Google Ads Certification

Expand your reach with broad match by following these best practices:

optimize ad groups, follow creative best practices, be mindful of negative targeting, consider brand restrictions.

With Performance Planner, you can do the following:

- See forecasts for your campaigns - Explore outcomes by adjusting campaign settings - Understand opportunities in seasonal periods - Manage budgets across accounts and campaigns

What are three ways to optimize your responsive search ads with an Optimization Score?

1) Add responsive search ads 2) Add assets to responsive search ads 3) Improve responsive search ads

Types of recommendations

1) Ads & extensions 2) Keywords & targeting 3) Bids & budgets

What are the six factors to Ad Rank?

1) Bid - When you set your bid, you tell Google Ads the maximum amount you'll pay for a click on your ad. You often actually end up paying less, and you can change your bid at any time. 2) Ad Rank Threshold - To get high-quality ads, ads must meet minimum quality thresholds to show in a particular ad position. 3) Context of a person's search - With ad auction, context matters. Ad Rank gets calculated based on the search terms a person enters, the person's location at the time of search, the type of device they're using (e.g., mobile or desktop), the time of search, the nature of the search terms, other ads and search results that show on the page, and other user signals and attributes. 4) Asset impact - When creating your ad, you can add extra information to the ad, such as site links and images. These are called assets. 5) Auction-time ad quality - Google Ads looks at how relevant and useful the ad and website it links to are to the person who sees them. The assessment of the quality of your ad is summarized in your Quality Score, which you can monitor and work to improve in your Google Ads account. 6) The competitiveness of an auction - If two ads competing for the same position have similar ad ranks, each has a similar opportunity to win that position. As the gap in Ad Rank between two advertisers' ads grows, the higher-ranking ad is more likely to win, but it may also pay a higher cost-per-click (CPC) for the benefit of the increased certainty of winning.

What are the three main factors that inform Google's assessment of an ad's auction-time quality?

1) Expected CTR - That's the prediction of how often an ad will be clicked on when it's shown and controls for ad position. Across Google, user feedback is important for driving decision-making, and user clickthrough rates (CTRs) show what users respond to. By allowing users to vote with their clicks, millions of people help decide which ads are best for each search query. 2) Ad landing page experience - Users want ad landing pages that help them find what they're looking for. A highly relevant landing page yields a higher score. A high-quality landing page should have appropriate and original content that helps the user complete their task. It should be easily navigable and transparent about the nature of the business, how the site interacts with the user's computer, and how it intends to use their personal information. 3) Ad relevance - a measure of how well an ad matches what the user is searching for and helps make sure that only useful ads are shown. It also prevents businesses from simply paying their way onto a search that's unrelated to their product or service.

What are the key elements of automated bidding?

1) Performance - Bids influence how visible your ads are and the amount of interaction you get in each unique moment. If you don't bid efficiently, you could miss valuable conversions. 2) Auctions - Given the dynamic nature of Google auctions, the appropriate bid can often be a moving target that's challenging to reach at scale when using manual bidding. 3) User journey complexities - Many signals influence user behavior. Their intent and likelihood to complete valuable actions for your business vary based on location, time, device, etc. Taking all these signals into account for every auction and bidding can be done through Google AI.

What are the three ways advertisers can leverage AI to help boost conversions?

1- Broad Match 2 - Responsive Search Ads 3 - Value-based Bidding

Explain how google accounts are organized (TOP DOWN)

1- Manager Account To easily view and manage these Google Ads accounts in one place, advertisers can choose to create a manager account. 2- Account An account is a collection of campaigns. It's associated with a unique email address, password, and billing information. 3- Campaign A campaign is a collection of ad groups. It has its own budget and settings, which determine where ads will appear. 4- Ad Group An ad group contains a set of similar ads and keywords (the words and phrases that trigger ads to appear).

Top signals card

A top signals card in a bid strategy report highlights some dimensions where the bid strategy is automatically optimizing bids for consumers who are more or less likely to convert. Top signals may include but aren't limited to device type, location, day of week, time of day, queries, or Customer Match lists.

