Google Ads Certification: FINAL

Why complement your Audience strategy with Customer Match?

- Diversify your audience strategy with a tagless strategy. - Re-engage with customers you haven't seen in awhile. - Reach customers who may not have converted online and aren't a part of your remarketing lists (i.e, customers who converted off your app or in your store). - Reach customers based on their purchase history (i.e, customers who've made at least one purchase in the last month). - Reach customers according to their lifetime value

Which of the following is a core benefit of Google Ads automated bidding? Select the best answer. 1. Auction-time bidding 2. Daily budget pacing 3. Impression share-based bidding 4. User ID-based bidding

1. Auction-time bidding 2. Daily budget pacing 3. Impression share-based bidding 4. User ID-based bidding

Which part of a Search ad isn't automatically generated by Dynamic Search Ads? Select the best answer. 1. Description line 2. Headline 3. Destination URL 4. All of these are automatically generated

1. Description line 2. Headline 3. Destination URL 4. All of these are automatically generated

Knowledge Check If Hiroko wants to increase sales of kids' bikes by creating an end-of-the-year sale, what's the best way for her to do this?

1. She can pause all her campaigns. 2. She can add keywords within the Kid's Bike ad group, such as sales, deals, and end-of-year sale. 3. She can create a new ad group for the end-of-year sale. 4. She can duplicate her Kid's Bike ad group to potentially show more ads for kids' bikes. explained: Creating a new ad group allows Hiroko to tailor the messaging in her ads specifically around the sale. It's true that adding sale-oriented keywords to the Kid's Bike ad group would allow her to reach customers searching for a sale, but then her ads would still include the original messaging and not be as relevant.

Knowledge Check

1. The web traffic marketing goal will help you get more customers to learn about your new products. 2. The leads marketing goal will help you generate leads by gathering contact details through a signup page. 3. The sales marketing goal will help you encourage customers to complete a purchase.

Where do the points come from?

A combination of statistical models, simulations, and machine learning is used to assign points to each recommendation, based on the likelihood that it will enhance your account's performance. If a recommendation can have more impact, it's weighted more heavily toward your overall score.

Key Performance Indicator (KPIs)

A measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives.

What's the main goal of the Google Ads Performance Planner tool? Select the best answer. A. It helps you forecast what your minimum budget should be across campaigns. B. It helps you forecast and guarantee a return on investment based on future budgets. C. It helps you forecast and determine your budgets, while also improving your return on investment. D. It helps you choose your future bid strategy.

A. It helps you forecast what your minimum budget should be across campaigns. B. It helps you forecast and guarantee a return on investment based on future budgets. C. It helps you forecast and determine your budgets, while also improving your return on investment. D. It helps you choose your future bid strategy.

Arrange the items below in order of hierarchy, beginning with the top level Campaign, Ad Group, Ad, Account

Account Campaign Ad Group Ad

Campaign types

Advertising with Google Ads starts with creating a campaign based on your business objectives. Each campaign type determines where your ads appear and the format in which those ads are displayed. Look at how different campaign types — Search, Display, Video, Shopping, and App — can support your business objectives.

Step 7: Bidding & Budget

After Hiroko decides where to display her ads, she focuses on how much she's going to spend. She determines her budget — how much she's comfortable with spending each day — knowing she can change it at any time. Then she determines her bid strategy, which is the way she sets her bids for different keywords. She can manually set her bid amount for each keyword, or let Google Ads do it for her. Since this is her first campaign, she chooses an automated bidding strategy to save time. Google will automatically optimize her bids based on the campaign goals she's set. Select the panel to learn more.

These ads drive engagement, app installs, and in-app purchases. They appear across the Google Search and Display Networks, as well as on Google Play and YouTube.

App

Put optimization score to work for you

As you know, optimization score runs from 0% to 100% — and a higher number means an account is closer to performing at its full potential. But how does Google Ads calculate your score? And what does this mean for your business?

Tip

Based on 250 random Google Ads Customer IDs*, Performance Planner highlighted how to find an average 43% increase in conversions — for the same investment — by reallocating bids and budgets between campaigns. It's also been seen to highlight how to grow conversions by 80% for the same CPA (no diminishing returns). *Source: Internal Performance Planner pipeline data

Broad Match vs Broad Match Modifiers

Broad match is a good fit if you want to spend less time building exhaustive keyword lists. Your keywords will match to a wider variation of search terms, and you'll reach people not necessarily searching for your specific brand or business. It's like casting a wide net to reach searches related to your keywords. Broad match modifiers allow you to indicate if there are certain concepts related to your keywords that must be present in the searches you reach.

Devices

Campaigns target all types of devices, which include desktop, tablet, and mobile. You can also choose to customize ads for different devices.

Which of the following factors wouldn't change an account's optimization score? Select the best answer. Changes in tracked conversions Shifts in spend mix Renaming campaigns Changes in auction dynamics

Changes in tracked conversions Shifts in spend mix Renaming campaigns Changes in auction dynamics

Marketing goal: Create awareness Each of the following solutions helps to create awareness among your potential customers.

Detailed Demographics Detailed Demographics allows advertisers to reach people based on advanced demographic criteria like marital status, education, parenting stage, and homeownership. Affinity Audiences Affinity Audiences aggregates people who have demonstrated a strong interest in a given topic.

Optimize Campaigns

Device targeting: Reach your customers on any device, including desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Locations & language targeting: Your campaign's ads are eligible to show to customers in particular locations, or to customers who've chosen your selected language as their browser's language setting. Bidding & Budgeting settings: Your bid strategy controls how you pay for users to interact with your ads. Your bid limit is the most that you'll pay per click for ads in an ad group, and your budget is the average amount that you're comfortable spending each day on your campaign. The budget that you choose is entirely up to you, and you can adjust it at any time. Ad extensions: Include even more information with your ads, such as location details, links to pages on your website, and your phone number.

What are Dynamic Search Ads?

Dynamic Search Ads can help you increase the reach of your Search campaigns. Instead of creating an ad for each page on your site and adding keywords for each of those ads, Dynamic Search Ads uses Google's understanding of your site to customize and target your ads.

Note about Dynamic Ads

Dynamic Search Ads produces highly relevant ads that complement your other Google Ads campaigns. These ads deliver value for relevant searches that aren't covered by existing keywords, complementing your keyword strategy and ensuring that you aren't missing any relevant searches.

Dynamic callout extensions

Dynamic callout extensions Dynamic callouts are automatically generated callouts that can serve with search ads. The text for dynamic callouts is generated from existing content on your website (like the landing page of the ad creative). Or, if the system can find a match on the landing page for certain high-value phrases, these can be used as a callout (e.g., "get a free quote," "book online," or "stores nationwide"). Up to six dynamic callouts can show with a specific ad, depending on the customer's device and content.

Dynamic sitelinks

Dynamic sitelinks Dynamic sitelinks are automatically generated sitelinks that can serve with search ads. They're optimized to direct consumers to relevant pages contextually on your website. Available in one- and two-line formats, they look the same as advertiser-provided sitelink extensions. Between two and six dynamic sitelinks can show with a specific ad, but this depends on the customer's device at the time.

The Importance of Search

Every day, about 3.5 billion searches are made using Google Search. Everywhere, people are searching for information, shopping online, comparing product prices, getting directions, or just learning something new. Google's mission is to organize all this available information and make it accessible and useful. When people want to know, buy, go, or do, Google Search is their first stop!

The three main factors that determine the quality of an ad Advertisers only pay when they actually receive a click on their ad; their order isn't just based on bids. Why? We want to show more useful ads in a higher position on the search results page. Find out which factors help determine the quality of an ad.

Expected clickthrough rate This is our prediction of how often an ad will be clicked on when it's shown. Across Google, we rely on user feedback to drive decision making, and user clickthrough rates (CTRs) tell us what users respond to. By allowing users to vote with their clicks, we have millions of people who are helping us to decide which ads are best for each search query. 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. Ad relevance Ad relevance is a measure of how well an ad matches what the user is searching for, and helps to 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.

How can Hiroko reach each group individually with RLSA?

First group Create a text ad that includes a "new user offer" to reach the first group, as these people haven't been to her site yet. Second group Bid higher for the second group, which has a greater chance of converting, since these people already know about her site. Third group Create a a text ad that includes a special "return offer" to reach the third group. These people might decide to return and make a purchase!

Knowledge check Which of the following are components of Performance Planner's forecast methodology? Select all that apply. Forecasting Simulation Validation Machine learning

Forecasting Simulation Validation Machine learning All of these are components of the forecast methodology.

Fully automated extensions

Fully automated extensions are directly populated by Google and don't require any action on your part. These extensions are shown automatically when Google predicts that they will improve ad performance.

Step 2: About Company Search campaign

Hiroko is a digital marketing manager at a major online bicycle and adventure sports store called Your Adventure. Let's see how she sets up her first Search campaign! Last year, Hiroko's company sold more bikes online than offline, so she wants to create promotional text ads with a Google Search campaign to get even more customers to her online store. If Hiroko can increase bike sales by 20% this year and stay within her budget, she'll get that promotion she's been working toward!

Audience solutions in practice

Hiroko is the digital marketing manager at Your Adventure, a bike and adventure-sports online retail store. She's currently running a Google Ads Search campaign and anticipates many people searching for the term "bicycle sales online." These potential customers share various behaviors, interests, and characteristics. 1. Some have already visited her website and are in the middle of researching bicycles. 2. Some are passionate about outdoor adventure. 3. Some are looking to purchase a new bicycle. 4. Some have signed up to her email list but haven't made a purchase yet.

Is a Google Search campaign the right solution for you? Check off each item that applies to you. 1. Do you want your business to appear when users are researching and comparing different options? 2. Do you want your business to be there at the exact moment someone is looking for the kinds of products or services you offer? 3. Do you want your business to show up on search results when businesses similar to yours are showing up? 4. Do you want to learn about what users are looking for and the ads they're engaging with so you can come to an informed decision on how to add more value to their lives?

If you selected at least one item, then creating a Google Search campaign is perfect for your needs.

What are Call extensions? Benefits, When to use & Tips

If you're looking to get calls from customers, use call extensions. These extend ads with a phone number, allowing mobile users to directly call your business. Benefits Convenience: Generate calls directly from your ads and provide customers with a more convenient way to reach you. Qualified leads: Drive greater response and a higher number of qualified leads by increasing the options available to consumers for connecting with you. Flexible scheduling: Specify what dates, days of the week, or times of day call extensions should appear, aligned with your business's (or call center's) opening hours. Outside the designated times, the ad won't show the call button (mobile) or phone number (desktop) when it is displayed. When to use Use call extensions if you do business over the phone and value phone calls as much as you value clicks to your website. Users have the option of calling from the ad or clicking through to your website. Tips Measure the impact: Enable phone call conversions reporting in account settings to assess which campaigns, ad groups, and keywords are most effective at driving call conversions. Provide great service: Once customers call you, success mainly depends on the service they receive from your call center. Make sure your staff is trained to answer questions about the services or products that your extensions are associated with.

Detailed Demographics use case

Imagine that someone has searched for the best toys for their toddler on Google.com, recently viewed the best recipes for kids on YouTube, looked for the Children's Amusement Center on Google Maps, and installed potty training apps on their mobile device. Our system would recognize that this person is likely caring for a toddler, and would place them in a Parents of Toddler audience. An online business selling toys suitable for babies aged 1-3 can layer the Parents of Toddler audience onto their Search campaign, so when they're targeting the broad keyword "toys," they know their ads will only be shown to a relevant segment of parents.

Video Example:

In 2017, Telecom Egypt launched WE, a 4G service brand. WE had two goals: increase recognition of their brand as a new mobile operator and drive consumer attention to their prepaid cards. As part of their campaign, WE chose to use YouTube to maximize their reach. Their YouTube campaign ran for one month and used a variety of ad formats and targeting techniques, including Remarketing, In-Market, and Affinity Audiences. In that time, WE achieved 80% reach among their intended audience, helping them increase overall awareness. To top it off, their ads saw an average watch time that was 484% better than similar campaigns they'd run in the past.

Recap

In this course, you learned about the value of planning for success and how Performance Planner can help you maximize your return on investment.

