigns yet, click Create a new campaign and follow the instructions on the page to complete your ad group.
If you already have a campaign, follow these steps:
- Sign in to your AdWords account.
- Click the Campaigns tab.
- Under All online campaigns, click the name of the campaign that you’d like to add an ad group to.
- Click the Ad groups tab.
- Click the + New ad group button.
- On the “Create ad group” page that appears, follow the instructions to complete your new ad group (you’ll be given the chance to create an initial ad and its keywords).
- Click Save ad group.
Once you’ve created your new ad group, you’ll most likely want to fill it out with more ads and keywords. You can do this by clicking on your ad group’s name, then click on its Ads or Keywords tabs.
Tip
- A new ad group should contain 2-3 ad variations to split test for the highest converting ad copy. Use your highest search volume keyword as part of the ad copy to increase your Quality Score.
- Some advertisers find it useful to separate ad groups by match type allowing easier control over ad copy and search intent combinations.
- Avoid using broad match keywords because of the potential for your ads to be displayed to keywords that are irrelevant to your ad. Using broad match (or modified broad match) keywords is for a seasoned campaign – not an initial campaign.
- Use keyword matching options to help control which search terms will trigger your ad to appear. When you enter keywords, AdWords sets them as broad match by default. This means your ad is eligible to appear when someone searches for any variation of those keywords. To use the other keyword matching options, you’ll need to add special punctuation to your keywords. For example, with the exact match option, you can make your ad eligible to show only when someone searches for your exact keyword and nothing else. You just need to add brackets, like [tennis shoes], to your keyword.