Responsive Search Ads - composition

AI takes all high quality images, sitelinks, etc. to assemble a ad that is optimized for search query. Using responsive search ads, advertisers can create ads that adapt to show more relevant messages to more people. For example, by entering up to 15 headlines and four descriptions, Google Ads uses machine learning to automatically create and test different asset combinations, learning what performs best over time. It works with Smart Bidding and broad match to show the right ad for each query — including new queries that a static text ad may not be eligible for, due to ad relevance.

Value-based/Smart Bidding - inform bids

AI uses advertiser intent, search query intent, and ad composition to help inform bids. Predicts future ad conversions. Smart Bidding works with broad match to automatically bid on high-performing queries. By bidding at the query level in real-time, it shapes traffic in a way that aligns with performance goals. To set the right bid, Smart Bidding uses predictive AI which learns from billions of combinations of signals, like time of day or device type, to automatically set unique bids for every search query. That means advertisers using Smart Bidding can set bids based on each user's context in the moment, which is something that can't be accomplished manually. Automated bidding is the only way to account for all available signals and improve performance.

best practices for setting a target CPA:

Account for conversion delay when analyzing the past 30 days of performance. The target CPA should be set close to the current CPA to start, in order to maintain similar volume. Review the Google Ads recommendation for the target CPA, which is based on historical conversion data. If you're switching to a new conversion action, make sure you review the average CPA of the relevant conversion action to set targets

Why do ad assets matter?

Ad assets are a product add-on that serve on your existing text ads. They highlight relevant information about your business and what you offer. Ad assets enhance user engagement and relevancy, which can lead to better ad performance. Stand out: Ad assets make your text ad stand out, leading to increased user engagement and a better click-through rate (CTR). Drive efficiency: These added clicks often come at a lower cost-per-click (CPC), compared with the cost of moving up a position. Boost conversions: Giving users relevant information upfront often translates into more qualified leads.

Ad customizers for responsive search ad

Ad customizers let you add real-time information to your ad to tailor your message at scale. Personalize your ad with a customized headline or description to show a relevant variation to each potential customer. 3 responsive search ad customizers: location insertion, countdown customizers, and keyword insertion.

What is ad strength? What is asset performance?

Ad strength - A tool that analyzes the relevance, quantity, and diversity of your responsive search ad content according to best practices. Components = Headline quantity Headline relevance (keywords)Unique headlines Unique descriptions Asset Performance - Asset performance labels measure your asset's performance relative to other assets in the ad. They update as user search behaviors change, impacting the query mix, ad position, etc. Components= Weighted mix of performance metrics with statistically significant confidence.

Broad match - tennis shoes

Ads may show on searches that are related to your keyword, which can include searches that don't contain the keyword terms. This helps you attract more visitors to your website, spend less time building keyword lists, and focus your spending on keywords that work. Example: Searches for "tennis shoes," "tennis sportswear," "used tennis shoes," or "top-rated tennis equipment" may show this ad. Benefit: It allows you to reach the most possible consumers searching for your product or service while saving you time from adding a variety of keywords. Broad match works best with automated bidding strategies. Set it up: Broad match is the default match type that all your keywords are assigned, so you don't have to specify another match type (exact match, phrase match, or a negative match type).

Exact Match - tennis shoes

Ads may show on searches that have the same meaning or same intent as the keyword. Of the three keyword matching options, exact match gives you the most control over who sees your ad but reaches fewer searches than both phrase and broad match. Example: A search for "tennis shoes review," "red tennis shoes," or "tennis sneaker" wouldn't show this advertiser's ad; only a search for "tennis shoes" would show this ad. Benefit: It offers more control over the search terms that ads match to, although volume may be limited. Set it up: Add brackets [ ] around the term.

Phrase Match - tennis shoes

Ads may show on searches that include the meaning of your keyword. The meaning of the keyword can be implied, and user searches can be a more specific form of the meaning. With phrase match, you can reach more searches than with exact match and fewer searches than with broad match, showing on the searches that include the meaning of your keyword. Example: A search for "tennis kids' shoes" would show for "kids' tennis shoes," "children's tennis shoes," or "buy kid shoes." Benefit: This makes sure the core concept of your keyword is present in the search term while reaching more volume than what exact match keywords would provide. Set it up: Add quotes " " around the term.

Why is Google pushing Broad match?

Broad match works best with Smart Bidding, and Smart Bidding works best with conversion data. Ads may show on all relevant searches that relate to your keyword, even if they aren't present in the queries. It provides comprehensive matching, since broad match keywords cover all the same queries of narrower match types, plus more.