Knowledge check How many ads should you be implementing per ad group? Three to five Only one One or two Two to three

It's highly recommended to have three to five ads per ad group. The more ads you have, the more options you'll have for success in an auction.

How customers stay in control

It's important for your customers to know that they're always in control over the ads they see, and they'll always know why they're seeing an ad. Google values transparency and always puts the customer's privacy first, which is why we offer a user control called My Activity. Using My Activity, customers can see everything they've searched for, visited, or watched in a single place. It's their one-stop shop for ad controls, including the ability to update interest preferences and opt out of ads personalization. We're able to honor muting choices whenever and wherever customers are signed in, across all devices and browsers.

Which of the following can be customized with audience signals to make Search campaigns more efficient? Select the best answer. Keywords Networks Headline length All of the above

Keywords Networks Headline length All of the above

Checking the performance of automated extensions

Learn how to check the performance of an automated ad extension in the Google Ads interface by interacting with the hotspots on the image. All accounts receiving any traffic for these extensions will automatically receive reporting.

How does ad muting work?

Let's say a person isn't into watching movies. If she wants to stop seeing movie ads on the web, all she has to do is click or tap on the [x] in the upper righthand corner. Her preferences will now be reflected across all of her devices.

Improving campaign performance with RLSA

Let's take a look at how you can improve your search campaign performance using RLSA. Hiroko is the digital marketing manager at Your Adventure, a bike and adventure sports online retail store. She's happy with all the traffic her site is receiving via Google Search, but she's looking to improve the performance of her campaigns. At this very moment, three different groups of people are using the search term "bicycle." 1. The first group has never heard of Hiroko's online site. 2. The second group has visited her site before, but is still researching different bicycle options. 3. The third group has reached her site's checkout page, but didn't fill in their details.

Specialized campaign types:

Local campaigns help you drive important offline metrics — like store visits or in-store sales — by advertising on multiple platforms. Let Google Ads optimize how your ads appear on Search, Maps, Display, and YouTube to maximize your offline performance. If you're a hotel looking to advertise rates and availability, Hotel campaigns are for you! These campaigns display hotel prices and availability on Search, Maps, and Assistant to connect you with the millions of travelers actively searching for you. With Discovery campaigns, you can easily engage customers across Google's most popular properties with a variety of rich, unique ad formats. Reach your users across the YouTube Home Feed, Gmail, and Google's Discover Feed — all with one campaign.

Smart Campaigns

Looking for an automated solution for small businesses? Smart campaigns are here to help! Just choose your business goals and let machine learning deliver results through Google's Search, Display, and Maps networks. Smart campaigns are the default for advertisers new to Google Ads. They're a great fit for those who want an easy way to reach relevant customers and drive results but have limited time or experience with managing Google Ads campaigns. Let our smart technology improve your ads, so you can focus on what's most important — running your business.

Tip

Make sure to choose ad groups that have a good amount of traffic, and then regularly monitor their performance and ad status.

Knowledge check What are some of the benefits of leveraging Google Ads automated bidding strategies? Select all that apply. Manual control Auction-time bidding Machine learning

Manual control Auction-time bidding Machine learning

Knowledge check Which ad extensions can serve automatically? Message extensions Callout extensions Sitelink extensions Structured snippets

Message extensions Callout extensions Sitelink extensions Structured snippets

How often is it recommended to repeat the budget planning process? Select the best answer. Monthly Daily Annually Weekly

Monthly Daily Annually Weekly

Step 4: Google Search Network

Next, Hiroko needs to determine where her text ads will show and how to get the most exposure for them. She selects the Google Search Network, which includes, by default, Google Search partners. Her ads will show on Google Search, but also extend to the hundreds of additional sites partnering with Google. Showing her ads to even more people out there should help her grow her business! Select the panel to learn more.

Step 5: Devices

Now Hiroko needs to decide which devices to show her ads on, based on what her customers use to search and shop for bikes. Since they research, compare prices, and make purchases both at home and on the go, she selects the desktop, mobile device, and tablet options. This way, her ads can appear throughout the entire customer journey! Select the panel to learn more.

So how does this all work exactly?

Once Hiroko tags her site with the Google Ads remarketing tag, people who visit will be added to her remarketing lists (in accordance with their privacy settings). Hiroko can then define different audience lists based on the pages these people visited and the recency of their interaction with her site. What can Hiroko do after layering her Search campaigns with her remarketing lists? Increase her bids on certain audiences Decrease her bids on certain audiences Create ad groups targeting generic keywords and only show ads to those who've visited her before Tailor her ad creatives based on the customer Exclude certain audience lists from her campaigns

What changes will Performance Planner recommend?

Once you use Performance Planner to create a plan with the target date, campaigns, budget, target conversion volume, and target cost-per-acquisition (CPA) for upcoming periods, the tool will provide one of the recommendations below. These recommendations are campaign settings forecasted to help drive maximum conversions and the most efficient return on your investment for your targeted budget.

Navigate the interface: What it all means

Optimization score A score of 73.5% means there's 26.5% optimization opportunity available across all recommendations for this account. Filter Narrow down your selection to show only specific recommendation types, like Keywords & Targeting. Optimization recommendations Recommendations are ordered based on performance uplift, with the most impactful suggestions at the top. In this example, this account could gain 3.69K conversions by adopting a new bidding strategy.

How do you see optimization score improving your advertising? Your anonymous response will be visible to others taking this course. A. By surfacing impactful recommendations B. By saving time that would've been spent on finding optimization opportunities C. By deciding which optimizations will increase performance D. By monitoring account health over time

Optimization score empowers you to improve your advertising in all these ways, so you can attract more customers and meet your business goals.

What does this mean for your business?

Optimization score is made up of over 50 recommendations, meant to help you make your advertising more efficient, reach new audiences, and spend smarter. The score is real-time responsive, so it's a snapshot of your optimization potential at a given time. That means you can instantly improve your account by applying recommendations that meet your business objectives.

Recap

Optimization score looks across key aspects of your campaigns to identify opportunities for improvement. Apply these recommendations to get the best results for your advertising budget.

How is your optimization score calculated?

Optimization score runs an algorithm that looks across key aspects of your accounts, including statistics, settings, and industry trends, to determine whether your campaigns are fully optimized. When optimization potential is detected, the system provides recommendations to close the gap. For example, an account with a score of 80% could improve its performance by 20% if the listed recommendations are adopted.

Navigate optimization score

Optimization score's intuitive interface makes it easy to understand and implement recommendations so you can reach more customers, wherever they are.

Why optimization score?

Optimization score, found on your Google Ads Recommendations page, estimates how well your Search campaigns are set to perform. The score runs from 0% to 100%. The higher your score, the more your account is running to its full potential. Along with your score, you'll see a list of optimization recommendations for increasing campaign performance and improving your score. With just a few clicks, you can apply recommendations to get the most out of your Google Ads investment.

Simulation

Our forecast engine simulates relevant ad auctions with query level variables, including seasonality, clickthrough rate, competitors, landing page, and time of day.

How does the Performance Planner work?

Performance Planner determines the optimal bids and average daily budget allocations across all of your campaigns to help increase the number of conversions you can achieve for any future spend scenario.

Why use Performance Planner in Google Ads over traditional forecasting methods?

Performance Planner highlights growth opportunities for your Google Ads always-on campaigns. Having the optimal budgets and bids is crucial to making the most of your marketing budget and growing your business with Google Ads.

What's the Google Ads Performance Planner?

Performance Planner is a new forecasting tool that uses machine learning to reveal the possibilities for your Google Ads campaigns. With this tool, you can explore forecasts for your upcoming monthly, quarterly, and annual budgets for current campaigns, while also helping to improve your return on investment.

Note

Performance Planner is a planning tool and does not optimize in the Google Ads front end toward forecasted KPIs. Unpredictable external factors in a dynamic auction environment can mean Performance Planner forecasts may have discrepancies, so it's important to continually monitor performance and optimize toward performance targets.

Note

Performance Planner is different from the Recommendations page. On the Recommendations page, you can apply optimization suggestions to help improve your campaigns. Whereas Performance Planner is your go-to tool for deciding the budget required to help reach your marketing goals.

Phrase Match vs Exact Match

Phrase match is a good fit if you're looking for something that's more flexible than exact match, but more targeted than broad match. It helps you reach more customers, while still showing your ads to those most likely searching for your product or service. Exact match is a good fit if it's important to you to match with very specific user searches. Exact match keywords allow you to reach only searches that mean the same thing as your keywords.

What are Price extensions? Benefits, When to use & Tips

Price extensions let you showcase your services and range of products alongside their respective prices. They're available globally in several languages and currencies. Benefits Price extensions provide a better customer experience by setting clear expectations from the very first touchpoint. When to use This structured way of highlighting information makes it easier for people to compare their options and decide if they're interested in your products or services. Check the Google Ads Help Center for price extensions to see which languages and currencies are available. Tips Be granular and relevant to user queries. Make sure that the descriptions relate to the headers. Don't use promotional copy in descriptive lines. Don't repeat headlines and description lines.

What are Promotion extensions? Benefits, When to use & Tips

Promotion extensions allow you to quickly and prominently display information about your promotions without having to update every single ad. Benefits Promotion extensions show below your ads in an eye-catching format. When to use Promotion extensions are great for highlighting special offers and sales and can include monetary or percentage discounts for your products or services. Tips Select special occasions and events: You can select from a list of prepopulated occasions to have your promotion extension appear with a bold label (e.g., back-to-school, Black Friday, Boxing Day). Check out the Help Center for all available occasions. Flexible scheduling: Choose to show your promotion extensions within the date of the occasion, or specify the dates, days of the week, or times of day you want them to show.

Why does this matter to users?

Providing relevant ad extensions encourages users to make more informed decisions and take action. Increased engagement Using ad extensions that make sense increases the likelihood of matching a user's moment and addressing their signals, like intent, device, interest, location, etc. As a result, your ads will be more relevant and draw higher engagement. Better ad quality Ad formats will impact Ad Rank. When calculating the expected impact of formats, we look at factors such as relevance, clickthrough rate, and prominence of the ad format. More qualified leads Giving users relevant information up front often translates into more qualified leads. Because users know what to expect when they arrive on your website, they're more likely to fulfill the action fostered by the ad.

What is Quality Score?

Quality Score is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. Higher-quality ads can lead to lower prices and better ad positions. Quality score is composed of expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience.

Key Benefits of Dynamic Search Ads

Reach and coverage Capture more searches! Match with searches you may have missed and that are highly relevant to your site. Efficiency and time savings Don't spend time creating endless ads! Stop managing extensive keyword lists. You no longer need to pause or create ads based on seasonality or demand, as our web crawling technology manages that for you and is aware of what your website is offering and when.* *Crawler takes a few days to update Transparency and control Don't sacrifice control! Dynamic Search Ads offers full transparency via the Search Term report, control through bids at the dynamic target level, and exclusions for irrelevant traffic.

Search Maximize Clicks or Maximize Conversions campaigns

Recommended average daily budget

Search Manual cost-per-click (CPC) or Enhanced CPC campaigns

Recommended average daily budget and campaign bid scaling (1.5 scaling means + 50% bid scaling)

Search Target CPA or Target return on ad spend (ROAS) campaigns

Recommended average daily budget, Campaign-level Target CPA, or Campaign-level Target ROAS

Three Principles: Relevance

Relevance Google Ads helps you connect with the right people, at the right time, with the right message. Your ads can appear on Google Search, YouTube, and more, just when someone is looking for products or services like yours. You can also customize options, such as keywords and location, to get in front of the most relevant customers.

Affinity Audiences use case

Say a person regularly views videos about camping, has recently searched for the best fishing lures on Google.com, and has researched hiking trails on Google Maps. Our system would recognize that this person is likely passionate about the outdoors and would place them in an Outdoor Enthusiast affinity audience. If you were an online adventure sporting goods shop, you might like to bid on broad terms like "adventure sports," but would want to to avoid potentially irrelevant traffic. By layering the Outdoor Enthusiast affinity audience to your broad keyword targeting campaign, you'll make sure your ads are only seen by people who are truly passionate about the outdoors, increasing the relevancy of your ad and the likelihood of conversion.

