Google Adwords – what is it?
When planning marketing activities for our website, we must ensure a rational selection of promotional channels, taking into account our budget and business goals. In recent years, Google's advertising system, Google AdWords (renamed Google Ads since July 24, 2018), has become unrivaled in terms of reach, the number of available advertising formats, and functionalities . You may be wondering: what is Google AdWords?
This system allows for the display of text, image, and video ads. When we begin promoting our website online, we consider which channel to focus on and which to allocate a larger budget to. Many clients hesitate between entrusting an interactive agency with organic website positioning and commissioning a pay-per-click campaign. A well-planned e-marketing campaign should complement both promotional channels to generate valuable traffic to our website. Organic positioning is a lengthy process, and the results can take months. AdWords can deliver results much faster, and the campaign itself can be launched overnight, immediately increasing our website's visibility!
Google Adwords – where can we reach potential customers with advertising?
AdWords advertising is primarily associated with Google search network campaigns. They are marked with a green "advertisement" icon, sometimes also yellow. AdWords sponsored links appear at the top of search results and at the bottom of the page. In the middle are the so-called Google organic results. Previously, Google AdWords ads also appeared in a box on the right side of the search results, but this solution has been discontinued. Currently, Google is striving to increase ad visibility at the expense of organic results.
We encounter Google AdWords ads throughout our daily web browsing. We are displayed on advertising spaces on other websites with banners directing to our website. Banners can take various forms, from text-based to graphical, to dynamically generated flexible banners that adapt to a given advertising space without the need to create creatives in different sizes. They appear on websites from the Google advertising partner network, which includes both small and large portals on a variety of topics – allowing us to reach users from different age groups, with different interests, and with different goals.
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Google AdWords also offers advertising on YouTube. Nearly 16 million Poles regularly visit the YouTube platform each month, so it has undeniable advertising potential. YouTube allows us to reach potential customers at a relatively low cost per interaction with our ad (often as little as 5 cents per video view). Check out the shortest ad format available, which we explain in this post. Google Ads offers various YouTube ad formats. You can choose between non-skippable ads and ones that can be skipped after 5 seconds of playback. Other options include bumpers—6-second promotional videos that quickly grab the attention of potential customers—and overlay ads that appear during the video itself. Google AdWords (Google Ads) also allows you to advertise through Google Sponsored Promotions campaigns . These are ads targeted at Gmail users. They appear at the top of the inbox and can also be sent in a newsletter-like format. They then land in the 'Offers' tab.
Adwords Search Network Campaign Extensions – How to Use?
Google continues to expand the functionality of AdWords ( Google Ads ) ads on the Search Network. By using extensions wisely, we increase the visibility of our ads in search results (with all extensions, our ad on a mobile device can even take up the entire screen!). Using extensions also affects quality scores, but their primary purpose is to segment user information and add features that shorten the path between a potential customer and the company. Using call extensions allows users searching for services on a smartphone to connect directly with our company by clicking the number in the ad. It's also possible to send an SMS using the message extension. These features are ideal for the service industry, especially in the case of roadside assistance, where speed of reaching customers is crucial. We can also enhance our ads with callout extensions, which provide additional space for information important to potential customers. For example, we can include messages about free shipping, 24-hour shipping, or 24-hour service. It's also worth including links to other subpages of our website, such as tabs with promotions, news, or a contact form. Price extensions help us inform users about the prices of our top products or most popular services. If we have a special promotion, we also have an extension that allows us to announce it in the search engine. The list of available extension variants is long and offers enormous potential, worth taking advantage of.
Shopping advertising – what does it involve? Using Google Ads , we can also present our offer by running a shopping campaign. This type of ad consists of a product image, its name, and price, and directs customers directly to a store subpage where they can purchase the item. This allows customers to see basic information about the product they're interested in, even without visiting our website. These ads appear at the top of search results, on the right side of the results list, and in the Google Shopping tab. This makes our offer highly visible to potential customers, which in turn increases the chance that a user will click through to our website. Creating a shopping campaign isn't difficult, but it requires creating a Google Merchant Center account linked to your Google Ads account and generating a product feed—a file containing data about your products. Once the feed is uploaded to your account, the system will automatically pull data for ads directly from the website. However, you don't have to worry about spending money on an outdated offer—the feed is regularly updated, preventing ads from being generated for products that are currently out of stock.
Display Advertising – What's It All About? Google also offers display ads, which are graphical in nature. They appear not in the search engine itself, but on the websites of Google's advertising partners – as banners between paragraphs of text or next to an article, full-screen ads, background ads, or pop-ups. These offer advertisers a wide range of creative options, allowing them to combine text with images and thus have a stronger impact on web users. Using this ad format in Google Ads, we can choose from a variety of targeting options. If we want our banners to align well with the content of the website they're placed on, we can set the ad to appear only on websites from specific industries. However, we can also target the ad directly to audiences with specific demographics and interests – in this case, the ad will appear on websites with various topics, but only to users who match the target audience. Using Display advertising, we can also run a remarketing campaign by targeting people who have come into contact with our online store with banners.
What goals can you achieve with Google Ads? The Google Ads system is designed to serve advertisers, regardless of their goals. These campaigns can help you increase website traffic, encourage users to take a specific action, or simply increase brand awareness online. Various bid optimization strategies in Google Ads help you achieve your goals. For example, if you're focused on conversions, you can choose from five intelligent, algorithm-based bid optimization strategies. You can focus on maximizing the number or value of conversions, maintaining a target cost per action, maintaining the best ROAS (return on investment), or opt for automatic adjustments to your manually set bids.
Google Adwords Advertising – How Much Will I Spend?
There is no minimum or maximum amount we can allocate for a Google AdWords campaign. The key here is the business goal we want to achieve. AdWords offers us a wide range of opportunities to reach potential customers across all areas of the internet. AdWords advertising can encourage users to take specific action. Running a small service business operating in the local market, a budget of PLN 1000 can significantly increase the website's visibility and contribute to an increase in phone calls and form submissions. Running a large brand campaign on YouTube, spending PLN 65, can achieve nearly 9 million ad views per month. It's difficult to imagine such results with a similar budget advertising on television. A thorough understanding of the industry in which we operate, setting clear business goals, and, in the long run, a diligently managed and optimized Google AdWords campaign will contribute to achieving measurable results while reducing costs. 95% of Polish internet users are within the reach of the Google Display Network! Do you already know what Google AdWords is ? Start advertising with Adwords today!
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- It explains what Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is and where you can reach with advertising: the search network, partner network banners, YouTube and Gmail.
- We cover search campaign extensions (connections, messaging, callouts, links, pricing, promotions), shopping campaigns, display advertising, and optimization goals and strategies.
- It was indicated that there is no minimum budget – from PLN 1000 for small businesses to PLN 65 for millions of views on YouTube, with 95% of Polish internet users being within the reach of the Google network.