Callouts and dynamic callouts

Callouts allow advertisers to highlight relevant, impactful selling points about your products or services that can be shown alongside your search text ads. Dynamic callouts allow Google to automatically surface relevant selling points to complement your search text ads. Benefits- Callout assets are used to highlight information about value-adding attributes of the business, products, or services. They can boost user engagement and increase click-through rates.

The case for close variants

Close variants help you connect with consumers who are looking for your business, despite slight variations in the way they search, and avoid the need to build exhaustive keyword lists. Close variants in match types may include: - Misspellings - Singular or plural forms - Stemmings (for example, "floor" and "flooring") - Abbreviations - Accents

Why does creative customization matter?

Creating customized, relevant copy for Search ads is an important way to connect with audiences and motivate them to take action and achieve your objectives. Expert marketers know that personalization can significantly contribute to business profitability.

What are the benefits of upgrading from DSA to Performance Max?

Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) has provided significant value to advertisers. It helps them capture more conversions from relevant search queries through scaled landing page-based targeting and creative generation for Search ads. With Performance Max, you can get more conversions at the same cost through other channels in addition to search. Upgrading from DSA to Performance Max gives you the ability to run fully automated campaigns like DSA more easily through one buying door.

What are dynamic images?

Dynamic image assets are an account level automated asset that allows Google to curate relevant visuals from your ad's landing page to complement your existing search ads. They can help you reach your performance goals, with compelling visuals of products or services that enhance the message of your text ads. You can opt-in to dynamic image assets at the account level. **You should use image assets and dynamic image assets together. Have AT LEAST 4 unique images per ad.

What strategy aligns with each marketing objective?

Increase traffic = maximize clicks Boost awareness = target-impression share Drive action = conversion-based bidding

Types of marketing objectives

Leads - Boost conversions by encouraging people to take action. Sales - Grow online, in-app, in-person, or over-the-phone sales. Website traffic - Get the right people to visit your website.

Broad Match - matching

Looks at user intent and advertiser intent and makes the connection that is strongest. Consumer expectations are constantly changing, and it's impossible for a manual approach to keep up. Broad match and Smart Bidding use the best of Google AI to understand the intent behind user searches, not just the words within them. This combination helps advertisers reach more of the right customers, no matter how they're searching.

There are two types of bidding methods you can choose for your bidding strategy in Google Ads: manual and automated.

Manual CPC bidding is bidding method that lets you set your own maximum cost-per-click (CPC) for your ads. This differs from automated bid strategies, which set bid amounts for you. Automated bidding is a bidding method that uses Google AI to set bids for your ads based on that ad's likelihood to result in a click or conversion. Each type of automated bid strategy is designed to help you achieve a specific goal for your business.

What are two reasons the Maximize Conversion Bidding strategy is a good fit for Gordon's goal?

Maximize Conversion Bidding is good for advertisers who want to maximize the number of conversions for a campaign within a set budget. Maximize Conversion Bidding is good for advertisers who don't want to optimize toward a target CPA target just yet.

Why does Maximize clicks matter?

Maximize clicks is an automated bidding strategy for those looking to increase website traffic but who aren't tracking conversions. If you aren't tracking conversions in your Google Ads account, this bidding strategy is the default when you create a new Search campaign. This strategy helps you get as many clicks as possible within your budget each day while minimizing the manual effort required to maintain bids. It automatically adjusts the maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bid in a campaign to maximize the amount of clicks within a budget.

Can I activate recommendations automatically applied at the campaign level?

No. Automatically applied recommendations are activated at the account and manager levels. This feature is turned on for all campaigns within an activated account.

Will all recommendations that surface in my account be applied automatically?

No. When enabling automatically applied recommendations, you'll choose the recommendations for which you'd like to opt-in to from a menu. Only the recommendations you select will be eligible to be applied automatically.

Will recommendations automatically applied increase my account spend?

No. While any account changes, including those made by applying recommendations automatically, could result in an increase or decrease in ad spend, these changes will never exceed your chosen budget. This feature is meant to help you get the most clicks, calls, and sales from your account while leaving you in control of your overall budget.