These ads show up next to Google search results and on other Google partner sites, like YouTube, when people search for products or services you offer.

Search

Here are some additional factors that you should check while budget planning: Repeat the planning process monthly to find growth opportunities in Google Ads and optimize for your target metrics.

Seasonality Take advantage of seasonal trends throughout the year. Market Share Get ahead of fluctuating auctions due to activity from other businesses and other external factors. Growth Use Performance Planner to compare previous periods and see a forecast of the growth possibilities you can drive using Google Ads.

Why should I use Performance Planner every month?

Seasonality, fluctuating auctions, and competitors mean that Google Ads campaigns should be planned and optimized on at least a monthly basis. Using Performance Planner every month lets you optimize your budgets and bids so you can drive more conversions for the same investment.

Seller ratings (stars) extension

Seller ratings are an automated extension 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.

These ads promote your products by giving users detailed information about what you're selling. They appear on Google Shopping and next to search results.

Shopping

Campaign: Shopping

Shopping ads appear on Google Shopping next to search results and near text and responsive ads. Shopping ads promote your products by giving consumers detailed information about what you're selling before they even select your ad. Use a Shopping campaign to advertise your online and local inventory, boost traffic to your website or local store, and find better-qualified leads.

Shopping Example:

Shopping ads appear on Google Shopping next to search results and near text and responsive ads. Shopping ads promote your products by giving consumers detailed information about what you're selling before they even select your ad. Use a Shopping campaign to advertise your online and local inventory, boost traffic to your website or local store, and find better-qualified leads.

How do these solutions work?

Signals Google's intelligent algorithms leverage behavior on Google.com, YouTube, Google Maps, Google Shopping, and more to identify repeated patterns of behavior. Survey Google validates this behavior using surveys and conversion data. Scale As users move between mobile and desktop, Google maintains a holistic picture of their behaviors, helping brands to reach users across device

Similar Audiences

Similar Audiences leverages your remarketing lists to find new customers with similar characteristics as your existing customers. It can help you expand the reach of your valuable audiences, across all platforms.

Step 6: Locations & languages

Since the majority of Your Adventure's sales are from online purchases, she targets all the locations they ship to. She also chooses to target all languages, as she doesn't want to miss out on anyone looking to purchase a bike. Select the panel to learn more.

What do we mean by not all user traffic is the same?

Some people searching for your keywords may have already interacted with your site in the past. For example: They may have visited your homepage. They may have added items to a shopping basket on your site, but then abandoned it. They may be entirely new to your site, and have not yet discovered your incredible business Remarketing Lists for Search Ads allows you to serve unique ad creatives and set your ad group bids differently, based on past interactions with your site or app.

Which two people might see an ad with the keyword +black +shirt (set as broad match modifier)?

Someone searching for the term I want to buy a black shirt Someone searching for the term black button shirt Someone searching for the term shirt Someone searching for the term shirt brown

StellaService

StellaService is an independent company that evaluates the customer service performance of certain online businesses.

Dynamic Search Ads in action Let's take a look at how the process of creating a dynamic search ad happens.

Step 1: A person types in a search term. Step 2: Google matches that search to the landing page most relevant on your site. Step 3: Google's algorithm creates an ad based on your template and a tailor-made headline.

Advertiser-provided extensions

Strictly advertiser-provided extensions are not automatically generated, but Google recommends implementing the options amount for the business in order to achieve the most possible impressions. Advertiser-provided extensions will always supersede automated ones.

Structured snippets: Give a glimpse of what's offered

Structured snippets allow you to describe features of a specific product or range of products or services offered by the business before users click on the ad. Benefits of structured snippets Get more qualified leads: When you give users specific information about what you're offering before they visit your website, they'll be more likely to convert after clicking. When should you use structured snippets? Structured snippets are great to highlight specific aspects of your products or services. Examples: Amenities: Wi-Fi, breakfast, pool, gym, spa Types: Loose fit jeans, tapered leg jeans, relaxed fit jeans Destinations: Las Vegas, New York, Tokyo, Rome, Cancun, Paris Tips and best practices Focus on the essential: Make sure the headers selected provide information that's useful and attractive to users. Ideally, four values should be added to each header, but be sure you have enough content on your website for at least two values. Be relevant: The values that apply to each header must make sense in the context of the chosen header. For each value, is it true to say "[value] is a [chosen header]"? For example: "Wi-Fi" is an amenity, and "sneakers" are a type of shoe.

Structured snippets vs callout extensions

Structured snippets highlight specific aspects of the products or services offered. While callouts highlight what makes a whole business unique.

What's a text ad?

Text ads are just that — ads made up of text! They're a simple yet powerful way to get your business in front of people when they're searching for products or services like yours on the Google Search Network. To effectively reach potential customers, text ads should be informative, relevant, and engaging. Your text ads are the front door to your business, so it's important to show the right message to the right customer.

What makes up a text ad?

Text ads on the Search Network show above and below Google Search results. To create a text ad, you need a headline, URL, and description. Let's take a closer look.

Network

The Networks setting indicates where you want your ad to appear, based on the campaign type you select. For example, with the Google Search Network, your ad can appear on Google Search sites, in addition to search results on Google Play, Google Shopping, and Google Maps (including the Maps app). Your ad can also appear on non-Google search sites (like CNN) that partner with Google to show search ads; these are called search partners. You also have the opportunity to expand to the Google Display ads network, where your text ad can show on sites that partner with Google to show ads.

Tip

The broader match types (broad and broad match modifier) help you discover terms that you might not be aware of already, whereas exact match is good for those search terms you know your customers will be using when they're searching for a product or service that you want to provide specific messaging for.

Benefits of Google Ads automated bidding

The goal of any marketing campaign is to reach the right user with the right message at the right time. As consumers span across multiple devices, the customer journey has become more complex and so has setting bids based on each user's context. Google Ads automated bidding is the best solution to efficiently account for all available signals to help improve performance. Machine Learning Automated bidding uses machine learning to algorithmically help you set the appropriate bid for each and every auction. This takes much of the heavy lifting and guesswork out of setting bids, so you can meet your performance goals more efficiently and accurately. Time saved Cross-referencing audience data with context to establish intent and set the appropriate bid is a complex and time-consuming task. Automation offers a way to alleviate this strain on marketing resources. Auction-time bidding Our bidding algorithms tailor bids to each user's unique context, using relevant signals present at auction time. This is a unique capability in the market, as it allows for bid differentiation, with a high degree of precision based on the conversion opportunity of each auction. Depth of signals used and cross analysis Our algorithms integrate a large variety of signals and consider new ones to evaluate user intent. They also go a step beyond traditional signal analysis by recognizing and adjusting for meaningful interactions between combinations of signals while constantly considering new ones.

Knowledge check Imagine you have an online store that makes and delivers organic juice (not shakes or smoothies) in 30 minutes. Which keyword list would you use to reach each of the following business goals?

The keywords to increase the number of site visitors are +organic and juice. Using these keywords will get your ads in front of a larger audience interested in juice or its derivatives (as juice is in broad match), but will narrow it down to at least include those looking for organic, because the keyword +organic is a broad match modifier. The keywords to increase sales are -smoothie, -shakes, and "organic juices". Using these keywords will guarantee that people searching for smoothies or shakes won't see the ads, but people searching for organic juices will. Getting the right people to see your ads will help increase sales.

Knowledge Check Match each item with the correct answer. The likelihood that the ad will be clicked Select... How relevant, transparent, and easy-to-navigate the page is for users Select... How closely the ad matches the intent behind a user's search Select...

The likelihood that the ad will be clicked Expected Click Through Rate How relevant, transparent, and easy-to-navigate the page is for users Landing Page Experience How closely the ad matches the intent behind a user's search Ad relevance

Universal extensions: How many & why are they important?

There are three extensions every marketer should be using to enhance their text ad: sitelinks, callout extensions, and structured snippets.

Evolving to meet customer expectations

Think about how technology continues to shape people's lives and shopping behavior. They expect all digital experiences to be helpful, personal, and frictionless, providing a seamless experience no matter what the channel may be. Every time they turn to their devices for answers, they're expressing intent and reshaping the traditional marketing funnel along the way. Ads also need to evolve with these expectations. Successful advertisers work to close the gap by creating different segments of customers and building personalized and relevant experiences for each stage of the customer journey. Being useful and relevant is the only way to get customers to tune in.Ads also need to evolve with these expectations. Successful advertisers work to close the gap by creating different segments of customers and building personalized and relevant experiences for each stage of the customer journey. Being useful and relevant is the only way to get customers to tune in.

Third-party review sites

Third-party sites aggregate user reviews.

Step 3: Create Search Campaign

To create her Search campaign, Hiroko opens her Google Ads account. Since Hiroko wants to increase sales by bringing in more customers, she sets the campaign's marketing goal to Sales. Select the panel to learn more.

Display Example:

Trivago, a hotel search platform, used Smart Display campaigns to help travelers around the world find hotel rooms that meet their travel needs. Their primary goal was to increase bookings while maintaining steady costs. The travel brand provided headlines, descriptions of its hotel listings, and images of destinations. Google Ads did the rest — creating over 25,000 tailored ads and showing them to travelers shopping for hotel deals. As a result, Trivago drove 36% more conversions at the same cost-per-booking, compared with similar Display campaigns. The brand now uses Smart Display campaigns across markets in Europe, Asia, and North America.

True or False: It's best practice to separate campaigns with different marketing objectives into different Performance Planner plans, so that spend is not reallocated between two different marketing budgets or objectives.

True

True or False: Optimization Score is made up of over 50 recommendations to optimize Search campaigns.

True

URL

URL The URL shows your website address. It gives people an idea of where they'll go when they click your ad. Tip: Match your ad to your landing page: Have a 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 there. People might leave your website if they don't find what they expect. Optional: Two optional path fields can be added to your display URL. Each field can hold up to 15 characters. This feature gives users an idea of the content they'll see upon clicking your ad. If your final URL is www.example.com/store/us/newmountainbikes, you might want your path text to be "Mountain-Bikes" so your ad's display URL would be www.example.com/Mountain-Bikes.

Customer Match: How it works

Upload your customer data into Google Ads. We'll match it against the people who search on Google.com, and form it into audience lists. The upload can include various types of customer data (for matching), such as email address, mailing address, and phone number. Let's take a closer look at the steps below. 1. Segment Segment a customer list based on desired marketing action (e.g., reactivation of lapsed customers). 2. Upload Upload the list to Google Ads. 3. Audience Lists The list is translated into an audience list and made available for targeting on Search, YouTube, and Discovery. 4. Customize Creative Customize your creatives with special offers or incentives that are specific to this audience.

Performance Planner Best Practices

Use non-last click attribution conversions Performance Planner forecasts for conversion types that are activated for the Include in Conversions setting in the Conversions column. To allocate budgets that drive incremental conversions, include non-last click attribution conversions in the Include in Conversions column. Create multiple plans for campaigns that have different marketing objectives It's a best practice to separate campaigns with different marketing objectives into different Performance Planner plans, so that spend isn't reallocated between two different marketing objectives. Instead, consider grouping campaigns by marketing goal or budget. For example, you could split consideration and intent-focused campaigns by separating generic search campaigns (such as a campaign containing keyword "suv sale") and brand search campaigns (such as a campaign containing keyword "buy Landriver suv") into separate plans. Use the performance targets feature Unpredictable external factors in a dynamic auction environment mean that Performance Planner forecasts may have discrepancies. As a result, it's important to continually track and optimize performance. Use the performance targets feature to monitor targets set in Performance Planner and receive alerts and recommendations when a campaign isn't on track Use optimization score in the Recommendations page to improve your campaigns Performance Planner is used for forecasting future periods and recommendations in Performance Planner can be used as guidance to ensure seasonality and budget reallocation are accounted for future periods so you can prevent your campaigns from becoming "Limited by Budget"

Ad extensions best practices

Use the right number of extensions Enable as many ad extensions as what makes sense for your business. You should have at least three, but it's highly recommended to have four since in any given auction, an ad can show a maximum of four ad extensions. At a minimum, always enable sitelinks, structured snippets, and callouts. Keep them fresh and updated Change the link text and URLs whenever you have something new to communicate, such as sales or special offers. Monitor performance We recommend that you monitor the performance of ad extensions at the ad group level to see how they're increasing performance by capturing relevant traffic and queries.

Detailed Demographics

Using Detailed Demographics, you can reach customers based on their activities on Google.com. These activities may indicate certain things about their lives, including parental status, parenting stage, homeownership status, marital status, and education status. Parental status - Whether or not they're a parent Parenting stage - Ages of their children Homeownership - Whether they own or rent their home Marital status - Whether they're married, in a relationship, or single Education status - Level of education they've achieved or if they're currently attending college

What are automated ad extensions?

Very similar to advertiser-provided ad extensions, automated ad extensions give consumers relevant information up front, which can often translate into more qualified leads. Every Google Ads account gets opted into all the automated ad extensions they're eligible for. The content for automated extensions is carefully generated by machine learning and support by a dedicated team within Google.

These ads appear on their own or within other streaming video content on YouTube and across the Google Display Network.

Video

Machine Learning

We use machine learning to fine tune forecasts and achieve a higher level of accuracy. Get the benefits of machine learning Performance Planner helps you discover the best bids and budgets so you can drive the most conversions for any spend scenario.

Knowledge check How often should you repeat the budget planning process? Select the best answer. Weekly Annually Daily Monthly

Weekly Annually Daily Monthly You should repeat the budget planning process every month to maximize your growth opportunities

How to reach a broad audience with match types

When she wants to get her ads in front of a wider audience and also make sure she isn't missing any search terms her customers might be using, she uses the broad match and broad match modifier keyword match types. Let's examine each below. Let's see how Hiroko, a digital marketing manager at a major online bicycle and adventure sports store, uses match types to set up her keyword lists.

Ad Extensions Impact

When you create your ad, you have the option to add extra information to your ad, such as a phone number, or more links to specific pages on your site. These are called ad extensions. Google Ads estimates how extensions and other ad formats you use will impact your ad's performance.

Tip

When you rotate your ads to optimize for clicks or conversions, ad groups with three or more high-quality ads may receive up to 15% more clicks or conversions, compared to ad groups with one or two ads. That's because Google selects the best ad for every auction, ensuring the right message gets in front of the right customer. When combined with three or more ad extensions, this best practice can result in even better performance.

Bid

When you set your bid, you're telling Google Ads the maximum amount you're willing to pay for a click on your ad. You often actually end up paying less, and you can change your bid at any time.

Step 1: Setting up a Search campaign When you set up a Search campaign, think through the different ways to drive more traffic to your site, service, or product.

Where do you want your ads seen? How much do you want to invest? What do you want to share in your ads? What keywords will match your customer's search terms?

Recap

Whether you want to re-engage existing customers or reach out to your most valuable customers, Google's Audience solutions offer you a complete set of strategies and products to connect you with people in the moments when they're ready to buy.

Why Google Ads?

With Google Ads, you get access to a broad range of advertising products designed to help you reach customers in the moments that matter. Stay focused on growing your business while Google's smart technology does the heavy lifting to drive better results from your advertising.

Translate user intent into business results

With Google Search campaigns, your ads show up alongside search results when people are looking for the products or services you offer.

Campaign: Video

With Video ads, you can reach the right audience at scale and capture their attention. Show your ads on their own or within other streaming video content on YouTube and across Google's network of websites and apps. Only pay when people choose to watch your ad. Video campaigns help you bring your business's story to life. They engage customers in different ways, like showing ads before their favorite music video or while they're researching an upcoming purchase.

Search Example:

With more than 870 hotels across the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, La Quinta Inns & Suites knew it was crucial to drive early consideration and re-engage with travelers throughout their trip research. The brand used data from their customer loyalty program to target Google Search ads and create a strategy to bid on users differently at various stages of the purchase journey, while also driving down their cost-per-booking. These newly implemented audience and bidding strategies drove an 83% increase in bookings as compared with previous years, and now drive 32% of La Quinta's paid hotel bookings through Google.

Context of query

With the ad auction, context matters. When calculating Ad Rank, we look at the search terms the person has entered, the person's location at the time of the search, the type of device they're using (e.g., mobile or desktop), the time of the search, the nature of the search terms, other ads and search results that show on the page, and other user signals and attributes.

Tip

You can implement a Google Ads automated bidding strategy to get the benefits of auction-time bidding while still using a third-party management solution.

Tip

You can provide up to 15 headlines and four descriptions for a single responsive search ad. And Google Ads will automatically show different combinations depending on the search query.

Tip

You must be tracking conversions for conversion-focused bid strategies to work properly, with the exception of eCPC on Display.

Consideration-focused bidding strategies

You should choose this bid strategy if you want to drive as many clicks as possible within a set level of spend. Goal Clicks Bid strategies to choose from Maximize clicks: Set bids to try to get you as many clicks as possible within a target spend amount that you choose. Use case Budget-constrained campaigns focused on driving clicks Drive more click volume Maximize traffic when extra budget is received Upper funnel keywords that have high assist value in conversion

Awareness-based bidding strategies

You should choose this bid strategy if you want to make sure that your ad is visible for certain queries and even at certain locations on the page. Goal Visibility Bid strategies to choose from Target impression share: This helps make sure your ads are meeting a specific impression share threshold for a specific location on the search results page: anywhere, top of page, or absolute top of page. Use case This is for raising awareness of your brand and campaigns that include brand terms.

Tip

You should use all relevant ad extensions for your business because the expected impact of ad extensions is factored into Ad Rank. For more details, use this best practices guide: Using Quality Score to Guide Optimizations.

Bidding & Budget

Your bid strategy controls the manner in which you pay for users to interact with your ads. Once you choose the metric you'd like to focus on for your campaign, you'll see different bidding options to help you optimize for it. You can choose to manually set your bids for clicks on your ads, or let Google Ads do it for you. Your budget is the average amount you're comfortable spending each day on your campaign. The budget you choose is entirely up to you, and you can adjust it at any time.

Locations & Languages

Your campaign's ads are eligible to show to customers located in, or who show interest in, a geographic location. For example, a Parisian bakery owner can reach people located in Paris only, while an online shoe retailer that ships to Canada and the US can connect with people in both countries. Language targeting allows you to restrict where your ads may appear, based on the user's language settings and the language of the site.

How you can find your Quality Score in Google Ads

Your current Quality Score and its component scores can be seen through four Quality Score status columns in the Google Ads interface: Quality Score, Landing Page Experience, Ad Relevance, and Expected Clickthrough Rate (eCTR).

But you already have something that can help!

Your customer relationship management (CRM) data can help you understand the types of people who have a relationship with your brand, and you can use insights from your data to address your marketing challenges. Customer Match allows you to leverage your online and offline customer data to reach your customers and deliver the right message wherever they are, on any device, across Search, YouTube, and Discovery.

Why choosing the right bid strategy is important?

t's important to choose a bidding strategy that reflects your marketing goals. Google Ads offers several bid strategies to choose from. Which strategy you choose depends on which networks your campaign is targeting and whether you want to focus on improving clicks, visibility, conversion, and so on.

Ad rank threshold

To help ensure high-quality ads, we set minimum quality thresholds that an ad must achieve to show in a particular ad position

True or false? Affinity Audiences allows advertisers to reach people who're actively researching and intending to buy the products or services they offer.

False

Validation

We perform forward and backward measurements of accuracy for thousands of campaign samples — across one, seven, 30, and 90 day periods — to ensure we're making valid recommendations.

What if you're using Search Ads 360

Your recommendations reflect your Search Ads 360 bid strategies and data sharing preferences. Contact your Search Ads 360 team for additional information. Learn more about data sharing preferences here.

Have you ever asked yourself these questions?

"How will my campaigns perform next quarter?" "Is there a better way to distribute my current spend to drive increased conversions for my current Google Ads investment?" "How much budget do I need for my Google Ads to achieve key performance indicators (KPIs)?" "How can I use Google Ads to drive more sales, while remaining profitable and further grow my business?"

Knowledge check Hiroko is a digital marketing manager for an online bicycle store that sells bikes and cycling gear. She wants to use as many ad extensions as possible. Which three ad extensions would you recommend for her? 1. Callout extensions 2. Location extensions 3. Sitelink extensions 4. Structured snippets

1. Callout extensions 2. Location extensions 3. Sitelink extensions 4. Structured snippets The three extensions that Hiroko should be using are the universal ones: sitelink extensions, structured snippets and callout extensions.

Performance Planner Best Practices:

1. Create separate plans for each marketing objective. Don't add all brand and generic campaigns into the same plan. That's because different campaigns often have different marketing objectives. Incremental conversions are achieved by creating separate plans for each marketing objective. 2. Set bids and budgets using non-last click conversions. By default, Performance Planner will forecast conversions based on what's included in the Conversions column in your Google Ads front end. To allocate budgets that drive incremental conversions, set bids and budgets using non-last click conversions in your Conversions column. 3. Regularly check your plan. Forecasts improve when plans are generated closer to the actual run date. Make sure to regularly check back on your plan before implementing it.

If an advertiser doesn't want to add remarketing tags to a website, why would Customer Match be a good fit for them? Select the best answer. 1. Customer Match relies on your own data instead of a remarketing tag. 2. Customer Match allows you to reach people who haven't been to your website yet. 3. It wouldn't be a good fit. You have to tag your website to use Customer Match. 4. Customer Match allows you to reach people who have been to your website.

1. Customer Match relies on your own data instead of a remarketing tag. 2. Customer Match allows you to reach people who haven't been to your website yet. 3. It wouldn't be a good fit. You have to tag your website to use Customer Match. 4. Customer Match allows you to reach people who have been to your website.

How Google Ads can fuel your business goals.

1. Drive Sales - Grow online, in-app, in-person, and over-the-phone sales. 2. Get Leads - Boost conversions by encouraging people to take action 3. Increase Website Traffic - Get the right people to visit your website. 4. Influence Consideration - Encourage people to explore your products and services. 5. Build Awareness - Reach a broad audience and maximize exposure. 6. Promote your App - Increase installs and interactions with your app.

What are the three main factors that determine ad quality? Select the best answer. 1. Expected clickthrough rate, landing page experience, and ad relevance 2. Expected clickthrough rate, ad formats, and ad relevance 3. Expected clickthrough rate, max CPC bid, and landing page experience 4. Max CPC bid, landing page experience, and ad relevance

1. Expected clickthrough rate, landing page experience, and ad relevance 2. Expected clickthrough rate, ad formats, and ad relevance 3. Expected clickthrough rate, max CPC bid, and landing page experience 4. Max CPC bid, landing page experience, and ad relevance

How does Google Ads generate responsive search ads? 1. Google Ads creates them based on existing high performing ad copy. 2. Google Ads mixes and matches headlines and URLs that have been provided. 3. Google Ads mixes and matches headlines and description lines that have been provided. 4. Google Ads creates them based on existing ad copy, landing pages, and extensions.

1. Google Ads creates them based on existing high performing ad copy. 2. Google Ads mixes and matches headlines and URLs that have been provided. 3. Google Ads mixes and matches headlines and description lines that have been provided. 4. Google Ads creates them based on existing ad copy, landing pages, and extensions.

Which are the three required parts of a text ad? Select the best answer. 1. Headline, description, and URL 2. Description, path fields, and headline 3. Description, path fields, and URL 4. Headline, description, and path fields

1. Headline, description, and URL 2. Description, path fields, and headline 3. Description, path fields, and URL 4. Headline, description, and path fields

Knowledge check Which of the following factors is not considered by Ad Rank in its calculation? Select the best answer. 1. Increasing the conversion rate of your landing pages 2. Testing new ad formats and extensions 3. Rewriting ads with low CTRs 4. Context of query

1. Increasing the conversion rate of your landing pages 2. Testing new ad formats and extensions 3. Rewriting ads with low CTRs 4. Context of query

How to use Performance Planner

1. Learn Create a new budget plan to learn the best bids and budgets for your campaigns to drive incremental conversions. 2. Explore Explore further optimizations and forecast how you can grow your business with Google Ads. 3. Do Review and implement changes prescribed by your Performance Planner plan. 4. Repeat Ensure you react to external factors and optimize to the target metrics set. Use Performance Planner on a monthly basis for best results.