The importance of value-based bidding

Not every customer brings the same value to your business. Some conversions don't matter as much to your business goals, while others are of higher value and should be reported and optimized for accordingly. Value-based bidding can help maximize overall conversion value. Differentiating your consumers will drive increased performance.

How does Ad Rank influence actual cost per click?

Often, the average cost per click (CPC) isn't the price you're paying for each click. Because the system is dynamic, CPC can vary from auction to auction and depends on a variety of factors, such as the context of each query. Remember that the average CPC is just an average — meaning the price could be above or below that average. Higher-quality ads typically lead to lower costs, better ad positions, and more advertising success. When users see better ads, they're happier and more likely to actually click on those ads.

What's optimization score?

Optimization score is an estimate of how well an advertiser's Google Ads account is set to perform. An optimization score is a value between 0 and 100, and higher scores indicate a campaign or account is better optimized and has fewer available actionable opportunities. Optimization score uses a combination of statistical models, simulations, and machine learning to identify the optimization uplift potential of each recommendation. If a recommendation is more closely tied to performance, it's given more weight for the overall score. Recommendations with a higher uplift percentage have a larger impact on advertiser performance.

What is Performance Planner?

Performance Planner is a tool in Google Ads that lets you plan for upcoming periods of up to 18 months. You can forecast how optimal target and budget adjustments can positively affect key metrics and overall return. Use Performance Planner on a monthly basis to make sure you're setting the right budgets and campaign-level Smart Bidding targets to capture demand for your business.

Sitelinks and dynamic sitelinks

Sitelinks allow advertisers to deep-link users directly to specific pages within your website. Dynamic sitelinks allow Google to curate high-quality sitelinks for you based on the content of your website. Benefits - Adding sitelinks can boost the average click-through rate for an ad. You also reduce the steps to conversion by bringing users directly to the right page.

What is Google Ads Smart Bidding

Smart Bidding is a subset of automated bid strategies that uses machine learning to optimize for conversions or conversion value in each and every auction—a feature known as "auction-time bidding." It adjust bids automatically to help you connect with the right customers at the right time, optimizing for the best results within your budget. Smart Bidding strategies for Search campaigns focus on two main performance goals: conversions and conversion value.

Maximize conversions bidding and Maximize conversion value bidding are...

Smart Bidding strategies that use Google AI to optimize for conversions or conversion value in every auction — a feature known as auction-time bidding. It adjusts bids automatically to help you connect with the right customers at the right time, optimizing for the best results within your budget.

Smart Bidding target and budget simulators

Smart Bidding target and budget simulators show you how different settings might change your ad performance. These tools help you understand what happens if you change your targets or budgets.

Structured snippets and dynamic structured snippets

Structured snippets and dynamic structured snippets Structured snippets allow advertisers to highlight specific aspects of your products or services in a structured format based on a set of available headers. Structured snippets are shown for relevant queries as an additional line of non-clickable text in the form of a Header: Value 1, Value 2, Value 3, etc. Dynamic structured snippets allow Google to surface useful, structured information automatically. Benefits - Use structured snippets to get more qualified leads. When users get more specific information about what's being offered before they visit a website, they're more likely to convert after clicking

Types of conversion-based bid strategies

Target CPA, Maximize conversions, Target ROAS, or Maximize conversion value.

Why does Target impression share bidding matter?

Target impression share is an automated bid strategy that automatically sets bids to show your ad at a certain location on the Google Search results page. Use this bidding strategy to drive brand awareness and show your ads on the results page for a certain amount of time. There are three options for where ads can show: at the absolute top of the page, at the top of the page, or anywhere on the Google Search results page. Google Ads automatically sets your bids based on the placement setting you choose.

Optimize targets and budgets to improve performance

Targets (if using target ROAS) and budgets (if using maximize conversion value) are the primary available levers to optimize bids and spend. Use simulators to forecast the impact of budget and target changes on key metrics. Use Performance Planner to forecast target and budget scenarios across campaigns up to 18 months ahead Use optimization score recommendations to quickly identify opportunities for growth. Use portfolio bidding and shared budgets to allocate bids and spend across a group of campaigns with similar performance goals.