How many ads should be implemented per ad group? Select the best answer. 1. Only one 2. One or two 3. Three to five 4. Two to three

1. Only one 2. One or two 3. Three to five 4. Two to three

Which attributes describe a good landing page experience? Select the best answer. 1. Relevant and original content 2. Easy to navigate 3. Transparency about your business 4. High amount of user traffic

1. Relevant and original content 2. Easy to navigate 3. Transparency about your business 4. High amount of user traffic

How to get ads in front of the right customers?

1. She starts by creating ad groups. For each ad group, she can create specific text ads and a list of search keywords — the words and phrases that will prompt her ads to show up. Since it's best to create ad groups around themes or products, Hiroko's plan is to create multiple ads groups, one for each of her bike types: kid's bikes, mountain bikes, and road bikes. This level of granularity gives her more control to get the right ad message to the right customers. 2.For each ad group, she creates a unique list of keywords. She thinks about the search terms people may use when researching or looking for bikes, and uses those as her keywords. Building a solid keyword list can help her match her ads with the right customers! Take a look at some of the keywords she selected for her Kid's Bike ad group: kid bikes children's bike girl bikes boy bikes first bike With her keyword list in place, she decides on bid amounts — the maximum amount Your Adventure will pay when a customer clicks on their ad. 3. Finally, she creates a set of text ads for each ad group. She fills in the following options to create one of her text ads: Headline - To catch her customers' attentionURL - To reach a particular page on the Your Adventure siteDescription - To highlight the details of what Your Adventure is offering Here's one of her ads: Kid's Bike Sale at Your Adventure | 20% off all kid bikes & free shipping https://www.example.com/kidsbikes Top quality, great selection, and expert advice you can trust. Chat support available. Read our reviews first! Shop from your phone. 4. To complement her ad groups, Hiroko selects the option to create ad groups made up of dynamically created text ads and keywords lists. They're built automatically, based on the content of her website. This enables the ads to show up for searches that Hiroko may not have thought of when creating her standard ad groups. We'll go over Dynamic Search Ads in more detail later. With her Search campaign in place, Hiroko's ads display for searches such as buy kid bike and sales on boy's bicycles, making it easier to complete a sale!

What is the key value proposition of Google Search campaigns? Select the best answer. 1. Show your ads when a customer is searching for your product or service 2. Influence organic results 3. Appear as a text ad, a video ad, or a banner ad on one of Google's partner sites 4. Reach people on Google.com that might be interested in your brand, regardless of what they're searching for

1. Show your ads when a customer is searching for your product or service 2. Influence organic results 3. Appear as a text ad, a video ad, or a banner ad on one of Google's partner sites 4. Reach people on Google.com that might be interested in your brand, regardless of what they're searching for

Similar Audiences: How it works

1. Similar Audiences finds people that are similar to those on an original remarketing "seed" list. The people are similar in profile based on the seed list members' recent browsing interests, search terms, and videos watched on YouTube. 2. Our system "scores" people based on how similar they are to those on the original seed list, with similarity defined as interested in the same categories, topics, and products. 3. Once you have lists of similar audiences, you can layer these lists over your campaigns and bid higher to reach valuable potential customers. Note: Each similar audience has its seed list members removed to ensure that no one overlaps between a similar list and its seed list. In the case of an All Visitors list, this would mean that the Similar to All Visitors list is comprised of users who've not been to your site before.

Which ad extensions can serve automatically? 1. Sitelink, location, and call extensions 2. Message, callout, and structured snippets 3. Sitelink, callout, and structured snippets 4. Promotion, callout, and sitelink extensions

1. Sitelink, location, and call extensions 2. Message, callout, and structured snippets 3. Sitelink, callout, and structured snippets 4. Promotion, callout, and sitelink extensions

Which two people might see an ad with the keyword +black +shirt (set as broad match modifier)? Select all that apply. 1. Someone searching for the term shirt 2. Someone searching for the term shirt brown 3. Someone searching for the term I want to buy a black shirt 4. Someone searching for the term black button shirt

1. Someone searching for the term shirt 2. Someone searching for the term shirt brown 3. Someone searching for the term I want to buy a black shirt 4. Someone searching for the term black button shirt

Optimal budgets and bids are crucial to getting the most of your marketing budget! Here's how Performance Planner can drive more conversions at different spend scenarios.

1. The additional conversions you can generate at the same spend using Performance Planner. 2. The incremental number of conversions you can achieve and maximum amount you can spend without diminishing returns (maintain your current CPA cost per action) 3. The incremental number of conversions you can achieve and maximum amount you can spend at your desired target CPA goal (in order to remain profitable) 4. Additional spend and resulting conversion scenarios at higher target CPA goals (reduce profitability to increase total conversion volume)

Advertising with Google Ads starts with creating campaigns based on your business objectives. Which campaign type would you pick for each of the following scenarios?

1. These ads drive engagement, app installs, and in-app purchases. They appear across the Google Search and Display Networks, as well as on Google Play and YouTube Universal App 2.These ads show up next to Google search results and on other Google partner sites, like YouTube, when people search for products or services you offer Search 3. These ads appear on their own or within other streaming video content on YouTube and across the Google Display Network Video 4. These ads promote your products by giving users detailed information about what you're selling. They appear on Google Shopping and next to search results Shopping Universal App Video Search Shopping

Why do search ad extensions matter? Select the best answer. 1. They guarantee higher engagement for advertisers. 2. The cost-per-click on ad extensions is lower than on a search ad headline. 3. They increase engagement and influence ad quality. 4. They increase ad quality and drive lower conversion costs.

1. They guarantee higher engagement for advertisers. 2. The cost-per-click on ad extensions is lower than on a search ad headline. 3. They increase engagement and influence ad quality. 4. They increase ad quality and drive lower conversion costs.

Knowledge Check A new suitcase company wants to attract customers to their website. In their situation, what are the benefits of using broad match?

1. They will only reach people searching for their brand. 2. They can reach potential customers that haven't yet heard of their brand. 3. They can make sure to only reach customers looking to purchase carry-ons. 4. They won't have to create an exhaustive keyword list of every type of suitcase they sell.

By planning your Google Ads budgets in advance, you can:

1. Understand the future spend potential of current Google Ads campaigns to help drive budget decisions 2. Take advantage of seasonality to capture incremental opportunities 3. Set optimal bids and budgets across your campaigns to help ensure that ROI performance is maximized 4. Find new opportunities to grow your sales volumes with Google Ads

Match the marketing goal to the correct ad extension. Sitelinks, call extensions, structured snippets, location extension. 1. You operate many retail stores and want potential customers to see the distance from their location to your stores. Select... 2. You're interested in directing people to specific pages on your website. Select... 3. You're focused on driving phone calls to your business. Select... 4. You want to describe the features of a specific product your business offers before customers click on the ad. Select...

1. You operate many retail stores and want potential customers to see the distance from their location to your stores. Location Extension 2. You're interested in directing people to specific pages on your website. Sitelink extension 3. You're focused on driving phone calls to your business. Call extension 4. You want to describe the features of a specific product your business offers before customers click on the ad. Structured snippets

What are Message extensions? Benefits, When to use & Tips

Adapt to a new communication style: Message extensions are a mobile-only format that enables clients to easily connect with a growing segment of users who prefer to text. Benefits Convenience: Consumers can interact with your business on their own terms. Message extensions ensure that your business doesn't miss an opportunity to connect with customers when it's not a good time to call. Prequalification: Give users the chance to ask questions, review products, talk pricing, and engage in other ways they can't on your website. Ability to generate leads: Receive messages from users, and put them in a queue to call later when it's convenient for them. When to use Message extensions are a great fit when you want to give customers an alternative to calling. They provide an initial touchpoint to generate leads, book appointments, and start the sales process. Make sure you have a system in place to respond to messages, either via email forwarding, SMS contact center software, or a mobile phone. Tips Optimize your message extensions: Have a clear call-to-action such as "Text us to get a quote." Put together a prefilled message text that makes users excited to contact you. This is the message text users will see in their SMS app before sending. Schedule your message extensions to show when someone is available to provide answers. Provide great service: Reply to texts in a professional and timely manner.

Affinity Audiences

Affinity Audiences aggregates users who've demonstrated a qualified interest in a given topic, allowing you to access the people your product or service will most likely matter to.

Tip

Affinity Audiences, Detailed Demographics, and In-Market Audiences are auto-included and automatically used as a signal for conversion-based search bidding strategies. Even so, it's recommended that you apply these audiences to view list- and segment-specific performance and implement creative customization.

Campaign: App

After a simple setup process, App campaigns run ads across Google's largest properties, including Search, Play, and YouTube, as well as thousands of mobile sites and apps. Your ads and bids are automatically adjusted to get the most downloads. Just add a few lines of text, a bid, and some assets, and the rest is optimized to help customers find you. With an App campaign, you can increase engagement, app installs, and even in-app actions, like signing up for a newsletter or ordering a product.

How are ad extensions served?

All available extensions in the ad extensions section are designed to co-trigger. At any given time, up to four extensions can show for a particular query or device. In fact, Google Ads shows one or more extensions with your client's ad when it calculates that the extension (or combination of extensions) will improve campaign performance, and when the Ad Rank is high enough for it to appear.

How can Google Ads help you advance your business goals? By driving online, in-app, in-person, and over-the-phone sales By building awareness of your brand By influencing consideration of your products and services All of the above

All of the above

What led Luca to purchase the bike? 1. Luca clicking on the ad and arriving at the right page 2. The enticing headline on the text ad 3. The advertiser creating a Google Search campaign 4. Luca seeing the bike in the store and revisiting the website to find it online

All of them!

What are App extensions? Benefits, When to use & Tips

App extensions are great if you have an app to promote. This format gives you the option of driving traffic to your website or the app store from a single text ad. Benefits By giving the option to install the app via the extension, you increase your app's visibility and grow your installation base. Users interested in your app can directly download it from your ad. When to use Tips and best practices great if you have an app to promote because the format gives you the option of driving traffic to your website or the app store from a single text ad. This is also the only way to guarantee an app impression based on a keyword. Tips Be clear: Your headline link should direct to your website while the app extension links to the app store. Don't link your headline to the app store as well, as this is redundant and may create a confusing user experience. Show it: Implement the extension to serve on both brand and generic keywords. Be inclusive: Don't limit the extension to keywords oriented to driving mobile app downloads, since users still have the option to click through to the website.

App Example:

As the leading gaming company in Greece and sponsor of the Athens Classic Marathon, OPAP launched an app to drive engagement around the marathon and raise funds for two children's hospitals. OPAP had three goals: increase the number of app downloads, decrease the cost per install, and increase engagement. To meet these goals, OPAP decided to use App campaigns — and the number of app installs quadrupled from the previous year.

Tip

As you grow with Google Ads, your optimization score can change. That's because our algorithm regularly discovers recommendations for your account and adds new suggestions based on real-time data. Scores may even decrease if our algorithm identifies new headroom in your account, such as changes in auction dynamics, an update to tracked conversions, and shifts in spend between campaigns. You may see a new set of recommendations when these changes happen.

Quick recap

Audience solutions allow you to create audience lists to layer on your ad groups, combining intent and insights to send the right message to the right customer with the right bid. This is important because today's customers expect frictionless experiences across all channels, providing them with the relevant information they seek.

What's automated bidding?

Bidding is a key success factor for online marketing, and the bid strategy you choose directly influences how your campaigns perform and how visible your ads are in the unique moments that are important to your business. Google Ads offers several bid strategies that are tailored to your marketing goals and different types of campaigns. Depending on your focus, you can determine which strategy is best for you. 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. Auctions Given the dynamic nature of our auctions, the appropriate bid can often be a moving target that's challenging to reach at scale when using manual bidding. 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, and so on. Taking all these signals into account for every auction and bidding can be done through automation.

Knowledge check How are optimization score suggestions ordered on your Google Ads Recommendations page? Select the best answer. By least impactful optimization By most impactful optimization Alphabetically Randomly

By least impactful optimization By most impactful optimization Alphabetically Randomly Optimization score suggestions are ordered based on performance uplift, with the most impactful suggestions at the top of your Recommendations page.

Knowledge check How can optimization score help you enhance your advertising campaigns? Select the best answer. By providing real-time estimates of how your accounts and campaigns are performing By giving recommendations customized to your account's performance By generating recommendations across your accounts and campaigns All of the above

By providing real-time estimates of how your accounts and campaigns are performing By giving recommendations customized to your account's performance By generating recommendations across your accounts and campaigns All of the above Optimization score provides customized recommendations across your accounts and campaigns, as well as real-time estimates of how well your advertising is performing.

Callout extensions: Highlight value-adding attributes

Callout extensions are short, specific (25-character) snippets of text. They can be used to highlight information about value-adding attributes of the business, products, or services. Benefits of callouts Boosts engagement: In our tests, this added information drove a ~10% increase in CTR. Callout extensions are a powerful way to highlight value-added attributes about a particular product or service. Easy to implement: Just add 25 characters for most languages, or 12 characters for double-width languages (like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean). Why should you use callout extensions? Callout extensions are short snippets of text and can serve multiple marketing objectives such as: Drive store sales: Free pickup in store; no lines at checkout Online conversions: 365-day returns; free shipping over $25; 24/7 customer service Brand awareness: Zero-waste policy; organic material only Tips and best practices Be brief: Keep your callouts as short and specific as possible, and include at least six of them in your campaigns. Be appealing: Consider callouts that are unique offerings and can apply at a high level to your whole business. Be concrete: Focus on specific info (for example, "4.7-inch LED display" vs. "large LED display" and "34 MPG max mileage" vs. "great fuel economy"). Think bullet points: "Free shipping" is much sharper than "We have free shipping." Sentence case beats title case (e.g., "100% silk" vs. "100% Silk").

Campaign:

Campaigns are created around a marketing goal and set up based on the actions you'd like customers to take. The marketing goal should be the main thing you want to achieve for your business and can be changed at any time. Search campaign marketing goals can be set to Sales, Leads, or Website Traffic. (Display, Video, and App campaigns have additional goals to choose from.) For example, if Hiroko wants to increase store email list signups, she can create a Leads goal campaign.

Steps to create a text ad in Google Ads Follow this checklist to get started creating your first ad. Before your text ad starts showing to users, Google Ads reviews its content and formatting to make sure it meets our advertising policies.

Check off each item as you complete the task. 1. Sign in to your Google Ads account. 2. In the page menu on the left, select Ads & Extensions. 3. Select the + button and choose the Text Ad option. 4. Enter a URL, headline, and description. Remember that you can also enter the optional Path fields. As you type, a preview of the mobile and desktop version of your ad will appear. 5. When you're satisfied with your new text ad, select Save Ad.

Conversion-focused bidding strategies

Choose one of these bid strategies if you're tracking actions post-click, valuing conversions equally, and looking to maximize the number of conversions. Goal Conversions Bid strategies to choose from Maximize Conversions: Drive as much conversion volume as possible within your budget. You don't need to provide a specific cost per click (CPC), cost per acquisition (CPA), or return on ad spend (ROAS) target. Target cost-per-acquisition (tCPA): This strategy automatically sets bids to help you increase conversions while reaching your average cost-per-acquisition goal. Enhanced cost-per-click (eCPC): This strategy automatically adjusts your manual bid up or down based on each click's likelihood to result in a conversion. Use case Maximize Conversions: Advertisers who want to maximize the number of conversions for a campaign. Advertisers that want to spend a fixed budget and don't have an explicit CPA/ROAS goal Target cost-per-acquisition (tCPA): Maximize amount of conversions, without considering order value — such as lead generation and eCommerce businesses. Note: For a Display campaign using Target CPA, you can choose to pay for conversions billing. Enhanced cost-per-click (eCPC): For Search, this is for advertisers who want to set the core bid manually or through third-party bidding tools, with an added layer of real-time optimization. For Display, this is for advertisers who do not have conversion tracking, use a third-party bidding system, or insist on setting bids manually with an added layer of real-time optimization. It's also great for lead generation and to drive online sales.

Revenue-focused bidding strategies

Choose this bid strategy if you're tracking the revenue or value associated with your conversions and want to maximize it at a specific return on ad spend target. They're a good fit if you're tracking conversion value and have campaigns that have at least 50 conversions in the past 30 days for Search and at least 15 conversions in the past 30 days for Display. Goal Revenue Bid strategies to choose from Target return on ad spend (Target ROAS): Automatically sets bids to help get as much conversion value as possible at the target return on ad spend (ROAS) you set Use case If you want to automatically optimize bids to maximize revenue within your target ROAS

Three Principles: Control

Control Google Ads gives you complete control over your budget. You choose how much to spend per month, per day, and per ad. Based on your settings, Google Ads uses a lightning-fast auction to determine which ad to show. If you want to change your strategy, you can easily adjust your ad, modify your budget, or pause and restart a campaign.

The challenge of creating keyword lists

Creating keyword lists for user searches that are relevant to your business can be challenging and time-consuming. The rapid rise in smartphone use and adoption of voice search and digital assistants have changed the way customers find you, resulting in a high volume of searches you just can't foresee. More and more search moments with new searches are happening every day. In fact, out of all the searches made on Google daily, 15% have never even been seen before! This can make manually covering all searches a never-ending task, resulting in lost opportunities. Building ad creatives at scale and correctly matching them to each of your different landing pages can also be a demanding task. You might have a website with hundreds, thousands, or even millions of ever-changing landing pages that require you to update your ad headlines and display URLs constantly. So what's our answer to this daunting problem? Dynamic Search Ads

Marketing goal: Increase purchases and loyalty with your existing customers Each of the following solutions helps you reach your existing customers.

Customer Match Customer Match allows you to upload your own data into Google Ads and reach custom segments across devices. Find your loyal customers, exclude your current customers, and expand to reach those that resemble your customers. Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) Remarketing Lists for Search Ads can help you reach those who were your customers in the past (those who've gotten to your website's thank-you page).

Description

Description Two description fields — with up to 90 characters each — let you highlight unique details about your product or service. On mobile, where space is tight, Google Ads optimizes your ad to show the highest-performing text. Tip: Highlight what makes your business unique: Free shipping? Dazzling variety? Tell people! Showcase the products, services, or offers that make you competitive. Include prices, promotions, and exclusive offers: People often use Google Search to find information and get things done. Give them what they need to make a decision. If you have a limited-time discount or stock an exclusive product, say so. Empower customers to take action: Are you selling something or offering a service? Calls to action — like purchase, call today, order, browse, sign up, or get a quote — make next steps clear to your potential customer.

Planning is the crucial first step to achieving success with Google Ads

Digital marketing is constantly evolving, which helps businesses like yours connect with more customers. By planning your Google Ads budgets on a monthly basis in advance, you can help ensure that when people need products or information, your ads can meet them at the right time to help maximize conversions and achieve your key performance indicators (KPIs).

Campaign Types

Display: Increase brand awareness when users are browsing content they're interested in online. Shopping: Promote your products, share details about your inventory, and boost traffic to your online or physical store. Search: Drive action on your site when users are searching for similar products or services. Video: Reach your target audience at scale and bring your business' story to life.

Dynamic structured snippets

Dynamic structured snippets Dynamic structured snippets are features that automatically surface useful, structured custom information. This data shows for relevant queries as an additional line of nonclickable text in the form of a header: Value 1, Value 2, and Value 3. A one-line or two-line version of this automated extension may serve. The content is generated from a variety of resources, such as your website and data from internal resources. These snippets can show with text ads in any position on Google Search. A minimum of two snippets will show, but there is no maximum number; it just depends on how many the page width can support.

Tip

Enhanced CPC, Target CPA, Maximize Conversions, and Target ROAS fall specifically under the umbrella of Google Ads Smart Bidding. They're conversion-based bid strategies that leverage an exclusive set of signals to bid at auction time. Once you've decided which automated bid strategy works for your business, check out the Finding success with Smart Bidding: Google Best Practices (Search) and the Smart Bidding Guide (Display) to help further simplify your account structure and get the most of your bid strategy.

Customer Match

Every interaction you have with your customers is an opportunity to connect with them on their path to purchase. These interactions are taking on new forms every day, providing you with additional insights. But the evolving landscape complicates the once-simple approach to reaching customers and moving them down the purchase path. There are now multiple touchpoints and factors that can influence a consumer connection.

To improve your ad quality, focus on the three components of Quality Score

Expected clickthrough rate: The likelihood that the ad will be clicked Expected clickthrough rate (eCTR) predicts whether your keyword is likely to lead to an ad click. However, you should be actively working on improving your clickthrough rate (CTR) which is often how users who see your ad actually end up clicking on it.To improve your clickthrough rate, you may want to: Be specific in your ad: Include keywords in your ad text (especially in the headline) to show people that your ad is directly relevant to their search. Experiment with different calls to action: Do you offer free shipping or free returns? Call now vs. book now? Highlight a unique benefit of your product or service: What makes you stand out from the competition? Think about what matters to users (perhaps an exceptional warranty or return policy). Create time- or location-specific ad text: Test seasonal creative around holidays or special events, or test location-optimized creative. Ad relevance: How closely the ad matches the intent behind a user's search To improve your ad relevance, you may want to: Add negative keywords: Prevent your ads from showing on unwanted queries or queries not closely related to your product or service. Be specific on mobile: If a user's mobile search experience is different from desktop, test mobile-specific creatives. Be local: Target the right region for your business by using only the relevant languages and locations. Include relevant search terms in your ad copy: Adding search terms that are related to your business in your ad copy can help make your ad more resonant for users. Landing page experience: How relevant, transparent, and easy-to-navigate the page is for users To improve your landing page experience, you may want to: Send traffic to the right landing page: Direct clicks to pages related to a user's query. If a search is for "striped shirts," the landing page should feature striped shirts, not some other variety of shirts or clothing in general. Be consistent: Make sure the landing page continues the conversation set up by your ad and follows through on the ad's offer or call-to-action. Make your site transparent and trustworthy: Make it easy for visitors to find your contact information, and clearly state what your business does. If you request personal information from customers, make it clear why you're asking for it and what you'll do with it. Work on loading speed and clarity: Help users quickly find what they're looking for by prioritizing the content that's visible above-the-fold. Rethink mobile: Ease of navigation is valued by users even more on mobile websites, so make sure yours is optimized.

What are the benefits of responsive search ads?

Flexibility Create flexible ads that adapt to device widths, giving you more room to share your message with potential customers. Relevance Save time by providing multiple headline and description options. Then let Google Ads show the most relevant combinations to your customers. Reach Reach more potential customers with multiple headline and description options that give your ads the opportunity to compete in more auctions and match more search terms. Performance Increase ad group performance by attracting additional clicks and conversions that your existing text ads aren't capturing.

What are Affiliate Location extensions? Benefits, When to use & Tips

Give directions to retail partner locations (available in select countries): Affiliate location extensions allow product manufacturers to drive visits to retail partners that sell their products. The format displays the headline and URL for the manufacturer's website, ad text for the manufacturer's product, and the nearest retailer. Benefits Drive store sales: By helping consumers find a nearby retailer that sells your product, you improve the chance that they'll visit you and make a purchase in person. Drive online sales: Consumers have the option to visit the manufacturer's website and purchase online if they don't have time to visit the retailer. Report store visits: Affiliate location extensions are one of the requirements if manufacturers want to report store visits. When to use Affiliate location extensions are ideal for manufacturers. They help consumers find their products at select retailers, while still providing the option to visit their website and purchase online. Tips Maximize local reach: In the Google Ads interface, select retail chains or automotive dealerships to highlight all of the nearby locations where consumers can find your products. Adapt bids: Set higher bids for users who are close to retailer locations to ensure they see your ad. This can be done via the Advanced Locations Settings in Google Ads.