How Ad Rank determines ad position

The order in which ads appear is called ad position, and Google wants to show more useful ads in a higher position. That's why the Google Ads auction uses Ad Rank to determine whether ads are eligible to show at all and in what order. Advertisers only pay when they actually receive a click on their ad. Generally speaking, the ad with the highest Ad Rank shows in the top position, the ad with the second-highest Ad Rank shows in the second position, and so on. (This assumes ads clear the relevant thresholds.) Ad Rank is based on various factors, not just bids.

Campaigns have three key components

The three components of campaigns are targeting, ad formats, and bid strategies. Trageting - Reach your audience by using audience solutions and keywords. The former are tools to help you better connect with consumers, and the latter are words or phrases Google uses to match ads with the terms consumers search for. Ad Formats - Use responsive search ads to get your business in front of consumers who are searching for products or services like yours. With responsive search ads, Google AI uses the headlines, descriptions, and images you provide — called assets — to create ads that are relevant to your consumer audience. Bid Strategies - Apply the bidding strategy that best fits your marketing objective. Google AI enables a set of bidding strategies called Smart Bidding, which help drive higher conversion volume or conversion value.

Value ingestion

There are three main ways to ingest or integrate value in Google systems. Global Site Tag: Conversion tracking and value fires via website tag following online activity (One Google Tag, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics 4, enhanced conversions for leads (ECL)). Import: Conversions are passed directly into the platform via import (OCI, conversions API, offline conversion adjustment, store sales improvements). Google Tracked: Conversion events are tracked in Google's systems (store visits, EVCs, call measurement, and local actions).

Best practices for building an effective keyword list...

Think like your audience, organize keywords by theme (ex: running shoes vs evening shoes), look at search terms report, use negative keywords.

Advertisers who adopt responsive search ads in campaigns that also use broad match and Smart Bidding see an average of 20% more conversions at a similar cost per action.

True

Organic results for most searches on mobile now serve a visual experience.

True

Search and Performance Max are Google's most powerful AI-powered campaigns. By using Search and Performance Max together, marketers can steer the full power of Google AI to help achieve their business goals.

True

The more headlines and descriptions you enter, the more opportunities Google Ads has to serve ads that more closely match your potential customers' search queries, improving your ad performance.

True

There's no need to add the same keyword in exact, phrase, and broad match to an ad group, as broad match uses Google AI to cover search queries that exact and phrase match keywords would have matched to.

True

You'll see one of the five different ad strength ratings when you work on your responsive search ad: incomplete, poor, average, good, and excellent. Along with these ratings, you'll see action items to improve the effectiveness of ads.

True

The Google Ads auction creates a great experience for users and value for advertisers.

True. That means it's important for Search to be natural and intuitive for users and advertisers alike.

Value definition

Value definition depends on your ability to capture or calculate the value at the time of conversion. That's highly dependent on the business model and timing or when the value is realized. Actual = at time of conversion Proxy = general value understood at time of conversion Predictive = calculated at the time of conversion

Define value.

Value is the monetary or business value a consumer brings to a business and can be measured by a number of metrics, such as cart size, average order value, lead value, and lifetime value.

Can I reverse changes made once recommendations are applied automatically in my account?

Yes. In the same way you'd make any changes or updates to your Google Ads account, just sign in and change your settings back to what they were prior to the automatically applied recommendations. If you can't reverse changes from the change history page, you'll need to go to the specific campaign(s) to reverse the change made (e.g., individually remove keywords).

Seller ratings are

an account-level automated asset that lets users know if your business is highly rated for quality service. Google receives data from the following data sources, which can be used to generate a seller ratings score.

Value-centric measurement (VCM) is a framework used to

help marketers define conversion values and import them into Google. VCM is the first step to enabling value-based bidding and represents a change in maturity, moving from basic tracking to conversion quality and value.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

is a marketing metric that measures revenue earned for each dollar you spend on advertising

Target CPA bidding

is an automated bid strategy that sets bids for you to get as many conversions or customer actions as possible. When you select the Target CPA (cost-per-action) bid strategy, you set your desired average cost per conversion.

Responsive search ads offer

rue query-time optimization by assembling the assets into ads predicted to perform best for each user's search. This means evaluating tens of thousands of potential ads in a fraction of a second to show more relevant messages to each person based on contextual and intent signals. They automatically test different combinations of headlines and descriptions and learn which one performs best. Unlike expanded text ads, you can provide up to 15 headlines and four descriptions for a single responsive search ad.