What are Location extensions? Benefits, When to use & Tips

Give directions to the business: Location extensions let you show your business address, phone number, and a map marker alongside your ad text. On mobile devices, there's a link with directions to your business. Benefits Drive store sales: By helping users find a nearby store, you improve the chance that they'll visit you and make purchases in person. Drive online sales: Many users feel more confident buying online if they know there is a store close to them (in case they'd like to exchange or return what they've bought). Increase performance: On average, ads with location extensions see a 10% boost in CTR. Boost visibility: Add a bid modifier for users who are close to a store location. This increases the ad's visibility and the chances that the user will visit the store. Report store visits: Location extensions are one of the requirements if advertisers want to report store visits. When to use Location extensions are great if you have physical stores that you can drive foot traffic to, or for otherwise encouraging customer visits. Tips Keep information updated: Location extensions are served via the Google My Business (GMB) account. Make sure information such as address and phone number are updated. Adapt bids: Bid more aggressively for users who are close to your stores to ensure they see your ad. This can be done via the Advanced Location settings in Google Ads.

Auction-time ad quality

Google Ads also looks at how relevant and useful your ad and the website it links to are to the person who'll see it. Quality Score is an aggregated estimate of our assessment of the quality of your ad.

How Ad Rank determines your ad position

Google Ads calculates Ad Rank for every ad in the auction. Ad Rank determines your ad position and whether your ads are eligible to show at all. Generally speaking, the ad with the highest Ad Rank gets to show in the top position, and the ad with the second highest Ad Rank gets to show in the second position (assuming the ads clear the relevant thresholds), and so on. At a high level, think of Ad Rank as having five factors.

How does Google Ads generate responsive search ads? Google Ads creates them based on existing ad copy, landing pages, and extensions Google Ads creates them based on existing high performing ad copy Google Ads mixes and matches headlines and description lines that have been provided Google Ads mixes and matches headlines and URLs that have been provided

Google Ads creates them based on existing ad copy, landing pages, and extensions Google Ads creates them based on existing high performing ad copy Google Ads mixes and matches headlines and description lines that have been provided Google Ads mixes and matches headlines and URLs that have been provided

What is Google Ads?

Google Ads is a digital advertising solution that helps you reach this audience and transform them into valuable customers.

How google ads auction works?

Google Ads uses an auction system to rank the ads that appear on the search results page, and to determine the cost for each ad click. The order in which ads appear on the page is based on a calculation we call Ad Rank. First and foremost, Google users want ads they see to be relevant. Users don't want to be bothered with ads that aren't closely related to what they're searching for. And advertisers want to show relevant ads so that users will actually click on them. Google wants to provide a good experience for users and value to advertisers so that they come back and use our services again in the future. Let's review an example of what a real-time auction would look like.

Google Consumer Surveys

Google Consumer Surveys is a platform that collects ratings for certain domains and businesses. Surveys are run and managed by Google.

Google Customer Reviews (GCR)

Google Customer Reviews is a free service that helps your business collect feedback from customers who've made a purchase on your website. With just one click on your checkout page, customers can choose to receive a survey to rate their experience. The ratings from these customer surveys apply to your seller ratings eligibility. To learn more about the program, visit the Help Center.

Campaign: Display

Google Display ads can appear across a network of more than two million sites and apps, reaching 90% of people on the internet. Your ads get matched to content related to your business or to your customers' interests. Use a Display campaign to increase exposure and reach audiences with specific interests across the web.

Recap

Google Search Campaigns are an effective way to reach your customers when they need you the most — right when they are searching for your products and services using the Google Search engine. We make it easy for you and your ads to make that lasting connection with your customers with different matching and keyword options, as well as our machine-learning algorithm in DSA.

Forcecasting

Google Search ad auctions — made up of billions of searches per week — powers our forecast engine. Get accurate forecasts Forecasts are based on Google data and your account's historical performance, and then validated using machine learning. That means Performance Planner plans are more likely to hit KPIs than prior estimation methods

Policies and requirements

Google only uses data to serve ads as specified by your campaign setup. We don't share the cookie lists with any advertisers, including you as the account owner. A remarketing list must have at least 1,000 users on it before it can be used.

What Real time auction looks like?

Google uses a special version of a second-price auction that takes into account more than just bids—more on that later. In a standard second-price auction based only on bids, the advertiser doesn't have to pay their full bid. They only have to pay $0.01 more than the amount of the next highest bidder. Say we have four advertisers competing for space on the search results page, and they're willing to pay $4, $3, $2, and $1, respectively, for a user to click on their ad and visit their website. So in this particular case, the first advertiser was bidding $4, but they'd only have to pay $3.01—which is $0.01 above the bid of the second highest advertiser. The same thing applies to advertiser 2, and to advertiser 3. This design allows each advertiser to bid their true maximum willingness to pay for a click—but only have to pay just enough to beat the competition.

In-Market Audiences

Google's Audience solutions can tell the difference between interest and intent. Being able to identify groups that are in-market for your products and services is extremely valuable because it allows you to reach people when they're in the mindset to buy. This can result in a higher ROI than reaching customers that are only generally interested.

So, how can Hiroko tailor her campaign to suit her various customer groups?

Google's Search Audience solutions allow Hiroko to create audience lists based on a multitude of signals, then layer those audience lists onto her ad groups. This allows her to then condition her bids, creatives, and keywords based on her various customer groups. With Audience solutions, she can combine the intent exhibited from search keywords like "bicycle sales online" with insights about those potential customer groups. This way, Hiroko can make more informed decisions to reach customers at the right moment, with the right bid and message.

Google-led shopping research

Google-led shopping research evaluates the customer service performance of certain online businesses. It follows its own methodology and processes, which may bear similarities to StellaService.

Optimization score has helped to improve a wide range of businesses, for example:

Hanapin Marketing, the agency behind the blog PPC Hero, sought to increase conversions. The agency made optimization score a central part of their account management routine — and it paid off. In one account, a specific recommendation led a campaign to a 44% increase in conversions and a 32% reduction in cost-per-conversion. wPromote, a digital marketing agency, was looking for ways to grow their accounts while keeping their budget stable. Optimization score was there to help. After changing their bidding strategy in a remarketing campaign, wPromote saw conversions increase by 20% and cost-per-conversion decrease by 16%.

Headline

Headline People are most likely to notice your headline text. Details: Up to three headline fields are available with up to 30 characters each. The first two headline fields are required, and the third is optional. Look out for how your longer headlines — separated by a vertical pipe ("|") — might wrap on mobile devices. Tip: Include at least one of your keywords in your headline: Keywords in your ad text show your ad's relevance to what people want. For example, if you've included "mountain bikes" and "new bikes" as keywords, one of your ad headlines could be "Buy New Mountain Bikes."

Meet Hiroko

Hiroko is the digital marketing manager at Your Adventure, which sells bicycles and cycling gear both online and in brick-and-mortar locations around the world. She's focused on increasing the number of bicycles that her company sells online, so tracking conversions is very important to her. But, there are so many bidding strategies to choose from. Let's dive into the different automated bidding strategies available to help Hiroko choose the right one.

Knowledge check Hiroko has reviewed all of the available automated bidding strategies,. Which one should she choose, if she's focused on conversions to increase online bicycle sales within her budget? Select the best answer. Target impression share Maximize conversions Maximize clicks Target return on ad spend

Hiroko should choose maximize conversions to drive as many conversions as possible with her budget. Target impression share Maximize conversions Maximize clicks Target return on ad spend

How Dynamic Search Ads works

How are you, your potential customers, and Google all involved in how Dynamic Search Ads ultimately works? 1. You specify the pages of your website, daily budget, and an ad template. 2. The customer enters their search term in Google Search. 3. If you have content relevant to the search, Google dynamically generates an ad headline and destination URL to the best matching page on your site. Technical terms: Using Google's web crawling technology, Dynamic Search Ads indexes your website and uses that index list to ultimately determine if a customer's search is relevant to your business. If the search term matches the index, Dynamic Search Ads will automatically create a headline and a destination URL customized to the customer search term and will enter a dynamic search ad based on your template into the Google Ads auction. You only need to create the description in the template beforehand — everything else is automatic and based on the customer's search term.

Broad match modifier Hiroko wants to promote her store's best-selling blue girls' bike. To get her ads in front of a wide audience looking to buy a bike, while still narrowing in on people searching for a blue girls' bike, she adds broad match modifiers to her keywords.

How does it work? Adding a + sign in front of a keyword turns it into a broad match modifier. This prompts your ads to appear only if the keyword or its close variations are in any part of the search terms. This is different from broad match, which allows for any variation of the keyword to appear in the search term. Broad match modifiers only allow for close variations. How does this help Hiroko? If Hiroko uses the broad match modifier keywords +blue, +girl, and +bike, her ads will appear for people searching for any combination of these terms in a search (and possibly including additional terms). However, the ads won't appear if any one of these keywords aren't in the search term. For example, her ads will match with searches for blue bicycle for 6-year old girls, because all three broad match modifier keywords are in the search. However, her ad won't appear for the search girl bike because blue isn't a part of that search. Why will Hiroko's ad show when the search term is blue bicycles for sporty girls and her broad match modifier keywords are +blue, +girl, and +bike? Because the search term bicycle is a close variant of bike, and all the broad match modifier keywords appear in the search term.

Negative keywords Hiroko is targeting the keyword kids' bikes in broad match and has noticed that her ads are sometimes matching to the search term kids' scooters. However, she doesn't have any scooters in her inventory at the moment. Until she gets more scooters in her store, she wants to put her ads in front of people only interested in bikes, so she adds -scooter as a negative keyword to her keyword list.

How does it work? Adding a minus sign in front of the keyword scooter makes it a negative keyword (-scooter). This means ads won't show if someone includes that negative keyword in their search. How does this help Hiroko? By using the negative keyword -scooter, Hiroko's ads won't match to people searching for scooters.

Broad match (default match type) Hiroko's adventure store just increased its bike inventory, and she wants to promote the new selection. To get her ads in front of the widest possible audience and to make sure she doesn't miss out on any searches, she uses broad match for her keywords.

How does it work? Broad match shows ads if a keyword (or any variations like misspellings, synonyms, or related searches) are included in a user's search terms. How does this help Hiroko? With broad match, Hiroko can use more general keywords like bike and match her ads to anyone searching for bike or its variations, like bicycle. For example, if a user is searching for best first bikes for a 6-year-old child or men's mountain bikes for sale, Hiroko's ad will appear because their search terms contain some variation of her keyword, bike. This gives her store's site a better chance to be seen and increases the chances of Hiroko's ad showing up for search terms she may not have thought about.

Phrase Match Hiroko wants to promote a deal on a new kids' bike called My First Big Bike. To get her ads in front of only people searching for that bike brand, she adds phrase match to her keywords.

How does it work? Placing quotation marks around the keywords turns them into phrase match. This prompts your ads to appear only if the keywords within the quotation marks or close variations of them match a user's search term. This is different from broad match modifier as there cannot be any extra words between the user's search terms, but similar since extra words can appear before or after the phrase match. How does this help Hiroko? If Hiroko uses the keyword "My First Big Bike" in her phrase match, her ad won't match to searches that contain first big bike, as my also needs to appear. Her ads will only show to customers searching for the bike brand, My First Big Bike. Will the search term Is my first big bike worth buying? prompt Hiroko's ad to show if she uses phrase match on her keyword, "My First Big Bike"? Yes, it will! This search term includes the keyword phrase my first big bike in its entirety and in the correct order. Other words are allowed to come before or after the phrase.

Exact match Hiroko is running a sale on kids' bikes, and she really wants to attract customers looking for deals. To get her ads in front of people only searching for promotions on kids' bikes, she adds exact match to her keywords.

How does it work? To use exact match, place brackets around the keywords. This way, your ads will only show if the search means the same thing as your keyword. It may include close variations of your keyword, like misspellings, plurals, and synonyms. This is different from phrase match, as there can't be any extra words before or after the search terms. For example, the keyword [men's bicycles] will show when someone searches for men's bicycles or men's bikes, but it won't show for men's bikes for sale. How does this help Hiroko? If Hiroko uses the exact match keyword [kids' bike sales], customers will see her ad whether they search for kid bicycle sale, sale on kid bikes, or children's bike on sale. This helps her narrow her audience down to only potential customers. Her ads won't appear for anyone looking for just kids' bikes, as that doesn't include the concept of a sale. Will Hiroko's ad match with the search words best kid bike sales if she uses the exact match keywords [kids' bike sales]? No, it won't. Exact match keywords only match to searches that mean the same thing as the keyword. In other words, they don't match to searches that contain additional concepts or details not present in the original keyword.

In-Market Audiences use case

Imagine that someone watched a video review of a car, installed the AutoTrader app on their mobile device, searched for auto financing help on Google.com and looked for local car dealerships on Google Maps. Our system would recognize that this person is likely in the market for a car, and would add him to an audience list of similar people. A bank specializing in automobile financing and looking to increase loans for potential car buyers might target the generic keyword "loans" and layer that campaign with an audience that's in-market for a car. This way, only people that are potentially interested in auto financing will see their ad.

Best practices for excellent Google Ads creatives

Implement three to five ads per ad group The more ads present in an ad group, the more options you'll have for success in an auction. Optimize your ad rotation for clicks or conversions Optimizing your ad rotation will allow the system to serve the ideal ad for the specific circumstances of each auction. Use at least three extensions for each campaign or ad group At the time of each auction, your ad will be assembled with the most appealing extensions. More eligible extensions give your ads more opportunity to meet users' specific needs.

Marketing goal: Drive consideration Each of the following solutions helps you drive consideration among potential customers and people who have interacted with your brand in the past.

In-Market audiences In-Market Audiences is a powerful way to drive consideration among people who are actively researching the products or services you offer and who we've inferred are in-market to buy them, including those thinking of buying from other places. Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) RLSA helps you reach people who have engaged with your website or YouTube channel in the past. Similar Audiences for Search Similar Audiences for Search helps you find new customers that share the behaviors and characteristics of your remarketing audience segments.

Position Dynamic Search Ads based on your business goals What are your business goals, and how can Dynamic Search Ads help you reach them?

Incremental reach "I want to make sure my ads appear for more relevant user searches." Use Dynamic Search Ads as a complement to your existing keyword strategy. This requires little effort and ensures good coverage without complex implementation or campaign management. Long-tail automation "I want my users to find me even on my long-tail products." This is great for you if your website content is large and dynamic, and you fear the risk of missing long-tail traffic with a keyword-targeted, campaign-only strategy. Rapid expansion "I want to enter new markets quickly." Dynamic Search Ads can help you broaden your current activity to new business areas or countries.

What are the benefits of Optimization Score?

Instant With optimization score, you get real-time estimates of how your accounts and campaigns are performing. You can also make instant improvements by accepting recommendations. Customized Optimization score uses a variety of methods, such as statistical modeling, to give you recommendations tailored to your account's performance. Scalable Scores and recommendations are available for campaigns, accounts, and most manager accounts (MCCs). This allows you to apply recommendations across multiple layers of your advertising strategy.

Knowledge check It's 6am, and you're sitting in an airport in Singapore, looking through email on your laptop. You realize you forgot to book a hotel for your trip to New York to see the Statue of Liberty.

Intent: I need to book a hotel room Device: I'm on my laptop Interest: I love architecture and New York Time: It's 6:00 a.m. Location: I'm sitting in the Singapore airport

Targeting options for Dynamic Search Ads You're in control of how Google matches people's searches to your site's content. There are different site targeting options to choose from, each with a different level of control.

Landing pages from standard ad groups This is the easiest option, as it includes all webpages that you're already using as landing pages for your ads across your accounts. Categories Based on your website content, Google creates targetable categories, or sets of landing pages organized by theme. You decide which sets of pages to target, how to group similar pages, and the level of granularity. Example: In an online electronics store, you can target just the "digital camera" category of the store URL contains You can target pages of your site containing specific strings. Example: You want to target all the blog-related pages of your electronics website based on the URL string that appears when you navigate the site. If all of those URLs follow a similar pattern, like example.com/blog/, you should target every one that contains "blog URL is You can target specific URLs. Example: If you want to create a dynamic ad group based on your "special offers" page, you can choose to target just that page. Page feeds Generate your ad group's DSA targeting based on a feed of specific URLs, mapped to custom labels that can be updated automatically. Example: You want to make a campaign for TVs that are on sale. You'll need to create a feed and label all the TVs being sold at a discount "ON_SALE". In your dynamic ad group, choose to target custom labels, and enter "ON_SALE" as a custom label. You'll also be able to add a custom bid for that target.

How Ad Rank influences actual cost per click

Oftentimes, average cost per click (CPC) is not the price you're paying for each of your clicks. Because the system is dynamic, the CPC can vary a lot from auction to auction and depends on a variety of factors, such as the context of each query. It's important to keep in mind that average CPC is just an average--meaning that the price you pay 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.

Tip

Performance Planner is our newest tool in Google Ads to help you answer the questions above and determine the advertising budget required to help reach your marketing goals.

How do I see and implement these recommended changes?

Performance Planner provides a CSV download with the recommended bid scaling, Target CPA, Target ROAS, and average daily budget amounts. You can manually apply these suggestions through the Google Ads campaign management interface, or you can download a Google Ads Editor file and upload to Google Ads Editor to see and action the recommended changes.

How does Performance Planner forecast campaign performance?

Performance Planner uses a combination of account history and machine learning to power forecasts. In Google Ads tools, forecasts must meet a certain level of accuracy. As a result, the confidence interval of these forecasts is likely greater than that of other available forecast tools.

Performace Planner Process:

Performance Planner will generate a forecast of what your campaigns will achieve for a future period, if you make no changes to your current campaigns. This forecast is represented by the grey dot. Using Google's seasonality data and insights, Performance Planner will predict the results if you use optimal bids and average daily budgets across your campaigns to maximize the number of conversions for any future spend scenario. These results are represented by a blue line. When you choose a spend point on the blue line, Performance Planner will improve your ROI by reallocating spend between campaigns through adjusting bids and average daily budgets. See these changes in the campaigns table or via CSV download.

What do users want?

Relevant information Users search on Google because they're looking for an answer to a specific query. This is the core of Google's mission. Information based on their moment Users are now consulting multiple sources across multiple devices and have become more demanding and impatient to get results. To help users, Google has to quickly provide results that meet their intent, interest, location, and more. Ads that contribute to their experience Ads are a part of the Google ecosystem and follow the same rules. They have to be relevant to provide a good user experience and encourage users to take action.That's why, in order to respond to user behavior and demand, we offer various ad extensions that provide the right users with the right information at the right moment.

What are responsive search ads?

Responsive search ads let you create ads that adapt to show more relevant messages to your customers. All you need to do is supply the headlines, descriptions and URLs for your ads. The more headlines and descriptions you enter, the more Google Ads can test and serve ad variations that match users' search terms — which can improve your ad performance. After you enter headlines and descriptions, Google Ads assembles the text into multiple ad combinations in a way that avoids redundancy. Over time, we'll test the most promising ad combinations, and learn which ones are the most relevant for your customers.

Three Principles: Results

Results Pay only for results, like clicks to your website or calls to your business. Our measurement tools make it easy to see how your site, apps, and ads are performing. Plus, smart technology lets you create, manage, and optimize your campaigns so you can get the most out of your investment.

Question: You're a brand manager with an eCommerce retail company. You're looking to advertise online and measure the volume of sales coming from your digital campaigns. Which of the following benefits of Google Ads could help you accomplish your goal?

Results: Use Google Ads' measurement tools to understand how your campaigns are performing.

See optimization score in action Hiroko is a digital marketing manager at Your Adventure, an online bike store. Spring is right around the corner, and her business is heading into an annual promotional week. With bicycle sales about to peak, she's looking to Google Ads to help drive online sales during this busy season. To start, Hiroko heads to the Recommendations page of her Google Ads account. Here, she finds optimization suggestions based on the performance of her different campaigns.

Room for improvement Hiroko can see that her optimization score is 80.3%. So she has room to boost her campaigns by nearly 20%. If she acts on each recommendation (by either applying or dismissing them), her account can achieve a score of 100%. Accepting recommendations Hiroko is eager to improve her campaigns to drive more sales. She accepts bid suggestions to increase the cost-per-click on her custom bike campaign, which drives the most sales. She then decreases bids on less popular search terms in her bike accessories campaign, which gets the least traffic. Achieving success After accepting recommendations, Hiroko feels confident that her Google Ads campaigns are ready to drive sales during her busy season. Using optimization score ends up helping Hiroko drive down cost-per-acquisition for each bicycle sale, resulting in a significant profit increase!

Campaign: Search

Search ads appear next to Google search results and on other Google partner sites, like YouTube, when people look for businesses like yours. With a Search campaign, you can make sure potential customers notice your brand, consider your products, and take action.

Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA)

Search campaigns generate valuable traffic to your website and can help you achieve excellent results. But not all user traffic is the same!

Knowledge Check If your exact match keyword is [running shoes], which searches may prompt your ad to show? shoes for running Best running shoes shoes best for running running sneakers Running shoe

The following searches will match: Running shoe, because it's the singular form of the keyword running sneakers, because it's a close variation of that exact term, with the same meaning shoes for running, because it's a close variation of that exact term, with the same meaning The following searches will not match: Best running shoes and shoes best for running, because the concept of best was not included in the original keyword

How Audience solutions can enhance your Search strategy

Variable bidding What Layer at least one audience group on top of your Search campaign, and bid differently for that audience based on their value to your business. How Increase your bids on certain audiences: If you bid higher for certain audiences, you'll potentially have your ad shown at a better position when people search for you. For example, using Affinity Audiences, Hiroko could bid higher for customers searching for "mountain bikes" who are also passionate about outdoor adventure sports. Decrease your bids on certain audiences: Certain audiences might not have as strong a performance as others do, so you can reduce your bids when those audiences search for you. For example, using Remarketing Lists for Search Ads, you may know that certain past visitors have a low shopping basket average value. Bidding lower for lists that include such visitors may improve your overall campaign performance. Why you should care Ad auctions are competitive, and you want to make sure you're making the right bids when certain groups of people are searching for you. Keyword expansion What Expand your keyword set to larger set terms and more broad terms. Engage the mid- and upper funnel for greater reach. How Create ad groups that target generic keywords and only show ads to certain audiences. Bidding for generic keywords can be costly, as it's not always a given that people searching for those terms are in the market for your product. Why you should care For example, people searching for the term "commute options" might not be looking for bicycles and aren't relevant customers for a bike shop. You may decide to create an ad group that targets generic terms like "commute" and only have your ads shown to people that have been added to an in-market list for "Autos & Vehicles > Vehicles (Other) > Bicycles & Accessories," increasing the relevancy of your ad. Creative customization What Reach different audience segments with unique messaging that will resonate best with them. Using Google Audiences, you can tailor your ad creatives based on the user. How You can build ad groups catering to specific audience lists and create bespoke text ads for those groups of people. For example, using Customer Match, you can create an ad that will show only to people who have signed up to your mailing list, offering them a discount for returning to your site. Why you should care The more relevant your ads, the better the user experience for your customers, leading to a higher click-through rate and better campaign performance! For example, using Remarketing Lists for Search Ads, you can create an ad that's relevant for new customers and only show it to them (by excluding all the people who've already visited your site in the past year).

Sitelinks

additional links that appear just under the text of your search ads, directing users to specific pages of your website. Benefits of sitelinks Increased engagement: Adding sitelinks can boost the average clickthrough rate (CTR) for an ad, including in searches for one of the advertiser's brand terms. More conversions: By sending users directly to the right page, you reduce the number of steps they need to perform for an action that you value. Easy to manage: Add and update sitelinks at the account, campaign, or ad group level without the need to bid separately or add separate keywords. The system automatically displays the best performing or most relevant sitelinks for each query. Why should you use sitelinks? Sitelinks direct to specific pages of your website, and they can serve most marketing objectives as long as the site contains related content. It's important to remember that the link in the sitelink can't be the same as the headline links. Purposes include: Driving store sales: Store hours and locations; find a store Making online conversions: Special discounts; new offers; men's shoes; subscribe now Raising brand awareness: Our values; learn more about our business story Tips and best practices Add as many sitelinks as you can: You should ideally implement 8 to 10 active sitelinks per campaign. Make sure you have enough content on your website to have at least two sitelinks, otherwise the sitelinks won't show. Select the right landing pages: Link directly to popular or high-converting sections of your website. Guide the user: In the sitelink title, clearly mention what users will find on the landing page.